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4 votes
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Thorium and the future of nuclear energy
10 votes -
Apple cancels plans for second data center in Denmark
6 votes -
Russia wants concessions from Ukraine for continuing gas transit to Europe
9 votes -
Are there potential downsides of going to 100% renewable energy?
4 votes -
California's largest utility resorts to blackouts to prevent wildfires
10 votes -
Kyshtym: The nuclear disaster that was kept secret for thirty years
11 votes -
The ticket to 100% renewable power is underneath our feet
6 votes -
How to make wind power sustainable again
6 votes -
To some solar users, power company fees are an unfair charge
5 votes -
To drive eagles away from deadly wind turbines, researchers turn to sound
4 votes -
Nuclear power is not the answer in a time of climate change
14 votes -
Going nuclear might be the best way to combat climate change
26 votes -
Oregon restricts solar development on prime farmland
5 votes -
I oversaw the US nuclear power industry. Now I think it should be banned.
12 votes -
"A big fugazi": Why fishermen still can't get behind offshore wind
8 votes -
How greed and corruption blew up South Korea’s nuclear industry
6 votes -
What happened when I bought a house with solar panels
10 votes -
Springtime, and the renewables are surging
4 votes -
Electricity grid cybersecurity will be expensive – who will pay, and how much?
3 votes -
Community solar is an excellent way to create energy equity–if it’s done right
4 votes -
Statehouses, not the sun, drive solar energy gaps
3 votes -
One in five Americans now live in places committed to 100% clean power
9 votes -
This company says the future of nuclear energy is smaller, cheaper and safer
5 votes -
Thorium Energy Conference 2018 - discussion of Molten Salt Reactor concepts and the new nuclear industry
12 votes -
Earth matters: A younger generation pushes South Africa's solar power revolution
6 votes -
New scientific device creates electricity from snowfall
8 votes -
How Atlanta plans to get to 100% green energy by 2035
6 votes -
The removal of fuel from Fukushima reactors begins, eight years after the disaster
8 votes -
House OKs 100 percent clean energy in Washington by 2045
15 votes -
‘Historic breakthrough’: Norway’s giant oil fund dives into renewables
7 votes -
Battery reality: There’s nothing better than lithium-ion coming soon
12 votes -
Energy secretary Rick Perry approves deal to sell nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia
9 votes -
Puerto Rico just passed a bill to require 100% renewable electricity by 2050
13 votes -
Companies organize to make it easier to buy renewable energy
5 votes -
'Coal is on the way out': Study finds fossil fuel now pricier than solar or wind
13 votes -
A battle is raging over the largest solar farm east of the Rockies
10 votes -
Could We Run Modern Society on Human Power Alone?
10 votes -
Even in a warmer Europe, wind and solar could still keep the lights on
5 votes -
New window film reduces energy costs
4 votes -
Where will the materials for our clean energy future come from?
7 votes -
Solar farms shine a ray of hope on bees and butterflies
5 votes -
Green New Deal doesn't include nuclear. Good? Bad? What do you think?
18 votes -
Keep calm and carry on: Managing electricity reliability
6 votes -
On Thorium Power (and the 'hype' thereof)
I've noticed, particularly on reddit but also elsewhere on the english-speaking internet, that thorium nuclear (MSR/LFTR) power is being hyped. And I can't help but feel suspicious. It seems too...
I've noticed, particularly on reddit but also elsewhere on the english-speaking internet, that thorium nuclear (MSR/LFTR) power is being hyped. And I can't help but feel suspicious. It seems too good to be true. "burns our nuclear waste", "infinite fuel", "Absolutely safe", "Proliferation is not an issue". Stuff like that. Not gonna provide much evidence for those claims existing here, but I'll say that you can usually find them in any big thread involving energy sources and there's a few TED talks too. Coal, conventional nuclear, renewables, any of those is apparently strictly inferior and we're complete morons for not switching already. Coal apparently causes more damage through radiation than nuclear, nuclear is dirty and renewables need something... anything.. to keep them company in case we can't get enough wind/sun. (Also, batteries and hydroelectric storage don't exist.)
