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Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Greenpeace has strongly condemned investment in the International ITER Fusion Project, claiming the money spent on ITER should instead be spent on renewables.
According to Australian SBS;
… Greenpeace nuclear and energy campaigner, Sebastien Blavier, said the cost and uncertainty of fusion mean investing in thermonuclear reactors at the expense of other available clean energy options is risky and ignorant.
“We are opposed to this argument of fusion being the future of power for humanity, that’s totally false for us,” he said. “Today the world is facing massive challenges like poverty, like access to electricity for people, poor people, for development.”
“We now how have the solution with renewables like solar and wind – they are affordable, they are cheap. For the moment ITER is presented as being the solution for the future power of humanity and I think that’s a big mistake.”
“If you look at the costs, it’s a massive amount of money that could be invested in renewables that are already ready to take off and be competitive; so it’s not a solution to future power, it’s only research.” …
Read more: http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2015/12/06/nuclear-fusion-shadows-clean-energy-debate
Greenpeace also opposes nuclear fission. From their website;
End the nuclear age
Greenpeace has always fought – and will continue to fight – vigorously against nuclear power because it is an unacceptable risk to the environment and to humanity. The only solution is to halt the expansion of all nuclear power, and for the shutdown of existing plants. …
Read more: http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/campaigns/nuclear/
Given that leading greens like James Hansen, former NASA GISS director, think nuclear is an essential part of any plausible low carbon energy scenario, because renewables can’t be scaled up economically, and given that even Google couldn’t find a way to make renewables work, it seems likely that renewables will not “take off” anytime soon, regardless of how much Greenpeace thinks we should.
In my opinion, the evidence suggests Greenpeace vigorously opposes all low carbon energy solutions which might actually work. The question is, why?
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Still waiting for any ‘renewable’ to be able to power a Bessemer Blast Furnace. Maybe, just maybe, then I will think about renewables as being viable.
While fusion is perpetually “thirty years away”, Rossi’s ECAT is only “one year away”. I’d suggest the ECAT.
Rossi’s ECAT has been only one year away for quite a few years now. I suspect it will be quite a few years more before ECAT gets to “Any Day Now”.
I don’t mind my taxes going to help speed that to the market. It is how many orders of magnitude denser as a source of power than solar or wind? With none of the wildlife menaces that they present? These ‘brownpiece’ nuts really are off in their own little ignorant paradigm, aren’t they.
Molten Salt Reactors from ORNL is the way forward, MRSE ran for 20,000 hours. MSRs are what Fusion would like to be; easy and cheap to build. http://www.egeneration.org http://www.thorcon.com
I’m waiting to see what comes out in February or March at the end of the one year test. That would represent over 8000 hours of operation …
Rossi is now working in China with the support of the Chinese government. If the ECAT does become a viable energy solution, it will be sad that the West rejected it and we’ll be buying yet another consumer item “Made in China”.
I think the molten salt (LFTR) designs will be on line and providing energy long before fusion or LENR get ready for prime time. Interesting that China is “all in” on about a dozen different approaches to nuclear (including LFTR) and we’ll start to see the results of their experiments within a decade.
There’s a joke going around that Greenpeace is the group that never met an energy source that they liked except for those that they could spell (wind, sun) 😉
Nuclear anything and hydroelectric are way too long I guess despite being the cleanest.
I can wait for that.
I’ve got some extra NZ woollens to see me through this winter.
We’re almost ‘home and hosed’ as they say in the horse circles.
g
Sodium-cooled reactors are better than molten salt — many have been & are now in operation (Russian), unlike the molten-salt types. They can use just about any type of fissionable fuel including nuclear waste:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium-cooled_fast_reactor
Sal, I thought the Ecat had been debunked. Do you have any references to independent tests of the device?
Like anything else, renewables (e.g. PV) are a good solution when applied correctly. For California residential, PV is clearly cost effective if you are paying Tier 5 rates ($0.35/kWh).
It probably does not make sense to try to generate every kWh you use if you are grid connected. But if you can easily and cheaply produce 50% or 90%, that’s great!
And no, PV isn’t a great solution for heavy industrial, but much of that is already near existing hydro, and I’ll bet it eventually relocates to areas where there is plenty of wind power and the cheap power it makes available.
Lastly, LED lighting and more efficient appliances and computers are bringing down residential power consumption which will further reduce the size of the PV system you need. Plus prices continue to fall, and efficiency keeps increasing. All of this makes PV more and more attractive, for the right applications.
