NASA Discovers Mantle Plume That's Melting Antarctica From Below (newsweek.com) 244
schwit1 shares a report from Newsweek: Researchers at NASA have discovered a huge upwelling of hot rock under Marie Byrd Land, which lies between the Ross Ice Shelf and the Ross Sea, is creating vast lakes and rivers under the ice sheet. The presence of a huge mantle plume could explain why the region is so unstable today, and why it collapsed so quickly at the end of the last Ice Age, 11,000 years ago. Mantle plumes are thought to be part of the plumbing systems that brings hot material up from Earth's interior. Once it gets through the mantle, it spreads out under the crust, providing magma for volcanic eruptions. The area above a plume is known as a hotspot.
[I]n a study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth, Seroussi and colleagues looked at one of the most well studied magma plumes on Earth -- the Yellowstone hotspot. The team developed a mantle plume model to look at how much geothermal heat would be needed to explain what is seen at Marie Byrd Land. They then used the Ice Sheet System Model (ISSM), which shows the physics of ice sheets, to look at the natural sources of heating and heat transport. This model enabled researchers to place "powerful constraint" on how much melt rate was allowable, meaning they could test out different scenarios of how much heat was being produced deep beneath the ice. Their findings showed that generally, the energy being generated by the mantle plume is no more than 150 milliwatts per square meter -- any more would result in too much melting. The heat generated under Yellowstone National Park, on average, is 200 milliwatts per square meter.
[I]n a study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth, Seroussi and colleagues looked at one of the most well studied magma plumes on Earth -- the Yellowstone hotspot. The team developed a mantle plume model to look at how much geothermal heat would be needed to explain what is seen at Marie Byrd Land. They then used the Ice Sheet System Model (ISSM), which shows the physics of ice sheets, to look at the natural sources of heating and heat transport. This model enabled researchers to place "powerful constraint" on how much melt rate was allowable, meaning they could test out different scenarios of how much heat was being produced deep beneath the ice. Their findings showed that generally, the energy being generated by the mantle plume is no more than 150 milliwatts per square meter -- any more would result in too much melting. The heat generated under Yellowstone National Park, on average, is 200 milliwatts per square meter.
It's all fun and games... (Score:3, Insightful)
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Until a gamma-ray burst or a wandering black hole takes us ALL out.
What would the effect of a really strong gamma-ray burst be? I mean, I know generally we'd have a bad time, but how quickly would it strike, and what would it be like? Would there be time to point to the skies, cry out "Good lord! (choke!)"?
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What would the effect of a really strong gamma-ray burst be?
Bad. Really bad. They are the strongest electromagnetic events known to occur in the Universe. A big one can sterilize an entire galaxy. They are most likely to occur in the center of galaxies, which may explain why all known life bearing planetary systems are in the galactic fringes (disclaimer: data is limited).
Would there be time to point to the skies, cry out "Good lord! (choke!)"?
Unlikely. The initial burst can peak in 10ms.
Gamma-ray bursts [wikipedia.org]
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They would not sterilize the galaxy.
They only would kill life on the side of the planet facing the burst.
Hence half of the landmass and most of the water life will be unharmed.
On top of that: a gamma burst will basically escape along the rotation axis of the object that is emitting it. Which is an extremely small beam.
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Re:It's all fun and games... (Score:4, Funny)
Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light.
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Whew. That doesn't sound so bad. For a minute there I was worried...
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Right. That's bad. Okay. All right. Important safety tip. Thanks, Egon.
God I miss being 12.
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Would dogs and cats be living together?
Mass hysteria!
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Mantle plumes are not controversial science (Score:5, Informative)
... but I’m not sure what’s going on with the idiots posting further up in this discussion.
In addition to Yellowstone, there’s the plume responsible for the Hawaiian Islands. Interestingly, as the tectonic plate shifts, the plume remains more or less in the same place below it. Currently it’s under the Big Island (obviously); you can see the direction that the plate is moving by looking at the chain of islands.
