Global warming

[David Horn]

(08-26-2016, 02:22 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote:

(08-25-2016, 04:15 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(08-22-2016, 02:49 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(06-06-2016, 01:28 PM)radind Wrote: There will be a price to pay for the closing of nuclear plants.

Quote:http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/mag...8Z,FM6S9,1
Decline of US nuclear industry is accelerating
… "Over the past few years, US companies have closed or announced plans to close eight reactors with a combined capacity of 6300 MW. Fertel claimed that another 15 to 20 plants are at risk of closure over the next 5 to 10 years. “We’re driving companies to make decisions that our nation will regret for the next 20 or 30 years, or longer, on the basis of short-term, unsustainable price signals,” …Replacing all the shuttered plants with new natural-gas generation would wipe out about one-quarter of the carbon emissions reductions that are projected in the administration’s Clean Power Plan. The changeover would also cancel out 40% of the cuts to greenhouse gas emissions that the US committed to in December at the Paris climate change conference.”…

We need to replace nuclear with solar. Delay is not a reasonable option.

Ask the Germans about that.  No one is more attuned to renewables and more averse to nuclear, so they were the first to come to grips with the obvious.  You can't run a modern society on intermittent power, so they are biting the bullet and reopening some coal fired plants.  Is that better?

Assuming one is dedicated to limiting or eliminating CO2 as a byproduct,  coal fired plant stack gases can feed algae in the cooling ponds. The algae can be used for products or biofuels.

The real problem is "... the perfect being the enemy of the good".  Germans don't' want nuclear, even though it has a perfect safety record and produces no greenhouse gases.  Somehow, they convinced themselves that they didn't need nuclear, yet the goal was then and is still today the total elimination of fossil fueled electric generation -- then the baseload problem reared its ugly head.  Doing both is currently impossible.  They decided on more CO2 rather than rely on nuclear ... clearly an emotional response based on nothing else.

At least the French seem to understand the issue.