Installed PV capacity is growing on an exponential curve. Do the math on how that works out over the next 30 years.
Here’s a cogent analysis describing exactly why PVs are the worst possible energy system.
“There is no solution to this imbalance between winter and summer insolation which is the primary reason that solar power is so ineffective in Germany.
….A recent report states that Germany has in effect wasted over $100 billion by focusing on solar power. The study suggests that if the same amount of financial support had been directed towards developing solar power in Spain together with additional transmission capacity in central Europe then northern European Countries would have access to much more renewable energy when they need it most in the winter.
It is undeniable that solar panels generate a lot of electricity in Germany. But it is also true that the return on the investment made in solar power has been very poor both in financial and environmental terms.”
http://judithcurry.com/2015/12/02/german-energiewende-modern-miracle-or-major-misstep/
Greg, California produces too much solar now, has to pay Nevada Power $.08KWh to take excess durning solar duck. ERoEI on solar with storage isn’t viable. Europe spent €1 Trillion on 210 GWs and only get 38GWs
“Lastly, LED lighting and more efficient appliances and computers are bringing down residential power consumption”
No, making appliances more efficient does not reduce electricity demand. People buy more stuff, for example, a computer (laptop, tablet, etc) and a TV in every room rather than just one of each.
@Greg: You say: “Installed PV capacity is growing on an exponential curve. Do the math on how that works out over the next 30 years.”
Well Greg, take a good look at the the Energy Information Agency link below.
http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=427&t=3.
Here is some math for you Greg: The solar PV panel was invented back in 1954 (look it up if you don’t believe me). That’s 61 years ago Greg. While you may argue that solar use is growing, it still has only provided us with about 0.4.% of our electricity needs here in the U.S. as of March of this year according to the EIA link above. IIRC, that is up from about 0.23% in 2014. I’m sorry Greg, but that doesn’t impress me as far as “exponential” growth is concerned. The reason, among other things, is solar’s poor energy density. And we still have all those solar companies that have been going under in the past. To me, it is rather odd to see that happening if the use of their product is growing at such a wonderful pace. If solar is going to represent the future for energy, the future is taking a long time to get here…. in excess of 61 years. Can’t think of anything else off the top of my head which took that long to scale up to meaningful commercial levels.
I haven’t done the math to determine if solar PV panels make sense in areas where electricity rates are high (such as in Hawaii where the residential rate is $0.36 per KWh, the highest in the nation IIRC). Maybe they would. Elsewhere, solar PVs might make sense if you choose to live somewhere where there is no access to the grid, such as a remote offshore island, a remote cabin in the mountains, or out in the middle of the desert.
I don’t know if you are Greg, but if you are one of those individuals who expect solar to make a SIGNIFICANT contribute to the nation’s power grid someday, I wouldn’t hold my breathe waiting for it if I were you.
Greg: Wind and solar are projected to only be 2.4% of energy use by 2040. In other words, not much.
https://twitter.com/BjornLomborg/status/672800205952126976/photo/1
http://www.worldenergyoutlook.org/weo2015/
Both wind and PV, as well as solar thermal require 100% peak capacity backup by existing on demand real energy sources (even maybe coal).
Better to “clean up” the backup, than waste resources on something that can’t stand on its own.
g
PV makes sense for off grid power because the alternative (unless you have a stream for water power generation) is a fossil fuel generator. I have both — PV/ lead acid batteries and an old, now oil burning propane generator and a std Chinese Harbor Freight gasoline generator. Oil changes, smelly gas cans in car trunk, generator noise are prices paid. You can buy a nice Honda generator for 5X the cost of the cheap ones. Much quieter too.
You won’t know how limited PV is until you build and run a system. You can multiply your peak solar generation by 6 hours to approximate your total energy generation on a clear day. That means you are relying on 6 hours power generation for a 24 hour day. Most of it has to be stored if you want lights, TV, Internet at night.
But lead acid batteries don’t handle deep discharges very well. They build up sulfate which noticably lowers capacity in one year, markedly in 2 years. High current desulfation correction, to the extent it works, is beyond the capacity of my PV array.
Then there is the radically reduced capacity of lead acid in cold weather, which means all winter unless a heated, insulated battery box is provided. Not fun and disappointing when you have to run a generator most winter nights, even though your battery set is only 2 years old. I’m still chasing the Holy Grail of silent, reliable, adequate solar electricity.