Re:Mantle plumes are not controversial science (Score:5, Informative)
Currently it’s under the Big Island (obviously)
Actually, it is under Lo'ihi [wikipedia.org].
you can see the direction that the plate is moving by looking at the chain of islands.
Kure is the last island in the chain, and is the northernmost coral atoll in the world. Beyond that there is a chain of seamounts [wikipedia.org] that have eroded below sea level. The last is more than 80 million years old, and is on the edge of the Kuril-Kamchatka Trench, a subduction zone near Russia. It is likely that even earlier seamounts once existed, but they have been subducted back into the mantle.
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but they have been subducted back into the mantle.
Would that be "basalt to basalt, crust to crust"?
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... but I’m not sure what’s going on with the idiots posting further up in this discussion.
Wow, have I, idiot been summoned?
I never bought the "Iron Sky" story about Nazis fleeing the second world war to set up a base on the dark side of the moon. However, the Germans did have a fetish for U-Boots, so them setting up a secret base on Antarctica would not be implausible. The heat under the ice in Antarctica could be coming from the secret Nazi base.
Them warming up their Sauerkraut could explain the plume.
Sauerkraut is rich in vitamin C, and was discovered by Captain Cook to cure scurvy.
In addition to Yellowstone, there’s the plume responsible for the Hawaiian Islands.
Yeah,
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... but I'm not sure what's going on with the idiots posting further up in this discussion.
Wow, have I, idiot been summoned?
No. I think *I* was being summoned...
Mt Erebus plume? Or new-to-us plume? (Score:4, Informative)
It has taken way too long to scroll down to this first on-topic post. But correcting the moderator system to limit the damage by paid trolls is another topic.
I have a serious question about the Antarctic mantle plume(s):
The Erebus plume under Ross Island has been documented ever since the International Geophysical Year (IGY) of 1957 and probably earlier. So has a second plume been discovered in the same area? Or is this story about confirmation of what was already known? WTF?
Hopefully answers to this question will not get drowned by the paid trolls (and what I suspect may be paid troll fighters who keep the sewer floodgates open).
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Mantle plumes are a lot bigger than one volcano. For example, the Canary Islands (20-odd volcanic islands scattered over several hundred kilometres from the African coast) are the products of one plume.
Erebus is on the other side of the Ross Ice Shelf
Re: Mantle plumes are not controversial science (Score:2, Insightful)
Some of the people who don't buy AGW are actually scientists who modify their theories occasionally, believe it or not. That's where the crazy conspiracy shit comes from. There are some sound ideas in mainstream ecology, but so m
Re: Mantle plumes are not controversial science (Score:2)
No, that is where I should definitely not post from. Slashdot has always been janky with my phone keyboard for some reason.
Re: Mantle plumes are not controversial science (Score:4, Insightful)
The usual denial hasn't been to deny melting for like thirty years at least.
It's weird then, that we haven't seen any climate contrarians responding to the denialists who say that volcanism is triggering the melting of the polar caps: and the related theory, that volcanism is causing the climate to warm. DOn't you guys care about this misrepresentation of your 'usual' theory?
What IS this theory anyway? Is there evidence to support this theory?
Instead, it's posited that the melting is due to a natural cycle; we're coming out of an interglacial period and back into bed normalcy.
(a) What natural cycle?
(b) Does this cycle appear in the climate record?
(c) What triggered this cycle to start just when the industrial revolution started?
(d) What suppressed the (experimentally proven) warming that otherwise would have occurred due to increased concentrations of CO2? Is the CO2 we released somehow different to the CO2 that was there before? How?
Some of the people who don't buy AGW are actually scientists who modify their theories occasionally, believe it or not. That's where the crazy conspiracy shit comes from. There are some sound ideas in mainstream ecology, but so much stock has been put into shutting out legit dissenters that it makes them indistinguishable from dissenting crackpots.
