George Carty said:

We don’t have commercial thermonuclear plants (fusion reactors) yet…

You’re right George. I originally intended to write thermal-nuclear but my fingers had a mind of their own.

        Ctrl Alt Del said:

…why aren’t the ‘renewable’ groups that push for wind so hard at least pushing equally hard to develop hydro to the maximum extend we can without problems?

Because hydro can be so hugely destructive to the environment the process of approving a new major hydro project is as onerous, if not more so, than approving a new thermonuclear plant, at least in North America. There is also, at least in the case of Canada, huge legal issues over native rights. In the States it’s water rights, and none of these are easy to brush aside. I suspect that the Greens and the politicians want no part of these sorts of fights for obvious reasons.

I don’t know if there is that much economically viable geothermal left to exploit for electric generation, but they do push for it to some extent.

        DV82XL said:

It may come as surprise to some that there is still a significant amount of undeveloped traditional hydro potential left in North America. The National Hydropower Association (U.S.) river basin studies show a potential of 73,200 MW of additional U.S. hydroelectric capacity in 5,677 undeveloped sites. The situation is the same for Canada, including the Far North where eight major rivers draining into the Artic Ocean are considered ripe for exploitation. Of course this is emphasizing engineering feasibility and some economic analysis, but no environmental considerations. Despite the widespread belief that hydro is the ideal clean source of renewable energy the bald fact is that it is hugely destructive to local environments and can and does create disruptions to the hydrology of an area several orders of magnitude greater.

Okay then let me restate this: I would like to see geothermal and hydro deployed to the maximum extent that they can be within reasonable enviornmental constraints. So if you have a dam that is there anyway and is already running off excess water, then it should be used there and it also should be used in places where you could build a dam with minimal impact or where building one would be beneficial to navigation or preventing seasonal floods or something like that. or if there is already some kind of water fall or natural impediment that gives water head then it should be used there too.

And geothermal should be used wherever there is a geothermal reserve that is untapped and can be tapped without causing any big problems.

All I’m saying is this: if we have any extra hydro capacity at all, maybe if it’s only like 4,000 MW and not all 73,000 but it can be used and it’s there and reasonable to use, then why not use it? Why not push it until we’ve exhausted all the good sites?

Okay, so maybe there are not so many, but why aren’t the ‘renewable’ groups that push for wind so hard at least pushing equally hard to develop hydro to the maximum extend we can without problems?

        George Carty said:

Will this fix the blockquote problem?

What problem are you having?

        Ctrl Alt Del said:

Okay, but I don’t really see how wind or solar could be profitable in the future unless the future involves the earth’s orbit moving closer to the sun or something.

I suppose they could be ‘profitable’ in the sense of the individual making money with enough subsidies but not a net gain for society.

Nuclear doesn’t so much need subsidies as it needs better regulation to encourage building, because nuclear plants can generate a profit on their own.

But renewable?

With the exception of hydroelectric and geothermal (in some places) they just won’t ever be able to hold up. So whats the point of pouring money into them now? I don’t expect the laws of physics to change in the future.

IMHO, the best energy policy would encourage hydro to be used to the maximum extent, geothermal to the maximum extent – but those only can fufill maybe 20% or so of energy even if used to the max – the other 80% should be nuclear with maybe some gas in areas where it makes more economic sense.

Also, I like other technologies that have been discussed here including synthetic fuels, district heating, plug-in hybrids, electric trains and transit.

That stuff is good because it actually works and therefore is worth encouraging.

Wind and solar is just a waste.

In our industrial society, energy is money. The more energy you have, the more comfortable your life would be. There will always be a hunger for more and more energy, because human wants are, in essence, unlimited. Energy does not satisfy the basic principle of diminishing returns in economics. It is not a consumer good.

What is the basic criterion for any energy technology to be “profitable” ?

It should have an EROEI > 1 (it should return more energy than the energy invested in as input).

Renewable power satisfies this criteria, and therefore “theoretically” profitable. But in practice, this is not so, because of two reasons.

1) The direct 1-to-1 relationship between energy and money in our society, is not perfect. There are certain anamolies, because established business practices distort the reality. For example, meat employs 10 times more water and uses a lot more energy and resources (land, sunlight, electric power, plastics for processing) than say milk. But the difference in pricing is not so high, as it should be.

2) Though human wants are unlimited, it takes time for the society to take notice of the new pools of energy, build corresponding machinery and use them. In other words, the energy demand of the society can be calculated beforehand. Surplus energy produced beyond this will not get sold, and get wasted. In this scenario, different energy technologies have to compete against each other.

Those technologies which have a higher EROEI will obviously win over the others which have a lower EROEI. This is the reason dirty coal is the winner in the current market. This situation will happily persist for another 100 years, because we have coal reserves to last us till that long.

