Re: The Climate Thread
Reply #8 –
Yes, I realise there are issues around nuclear, but I'm fairly certain the lack of support for it is under-pinned by vested interests in other technologies. The anti-nuclear brigade always reference 50 year old technology systems. Of course some are just professionals protesting against all and any change, they aren't going to convince anyone who holds even just a modicum of knowledge on the subject.
In recent years I worked in the area of additive manufacturing, that has covered a surprisingly wide scope, everything from replacement hips to printable solar cells. The long term promise is to produce very cheap printable solar cell films, that can be laminated to surfaces like existing roofing or tiles, we are talking figures of $1 to $3 per square meter. But the scientists have done the sums, and even if this stuff had twice the efficiency of current technologies(Up from about 23% to 45%) and covered every available square meter of roof space in the country it would still fall short of demand at various times of the year. What the solar boosters do not tell you is that they project the need will be for supplementary solar farms consuming space equivalent to the area of Tasmania, and nobody is prepared to predict what effect that will have on environment, it would certain change the planets albedo(reflectivity), and that has an impact on temperature and humidity.
Now do no take my post as an anti-solar position, I'm just postulating the stupidity of a single solution approach. Which is why I also see nuclear as a part of the solution, and many other technologies as well.
btw., Where do you put a nuclear plant?
It turns out the perfect place to put one is right next door to a desalination plant fixing two problems with one facility. It makes it very hard to believe Australia isn't a leader in this rather than an objector! Further on of the future carbon neutral technologies is clean hydrogen, produced from sea-water, where do you do that, right next door to the desalination and nuclear plant!
What are some one of the by-products of hydrogen production from sea-water?
Deuterium, Heavy Water and even Helium-3 in small quantities. Materials needed for use in the operation of the ultimate clean energy source, fusion reactors which the EU and UN is pouring trillions of dollars into developing, several new fusion pilot sites will be running before the end of this decade, none of them in Australia, despite Australia providing some of the leader researchers!
Yet we pour billions into buying very dirtily produced (well not in my backyard) cheap as crap solar PV cells, made using bucket chemistry in the virtual slave labour conditions of China, like the fumes and by-products never cross the border! An industry that in the 2000s is the equivalent of a 1970s asbestos sheet production facility! If produced in the correct clean safe and controlled environment they'd be costing us 5x the price to install and would need to last 50 years to get a payback, they barely last 15 years now, in fact the company that installed them will be long gone before you get to exercise your 20 year warranty! The real solar PV panel cost, not the buy price but the cost, should roughly be the equivalent of a similarly sized TV per panel.
Topic: The Climate, Environment and Energy Thread (Read 102612 times)
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