On numerous occasions I've asked denialists here on Slashdot to provide evidence for their posited theories, and they have not done so. I've been here for more than 10 years, asking for evidence. No evidence has been forthcoming. You want to know why people don't believe you?
That's your answer.
I wouldn't call myself a denialist... (Score:2)
...and I do think that we have had a relatively small impact that could be quite harmful for our own survival.
However, the earth has far more varied climate phases [wikipedia.org] than we have seen in our current icehouse.
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However, the earth has far more varied climate phases than we have seen in our current icehouse.
We didn't exist and couldn't have lived here in those more varied climate phases, so all that actually means is that it is entirely plausible that we will go extinct.
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Without the human influence on the greenhouse gas concentration, the Earth would be heading toward a glacial period. Predicted changes in orbital forcing suggest that in absence of human-made global warming the next glacial period would begin at least 50,000 years from now[18] (see Milankovitch cycles).
Once again, I have to ask, how is this contradictory evidence proof of your theory?
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Then the same also applies in the other direction. Other than global temperatures warming, (which is a 50/50 shot in a random environment) I have yet to hear an accurate prediction on the consequences of climate change.
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That said, the wiki is amusing for both saying AGW started a thousand years ago, and that dinosaur-farts caused the Jurassic global-warming. Also amusing is how our atmo can have a 'runaway tipping point', but the plume heating under the ice can't? Something something
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No, coming out of the last ice age (glaciation) ended about 8,000 years ago. Since that time the climate has been slowly cooling as you would expect from an examination of Milankovitch cycles. Each interglacial is a bit different because the individual cycles that make up Milankovitch cycles don't synchronize that well. There's no reason to expect that just because the last interglacial was a bit warmer that this one would be just as warm.
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This graph [climate.gov] illustrates nicely: https://www.climate.gov/sites/... [climate.gov]
Something happened over the last hundred or so years to abruptly reverse our course... but what?
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It's called the Michael Mann
This is by a gentleman named Marcott, not Mann, but it is consistent with the dozens of other temperature reconstructions of this period. It turns out that no matter who attempts a reconstruction, or what method they use, they end up with this same result. Rapid warming up until about 10,000 years ago. Cooling for the last 6000, then an abrupt reversal - an unprecedented spike in warming - over the last 100 or so. Any bold claims you make about what the "ice is SUPPOSED" to do needs to be based on evide
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No. No.
No, No. What, no real effect given the small amount of energy released. What?
If I light a match it will add to environmental heat both indirectly (release of contained greenhouse gases) and directly (energetic reaction releasing heat). But it doesn't matter. You typing the crap above contributes more both indirectly and directly. As does me replying to a crazy AC.
The only real connection to GW research is that this can help compensate measurements showing increased melting in this region - which is j
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For those that doesn't understand why 0.15W/m^2 on a limited area would have no real effect do search for the levels of energy the same area would get from the sun (averaged over the year of course).
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...
You know.... No, you obviously doesn't...
How about this: polar bears often starve. That is well documented since people first saw one. The conditions where they live are generally pretty hard even for something so well-adapted. Polar bears also often seek out the edge of ice-fields in order to increase chances of getting some food. That means that they are prone to located on "LITTLE CHUNKS OF ICE". Most time they can swim back to solid ice - sometimes they can't.
The rest of your idiotic crap I'll not to
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Yes drought set up the dust bowl but poor agricultural practices exacerbated it greatly.
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The proper term is "climate science deniers".
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All the climate science deniers have to do is come up with some science that explains the observations as well as or better than the current climate science. But they don't do that. They just loudly proclaim that climate scientists are in it for the money or some global communistic plot. They claim climate scientists are manipulating the observations when the methods they use to make the adjustments are available for anyone to see and make scientific arguments against. They claim like you did that scien
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You can spend 1% of GWP now or 5% of GWP in 30 years.