German wikipedia has this to say about thorium hype: "Der MSR/LFTR als Teil einer Thoriumnutzung erhält etwa seit dem Jahr 2010 insbesondere im angelsächsischen Raum starke Unterstützung verschiedener Organisationen, während Nuklear- und Energieexperten eher zurückhaltend sind. Einige dieser Befürworter halten den LFTR sogar für die Lösung fast aller Energieprobleme.[2][3][4][5] Kritiker sprechen aus unterschiedlicher Motivation heraus vom MSR- oder Thorium-Hype[6] oder sogar von Astroturfing[7]." - https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fl%C3%BCssigsalzreaktor - paraphrased: MSR/LFTR received strong support in english-speaking areas by various orgs, while nuclear- and energy experts are mostly silent. Some supporters regard LFTR as solution to all energy problems. For various reasons, critics call thorium hyped or even astroturfed. [citations are mostly english, for the curious]
Meanwhile, there's major problems regarding practicality, we can't estimate just how secure it is (keep in mind modern reactor concepts are all "theoretically safe" as long as you keep the human out of the loop and maintain the facility properly.) Proliferation risks of thorium fueled reactors are immense due to U233 (232-contamination doesn't make the weapon less dangerous when used, just more dangerous to handle.). Also, no serious evidence for the capability to burn nuclear waste. And decommissioning a thorium plant seems, as of now, to be just as much of a shit job as a conventional nuclear plant - if not worse.
My main question with this is: How do you view thorium power / did you notice the same trends as I did? I'm just trying to form a conclusion between the hype and a maybe cynical pessimism.
18 votes -
Waste crisis looms as thousands of solar panels reach end of life
8 votes -
What are the primary pressures leading us towards collapse?
I’m trying to organize a series of statements which reflect the primary pressures pushing civilization towards collapse. Ideally, I could be as concise as possible and provide additional resources...
I’m trying to organize a series of statements which reflect the primary pressures pushing civilization towards collapse. Ideally, I could be as concise as possible and provide additional resources for understanding and sources in defense of each. Any feedback would be helpful, as I would like to incorporate them into a general guide for better understanding collapse.
We are overwhelmingly dependent on finite resources.
Fossil fuels account for 87% of the world’s total energy consumption. 1 2 3
Economic pressures will manifest well before reserves are actually depleted as more energy is required to extract the same amount of resources over time (or as the steepness of the EROEI cliff intensifies). 1 2
We are transitioning to renewables very slowly.
Renewables have had an average growth rate of 5.4% over the past decade. 1 2 3 4
Renewables are not taking off any faster than coal or oil once did and there is no technical or financial reason to believe they will rise any quicker, in part because energy demand is soaring globally, making it hard for natural gas, much less renewables, to just keep up. 1
Total world energy consumption increased 15% from 2009 to 2016. New renewables powered less than 30% of the growth in demand during that period. 1
Transitioning to renewables too quickly would disrupt the global economy.
A rush to build an new global infrastructure based on renewables would require an enormous amount resources and produce massive amounts of pollution. 1 2
Current renewables are ineffective replacements for fossil fuels.
Energy can only be substituted by other energy. Conventional economic thinking on most depletable resources considers substitution possibilities as essentially infinite. But not all joules perform equally. There is a large difference between potential and kinetic energy. Energy properties such as: intermittence, variability, energy density, power density, spatial distribution, energy return on energy invested, scalability, transportability, etc. make energy substitution a complex prospect. The ability of a technology to provide ‘joules’ is different than its ability to contribute to ‘work’ for society. All joules do not contribute equally to human economies. 1 2 3
Best-case energy transition scenarios will still result in severe climate change.