I’m switching to lithium batteries soon. A completely different tech that requires special battery management and low voltage cut off circuitry. More low temp tolerant, I will nevertheless house these much lighter batteries in styrofoam coolers with thermostatic heaters to maintain full capacity year round. The goal is gasoline/propane generation only on rare cloudy days, as backup only.
For lihium battery conversions check:
http://www.electriccarpartscompany.com
and their competitors. You better be very handy with electricity to do this yourself. I’m a retired electronics tech. Or buy Tesla’s $7K system when it’s available.
Even in California the sun doesn’t shine at night.
I am sure in 30 years the Sun will shine most brightly in winter nights…
Well I wouldn’t put LED lighting “lastly”. It might be the only disruptive technology that can really make a world wide impact on energy consumption.
My first foray into LED technology was in early 1966, and it actually was a design for an Infra Red solid state source.
But I ended up having to make a red LED version of it anyway, to visually convince the end customer (IBM) that it did NOT work in any way that they had imagined, or assumed, but was a far simpler concept.
Almost at the same time, I demonstrated music transmission on a red LED light beam, over a few meters distance between a couple of 50 mm diameter ” antennas ” .
The corporate R&D brass, (Monsanto Chemical) were quite impressed that they could interrupt the music, by putting their hands into the light beam to block it. Strictly PR stuff, and not really either new or novel; simply demonstrative. That was but a dull glow in a darkened amphitheatre; and we jokingly laughed that one day we would light the world.
We also joked that we could get rich, by selling short the stock of any company stupid enough to invest in Gallium Nitride technology.
Well that was then and GaN was thought to be a zinc blende (diamond like) cubic crystal as Gallium Arsenide is. And nobody seemed to be able to make both P type and N type cubic GaN to get a diode.
That was also decades before the LED industry was in full swing with several colored indicators except that illusive blue.
And it was before Shoji Nakamura and Wurtzite lattice GaN which is a hexagonal Crystal; not cubic like diamond.
The rest as they say, is history.
So LED solid state lighting did not exactly grow exponentially, although the early visible (vanilla red) LED indicator growth was very spectacular.
Blue GaN was like a big bang that changed everything.
Now I don’t know how solar PV does anything comparable, although Nakamura disciples are trying to make a break through in multi band gap, multi junction concentrator solar cells.
The current 43% roughly solar conversion efficiency, might get raised to circa 60% in the next decade.
But Dr. Svalgaard and his associates have not been able to raise TSI much above 1362.xx W/m^2 extra terrestrially, so it seems like it’s a question of acreage availability.
Well it’s not their fault Goldilocks put us where we are in the solar system.
But I think some solar progress will happen, but no idea in what form.
Not holding my breath for solar towers though. That seems asinine.
You could probably hitch a bunch of captured wild horses to a circular walking track to eat their way around in circles harnessed to a multipole alternator, and generate more energy for the same land acreage.
g
In the right application, photovoltaics are a great solution. For instance, if it doesn’t matter that your lights went out at nightfall. If it doesn’t matter that you can’t cook in the dark…
” if you are paying Tier 5″
Translation: Solar is competitive when govt taxes the heck out of the alternatives.
I don’t know how transformative LED lights are going to be. Lighting makes up less than 5% of the energy used in this country, and a good portion of that is already fluorescent. If the entire country switched to LED, it might reduce overall energy usage by 2 or 3 percent.
I am posting this reply at 8:30 p.m. on December 7, 2015. The sun set 3 hours ago. PV is useless.
Btw, efficency does not reduce consumption. see Jevon’s Paradox.
The transparent covers of PVs cloud up relatively quickly here in NZ due to the high UV, and bird poo and dust accumulations greatly reduce efficiency so necessitate frequent cleaning. These are high cost maintenance items often not taken into account by promoters (we don’t have Mexicans to do low cost jobs here).
Deterioration of the PV units is a “hidden” cost that is much like the number of non-functioning and broken windmills on energy farms that never appear in their R&M accounts.
In any case, hydro and geothermal are far better sources. But we do need to research fusion as it is a good bet for the long term, and the knowledge gained of plasma physics and highy temperature engineering will be invaluable for the future.
“Lastly, LED lighting and more efficient appliances and computers are bringing down residential power consumption”
Wow, that’s pretty marginal stuff. My 2000watt heater is till 2000watts, even when I replace it with a new 2000watt heater. If the new one is 5% more efficient, am I really going to use less power?
