Castor, Radioactivity, Green Energy, Kraftwerk

[Joost Schuttelaar]

On Nov 7, 2010, at 14:54 , Martin Naef wrote:

>> Given that your country is still digging holes the size of a town to get
>> at a fossil fuel that is both inefficient and highly polluting, I think
>> there are more immediate concerns than storing nuclear waste somewhere
>> underground.
> 
> Exactly my thoughts. It's easy to be against nuclear power, but I don't 
> see the alternative. It's good to work on alternative sources, but it'd 
> be highly unrealistic to hope they would be without their share of side 
> effects.

I might go 100% nuclear next year for my electricity. In The Netherlands most 'green energy' is the burning of biomass, such as agricultural waste. To me, this is of course heaps better than buying and burning coal and oil, but not something which is actually carbon neutral - it is entirely dependent on synthetic fertilizers. Organic farming for instance produces almost no excess biomass, simply because you would use the grown organic material to fertilize the soil again.

For base energy load, we need nuclear. Just to replace oil and coal. For peak load, you need things like natural gas turbines and potential energy storage (f.e. pumping water up when there's little demand). Wind, solar, hydro, geothermal, ground heat exchange, use them where you can get significant output qnd stop playing around with things like microturbines.

Furthermore, we need to use smart technology to greatly reduce energy usage. To get the R&D-machine going, we need to change some economic game rules. All fossil fuels need to get heavily taxed. This means that for insulating your house there automatically is a huge financial incentive. On the producers-side, there is the need to feel the hidden economic costs of using high-energy manufacturing, stimulating the 'bio based economy', etc...

I am not a big believer in changing behavior of consumers/producers... to preach to consumers to consume less and 'use energy efficient lightbulbs' will not get us there. Basically we need to fix things on the supply side using technology.

-- 

Joost Schuttelaar
The Hague, NL