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Syndicate
So M. Spector what rivers are you damming to provide you your hydro-back up? Want to guess how many that would turn out to be to provide mega-watts of power on the scale needed and the environmental damage to fish and wildlife habitat that would cause. Because those are the real choices. I'm not an apostle of nuclear any more than I am any other generation. I am however, determined that discussion on energy be fulsome and complete and it is simply not true that there is any simple answers and that any generation is not awash in problems. As pointed out above the actual answer starts at conservation, but you are still going to need a consistent, stable 'back ground' generation and for that with current technology that means coal, gas or nuclear. And on that scale you take your pick. Unless of course you are going to turn off your computer, your lights, your hot water, your refrigirator, your central heating, unless you are on full wood, and be determined to end manufacturing beyond the forge and the spinning wheel run by the individual.
Indeed. I researched the impact of the James Bay hydro electric projects in Quebec for University courses, and even here in Manitoba hydro-electric power generation has caused tremendous impacts. Obviously hydroelectric can be done over waterfalls or areas of higher elevation, but in flat topography, the changes one must induce in the physical environment to have the amounts of water necessary to generate power are staggering. Why hydroelectric has a reputaiton as being zero-impact is beyond me.
From afar we often have a simplistic look at our "green choices". And A24, you are right about hydroelectric power generation - there are consequences in our choices and knowing those is a part of the critical thought processes. I know in Bruce County that when industrial wind turbines first started progressives for all for them and supported them but then reports started surfacing that some owners and their families were getting "sick" and weren't allowed to publicly talk about it. Contracts were secret and still are. Communities became divided. Industrial turbines became bigger and bigger and encroaching on other peoples' property and "well-being". In Terms of energy, the energy was wasted "going down the line" to where it was needed by 20%, and the cost of that energy was huge.
Anyway, I strongly believe in a "mixed system" where one size does not fit all, and particularly resources put towards "reduce" where individuals actually benefit rather than corporations and a few individuals.
It is a mammoth (and woolly-minded) hubris that unbinds the ego to convince itself that it can harness Promethian Fire!
Wow, what an interesting approach. My views on an issue are the deciding factor. I think I'll try that. Just wait for the next recipe thread when someone brings up the issue of muffins.
No they're not. Mine are! ;)
Directed to NuclearJeff: Nuclear power has a high cost. Uranium tailings pollute the environment and pose a health risk to humans as there is no infallible way of storing them. Spent fuel rods from nuclear power plants are so hot that the slightest exposure to them is fatal, and the need to store them in water to cool them creates another issue of disposal of the water as well as the rods. It's not the generation of power that is the problem, it's the byproducts of the industry that are toxic in the extreme.
There is ample scientific evidence of the contamination of the natural world by uranium mining and nuclear power. Any argument to the contrary is either purposely false or completely delusional.
And nuclear with it's bad stuff also does good stuff for nuclear medicine for example. I think as suggested each large energy source has good and bad stuff. And Rebecca, your link to that page doesn't work.
And for what it's worth, my opinion rules on babble -
Jan, I can't seem to make the link work, so I've removed it.
I do appreciate the how nuclear medicine saves lives - I have a couple of cancer survivors in my family who wouldn't be alive if it weren't for that technology. However, novel treatments are rapidly developing so that nuclear technology in medicine is becoming less important.
Yes, numerous examples of nuclear technology being beneficial can be sited, but it's a crude and dangerous way of dealing with issues of health and energy. Its by-products are clearly damaging, and we need alternatives. Can any of us say with certainty how much the nuclear lobby is preventing innovations that would make its technology obsolete? No. But given the arguments I've heard and read, I suspect that the preservation of the technology isn't based on a 'there's nothing better out there' POV. It's about preserving an industry that should be put in cold storage indefinitely.
