Castor, Radioactivity, Green Energy, Kraftwerk

[K9 Kai Niggemann]

Hi Joost, 

On 07.11.2010, at 15:22, Joost Schuttelaar wrote:

> 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.

I don't know about the Netherlands. But even in rainy Germany we get a mixture of wind and sun. Also when using distributed combined heat and power plants, biofuels have a very good efficiency for CO2.

Here is a good comparison (German, I'm afraid, couldn't find an English translation there):

http://www.oeko.de/aktuelles/dok/525.php


> 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.

See above. Apparently when you use bio fuels, along with a combined heat and power plant you get a negative CO2 footprint. (look in the row that says "Biogas-Blockheizkraftwerk")

> 
> For base energy load, we need nuclear. Just to replace oil and coal.

I disagree. And so do many researchers. Nuclear might sound like a good idea until you start thinking of the waste. The only reason, in fact why nuclear can even compete with other forms of energy is because the costs (monetary as well as carbon-dioxide) of getting rid (ie hiding it in a salt mine) of the waste isn't even factored into the equation. 

We must get out of nuclear as fast as we can. Oil, coal (and gas, btw) must go just as fast. We need renewable energies everywhere. And we can only achieve this by greatly reducing our energy consumption. 

Also, it seems we will need an intelligent powergrid and electric cars -- their batteries will serve as a huge, efficient and distributed storage for the power that is created but not used during those 22 hours a day that most cars are parked...


> 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.


If you want green, you should go solar. get a provider that guarantees green energy. I am sure they exist in the Netherlands.


> 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...


But what do you suggest we do about nuclear waste? I think the cost should be factored into the cost of kWh (kilowatt hours, that's the unit we use in .de, I don't know about other countries, probably the US uses kWinches ;) like the costs of maintenance are factored into every other form of energy.




> 
> 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.

very true. I read that some guy is already selling the (prohibited) 100W lightbulb again -- as a "heating bulb" (95% efficiency!)


> Basically we need to fix things on the supply side using technology.

this is in German but it shows how much CO2 solarpanels save over their lifetime (and the CO2 exhausted for making them is factored in):

http://www.solarone.de/photovoltaik_info/photovoltaik_oekobilanz_co2_bilanz.html


Kai