When I was a child, every room in the house had a single 70watt or 100watt electric bulb (230v) and little else. Now we have computers, bedside lights, stereos, chargers for cellphones, tablets, drones, electronic photoframes, synthesisers, printers, TVs, BD, STB, PlayStation, Xbox, AV receivers and heat pumps. All very efficient, but still way more power than ever. And then these Greenies want us to plug in our electric cars (well, Greenpeace probably want us to have NO car).
We may rely on the microwave oven a little more, the electric oven a little less, but the coffee grinder and blender may take up the slack.
Your desire for PV overlooks the fact that co2 is likely NOT the demon it’s made out to be. And it (and wind) contribute much to grid instability and cost, whilst delivering little in co2 reductions. All those good intentions are getting us closer along the road to a misanthropic hell.
I’d be happy just to see any renewable supply of energy stand on its own two feet, without taxpayer subsidies.
I don’t mind renewables entrepeneurs like Elon Musk, investing their own money in the schemes they believe in; nor do I mind if they get filthy rich doing it. But don’t try and piggy back on already viable sources of energy, which you detest so much.
So let your desert mirror scam start itself by itself from the sun, instead of having it run mostly on natural gas.
And anybody familiar with non imaging optical design can tell you what a totally lousy optical design you are using. Its collection efficiency (W/m^2) is pitiful.
Musk invested some of his own money, primarily as a startup kicker. His companies have received about $5 billion in subsidies in about 5 years, with $1.29 billion going to Tesla. and more to SpaceX, Solar City, and factories in Nevada, New York, California, Michigan, and Texas.
A hydroelectric dam is a renewable power source which can power a Bessemer blast furnace. Wait, green slimes are trying to erase hydro from the “renewables” list – “because salmon”.
Are they going to create more rivers? I think we are pretty much maxed out on hydro.
My comment was to dispute “Still waiting for any ‘renewable’ to be able to power a Bessemer Blast Furnace.” And I stand by it. What’s your point? In this context, a river never ceases to flow (just as the wind never ceases to blow, or the sun to shine) therefore it is a “renewable source”.
A Bessemer furnace was used for converting blast furnace molten iron into steel.
Aren’t these people supposed to be campaigning for endangered wildlife or cleaning up pollution or something? When the hell did they start being an authority on ENERGY policy? Whatever good work they have done in the last 40 years will be quickly undone as they discredit their organization poking their nose where they have no credibility.
That’s not sexy enough. Who wants to be really helping the planet by cleaning up the gazillions of tonnes of plastic in the Pacific when you have photogenic polar bears to “save” by launching terrorist attacks on Russian oil rigs?
They have to stay employed or go and get a real job where screaming obscenities at normal people is of part of the perks. Seriously – they like no solutions because the solutions do not propose to get rid of a substantial portion of the human population. Just suggest e “some how” eliminate 6/7 of the human population and watch their approval of teh plan skyrocket.
“renewables like solar and wind – they are affordable, they are cheap.”
Seriously? Then again they left out scalable & reliable. I’m not sure how they can classify either solar panels or wind turbines as ‘renewable’ tho. Solar panels themselves are not ‘renewable’ and wind turbines are scarfing up a huge percentage of rare earth metals – that are not renewable
They still labour under the fantasy that wind turbines and solar panels are really perpetual motion machines that can be magically made out of thin air. It’s one of their core delusions.
When the average person I meet hears the information on the inability of “pinwheels and mirrors” to reproduce themselves from their individual lifetime generation, they quickly change to another media-fed truism. Some, though ask where I found out so much and WUWT has another viewer.
Explanations are so much more effective than scary claims for thinkers of society.
They’re affordable and cheap- like hanging your clothes on the line. They give so little energy and are so work intensive that encouraging green energy is equivalent to encouraging slavery.
Rare earth metals are recyclable and almost certainly will be because of their value.
If I were young, starting a career, I would seriously consider working to develop cost-effective ways to scrap turbines and solar panels for recycling. I think it will be a growing niche for decades before shrinking and leveling out as the scale of practicality for these capture devices eventually becomes established.
Sure.
Call your local recycling shop and how much they pay for solar panels. Then ask if they actually recycle them or just trash them. Computers, same thing.
And they produce energy by what process ??
“renewables like solar and wind – they are affordable, they are cheap.”
Then there is no reason for government involvement. Cheap and reliable power is what everyone wants, so build it and they will come to buy it. No incentives needed.
