Apple's $848M, 25-year solar agreement is the largest of its kind, will provide 130MW of clean energ

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  • Reply 81 of 98
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Crowley View Post



    Let's take responsibility for our actions by attempting to throw our waste into the uncharted void. What could possibly go wrong with this well thought through idea?

     

     

    Plenty.

  • Reply 82 of 98
    crowley wrote: »
    Let's take responsibility for our actions by attempting to throw our waste into the uncharted void. What could possibly go wrong with this well thought through idea?

    What is wrong with letting the Sun consume our waste? How could that event possibly have a negative affect on Earth? Change the sun from yellow to sun making Suoerman lose his powers?

    Of course, the cost of such an endeavor means it's not even close to being feasible, but I don't see how the same doom and gloom of burying toxic waste under a playground should be applied to the Sun consuming Earth waste.

    One day the Sun will consume Earth, and we'll be gone, one way or another.
  • Reply 83 of 98
    solipsismy wrote: »
    What is wrong with letting the Sun consume our waste? How could that event possibly have a negative affect on Earth? Change the sun from yellow to sun making Suoerman lose his powers?

    Of course, the cost of such an endeavor means it's not even close to being feasible, but I don't see how the same doom and gloom of burying toxic waste under a playground should be applied to the Sun consuming Earth waste.

    One day the Sun will consume Earth, and we'll be gone, one way or another.

    It's cost prohibitive to heavy lift billions of tons of nuclear waste, never mind manage the many-bodied orbital equations necessary to steer the waste into the Sun and not just have it trapped in an elliptical orbit where the isotopes can be bombarded by x-rays, gamma ray bursts, UV etc., and create all sorts of ``unforeseen outcomes.''

    If we could even build such cost efficient lifters and guidance systems they sure as hell will be for space missions to explore, not to incinerate our ignorance.
  • Reply 84 of 98

    Awesome! To read something like this makes me proud tho think something can make a difference.  Awesome.

  • Reply 85 of 98
    Originally Posted by Benjamin Frost View Post

    And when the rocket blows up by accident and falls back to earth, it will release all the nuclear waste in one fell swoop.

     

    Oops.


     

    I’d bet that rocket safety ratings are higher than the estimated failure rate of existing containment setups.

  • Reply 86 of 98
    crowleycrowley Posts: 10,453member
    solipsismy wrote: »
    What is wrong with letting the Sun consume our waste? How could that event possibly have a negative affect on Earth? Change the sun from yellow to sun making Suoerman lose his powers?
    - cost of getting it there
    - risk implicit in getting it there
    - availability of alternatives without the cost/risk
    - the moral and responsible impetus to actually clean up our shit rather than just burn it
    - superman
  • Reply 87 of 98
    crowleycrowley Posts: 10,453member
    I’d bet that rocket safety ratings are higher than the estimated failure rate of existing containment setups.
    I'd bet they aren't. Prove your wanton speculation.
  • Reply 88 of 98
    Originally Posted by Crowley View Post

    I'd bet they aren't. Prove your wanton speculation.



    Prove yours.

  • Reply 89 of 98
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Tallest Skil View Post

     

     

    I’d bet that rocket safety ratings are higher than the estimated failure rate of existing containment setups.




    How much energy would we waste getting it out of earth's orbit? (not to mention money and materials for the rocket)

     

    edit: from Nasa.gov: Today, it costs $10,000 to put a pound of payload in Earth orbit.

     

    edit: and from wiki it takes 973 gigajoules to launch a rocket to mars that weighs 10000kg. (which is 973 GW/seconds, I think): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacecraft_propulsion#Effectiveness

     

    To put that into perspective, it would cost $10000 x 22000 lbs = 2.2 billion dollars

     

    from eia.gov: For example, if the Fort Calhoun reactor operates at 502 MW capacity for 24 hours, it will generate 12,048 megawatt-hours (MWh).  Most power plants do not operate a full capacity every hour of every day of the year.

     

    12GWh in a day, meaning it would take 81 (less because I didn't convert hours to seconds and I'm too lazy now ok last edit: i think its only about 2 days of wasted energy, but thats two maximum capacity days) full days of power to send its own 10 000 kg of waste to mars (which i assume is close to or cheaper than to the sun)

     

    Of course, I don't know how much average waste is created by a nuclear power plan in mass, and I've done more research than I needed to on this question.

  • Reply 90 of 98
    crowleycrowley Posts: 10,453member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Tallest Skil View Post

     



    Prove yours.