Climate change implications? (Score:2, Interesting)
Just curious how this may change the current thoughts on climate change impact on artic ice. TFA is pretty quiet about climate science. Perhaps theyâ(TM)re just scrambling?
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A "bimbo of a deal" is not a phrase a native English speaker would use.
I will bet you would also write a thousand dollars as, "1000$". Isn't that right, golubushka?
Here, mod this offtopic, too, kids. (Score:3, Informative)
I can afford the moderation, but you Trumpanistas only have so many mod points to spend. If I jump on that grenade now, you can't throw it at someone else who can't take the hit.
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I believe I'll join you in that exercise, my friend. Trumptards and other mouth-breathers who spend mod points here won't have them to spend on real science somewhere else.
The thing is, it's not even trolling to point out that these right wing ultra-conservatives cheapen and demean every site they visit. But in that brief, shining moment when decent people have given up and gone elsewhere, they still have the spurious legitimacy still clinging to the site.
It never lasts, of course. Before long, decent pe
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All I see are a couple dozen neckbeards who think they have all the answers with a second of thought and everyone else in the world is stupid.
It's true, Slashdot is still full of Nuclear Playboys and Hydrogen Douchebags. But at least we've chased off the Free Energy Fanboys. Now they're all on electronics experimenter groups, crapping them up.
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It makes little difference if Trump personally supports the Paris agreement or not, since it was an aspirational target, the states, companies and people still support it. The people who implement it, still implement it.
You mean we don't need the government to save the planet? I completely agree. People don't need the government to mandate anything to save the planet. People can do this on their own, assuming the government is not preventing this in any way.
The problem with government is that it picks winners and losers. One example are these stupid CFL lightbulbs. There's a government subsidy on them, maybe it's gone now, but they suck. I don't know anyone that buys them any more. People will get LED lighting now,
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People don't need the government to mandate anything to save the planet. People can do this on their own, assuming the government is not preventing this in any way.
Isn't going to work: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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And how would that work for the global climate ?
I gave you my answer, the market is always looking for "better" energy so all we have to do is allow the market to do this. In this case "better" is defined as being both low CO2 and low cost.
They aren't really cheaper if you would also include the cost of higher CO2 concentration and the effects it has on the global climate. A simple solution would be to calculate those costs, and add them to fossil fuel prices using a tax. At the same time, income taxes should be reduced by the same amount to keep it budget neutral.
Let me get this straight... I pay a tax because my utility chose to use dirty coal. But since this is a burden on the taxpayer the government pays me the difference on my income taxes. How is this an incentive to get off coal again? The utility doesn't give a shit, they want to sell cheap and reliable energy. If t
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The US Department of Energy was created 40 years ago with the mandate to provide energy independence for the USA.
The primary job of the Department of Energy is nuclear safety. It is in charge of the country's nuclear weapons, nuclear reactors and nuclear waste. It also does energy research and other related things but nuclear safety comes first.
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There was nothing wrong with CFL bulbs, when they were made well and had a good electronic ballast. The subsidy made certain junky brands nearly free and people ignored the more expensive better made bulbs.
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You just gave an example on how CFL subsidies failed, and did so better than I had. Thanks.
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The subsidies applied to the more expensive bulbs too. That's why I bought them. In fact, I have several years' worth and won't need to upgrade to LED for at least 10 more years.
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The best lamp I own (if you put aside light quality) is a CFL over my stove. It has literally held up longer than at least half a dozen incandescents I've run through the same fixture previously.
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The only way California might fail is if the tax burden imposed by the federal government becomes even more onerous. Even though we are one of the states that contributes most to operating the social programs used by mostly white people in the flyover states, and one of the states which gets the least back on every dollar sent to the federal government for that purpose (and for funding the blood for oil program) California still manages to operate in the black sufficiently to run its own social program prov
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Federal Government moves were made before your lifetime to encourage people to move to California and its been riding that unnatural wave since.