Yes. And also no reason for homes with solar installations should remain on the grid leaching off of the other rate payers… But never happens… because wind and solar don’t “work” reliably and efficiently. QED.
“renewables like solar and wind – they are affordable, they are cheap.” Then why this recent development?
http://www.therebel.media/paris_climate_conference_spain_s_abengoa_solar_goes_bankrupt
My favourite line to them is “thorium is every bit as renewable as rare earth metals”. As common as lead and we are in no danger of running out. A waste product from mining that we could dispose of safely and run our civilization for millennia with.
Yes, and fortunately China has included thorium reactors in its research effort.
Yes, wind turbines and solar panels are renewable. However they are recyclable.
Regards
Climate Heretic
PS Matter cannot be created nor destroyed.
Been following the comments on LFTRs?
But, more seriously, could a solar panel or wind turbine be scrapped for anything like a cost effective price? I have never seen any info on the topic, but it appears to me that many of the materials are not very amenable to reprocessing.
> PS Matter cannot be created nor destroyed.
Nonsense, it happens all the time, even to the Potassium atoms your body needs.
Energy cannot be created nor destroyed, but it’s pretty easy to convert it to other forms, especially heat.
My Bad.
Regards
Climate Heretic
Lets try for a third time. My Bad, I should have explained it more clearly.
Matter has the property of mass……………….(1)
Mass is equivalent to energy…………………….(2)
Energy cannot be created nor destroyed…….(3)
Let P be Matter
Let Q be Mass
Let E be energy
Let C be Cannot be created nor destroyed
Prove P –> C
ie: matter cannot be created nor destroyed.
Proof
P –> Q from (1)
Q ≡ E If and only if Q E and E Q from (2)
P –> E substitute Q for E
E –> C from (3)
from P –> E and E –> C we have by rule of inference:
P –> C
Therefore matter cannot be created nor destroyed.
Regards
Climate Heretic
PS However matter can change
I should have said’ “Yes, wind turbines and solar panels are not renewable”
Regards
Climate Heretic
The following line got stuffed up
Q ≡ E If and only if Q E and E Q from (2)
the correct line should read
Q ≡ E If and only if Q ↔ E and E ↔ Q from (2)
Regards
Climate Heretic
Greenpeace is risky and ignorant, their behavior reminds me of the drug-addled stoner who proclaims that the “man”, is evil and then asks for 5 bucks so he can go to Taco Bell.
This post is not an endorsement of Taco Bell or other products of Yum! Brands, Inc.
Would it incriminate me to mention that you just gave me the munchies?
I can an get a very nice breakfast burrito for $1.42 at Taco Bell, plus an absolutely free ‘senior coffee.
The last thing Greenpeace wants is to ‘solve’ the ‘problem’ of ‘carbon’ (they don’t seem to know the difference between carbon and CO2) because if it is solved, or it is recognised as a non-problem, they lose ALL of their influence on governments, and most of their funding.
If renewables really were affordable and cheap, then there would be no need for research or subsidy – we would just use them because they were cheap. But they aren’t, so we don’t.
What Sebastien Blavier should have said is that the cost and uncertainty of wind & solar mean investing in them at the expense of other available clean energy options like thermonuclear reactors is risky and ignorant.
But I doubt he is capable of understanding why that is the case.
You would think they would be at least a little concerned about all the birds being chopped, diced and fried by ” GREEN ENERGY ” !!
birds being chopped, diced and fried seems like a good meal to me
Yes, they go great with Mango Chutney, especially the endangered species !!!
I would suggest chopped, diced, and stewed crow for you Greenpeace friends if you have any greenpeace friends.
Not when their religious symbol is a wind turbine.
so the birds are a sacrifice to Aeolus?
Greenpeace makes it easy for us. Interesting that their popularity is highest on college campuses.
Considering what passes for “intellectual” discussion on college campuses these days, everyone apparently needing “trigger warnings” and “safe spaces” wherein no uncomfortable ideas can enter, why am I not surprised?
Wind and solar for grid-level power is absolute insanity.
No county in its right mind would even consider such a foolhardy policy, but, unfortunate, there are many clueless Leftist governments that have already done so and destroyed their economies by collectively wasting $trillions on expensive, uncompetitive, unreliable, intermittent, diffuse, inefficient and low-energy density wind and solar boondoggles..
