If people didn't spout off about things they didn't know about, this forum would be very quiet.
So, oil fracking is actually pretty damn terrible
- Thread starter babylonian
- Start date
If people didn't spout off about things they didn't know about, this forum would be very quiet.
Well technically Antimatter engines of the future release 100% of the energy of the particles in the collision. To the other points, The thing that grinds my gears is that with things like this and GMOs, NUCLEAR and a few other things: Its always the guy who watched some biased documentary who has the strongest opinions. They don't even bother to read a science book or understand what they are protesting so fervently against but they know its bad because a documentary told them so... and you know corporations are evil trying to kill us and all.
Fracking is just one more of those things. Same as GMO and Nuclear energy Where people who protect against them the most are generally the most ignorant.
Nothing is perfect, but Nuclear is BY FAR the best thing we could hope for.
I want you to realize that every single type of energy source has a MASSIVE lobby behind it putting out metric craptons of disinformation about it.
Coal lobbies discourage nuclear & renewables.
Natural gas lobbies discourage nuclear and encorage inefficient renewables
Nuclear lobbies discourage everything else
Oil lobbies fight just about all of them and eachother.
Want to know who financed gasland? The saudis.
Want to know who finances most anti-frack groups? The Russians do. Neither groups want US shale to ever be on the market becuase it's a massive compeditor. Remember the US has more shale oil than Russia & all of the middle east combined, but unfortunately it isn't overly cheap.
Renewables can be nice, but the amount of sheer BS put out about them makes me not want to touch them. For the vast majority of the US and virtually all of Canada, solar and wind are complete pipedreams. Yes, they can produce a great deal of energy but there's no way to store it. There will not be a useful way of storing it for the next 30+ years EVEN if we make a massive breakthrough. The reality is that the biggest investors in photovoltaics and wind turbine technologies are BP and exxon. The reason for this is simple : For every wind turbine or solar farm that's built they get to build a equal amount of quick-fire natural gas generation. That's because solar and wind are so unreliable that every area that switches to renewables is virtually guaranteed daily rolling blackouts unless the NG generation capabilities are built. They then balance between renewables and the natural gas generators. These put out Coal & nuclear plants because you simply can't turn them on and off, they have to have constant output over predictable time periods.
Hydrogen storage via PV & wind is nice, untill you realize that you're storing ultra-volitiles in containers under pressure. The process is extraordinarily inefficient (as others have pointed out) but the thing is there simply isn't a good process to convert surplus electricity into hydrogen. Sure, there are ways to do it that require pallidium & platinum converters, but the process is so excruciatingly slow it just isn't viable on large scales.
As I said before, nuclear is the best option. Fuel is cheap and with current-generation technology there's virtually no waste. Remember kids, the ONLY reason that nuclear waste exists in America is because Coal & gas lobbies made it ILLEGAL to reprocess the waste into usable fuel. France has tried multiple times to get the US to sell off all our nuclear waste stockpiles so they can burn it in their current-generation reactors, but it's illegal to do so. instead we build a multi-billion dollar storage system to keep it there for the next 20,000 years. We of course could spend $5 billion dollars to build a current reactor and reprocess it all into terrawatt-hours worth of power, but our wonderful government has made it illegal to do so.
Coal also isn't that bad of technology even though it's as old as dirt. There are several processes to make it 100% clean with the only biproducts being oil-bearing algea (which is then reprocessed into automotive fuels) and flyash which can be then used to make ultra-strong concrete. The problem is it's just not commercially viable because the government once again has passed laws that make it too expensive to convert to the new process.
The whole energy landscape is a mess, run by corrupt and idiotic politicians who are paid off by groups to fight other groups. If you wonder why something works the way it does, just remember it's because someone paid for it to be that way.
I want you to realize that every single type of energy source has a MASSIVE lobby behind it putting out metric craptons of disinformation about it.
Coal lobbies discourage nuclear & renewables.
Natural gas lobbies discourage nuclear and encorage inefficient renewables
Nuclear lobbies discourage everything else
Oil lobbies fight just about all of them and eachother.
Want to know who financed gasland? The saudis.
Want to know who finances most anti-frack groups? The Russians do. Neither groups want US shale to ever be on the market becuase it's a massive compeditor. Remember the US has more shale oil than Russia & all of the middle east combined, but unfortunately it isn't overly cheap.