    You claimed first and I asked first.  

     

    I'm waiting.

  • Reply 92 of 98
    Originally Posted by Crowley View Post

    You claimed first and I asked first.  

     

    The plan works out either way; either sending it to space is a valid option or the current storage solutions are safe enough that we can keep using them and people can stop whining. Makes me no never mind.

  • Reply 93 of 98
    crowleycrowley Posts: 10,453member

    Congratulations on being stunningly wrong (again), and assuming that no one else had thought of your genius back-of-napkin solution.  And no, the plan does not work out either way.  Just because "SHOOT IT INTO THE SUN" isn't a safe or cost effective solution doesn't magically make earthbound storage a safe and good idea either.  That's why it's a problem, and much smarter people than you are still "whining" about it.

  • Reply 94 of 98
    muppetrymuppetry Posts: 3,331member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Tallest Skil View Post

     
    Originally Posted by Crowley View Post

    You claimed first and I asked first.  

     

    The plan works out either way; either sending it to space is a valid option or the current storage solutions are safe enough that we can keep using them and people can stop whining. Makes me no never mind.


     

    I think the current storage options make more sense. The safety issue could, no doubt, be solved, but at the expense of even heavier payloads. As a best case scenario I did a quick calculation on energy to escape the earth's gravitational field, assuming that one used gravity assist from Venus to kill enough solar orbital speed to sling it at the sun, and while it's only a fraction of the energy generated from the waste, it is not insignificant in terms of cost because launch energy costs much more than generated energy. The estimates above are probably not unreasonable ballpark numbers. Much cheaper to reprocess and/or or bury.

  • Reply 95 of 98
    jfc1138jfc1138 Posts: 3,090member

    Breeder reactors may come back into contention:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor

  • Reply 96 of 98
    @solipsismy 02/11/2015 11:55 AM -- It is revolting to everyone with an engineering / exact science (hi school?) background, when you talk about 280 MW per hour. Please learn your units (Watts express power, WattHours express energy, W/h makes little physical sense). Anyone who doesn't know his/her units is unable to participate in a precise discussion involving numeric results.
    A correct question to ask would be whether these 280 MW refer to peak power (probably), or some (e.g., yearly) average.
    Sorry for being so caustic.

    I suppose, in California, there can't be enough solar power, as long as the water reservoirs can cope with providing power at night or on rainy days. Luckily, in sunny states like California, cooling will absorb a big chunk of solar power generated in the afternoon.

    Where I live, the country is flat and we receive about half as much solar power. Still, solar electricity remains interesting, but we face the danger of grid instability because they never planned for such (quickly deployable) things as gas power plants, in order to equalise the fluctuations of solar power.
    With too many politicians populating boards of directors in key organisations, and elections every 4 years, no decisions are made in the last 3 years before elections, and no long term vision is ever developed in the 1st year of a legislature.
  • Reply 97 of 98
    The very first thing you should do, assuming you can find the numbers, is divide the dollar figure by the rating in watts. In this case, it's 850 million divided by 130 million. That's $6.54 per Watt.

    Which is horrible. That's about what I paid to put 12 panels on my garage roof in 2009. Prices have dropped by 2/3rds since then. A large solar farm goes in today at about $1.50 per Watt. See this document...

    http://www.lazard.com/PDF/Levelized Cost of Energy - Version 8.0.pdf

    So why is Apple paying FIVE TIMES the going rate to buy into this farm? Even if you assume Apple' is buying the entire farm and selling off the other 150, which they're not, that gets you 850 million divided by 280 million = $3 per Watt, which is still way above the going rate.

    Something is really weird about these numbers.
  • Reply 98 of 98
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Tallest Skil View Post

     

     

    Yep.


    Nope. The data you posed was clearly labeled 2008. In the period between 2008 and today, the price of nuclear plants doubled, the price of wind fell 3 times, solar fell 7 times and gas plants fell 2 times. Here's the numbers taken in 2014 predicting 2015:

     

    http://www.lazard.com/PDF/Levelized Cost of Energy - Version 8.0.pdf

     

    Turn to page 2. Wind, gas and solar are all significantly less expensive than nuclear. They also take about 1/5th the time to build, which means the time risk dimension goes to zero (it takes 5 to 6 years to build a nuke, a lot DID happen in that time). This is precisely why no one outside China is building, and even they're cutting back their plans.

     

    Done like dinner.

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