_FKS_

Nuclear. It's the only thing beyond fossil fuels. If we want to somehow retain our standards of living.

Side-note: a barrel of oil gives a fixed amount of gasoline and diesel fuel, and that's hard to change [1]. A given refinery could slightly change the amounts, but not much, and that's billions in investments. Even if you replaced diesel vehicles by electric ones, the diesel fuel will be burned somewhere else.

[1] https://www.e-education.psu.edu/fsc432/content/overview-refi...

The first article has wrong figures.

"the skin of the aircraft (probably made of titanium) gets as hot as 12,000 degrees F during flight because of air friction."

First, there's no material on earth that could sustain that kind of heat. Titanium has a melting point at 3,000 degrees F. Tungsten about 6,000 degrees F. Other composites, maybe a bit more. But nothing at 12,000 degrees F.

Second, the only plane that somehow had regular service at that kind of speeds was the SR-71. It was indeed made of titanium. The front of the plane had to sustain a temperature of over 600 degrees F, and it was only for short periods of time. Nothing close to 12,000 degrees F and was already a feat.

Third, titanium is extremely hard to work with. Ask the SR-71 guys. Tools had to be made especially to build that plane, for hundreds times more than regular tools. They break down often and you need to replace them. Nothing to sustain a production line.

This is also from a pro-wind blog ;)

In case you're interested, this[1] document is of great interest if you wish to understand how these offshore turbines perform empirically. I'll give you a hint: not very good. Any piece of machinery exposed to sea salt doesn't last long. Also maintenance will be a big problem: just think one second the kind of undertaking needed to send a team of technicians to repair only one of these turbines. Let's not talk about replacing any large piece.

[1] http://www.ref.org.uk/attachments/article/280/ref.hughes.19.... (see Figure 1, page 13, "Performance degradation due to age using equal weights")

That doesn't mean it's a reasonable projet ;)

Hawking radiation is speculation AFAIK, there's no observation to back it up.

Even if you had the computing power AND if you were simulating your fusion reactor's plasma in realtime, while it's running AND you know/can predict the plasma instabilities in realtime (under a few ms), you still need a way to "counter" those instabilites in the said plasma. And you need to counter fast, before the instability "poisons" the entire plasma, something that should happen within a few ms. If you don't, your entire experiment stops, and it takes a while to get it back (minutes). Currently: 1. nobody really understands the instabilities, why and when they happen; 2. there's no way to 'counter' them. So it's not only about the computing power.

Most likely related:

John L. Gustafson presenting "Beyond Floating Point: Next Generation Computer Arithmetic" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aP0Y1uAA-2Y

With papers here: - UNUMS: http://ubiquity.acm.org/article.cfm?id=3001758 - Posits: http://johngustafson.net/pdfs/BeatingFloatingPoint.pdf

"The tyranny of verificationism impedes scientific progress. Let string theorists do their thing/string."

This is a very dangerous path. Science without empiricism is religion.

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1609.01966.pdf

WolframAlpha?

There are some theories on variable cosmological constants: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_speed_of_light

Topaz is of the same magnitude as this Tamil Nadu plant, in terms of "rated power". However, many people seem to miss that "rated power" does not equal "actual output". Please see capacity factor [1].

For a solar plant like this one, the capacity is about at ~25%. If it was 100%, for a 650MW plant, you would get 650 * 365 * 24 = 5694 TWh / year. In practice, you will get 5694 * .25 = 1423 TWh / year.

If this was a nuclear plant, you would get 5694 * .90 = 5124 TWh / year. Continously, day and night. Without back-end storage required. Big difference.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacity_factor

Nothing happens at night, there's no electricity output. You need some kind of storage on the back-end if you want to store the day's surplus electricity. Molten salt or hydro work well and can store the electricity, in order to distribute it at night time.

But in practice, this is mitigated by the actual power grid, another plant(s) somewhere else would take over at night. On a coal plant it is harder to adjust the load factor on the fly, it is not instantaneous. On a gas plant or a hydro dam, it is a matter of minutes, the turbines can start very quickly. That's why usually when such utility-scale renewable plants are installed, they need to be paired with another load-following plant, such as gas. Nevertheless, a renewable+gas/coal plant means less CO2 emissions, so I guess it's a good thing.

Not exactly, you can't do that kind of calculation. Solar panels work only in full sunlight, and only during the day. When there's cloud coverage, the electricity production goes down drastically. I was giving Topaz solar farm in California as a reference, because it's a solar plant of the same magnitude, in about the same sunlight conditions as India. There's about 3 years of track record for Topaz, and so far its best year (2015), it generated 1.3 TWh/year. We're far from the 5.67 TWh/year that you mention. The best upper limit (theoretical) in a solar farm is about 7 hours of sunlight/day, but that's just the theory. In practice it's always lower.