Even if every renewable energy technology advanced as quickly as imagined and they were all applied globally, atmospheric CO2 levels wouldn’t just remain above 350 ppm; they would continue to rise exponentially due to continued fossil fuel use. So our best-case scenario, which was based on our most optimistic forecasts for renewable energy, would still result in severe climate change, with all its dire consequences: shifting climatic zones, freshwater shortages, eroding coasts, and ocean acidification, among others. Our reckoning showed that reversing the trend would require both radical technological advances in cheap zero-carbon energy, as well as a method of extracting CO2 from the atmosphere and sequestering the carbon. 1
The speed and scale of transitions and of technological change required to limit warming to 1.5°C has been observed in the past within specific sectors and technologies {4.2.2.1}. But the geographical and economic scales at which the required rates of change in the energy, land, urban, infrastructure and industrial systems would need to take place, are larger and have no documented historic precedent. 1
Global economic growth peaked forty years ago.
Global economic growth peaked forty years ago and is projected to settle at 3.7% in 2018. 1 2 3
The increased price of energy, agricultural stress, energy demand, and declining EROEI suggest the energy-surplus economy already peaked in the early 20th century. 1 2
The size of the global economy is still projected to double within the next 25 years. 1
Our institutions and financial systems are based on expectations of continued GDP growth perpetually into the future. Current OECD (2015) forecasts are for more than a tripling of the physical size of the world economy by 2050. No serious government or institution entity forecasts the end of growth this century (at least not publicly). 1
Global energy demand is increasing.
Global energy demand has increased 0.5-2% per year from 2011-2017, despite increases in efficiency. 1 2 3
Technological change can raise the efficiency of resource use, but also tends to raise both per capita resource consumption and the scale of resource extraction, so that, absent policy effects, the increases in consumption often compensate for the increased efficiency of resource use. 1 2 3 4
World population is increasing.
World population is growing at a rate of around 1.09% per year (2018, down from 1.12% in 2017 and 1.14% in 2016. The current average population increase is estimated at 83 million people per year. The annual growth rate reached its peak in the late 1960s, when it was at around 2%. The rate of increase has nearly halved since then, and will continue to decline in the coming years. 1 2
Our supplies of food and water are diminishing.
Global crop yields are expected to fall by 10% on average over the next 30 years as a result of land degradation and climate change. 1
An estimated 38% of the world’s cropland has been degraded or reduced water and nutrient availability. 1 2
Two-thirds of the world (4.0 billion people) lives under conditions of severe water scarcity at least one month per year. 1
Climate change is rapidly destabilizing our environment.
An overwhelming majority of climate scientists agree humans are the primary cause of climate change. 1
A comparison of past IPCC predictions against 22 years of weather data and the latest climate science find the IPCC has consistently underplayed the intensity of climate change in each of its four major reports released since 1990. 1
15,000 scientists, the most to ever cosign and formally support a published journal article, recently called on humankind to curtail environmental destruction and cautioned that “a great change in our stewardship of the Earth and the life on it is required, if vast human misery is to be avoided.” 1
Emissions are still rising globally and far from enabling us to stay under two degrees of global average warming. 1 2
Climate feedback loops could exponentially accelerate climate change.
In addition to increased atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, many disrupted systems can trigger various positive or negative feedbacks within the larger system. 1 2 3 4 5
Biodiversity is falling rapidly.
The current species extinction rate is 1,000 to 10,000 times greater than the natural background rate. 1 2
World wildlife populations have declined by an average 58% in the past four decades. 1
The marginal utility of societal complexity is declining.
Civilization solves problems via increased societal complexity (e.g. specialization, political organization, technology, economic relationships). However, each increase in complexity has a declining marginal utility to overall society, until it eventually becomes negative. At such a point, complexity would decrease and a process of collapse or decline would begin, since it becomes more useful to decrease societal complexity than it would be to increase it. 1 2 3
25 votes -
Hyperloop promises ultrafast transportation. But what does it mean for the environment?
10 votes -
As US coal use drops to 1979 levels, EPA may ease rules on new coal plants
7 votes -
Lost lands? The American wilderness at risk in the Donald Trump era
11 votes