Battle of Chernobyl

[Bewolf]

Originally Posted by Pudfark

@nearmiss

What do you suggest for cheap energy in Japan?
What affordable alternative do they have?

Therein lies the problem....affordable?
"Clean/renewable" energy is so expensive....nobody can/will afford it.

Well, the Japanese have an island right there and that offers plentiful opportunities for alternatives. The problem is, it will take quite a while to build that up.

I personally was indifferent towards the problem for a long time up until I got to know that at least in Germany, NPPs are insecureable (Means, if one blows up, the taxpayer has to take care of the damage. I am also worried about the implications, that securers obviously deem the prevailing risk as too high to take any chances. Would be interested to know how that situation is in the UK or the US, for example). Also, Europe is a densly populated place, if a plant goes up here it will potentially effect millions. Add that to the problem that to this day no definitive nuclear waste site has been found to store this stuff for the next million years and you have some problems you can't just ignore. Add to that the huge construction plans for nuclear sites all over the globe and you just create another dependent infrastructure that repeats the old oil cycle of having to secure ressources to make sure you do not run out of fuel (not to talk about the huge amounts of subsidies going into nuclear plants not only in Germany, but all over the place, that could be very much used for alternatives).

IMHO nuclear sounds good on paper but in practice simply makes too much trouble in the long run. "Affordable" in this regard is a very relative term.

[Sternjaeger II]

the real problem about energy is that it's the biggest market on the planet, and as you know, market rules do not work to the advantage of mankind, but to the profit of few..

We do have alternative routes to follow: cold fusion is not a chimera as it used to be, and there are newer and more efficient techniques to be used in terms of nuclear energy.
Renewable energy is a modest patch up, it's not as reliable as others and still needs costly maintenance.

The real first, big step we should all do is reducing our consumption: I'm sure that if you look around yourselves right now you can find a lot of examples of unnecessary energy waste (AC transformers, lights on, PCs on that don't really need to be..). You know how many office kitchens have boilers that boil water 24/7? All that for a bit of coffee and tea?! We really really need to change our attitude towards energy consumption before pointing our fingers at the yet most efficient form of energy making.

[Kodoss]

The problem by renewable energy is not the production of it or its mainenance. The problem is that you have to storage it for the time, when their is no wind or sun shining.

But even for that their are solutions, you have only to convice the citizens(worst job ever).

[swiss]

Originally Posted by Kodoss

The problem by renewable energy is not the production of it or its mainenance. The problem is that you have to storage it for the time, when their is no wind or sun shining.

But even for that their are solutions, you have only to convice the citizens(worst job ever).

You'd have to be able to store Energy for 45-60 days for whole Europe.
Have fun convincing Norway to flood its country...

Originally Posted by Bewolf

I agree, becoming more efficient in regards to energy waste is a big part of the equation. That also means lots of people having to get rid of their convinience in their daily lives, but pressing a button or shutting down the light can't be such a huge sacrifice.

Funny you mention that.
The replacement of my old Sony TV with a LG Plama(0.5W stby) plus a better PC added a mere 1500kWhrs to my bill, that's a 40% raise.
Sure, we could save energy in some places, but overall our consumption will increase, a lot.

speaking of energy consumption and mass market gaming heres a trivial little fact,

if your a console user lets say xbox 360, by buying a brand new xbox slim, it pays for itself in energy consumption compared to the previous models. youd be silly not to if you were a 360 user.

lol go green buy yet another xbox model !

[swiss]

Originally Posted by Ali Fish

speaking of energy consumption and mass market gaming heres a trivial little fact,

if your a console user lets say xbox 360, by buying a brand new xbox slim, it pays for itself in energy consumption compared to the previous models. youd be silly not to if you were a 360 user.

lol go green buy yet another xbox model !

I'd love to see this calculation.

Originally Posted by swiss

I'd love to see this calculation.

well its out there, in basic terms the slim uses 50% that the original models did.

[Bewolf]

Originally Posted by swiss

Funny you mention that.
The replacement of my old Sony TV with a LG Plama(0.5W stby) plus a better PC added a mere 1500kWhrs to my bill, that's a 40% raise.
Sure, we could save energy in some places, but overall our consumption will increase, a lot.

True in some regards, but omitting some other developments. Washing machines, freezers, cars and lots of other stuff have dropped in consumption and increased in efficiency quite considerable over the last 10 years. And back to computer tech, current developments there also go for increased effiencies. Media applications aside, I do not see much danger in increased energy requirements from what we are at, to the opposite, there still is a huge potential for a decrease.

Btw, 1500kWhrs is huge, even if taking the larger consumption of Plasmas over regular TVs into account. So either you got yourself ripped off or you are running those things through unholy times. =)
At least such figures do not apply to your 08/15 folks.

[Bewolf]

Originally Posted by Sternjaeger II

the real problem about energy is that it's the biggest market on the planet, and as you know, market rules do not work to the advantage of mankind, but to the profit of few..

We do have alternative routes to follow: cold fusion is not a chimera as it used to be, and there are newer and more efficient techniques to be used in terms of nuclear energy.
Renewable energy is a modest patch up, it's not as reliable as others and still needs costly maintenance.

The real first, big step we should all do is reducing our consumption: I'm sure that if you look around yourselves right now you can find a lot of examples of unnecessary energy waste (AC transformers, lights on, PCs on that don't really need to be..). You know how many office kitchens have boilers that boil water 24/7? All that for a bit of coffee and tea?! We really really need to change our attitude towards energy consumption before pointing our fingers at the yet most efficient form of energy making.

The german government has implemented subsaries for exactly that purpose, motivating house keepers to invest in energy saving measures like temperature dampening to bring consumption down. I agree, becoming more efficient in regards to energy waste is a big part of the equation. That also means lots of people having to get rid of their convinience in their daily lives, but pressing a button or shutting down the light can't be such a huge sacrifice.

In regards to cold fusion, I am curior what ITER will achieve, but I am not holding my breath for any feasible solutions from this direction anytime soon.