China laughs at the West’s folly and is busy developing Thorium Molten Salt Reactors, which will likely enable China to produce grid-level power 50% cheaper than natural gas and 10 TIMES cheaper than wind/solar within the next 10 years…
The Leftist West seems intent on orchestrating its own demise for no reason whatsoever other than some perverted sense of guilt for once being the center of moder civilization and success…
You are describing South Australia perfectly.
According to this story, Indonesia is going for Thorium and molten salt. Might beat the Chinese.
http://www.blacklistednews.com/First_MSR_Thorium_Reactor_Scheduled_for_2021/47663/0/38/38/Y/M.html
If the radicals who want us to return to the Dark Ages realized how many people would die as a result, they might not be so brash with their accusations. The cure is worse than the disease, I think.
You kidding? Homo sapiens die-off is one of their fundamental goals.
Homo sapiens die-off is one of their fundamental goals.
Only in the West. Then the folks behind that narrative can pick up the pieces.
This is the answer to Eric Worrall’s question “Why”. It’s not really the foot soldiers, (who are more than likely ignorant of what is going on), but the people in power, who want to control all of the people. C02 is just a mechanism to achieve that aim.
Regards
Climate Heretic
Why does my security system keep interrupting me, and telling me that WUWT has a bum security certificate.
+1
Once again I posit; It is civilization that is tenuous, not the environment.
Patrick Moore explained why many time … Greenpeace are Anti-Humanist. If you are a humanist and have a bit of common sense, Solar and Wind is clearly design to keep humanity slaves. We all know that the more dense the energy the better for humanity and nature. This is why Greenpeace is against any form of dense energy.
Greenpeace should just shut up with their ideological opinions. Who elected them to be global government and arbiter of all things?
To be honest, their grandstanding near-terrorist “activism” has had them labeled as a radical “fringe” group for many years. Except for that hand-wringing 4% of Earnestly Concerned over-educated, I don’t think most folks give them a second thought!
I’d agree that ITER is a waste. Tokamaks work, but only after a fashion. But ‘renewables’ like wind and solar are too dilute and intermittent, as well as giving load and phase balancing problems on any grid they’re attached to.
I like the Russian donut. I strongly support fusion. I liken it to any technology. Several fields have to come up to certain level sophistication. It’s not impossible for the internet to work with just copper, it just works a whole lot better with fiber. It took from 1968 to 1985 to figure out why they couldn’t get a signal more than 10 meters. The development has been rapid ever since. I think the same thing will be true with fusion.
After you’ve had high speed digital internet it’s difficult to go back to dial up. The only question will be, why didn’t we develop fusion sooner.
Plasma Fusion, the path followed for the last 60 years, will NOT,can not, produce usable amounts of excess energy! The very last thing plasma wants to do is fuse. This is a total waste. GOD uses a different path of fusion to power the universe.
The con game of plasma fusion science is the blue print for the AGW “climate Science” drive for grant money and prestige…pg
@ur momisugly p.g.sharrow
Yes, ITER is the biggest Elephant ever to be built (or one of) on Frances’ soil. Japan is very lucky not to have won the contract to build it. ITER will produce some science about plasma, but that is all.
When they figure out that it is not going to be commercially viable, (they probably know this already) they will have to pull it down and of course this will cost even more money. This ITER is only a research vessel and will only begin full operation by 2027 possibly 2031 (due to the delay in building the ITER) and will only supposedly produce 500Mw and only using 50Mw to operate. This is just a research vessel and the demonstration model (2000Mw) will follow, when and how much, is anybody’s guess.
China in the meantime will have a small Molten Salt research Reactor, with the help of the US by the end of this year or if not then by 2016. ITER will have a completion date of (not around 2019) but around 2023. By 2024 or 2025 China will have a full blown 100Mw demonstration model. There is a possibility for 2Gw MSR. Another thing to consider is the physical size of the buildings and land area that will house ITER or MSR’s. I bet MSR’s will win hands down.
ITER is a dead duck, MSR will become main stream and if and only if Emc2 (Polywell) gets off the ground, it will crap all over ITER. MSR’s will be the nail that will put CO2, Global Warming and the control UN wants in a permanent COFFIN. (I hope).
Regards
Climate Heretic
Wake me when you have it.
p.g.sharrow
December 6, 2015 at 8:16 am
Please state what non-plasma-based fusion process or processes you imagine can produce more energy than they require to work?
Thanks!
During fusion, I think there is more energy there than we can currently account for. I ve looked at black holes, the structure maybe just a singular item, everything else is burned off. A process of seperation.