Pretty silly, since nothing like that is necessary. Just sit back and let California be California, and people will move here. That's why this is the home of tech. When people have money, they want to live someplace that doesn't suck.
Re: Trump Pulling Out of Paris Caused This (Score:2)
Why would success breed authoritarianism?
Oh, you meant secedes...
I guess thatâ(TM)s completely different. Besides the fact that many states tried secession about 150 years ago and it ended a bit rough for them.
Re: Trump Pulling Out of Paris Caused This (Score:2)
Amazon Prime Air is already operating from Hebron, KY and has been for some time - I saw one of their jets taxiing at CVG two months ago.
Re:Trump's fake NASA ''scientists" hide AGW (Score:5, Funny)
It's a cover up, I'm sure of that. This is to cover up the discovery of an ancient powerful alien device. This device is called a "door to the heavens", it's a transportation device that uses "Rosen-Einstein bridges" through space-time to allow people to travel astronomical distances seemingly instantly. One was found buried among ancient Egyptian artifacts and the other more recently found buried in the Antarctic ice. I have little doubt the power of this device is melting the ice. Perhaps this device has also attracted some unwanted attention from alien species? If that's the case then they have much more to cover up.
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Maybe it was buried under the ice to prevent aliens from travelling to our world via the "Rosen-Einstein bridges" and by burning so many fossil fuels we risk invasion by melting the ice from above.
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Indeed, new data appears every day. The debate would be over tomorrow though if people accepted the economics of anything related to CAGW.
The reason we burn coal, oil, and natural gas is because they are cheap. We can say they are abundant, reliable, and energy dense but that's just another way of calling them cheap. Solar power is expensive because it's unreliable, diffuse, and not necessarily abundant where it's needed. People tend to want energy when it's cold and/or dark where they are, and this ten
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How do we solve this problem? Look to energy sources that have a history of being cheaper than coal, oil, and natural gas. Those are wind, hydro, and nuclear.
There is no case in which nuclear is cheaper than coal, oil, natgas, wind, or solar. It's not even in the same ballpark. Cost estimates are always blown past like they don't even exist, the commissioning costs are always multiples of the estimates, and The People have to underwrite the insurance on the plant because no corporation will do it, so we ALL pay for it. As usual, you are using lies to sell bad technology.
Re:Climate Change: the debate continues (Score:5, Interesting)
The nuclear cost problem is a regulatory problem.
If BMW had to design a car from scratch every time they built one, each one would cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
Same goes with nuclear. We don't build enough of them, so we don't become more skilled at doing it. So we over-engineer.
We should be designing a nuclear power plant, and building hundreds of identical ones in exactly the same way.
We should also encourage smaller, rather than larger and more expensive power plants. One can build smaller reactors on a production line rather than have to build them on site. This will drive down costs.
It is so hard to build nuclear plants that we can't create a production line of them in reality, and anyone who gets permission to build one wants to build the biggest they can, because that permission is hard to get.
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We should be designing a nuclear power plant, and building hundreds of identical ones in exactly the same way. ...
And if they fail all in the same way, the people around them are
If solar plants fail, or wind plants, no one dies ...
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And if they fail all in the same way, the people around them are ...
... going to shut it down and fix it. This fix will also be mass produced and therefore inexpensive to implement.
You seem to think that a nuclear power plant can only fail in only one way, a mushroom cloud of radioactive debris. That's not how they work. Most every spectacular failure we've seen in a nuclear power plant is because they are all unique, no one can ever learn where all the gremlins are, and if a problem is found the fix is almost always very expensive because no other device in the world is
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One major difference between a passenger jet and a nuclear reactor is the reactor isn't six miles in the air with no where to land for hundreds of miles.
The other majour difference is: a plane crash kills up to 1000 in the plane and a few hundred on the ground.
A nuclear power plant failure potentially kills millions.