Renewables can be nice, but the amount of sheer BS put out about them makes me not want to touch them. For the vast majority of the US and virtually all of Canada, solar and wind are complete pipedreams. Yes, they can produce a great deal of energy but there's no way to store it. There will not be a useful way of storing it for the next 30+ years EVEN if we make a massive breakthrough. The reality is that the biggest investors in photovoltaics and wind turbine technologies are BP and exxon. The reason for this is simple : For every wind turbine or solar farm that's built they get to build a equal amount of quick-fire natural gas generation. That's because solar and wind are so unreliable that every area that switches to renewables is virtually guaranteed daily rolling blackouts unless the NG generation capabilities are built. They then balance between renewables and the natural gas generators. These put out Coal & nuclear plants because you simply can't turn them on and off, they have to have constant output over predictable time periods.
Hydrogen storage via PV & wind is nice, untill you realize that you're storing ultra-volitiles in containers under pressure. The process is extraordinarily inefficient (as others have pointed out) but the thing is there simply isn't a good process to convert surplus electricity into hydrogen. Sure, there are ways to do it that require pallidium & platinum converters, but the process is so excruciatingly slow it just isn't viable on large scales.
As I said before, nuclear is the best option. Fuel is cheap and with current-generation technology there's virtually no waste. Remember kids, the ONLY reason that nuclear waste exists in America is because Coal & gas lobbies made it ILLEGAL to reprocess the waste into usable fuel. France has tried multiple times to get the US to sell off all our nuclear waste stockpiles so they can burn it in their current-generation reactors, but it's illegal to do so. instead we build a multi-billion dollar storage system to keep it there for the next 20,000 years. We of course could spend $5 billion dollars to build a current reactor and reprocess it all into terrawatt-hours worth of power, but our wonderful government has made it illegal to do so.
Coal also isn't that bad of technology even though it's as old as dirt. There are several processes to make it 100% clean with the only biproducts being oil-bearing algea (which is then reprocessed into automotive fuels) and flyash which can be then used to make ultra-strong concrete. The problem is it's just not commercially viable because the government once again has passed laws that make it too expensive to convert to the new process.
The whole energy landscape is a mess, run by corrupt and idiotic politicians who are paid off by groups to fight other groups. If you wonder why something works the way it does, just remember it's because someone paid for it to be that way.
If Germany had to rely on solar to power their country, there would be a boom in candles. It only gets 5% of its energy from solar.
German Renewables Energy Supply and Fact Checking | The Energy Collective
And the truth is far far away from your statements. It is literally impossible at this time, and for the next 30-50 years for any large country to supply all their power through solar. The simple reason for this is storage technology. Yes, Denmark and Norway MAY be able to do it with pumped hydro storage, but they are by far the exeptions and nothing else.
I wouldn't use an opinion piece on a website called theenergycollective to fact anything. Solar is just 1 powerful piece of the clean renewable energy sources.
The 4th largest economy in the world (Germany) gets nearly 30% of all its energy from clean renewable sources.
Renewables Take Top Share of German Power Supply in First - Bloomberg
This is going on today.right now. Not some distant future.
Using fracking,sand,deep ocean drilling and nuke energy is just idiotic and lazy IMHO. It takes political will power driven by science to make good long term decisions.
Unfortunately the U.S. just doesn't have it. We are like oil addicted heroin fiends looking for dirtier and dirtier ways to get high.
Wondering. What would be a good long term strategy to store the nearly 2,000 metric tons of radioactive waste every year?
Should we keep stuffing radioactive fuel inside desert mountains?
Maybe we can shoot it in space?
Maybe the several hundred thousand year halflife of spent uranium is all commie bullshit?
I guess nuke fusion would solve that but that tech is much further than sunlight.
The numbers in my "questionable" article are about the same as ones in Bloomberg. Plus, the numbers in Bloomberg's article include hydro-electric power.
The market should decide what energy source gets used. Not some group of politicians or bureaucrats. BTW, most "alternative" power sources are extremely inefficient and expensive.
That 2,000 tons of radioactive waste is a product solely of US politicians, not nuclear technology. That radioactive waste can be burnt, burnt again, and burnt over and over till 99.9% or better of it is gone. Remember if it's radioactive it produces energy (Thus why it's dangerous), if it can produce energy it can be used in the nuclear process. The problem is the US government doesn't allow nuclear plants to use the waste as fuel and instead are required to spend significant sums of money to store the highly radioactive, still very useful leftovers from our rather old nuclear power plants.
26.3% is based on theoretical output rather than true energy demands.
It'd be like selling a website based on 1 week's adsense earnings when the rest of the year is almost nothing. The problem with most if not all of these renewable articles is that they are cherry-picking numbers and aren't using more useful metrics.
