If God Intended Humans Were To Have Free Energy For Billions Of Years

[DanieRains]

He would have put two thermonuclear reactors in the sky.

Not just one.

[RockRaven]

1. There's a lot more than two of them out there.....

[hunter]

2. Too bad the sun doesn't shine all the time...

I'm nearly certain this planet can't support 8 billion humans without high density energy sources capable or running 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

If we don't quit fossil fuels we are screwed. If we do quit fossil fuels we are screwed... unless there is some other high density 24/7 energy source.

The greatest problem with wind and solar energy is that it ultimately increases our long-term dependence on natural gas. Natural gas is the most dangerous fuel imaginable, mostly because people think it's "clean" and a good source of "backup" power for their solar and wind energy schemes.

Unfortunately there is enough easily extractable natural gas in the ground to destroy whatever is left of earth's natural environment as we know it. It's best we leave it ALL in the ground.

Renewable energy schemes in California, Denmark, and Germany have failed. The situation is so bad in Germany they haven't been able to quit coal, even as they've been forced to buy increasing amounts of gas from Russia at great political cost.

Solar panels or wind turbines built on previously undeveloped land are loathsome. That stinks of "We had to destroy the world in order to save it."

We humans have worked ourselves into a corner. I don't think we have any good alternatives left but to replace fossil fuels with nuclear power. Nuclear power is the only existing technology capable of displacing fossil fuels.

I used to be a radical anti-nuclear activist. I'm not anymore.

[Klaralven]

4. Thorium fission reactors and later, fusion reactors.

You need enough of them to run critical industries and support a population of about 1 billion.

The other 9 billion can subsist on intermittent power.

[hunter]

7. I don't quite understand the fascination with thorium reactors...

... especially if this thorium is to be newly mined.

We already have huge resources of potential nuclear fuel that are currently considered "waste," including depleted uranium, used light water reactor fuel, mine tailings that are rich in thorium or uraniuam, and existing nuclear weapons.

I don't believe 9 billion people can subsist on intermittent power. Modern agriculture and food distribution alone require tremendous amounts of energy.

Basic human necessities such as clean water, sewage treatment, and comfortable (not-too-hot, not-too-cold) housing require energy as well.

500 million human beings could probably live comfortably on this planet using nothing more than wind and solar power.

That's similar to the world of Ursula K. Le Guin's Always Coming Home.

But 9 billion human beings? Not a chance.

Always Coming Home is some kind of utopia because the civilization we know collapsed and billions of people suffered and died.

Nevertheless, it's still one of my favorite books.

[lagomorph777]

10. Because there's no such thing as energy storage?

Now, solar and wind are cheaper to generate (per raw kWh), than fossil fuels (and WAY cheaper than nukes). The next frontier is cheap storage. Many schemes are in the works right now; this is beginning to pay off already.

[Mosby]

5. Not all solar is intermittent.

Thermosolar plants like in Morocco can produce power 24 hours/day.

And as battery storage gets better and more affordable, the need for backup power from NG will decrease.

[hunter]

8. Battery and thermal storage is measured in minutes. At most hours.

Solar and wind outages can last for weeks or months.

[lagomorph777]

12. There are numerous storage schemes in the works.

They are all targeted at different, complementary timescales.

For example, there's a "hot gravel" thermal scheme that could cheaply store many days of energy. The storage medium is literally as cheap as gravel. Of course, the machinery to go with it has a cost.

Combine storage with diversity of renewables, partial decoupling from the grid for many, and long-distance HVDC lines, and you have a respectably robust scheme.

[hunter]

17. I haven't been able to make that math work...

... and I was a student of Buckminster Fuller's HVDC worldwide grid.

I first met "Bucky" as a seventh grade science fair winner.

It didn't end well.

Next I burned a lot of bridges behind me in my encounters with the hydrogen economy people.

I escaped with a very respectable university degree that got me work as a science teacher and occasional technician, but it was hard won.

That was a long time ago, back in the days of mercury arc valves.