Anyway, the discussion is moot. If you have the money to build enough nuclear plants to replace all CO2 producing plants, you would be an idiot if you did not put the money into wind and solar a
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A nuclear power plant failure does not potentially kill millions. It just doesn't! Very few large weapons even have that much power.
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Chernobyl killed a million. In an area that is not even densely populated.
If the infamous three miles island plant had gone boom like Chernobyl you had several millions of deaths next years.
Germany would be similar bad, basically every nuclear plant is close to a densely populated area. The main reason why everyone hates them.
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Chernobyl killed a million. In an area that is not even densely populated.
This is a lie. Chernobyl did not kill a million people. The only people peddling numbers anywhere near that are anti-nuclear groups.
Less than 100 deaths are directly attributable to Chernobyl.
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More people are killed fitting solar panels and installing / maintaining wind turbines than are killed by nuclear power plant failures every year.
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You have any number supporting that? ...
I'm not aware of a single case of death in Germany regarding solar or wind installations
What should be the cause of their death? Thin air?
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From https://www.forbes.com/sites/j... [forbes.com]
"In England, there were 163 wind turbine accidents that killed 14 people in 2011. Wind produced about 15 billion kWhrs that year, so using a capacity factor of 25%, that translates to about 1,000 deaths per trillion kWhrs produced (the world produces 15 trillion kWhrs per year from all sources)."
and
"We in the United States actually care more about this kind of thing than most other countries, so our numbers are the lowest in the world. The global averages in energy-rela
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The nuclear cost problem is a regulatory problem.
False. We have those regulations because of actual problems with nuclear reactors in the real world. The regulations were created to deal with problems which already existed. To the extent that those regulations are a problem for would-be nuclear operators, they are a good thing.
If BMW had to design a car from scratch every time they built one, each one would cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
BMW pioneered new technology in the i3 that is going to make that claim completely false. Also, you don't have to redesign a reactor every time if you actually have one good reactor design to begin with, then you only have to change
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That's a nice rant. Here's the deal though. We can use fossil fuels or build nuclear power plants. People claim that solar power will be as cheap and reliable as coal in 5 years. Okay, so what do we do for the next five years? It's burn coal or develop nuclear power. Then what happens if these promises of cheap solar energy doesn't happen? Then we're burning coal or using nuclear power.
At least if we start with nuclear power now we have something low carbon to fall back on if solar doesn't meet it's
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That's a nice rant.
Thanks!
Here's the deal though.
You misspelled "lie" there, though I know that's what you do, so I can translate easily enough.
We can use fossil fuels or build nuclear power plants.
And there's the lie, your false dichotomy.
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That's a nice rant. Here's the deal though. We can use fossil fuels or build nuclear power plants. People claim that solar power will be as cheap and reliable as coal in 5 years. Okay, so what do we do for the next five years? It's burn coal or develop nuclear power. Then what happens if these promises of cheap solar energy doesn't happen? Then we're burning coal or using nuclear power.
At least if we start with nuclear power now we have something low carbon to fall back on if solar doesn't meet it's promises of being cheap. Burning coal until solar gets cheap could mean burning coal until the sun goes out, and then for a few years after.
One of the reasons no one wants to build new coal plants is that solar and wind are already so cheap the coal plants wouldn't be able to compete with them and the reason that no one built nuclear plants is that coal was cheaper than they were. It would be nice if we could get the cost of nuclear down enough to be competitive but there appears to be no prospect of that in the foreseeable future. The only thing holding solar and wind back is that it takes time to build it out just like it took 100 years to
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Claimed disadvantages are: less development effort until recently, and less "quick efficiency" as a breeder reactor. But since they would be used to generate electricity, and the reaction products are part of the fuel cycle, not intended to be used externally for bombs or other reactors, that efficiency matters little.
Among the advantages are: more abundant and easily obtained fuel, inherently much safer design (meltdowns are physically impossi
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As far as I know no one has yet built a thorium reactor that demonstrates economic viability. Once they do that we can talk.