What we are trying to do is to factor in environmental damages into our calculations. When dirty-coal gets penalized for the CO2 emissions, it will suddenly become less economically attractive than nuclear power.

Once-through nuclear power using U235 will be similarly less attractive than breeder reactors using U238, in a similar scenario when longevity of nuclear waste is penalized.

With purely these calculations, breeder reactors using U238/Thorium can supply all the energy that we care for. And their EROEI will be much higher than any renewable competition.

But now we pose this question : why should we think of alternative energy technologies as competition ? More energy means more good for the society anyways

And if we have a chunk of renewable power (even though it has a lower EROEI than nuclear power) in our energy mix, our nuclear fuel will last even longer (and we might never even have to resort to mining the oceans for Uranium).

        Ctrl Alt Del said:

IMHO, the best energy policy would encourage hydro to be used to the maximum extent, geothermal to the maximum extent – but those only can fulfill maybe 20% or so of energy even if used to the max – the other 80% should be nuclear with maybe some gas in areas where it makes more economic sense..

It may come as surprise to some that there is still a significant amount of undeveloped traditional hydro potential left in North America. The National Hydropower Association (U.S.) river basin studies show a potential of 73,200 MW of additional U.S. hydroelectric capacity in 5,677 undeveloped sites. The situation is the same for Canada, including the Far North where eight major rivers draining into the Artic Ocean are considered ripe for exploitation. Of course this is emphasizing engineering feasibility and some economic analysis, but no environmental considerations. Despite the widespread belief that hydro is the ideal clean source of renewable energy the bald fact is that it is hugely destructive to local environments and can and does create disruptions to the hydrology of an area several orders of magnitude greater.

Geothermal is another potential source that is underdeveloped just about everywhere except Iceland. If exploited correctly, geothermal energy could certainly assume an important role in the energy balance. In fact the world’s potential is estimated to be equivalent to 22 400 TWh/yr of electricity (source: International Geothermal Association). This may seem to make the choice of geothermal quite a simple one but the construction of good geothermal systems are by no means easy to achieve. It requires skill in many disciplines and vast experience, especially when dealing with high-temperature systems. Geothermal systems also occur in nature in a variety of combinations of geological, physical and chemical characteristics, thus giving rise to several different types of systems. Not all of these have been field proven and this reduces the useful accessible resource base (that part of the accessible resource base that could be extracted economically (and legally) at some specified time in the future.

The figure for available power quoted above is somewhat misleading as it includes non-electric uses of geothermal energy; applications such as industrial and district heating systems. While these are important applications they are very market specific. If the source is not in a cold climate area, or if heat using industries cannot be attracted to the area, low-grade heat cannot be economically transmitted long distances.

Environmental problems also arise with this form of energy. Geothermal fluids (steam or hot water) usually contain gases such as carbon dioxide, hydrogen sulfide, ammonia, methane, and trace amounts of other gases, as well as dissolved chemicals whose concentrations usually increase with temperature. For example, sodium chloride, boron, arsenic and mercury are a source of pollution if discharged into the environment. Some geothermal fluids, such as those utilized for district-heating in Iceland, are freshwaters, but this is very rare. The waste waters from geothermal plants also have a higher temperature than the environment and therefore constitute a potential thermal pollutant if discharged into the surface environment.

The point here is that these two look good only when compared to coal, but they come with a whole set of issues that are really not acceptable if there is an alternative.

        vakibs said:

The technology that gives you the best profits in the current market is not necessarily the technology which gives you the best profits in a future market. The task of the government is to make policy decisions to prepare for the future. This is the reason we need subsidies for new technologies (either nuclear or renewable power).

Okay, but I don’t really see how wind or solar could be profitable in the future unless the future involves the earth’s orbit moving closer to the sun or something. I suppose they could be ‘profitable’ in the sense of the individual making money with enough subsidies but not a net gain for society. Nuclear doesn’t so much need subsidies as it needs better regulation to encourage building, because nuclear plants can generate a profit on their own.

But renewable? With the exception of hydroelectric and geothermal (in some places) they just won’t ever be able to hold up. So whats the point of pouring money into them now? I don’t expect the laws of physics to change in the future.

IMHO, the best energy policy would encourage hydro to be used to the maximum extent, geothermal to the maximum extent – but those only can fufill maybe 20% or so of energy even if used to the max – the other 80% should be nuclear with maybe some gas in areas where it makes more economic sense. Also, I like other technologies that have been discussed here including synthetic fuels, district heating, plug-in hybrids, electric trains and transit. That stuff is good because it actually works and therefore is worth encouraging. Wind and solar is just a waste.