As far as gravity waves, during an eclipse in the 1950s, a pendulum did something strange, it didn’t trace out the pattern that it normally did. It hasn’t been repeated since.
Still it’s great things to think about, whether I’m right or not. ( although I like being right) . Somebody will figure this out.
I liken it building the 1st computers, may not work very well at first, big, clumsy and full of problems. The benefits … the spaceshuttle would not have come into existence, they couldn’t cut the tiles by hand. When they slaved the computer to the cutting machine, it became a reality. That’s what the hold up was.
Think about a neutron star. How would you pack all that so tightly? What’s holding all that together? Is it a condensation of gravity?
Where is there one this working producing fusion energy . ??
Culham college near Oxford, UK has (Or had one in the early 00’s) a working Tokamak, but like all machines of this nature, it needs more energy to create Fusion than it is capable of producing. Tokamaks are more bang-in-a-bottle than a workable process.
We have lots of ways of wasting existing energy.
Somebody said Tokomaks work (presumably to provide fusion energy.)
I asked where there is one working and producing net fusion energy; not wasting legacy energy.
g
A Wimhurst machine works. But it doesn’t produce any fusion energy.
So where’s this Tokomak that does (work) ??
Greenpeace has always fought – and will continue to fight – vigorously against nuclear power
They are also opposed to fire. It appears to me that they only want energy source that don’t work.
“Today the world is facing massive challenges like poverty, like access to electricity for people, poor people, for development.”
And who’s fault is that???
Has Greenpeace ever got the science right?
Somewhere in its history there has to be an instance of getting it right, surely?
Peter
You Utopian, you!
Brgds
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“Renewables” either aren’t anywhere close to market efficiencies, and that’s with taxpayers funding incentives through the back door, or can’t be scaled to produce significant amounts of reliable energy.
I’d have to cover my entire roof with solar, at an incredible expense, to offset my monthly usage for just part of the year, and I’m in a pretty decent solar zone. Any amount of maintenance costs during the lifespan of those panels (which would almost certainly be required) makes it a loser, and that’s after the taxpayer funded credits I might receive.
Your local tax assessor would see all those panels and happily up the property value of your house. The raise in your property taxes would be more than what you would save on the cost of electricity.
To make solar cost effective you need a couple of things to be true; you need to be in a usurious rate tier, which means you live in a large house somewhere in a high population area. Wyoming doesn’t qualify (trust me, I know this from experience).
You need to be in an isolated location with poor power service. It’s nice to have the grid near enough to sell excess power, but if you already have cheap reliable power solar isn’t going to be a good deal.
But if you have both of those things it works just fine, is cost effective, and makes your hippy neighbors happy. 🙂
And for Ryan, many states, including CA, won’t allow a local assessor to increase your property taxes for adding solar. At least for now. That may have changed recently with Gov. Moonbeam’s new edict.
I am reminded of the anti-fission power activist back in the 1970’s who made the comment that having cheap and unlimited power would be like “giving an idiot child a machine gun”. Greenpeace is obviously of the same sentiments.
Why? Because they basically are ignorant and have a medieval mindset. They are ignorant of the simple equation: adequate energy supply == civilization, poor energy supply == barbary, perhaps civilization for a few but slavery for the rest. And they see modern-minded people in terms of heretics and witches against which the true believers have to fight.
Greenpeace and many others like The Sierra Club started with simple goals like encouraging hiking, reasonable use policies and conservation education. When the leftists saw that these innocent groups got large vocal memberships, headlines, and the attention of trend hopping, vote greedy politicians, they moved in.
Now those once respectable groups have become left activist ideological platforms and little else. When I hear the names of these groups today I know what is coming. My aversion is complete.
It’s taken years for my email address to be purged from their lists for non responsiveness and above all, for no donations to their endless emergency appeals.
“That’s totally false for US”. Groupthink personified. Cheap? Wow. Really in touch there. And ah, yes, the faux concern for the poor. Please. Don’t insult individual intelligence.
Prof James Lovelock of Gaia fame thinks nuclear power is the only green solution. http://www.jameslovelock.org/page11.html
Plus fracking. “Scientist James Lovelock is the man behind Gaia theory, and once predicted doom for our climate. He discusses nuclear (good), wind power (bad) and why fracking is the future”. http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/jun/15/james-lovelock-interview-gaia-theory
Anti-science much?