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The german thorium reactor in the 1980s failed badly.
India is about to finish one right now.
The idea of JaneQPublic, that a melt down is inherently impossible is false anyway. I bet such a reactor can be intentionally sabotaged easily.
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Here's the deal though.
The deal would be that you start reading up how nuclear power works, what is mined, how it is processed, what the waste is and what the costs are.
It is embarrassing that you post this nonsense since two years, get corrected 100 times per thread, but insist to learn nothing.
If I was your son/daughter I would be to embarrassed to go to school. Nobody can be as dumb as you are pretending to be; unless he is a professional troll or payed agitator for nuclear power (the later is unlikely
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Nuclear is expensive to build initially, given our current regulatory climate, but cheap to operate, and runs for years at 90% or more of nameplate capacity. What makes wind and solar cheap to install is that they are factory-built technologies. But now try to run them at more than a small fraction of nameplate.
Standardized nuclear, regulated by type instead of by individual installation, is what will replace the fossil baseload. Imagine how much an airline ticket would cost if Boeing had to get a full set
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Nuclear is expensive to build initially,
And it's expensive to decommission, as well. And they never actually stack up enough funds to do that, and the taxpayer always gets left holding the bill.
given our current regulatory climate,
We have those regulations because nuclear isn't safe even with them, but certainly not without them. You shouldn't complain about regulations designed to keep the land livable, since you live on the land.
What makes wind and solar cheap to install is that they are factory-built technologies.
What makes wind and solar cheap to install is that you're not dealing with nuclear fuel. It's not some magical property of being built in a factory. It ha
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We have those regulations because nuclear isn't safe even with them, but certainly not without them. You shouldn't complain about regulations designed to keep the land livable, since you live on the land.
You might live on the land but *I* live in the clouds.
Floaty floating clouds.
High up in the sky.
Just living on happy happy clouds.
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Fortunately China does not believe any of these arguments, and just ignores the opposition rather than letting it use its lawyers to make everything it doesn't like too expensive by holding up projects for years. It has to get out from under the world's largest pollution problem, and although it already produces and installs more wind and solar than anyone else - cheap early deployment of factory-built tech, once again - it is under no illusion that it doesn't need baseload sources to support heavy industri
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Fusion was a wet dream 50 years ago.
In our times it goes the same way as fission.
The price will never be able to compete with solar, wind, biomass, hydro or what ever other form of renewables we invent. Not to mention that we are probably 50 years away from being able to build a fusion reactor that is net positive in terms of energy.
Fusion might be a big thing in space craft propulsion, on the planet: never ever.
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Choking on its own pollution is exactly why they're doing this. Carbon is a long-term, more secondary issue with China, while doing something about the unbreathable air in cities is paramount.
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Nuclear is expensive to build initially,
And it's expensive to decommission, as well. And they never actually stack up enough funds to do that, and the taxpayer always gets left holding the bill.
Well, this is a bit unfair to phrase this way. Yes, nuclear plants have certainly been expensive to decommission. But to be far, we've only truly built and decommissioned one generation of nuclear plants. Most of the safety concerns have been addressed through the decades, and everything we've learned could be applied to new plants, including accounting for future costs. No one knew what today's financial and regulatory landscape would look like when American nuke plants were built, though today we have experience with all of those concerns.
I won't deny that nuclear energy comes with a host of dangers and expensive practical and regulatory issues. In fact, we do need to regulate the hell out of nuclear power. But we have learned enough to operate nuke plants in a reasonably safe and clean fashion, with new plants potentially being more efficient over time than current solar or wind technologies. The cost of entry is high, and it absolutely should be, but I believe we should still be counting on nuclear power as a piece of the future energy puzzle. The goal should be moving away from fossil fuels (running!) as quickly as possible, and leaning a bit on nuclear while cleaner technologies scale up, and was we continue to develop cleaner technologies and fine tune our notions of what is acceptable environmental impact. If we start now, a new generation of nuclear power plants could be built which, in tandem with increased reliance on renewables, could end our reliance on fossil fuels as in as little as 10 years (at least in the USA and similarly-developed areas). Unfortunately, we don't seem to have the political will to move in that direction, or that quickly.