That's news to me, and I thought I'd heard all the nuclear fallacies. The only nuclear lobby I know is the Canadian Nuclear Association, which tries to promote public knowledge and give the other side of the debate which is usually not heard, being less sensational. I have no doubt they make some statements which are debateable, and I'm not interested in defending every word they write.
http://www.cna.ca/
But who is this nuclear lobby that is so powerful it may be able to suppress green energy innovation?
Free .pdf download: 92-page book Nuclear Roulette: The Case Against a "Nuclear Renaissance" by Gar Smith, June 2011.
Source
Excellent article for surveyng the economic relationship between gas-fired power, alternative energy sources, and getting rid of coal.
Natural gas: Cheap, clean and risky
Natural gas has a key role in our energy future, but it must be handled with care.
A lot about why gas is not likely any better than coal. And that if and when it is made to be better than coal [plugging "leaks" in the production and transmission system, which fracking greatly exacerbates]... make it a condition that gas capacity replaces coal. And we have the highest proportion of coal burning in Canada, by far. While ostensibly pursuing the legislated highest standards of GHG reduction.
This is good advice for any energy replacing coal- even alternative forms.
What we are getting in Nova Scotia is shell games that as wind power moves in, there keep being ad hoc reasons that no coal capacity is closed down. None,
And we can see the path for this happening endlessly- even when we start importing cheap and GHG free hydro from Labrador or Quebec.
The economics driving that are simple. You can build all the new alternative capacity you want, but those paid off coal plants are producing cheap power. That is of course an opportunity that will not be passed up.
The shell games that can be played are mind boggling, and so are the ways that provincial governments can be compelled into shared interests in the scams. Like 'our' lovely NDP government.
160 years of old line party rule in NS, and now it's the NDP's fault for procrastinating during their first term in Halifax? Are the NDP always this slow? Tell Dexy to find some cheap alt. energy, and step on it.
You never dissapoint Fidel, but since your thoughts will occur to others:
if it was only that the NDP is going 'slow'.... with it having to take a bit longer to get there. That much is expected.
But 'our government' is aiding abetting the power company in going slow by letting them get away with making moves that will make meeting the legislated targets impossible to meet, not requiring them to account for how they will meet them [or not]; and joining in- even investing in and getting more investment from the feds- the methods that get the political benefits of megaprojects, meeting targets be damned.
http://www.treehugger.com/renewable-energy/over-half-germany-renewable-e...
"The thing that got me though, other than the huge lead in solar PV installations Germany has over the US, thanks to good policy, and the fact that so much wind power isn't owned by utilities, is what slightly over half of renewable energy being owned not by corporations but by actual biological people means—obviously a democratic shift in control of resources and a break from the way electricity and energy has been produced over the past century."
The OCI for one - the Organization of Candu Industries. They are lobbying directly against wind and solar expansion, citing that they take up too much land and don't provide enough jobs.
The Washington DC-based NEI - Nuclear Energy Institute - lobbies on behalf of over 300 nuclear-related industries in over 15 countries. According to them " nuclear energy is the only proven technology that can provide emission-free, affordable baseload electricity." That's from their web site.
Ah, yes. "Workers' jobs". The same excuse the asbestos industry and the tar sands megacorporations use. Who cares about climate change as long as workers have "jobs"?
What happens though when the people you dispise are actually right on an issue such as the OCI is above. Each turbine takes up 3-5 acres of good productive farm land, when you include footpad and access roads. Have a hundred of them in an area and you have eliminated close to 3 farms and that does not include the 3rd Bruce to Milton transmission line Ontario is building. And if anyone thinks there isn't a massive corporate industrial wind lobby flushed with massive amounts of cash that aren't working day and night to stop small scale wind and all solar and undermine other generation sources with misinformation than you need to start looking around a little more.
As I have said energy production on the modern, electical dependent scale we now have is complicated, horribly, horribly complicated and there are no easy answers. I'm a water guy. That is what worries more than anything, as such, shale gas fracking moves natural gas up my list far more than any other source generation. It potentially contaminates on massive scales water, the very basis of our lives and in intimately linked with industrial wind development.
Long thread.