Do the math. It's the same at any scale, from a homestead with solar panels and a "backup" propane fired Generac all the way to an international HVDC grid across the Bering Strait.

[Miguelito Loveless]

6. Last I checked...

the sun shines 24 hours a day.

We just don't always face it. Eppure si brilla, to paraphrase Galileo.

[lagomorph777]

11. Pretty sure that's true.

[Shanti Shanti Shanti]

16. You mean the sun isnt made to rise from the depths by the sky gods with their flaming chariots?

Sounds like blasphemy

[Miguelito Loveless]

18. Blasphemy and heresy are my specialty

[ProfessorGAC]

20. Beauty!!! (nt)

[hunter]

21. Have you ever been with your mom when she's removed from a church for her heresies?

Kicking and screaming?

I have.

Who knew churches had bouncers?

My mom was Jehovah's Witness then. She'd rejected her frontier Catholic faith after a bad encounter with a hard drinking, smoking, leering Catholic priest.

After the Witnesses we were Quakers. My mom could speak aloud whatever God was telling her and people would listen to her respectfully and move on.

Didn't change how I ignored the flag salute in school.

One of my favorite, or maybe most terrifying, experiences as a child was my mom in a girl fight bitch slapping contest with a Catholic bishop.

He was wrong.

Currently I'm some sort of Catholic heretic. If you're gonna be a Christian you might as well go old school.

[carpetbagger]

3. I was explaining the Star Wars premise yesterday..

1970s sci fi, a parallel galaxy much like ours, but with cheap energy. That's the whole premise. So... God loves Tatooine.

[hunter]

9. That's my nightmare vision with nuclear power, either fusion or fission...

... that energy would be so cheap that we humans will turn the entire biosphere of this planet into human meat.

Won't happen with fossil fuels because the continued use of fossil fuels will destroy the civilization that supports at least 90% of earth's human population.

Maybe, misanthrope that I am, I should be cheering fossil fuel use.

[former9thward]

13. No, God would have given us the ability to use nuclear energy here on earth.

We have not begun to use its potential because of people's unscientific fears and beliefs.

[Gore1FL]

14. Waste storage costs do it for me.,

Even a $.01 per pound per month adds up over a few billion years of half-lives.

[former9thward]

15. Technology is not static.

To think we will have the same storage methods for eons is very short sighted.

[Gore1FL]

19. Assuming we come up with a something cheaper than burying it and guarding it, sure.

Until that time, it's far to expensive to be realistic.

[hunter]

22. Meanwhile we ignore all that shit with a half life of fucking forever.

Not to mention the greenhouse gasses.

[Gore1FL]

23. Greenhouse gasses have been largely ignored as weapons, so there is that.

The best way to leverage nuclear is the solar and geothermal energy available to us.

If we are going to use the "someday the technology will exist" argument, it can be better made for the natural nuclear reactors we already have: the sun and the planet.

[hunter]

24. Nuclear power technology is seventy years old, so it's not "someday..."

...unlike the impossible batteries and other such technologies renewable energy enthusiasts pin their hopes on.

If solar panels were free, if you could grow them in your backyard like zucchini, they still wouldn't displace fossil fuels.

The environmental impacts of geothermal energy are not negligible.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_energy#Environmental_effects

[Gore1FL]

25. I haven't heard of "impossible batteries." Are they like nuclear reactors that run on unobtainium?

Ultimately, fuel, be it wood, be in uranium, be it gasoline, is all basically a form of battery. So, technically I do grow solar panels in my back yard. The ones I don't have to rake each fall, I pay someone to mow every couple of weeks.

In any event, nuclear energy is not going to be useful until we solve the cost problems I outlined, unless, again, we include the large one in the sky and the smaller one beneath our feet. While they are not without their problems, and limitations, these nuclear reactors are cheaper to harness and and immediately accessible.

[hunter]

26. I'd rather not eat grass.

And I'd rather not ignore the true costs of fossil fuels.

[Gore1FL]

27. Fossil fuels certainly have their short comings.

Their spent fuel presents a harrowing storage issue of sorts, as well.