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Well, ...
nameplate. Wow
If you have 100% of your power production with nuclear power plants:
Then 40% are running at 95% nameplate (base power)
Then 20% are running at about 50% nameplate (load following stage 1)
Then another 20% are running at 20% nameplate (load following stage 2, around peak times)
The rest is running at 10% or less of nameplate (peak following, balancing power)
Nameplate or "capacity factors" are completely ridiculous "terms" for argumentation about properties of different technologies.
In oth
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Nuclear is for baseload, not load-following, so China is using hydro for that. Wind and solar don't load-follow either; in fact, the grid has to be redesigned ("Smart Grid") to allow such sources in the first place. The battery farms that will have to be developed to allow adding of renewables other than hydro will, if they work out, be add to the load-following capabilities of all the other sources.
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Drill, baby, drill!
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If you go to the last page of the report you linked to, where there is a nice chart that summarizes everything, tell me what you see? I see LCOE (levelized cost of energy/electricity) of natural gas, hydro, solar PV, and onshore wind being the cheapest, as I suspect most people expect. Geothermal costs are low too, but I'm not sure that can be used just anywhere.
Look at the LACE (levelized avoided cost of energy/electricity) which is the more complex analysis, everything evens out, except onshore wind win
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That reminds me of something. Growing up on the farm we had four tractors. One of which had a block heater, starter fluid injector, AND glow plugs. Dad ordered it like this because we needed this tractor to start, even in the coldest weather because the animals needed to get fed. I asked him once, what if we could not start that tractor? He said then perhaps we didn't need to feed the cattle that day. I took that to mean the animals would have frozen to death.
My little story has next to nothing to do
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Of course the cost of "fuel" for solar and wind is 0.
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Nuclear power isn't exactly cheap. The systems we have now are more or less the result of countries wanting nuclear weapons and therefore developing infrastructure that can be used for civil reactors. But even so the civil nuclear industry have mostly survived on state financing.
One of the costly things about nuclear reactors are when they get too old to economically use - dismounting and storing of radioactive parts is extremely expensive and takes a long time to do. With long time I'm talking of short-tim
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That's all great but meaningless unless compared to an alternative. Nuclear power is not cheap, but it costs less than living in the dark. We are running out of options and a lot of the complaints you've made can be addressed with more development of the technology. A big one you raised is the need for a large and complex containment structure. That's there to contain a steam explosion. We can fix that by not using water as a coolant. What else is there? Lots of things, and we won't know which one is
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Nuclear power is not cheap, but it costs less than living in the dark.
I start liking your logic.
How much does living in the dark cost in your country? Perhaps you want to blame Germany again that "living in the dark" is more expensive here?
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Some places may not be able to take advantage of the renewables at this point in time so they'll just have to continue
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Almost every day, new scientific evidence is found that supports one side or the other. The debate is always evolving. This is very interesting!
You're operating under a false premise: the new scientific evidence is piling up much, much more one one side, that which supports man-made climate change. Evidence against it is far more rare, and much of that is of dubious or poor scientific quality and reliability. The vast majority of climate scientists agree, while those who do not are largely backed by political and fossil fuel interests.
Your statement is incredibly misleading and over simplified, if not just plain wrong, unless you clarify it by s
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but the declining south pole ice caps could be very much the result of volcanic activity.
No, because the plume isn't a recent development. It's been there for a long time and was part of the local equilibrium. The decline in the ice must be from additional factors.
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but the declining south pole ice caps could be very much the result of volcanic activity.
No, because the plume isn't a recent development. It's been there for a long time and was part of the local equilibrium. The decline in the ice must be from additional factors.
Try telling that to the people that used to live in Pompeii.