While I agree - people from western world live way over what is needed - there's an issue with demography also in Asia. Kaya's identity [1] shows that the factor P, global population, is by far the most important. Control demography, you will raise the Quality of Life. At least while we have high EROI energy sources (like fossil fuels); without high EROI energy, demography will become (again) a dominant energy source.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaya_identity

While by no means I mean to minimize this announcement, if the press was publishing an article every time a Coal plant opens in India, we would have an article every few days or so on HN.

Just to put things into perspective:

- A plant like Topaz, California generates ~1100 GWh/year. [3]

- "India was the third top electricity producer in the world 1272 TWh in FY 20014-15" [1]

- "India was the third top coal producer in 2015 with 283.9 Mtoe (7.4% global share)." [1]

- "Nearly 80% of total electricity generated (utility and captive) in India is from coal." [1]

So we're about at 3 orders or magnitude, in terms of generated electricity, between what you currently get from coal plants and this new Tamil Nadu plant. While the penetration rate of renewables is faster than coal [2], the same thing cannot be said of generated capacity. Globally an unit of power from renewables has a far lower EROI compared to Coal [4].

So I support what kumarski said below, this is much of a hype. If India wants to be serious about climate change, they should at least stop building Coal plants.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_India

[2] https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/Renewables- Are-Outpacing-Coal-in-India

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topaz_Solar_Farm

[4] http://festkoerper-kernphysik.de/Weissbach_EROI_preprint.pdf

Side note: Are you familiar with Sweetscape's 010 Editor? Very cool stuff, although closed source.

Links to doc are 404.

The issue is that craftmanship means time & experience (experience like tens of years). Think compagnons. This is fading away since the end of WWII, and especially since all manufacturing was moved to Asia. There are still a few artisans standing, but it's expensive work and they are hard to find.

Check This Old House (both the magazine and the PBS episodes). It's a pretty good starting point.

Smoke & mirrors. Art Berman has shown that none of the Tight&Shale producers are/has been profitable. They are largely there because of credit/debt (which of course can't grow for ever)

"Tight oil companies outspend cash flow by an average of 120%: spend $2.20 for every dollar earned from operating activities." "Tight oil company debt-to-cash from operating activities ratio averages 3.3: would take more than 3 years to pay down debt if all cash flow was used."

Please see: http://www.artberman.com/wp-content/uploads/The-Shale-Revolu...

Renewables depend on oil. You can't make renewables with renewables energy, because their overall EROI is insufficient to both maintain the current standard of life, and make them. The other issue is mobility, oil has the best volume/energy content ratio of all energy sources we know (except uranium). Renewables can only make electricity and you need about 10x the same battery volume (and weight) to move a vehicle, compared to oil. Unfourtunately for all of us, fosil fuels are here to stay for a while, until they run out. Or until the economy crashes. Or until climate change kicks in real bad.

Fossil fuels are the base subsidy. It's hard to see how a manufactured product will be cheaper than fosil fuels consumed on the spot (as coal is primarly a local consumption resource). Also the economy of scale principle works here too: how can a (coal) thermal plant which feeds a region, cities, can be replaced by a collection of small scale devices that produce electricity, and pretend to be cheaper? Nothing will ever be cheaper than coal to produce electricity. There's a good reason why the industrial revolution started with coal and not with renewables (which for the record were already available in Europe for a few centuries before that - it was already widely used since the 12th century)

In the meanwhile, a few other sources argue that the overall ERORI (energy invested vs. energy produced) is well below a somehow 'sustainable' level. The impression I'm getting is that the day oil/gas production starts to fall due to geological limits, so will the production of photovoltaic & windmills.

Please see: https://collapseofindustrialcivilization.files.wordpress.com...

And: http://science-and-energy.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/201...

And: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqhC6uI8TUY (for french speakers out there)

Please do convince me that we can run the current industrial civilization, at current rates of energy usage, with only solar & wind, on a long enough run, without oil.

It also has high winds with airborne, highly abrasive sand. Panels don't last long there unless you clean them daily. I can't immagine that happening for utility-scale installations.

https://energieduthorium.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/la-voit... - check from slide 23 on.

He compares pretty much the same car, from the same (French) maker, but with one version of the car running on Diesel, and one electric. You can see already that in half of EU countries, including Germany, running a gas car is better than an electric one.

Not sure how that does work out in the US, but given that 2/3 of electricity mix in the US are from fossil fuels (from which about 40% coal), you should be closer to Poland. So essentialy, depending on the state where you drive your Tesla, you could be better off with gas powered car (in terms of CO2 emissions).

It probably depends on the kind of car. I'd suggest you watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkj-vf1_pzQ (with english subtitles) - the guy is an automotive engineer. In the first 10 minutes, he compares how an electric car does in a coal-based electricity vs. non-coal. You can quickly see that in a country with heavy coal electricity mix, you're better off driving a gas car. Even Germany is break-even.

Indeed, what is funny that while resources are limited (and declining), economics are still considering as resources were unlimited. This video has a great re-interpretation of what economics really are, just managing energy in a productive system: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3w6ruZ_5nPE