It is well worth anyone’s time to re-read Dr. Patrick Moore’s GWPF Lecture – “Should we Celebrate CO2?”, but the following excerpt is relevant here:
I happen to think plasma fusion research is a virtually certain waste of money and I would rather see resources directed to better fission designs.
Anyone with an engineering background who looks honestly at the issue of electrical generation has concluded we cannot run a modern industrial grid on 100% renewables. Depending on how much price premium you are willing to pay, you can get fairly close. But a balance of nuclear and renewables gets you the same CO2 reduction at a vastly lower cost. See the following J.P. Morgan Study, which was discussed with comments by Peter Lang at Judith Curry’s site.
Nuclear reactions achieve fuel energy densities several million times that of combustion reactions. In the advance of human civilization we’ve gone from animal dung and twigs and branches to softwood to hardwood to coal and then to oil. At each stage we’ve seen a thermal density increase by a factor of 2 or less. Never before in history have we had the prospect of this big a jump in energy density — not even a tiny fraction of it. I simply don’t see how we can afford to walk away from the potential.
Alan, we all know greenpeace aren’t big on engineering, except when they need a new boat or some climbing ropes.
http://indaily.com.au/opinion/2015/06/25/renewable-energy-future-for-south-australia/
These disparate opinions are what is keeping the merry-go-round turning.
PS – I’d rather my base load be supplied with sources more reliable than wind and solar
You know what they say about opinions.
First off, you have to define exactly what you mean by “renewables”. Here’s one opinion to the effect that we can do it all with wind, solar and hydro (no biomass):
The above is an excerpt of this Scientific American article.
Second you have to define what you mean by “we”. In the context of this debate, I generally assume “we” means the whole world, although professor Jacobsen shifts his remarks between the whole world and just the US. In that context, nuclear is not a good choice for less developed countries and is just about my last choice for places like Sudan and Somalia.
Speaking of just the US, we don’t have enough hydro to smooth the intermittent output from wind and solar, so meeting the stated goal means building a lot more hydro, in addition to wind and solar. I don’t know if there are even enough suitable locations in the US to build that much hydro. In 2014 hydro contributed approximately 6.5% of total US generation; it would need to be at least 5 times that if we were depending on wind and solar for all the rest. It needs to be 4 times that just to replace the nuclear portion of US generation for the same year.
And finally, you have to define what you mean by “low cost”, or “affordable” or whatever other term is used to describe how simple it is to get off fossil fuels. And here we find the crux of so many disagreements; many advocates think that “low cost” just means someone else is paying for it.
Addendum to above. The other definition of “low cost” often turns out to be “not as bad as a total catastrophe which wipes out the entire planet”. Under those terms, anything turns out to be “affordable”.
Plasma fusion research is clearly an area of science that needs to be supported and the behavior of plasma is one of the pillars on which future breakthroughs in industrial processing and recycling are going to be catapulted into amazing technological advancement (who knows advances in our understanding of plasmas may one day improve our climate modeling) That said, Nuclear is the way forward for the production of electricity and lots of it. Untying the regulatory knots that have artificially inflated the cost is also a good idea. More important we need to address the crazy fear that little old ladies, children, and full grown men have of meaningless nuclear contamination as is being promoted in the press as some barely measurable Cesium follows the currents from Japan to the West Coast of North America.
There is a phrase in the entirely unrelated literature for recovering alcoholics that never the less seems appropriate for Greenpeace here: Contempt prior to investigation. Maybe they’re controlled by their obsessions too.
If Greenpeace was honestly applying their standards about waste and uncertainty, they would demand the immediate halt of all solar and wind.
But the phrase “If Greenpeace was honestly applying” is an oxymoron.
Time for a rhyme on the Green Paradigm:
SUSTAINABLE REALITY
If you like your energy sustainable,
You must first make the climate trainable.
With sun day and night,
And the wind always right…
I think it just might be attainable!
Solar and wind are renewable,
But only on small scales prove doable
They kill birds and bats
And displace habitats…
Conservationists find them eschew-able.
We would, likely, employ keener vision
Funding hydro and nuclear fission.
(The molten salt kind,
For our peace of mind)
With storm-proofed grids, for transmission.
Electricity, for the third world poor
Will unlock the virtual door…
To an affluent life,
A job and a wife
With less children than folks raised before.
So, curtailing overpopulation
Is not about “limiting nations
On what they can do
Which emits CO2”…
It relies on industrialization!
(please distribute freely)
Steve L