Recently there was massive news about Denmark producing 100% of the country's energy from wind power. It made virtually every major publication in the world concerning energy, being touted by several governments as proof it works. The problem was the truth was far different : It was 100% of the country's power for 1 hour at 2am in the morning. It was essentially during a time when very little power was needed, and shortly after that the turbines shut down and the country had to revert to natural gas generation (Which is powered by Gazprom NG).
So let me get this straight. You want to double down on a bad idea buy burning nuclear waste?? Brilliant idea. What happens when you burn something...?
What happens to the radioactive isotopes when the get releases in smoke? What are you going to do with the radioactive ash? So you want to take localized radio active smoke release it in the air so it can spread into the rest of the enviroment through wind and nuclear rain. Sweet plan!
The concept of burning nuclear waste is rediculous and should be considered criminally negligent. Japanese tried to do it after Fukushima and ended up making matters worse.
Spending tax dollars on new power plants using Nuclear fission is a horrible idea. The risk catastrophic failure is to high and it's idiotic for any country to actively promote the use of dirty energy when we have better alternatives today.
By burning I mean run it through a nuclear reprocess. An American reactor uses concentrated uranium in the neighborhood of 20% enrichment and uses it till it's maybe 15% or 12%. Once it reaches that point it's discarded. Newer reactos can use the uranium till it's 0.1% or even less in terms of enrichment. It uses up almost all of the radioactivity from the uranium to produce electricity.
The risk of catastrophic failure is extraordinarily low. More people die each year from the biproducts of Wind & Solar generation (Arsenic and Nickel mainly) than those that have died from nuclear technology over the past 10 years.
We do NOT have better alternatives, anyone that tells you that either doesn't understand the process or is paid to lead you astray. Remember BP is one of the largest producers of PV pannels in the world.
I'd also like to add that people like YOU are the exact reason that Fukushima had any type of radiation event.
People like you make idiodic claims based out of sheer lack of knowledge, regurgitating whatever fluff you hear on the news. Politicians and special interest feed off the lack of understanding and write laws that are harmful to humanity just to feed the constant lines of BS.
The Fukushima Daiichi reactors were commissioned in the early 70s with a nominal operating period of 25 years. Most early reactors were only expected to run 25, maybe 30 years then to be decomissioned and replaced with newer, safer, more efficient reactors. However due to the massive stupidity revolving around nuclear power they were never decomissioned. Reactors 1-6 which were damaged During the 2012 event reactors were nearing FOURTY years of operation. This was well beyond the intended operation period, and reactors 1-2 were in the process of finally being shut down.
The reason for the extreme length of operation was simple - Anti-nuke activists PROMISED some magic breakthrough technology would come to replace nuclear reactors and they never did. The reason they were finally coming offline was that TEPCO was finally going to replace several of the earlier reactors with modern AWBRs which are virtually indestructable (Rather than heat up during a disaster the reactor cools down).
If the reactors would have been replaced as intended, there would have never been an event, 3rd generation and above reactors are virtually meltdown proof, and all reactors that have had catastrophic, casualty causing events have been well beyond their intended shelf-life (or in the case of Chernobyl, staffed by idiots on purpose).
Here's a photo of a nearly identical event to the Tsunami that caused fukushima, except it was in Nebraska here in the US.
That's the Cooper nuclear power plant. Surrounded by roughly 25 feet of flood water due to massive rains causing the Missisippi river to swell. No meltdown, no nuclear event. It's a newer reactor that was made to withstand more problems than the older style reactors.
Please, please, please read and learn about nuclear. You seriously thought he meant to put fire to nuclear waste?! :anon.sml:
Your super amazing Nuclear reprocessing reduces the volume of high-level radioactive waste, but does not reduce radioactivity or heat generation and therefore does not eliminate the need for a geological waste management .
Where do we store the radioactive byproducts?
Are you saying this awesome reprocessing turns nuclear shit into golden Magic dust without any radioavtivity?
Your claim of dangers being "extraordinarily low" is not comforting enough for me to risk the future of my children.
If backwards looking people like you would pull their heads out of yer arse we could finally stop giving tax breaks to oil companies and instead divert the dirty oil money in renewable r&d.
100 years ago we learned to fly a plane 20 meters.
Last year we fucking sent a multi-stage rover 100 of millions of miles to take selfies on Mars.
Magical shit doesn't happen overnight. Renewables won't become uber efficient and self reliant without significantly more governmental incentives and funding.
The point is.there is ZERO FUCKING RISK of radioactive waste.
Zero risk is better than some interweb genius who thinks "extraordinarily low" risk of catastrophe is somehow acceptable.
