The future of green/renewable energy

youtube.com/watch?v=lL6uB1z95gA

What's aggravating is how we handle recycling in large parts of this country. We don't recycle anything. We ship our trash to China which seems pretty counter productive as far as energy use is concerned.

In my state we were recently told to stop putting our recyclables in bags because the factories in China couldn't be bothered to take the trash out.

Just use nuclear. Ask the frogs.

It isn't a scam, but that doesn't stop people from using it for their own scams; either purposely or through ignorance.

Well, I'm focusing mostly on greenhouse gasses, I think it's more important to save hundreds of millions of people, and yes we need something else then renewables like Nuclear power. I love Thougthy2 btw

N U C L E A R
U
C
L
E
A
R

youtube.com/watch?v=IkAp5gAYDUQ

Attached: gettyimages-1109562281_0.jpg (955x500, 136K)

Yes, nuclear is indeed a very exciting technology, we could for example use Thorium to have a safer version, while still producing a very high amount of energy. But we still need to get rid of the toxic waste though, and I'm not sure what the best way to do that is. Maybe dig a big hole in the ground? lol

>everyone and OP mentioning nuclear

Mining that shit is pretty devastating to the environment. Same for solar panels. Passive solar is better at least.

Nuclear is incredibly underrated and Germans are retarded.

For nuclear to be viable as a worldwide replacement for fossil fuels we would need functioning Gen4 reactors. Otherwise we will just burn through all the easy to obtain uranium in a couple of decades.
Alternate nuclear fuel is also an option but still mired in engineering problems.

MOX fuel and fast reactors. They can burn 99% of nuclear waste.

Fusion maybe.
Last time I checked the waste problem hasn't been solved. Its risks also include disasters and accidents (of which there were too many already) and nuclear weapons. Also it's already used.
Stop ignoring the waste problem.

One of the best things that could happen is the invention of a new battery type.
Ideally it should be cheap and easy to make, consist of non-rare non-toxic materials and be fully recyclable.
It would be the holy grail for storing surplus renewable energy.
Size wouldn't even matter as long as it isn't ridiculous, this wouldn't be the type of battery used in phones etc... anyway.

I hope they do find some new battery tech soon.

Read the post above yours. What you call "waste" is actually just fuel that can be used in fast reactors(like BN-800).

graphene solar cell

Attached: sebasebaa.jpg (2480x2548, 349K)

Electrical engineer here who installed a lot of "renewable" energy project, the most underrated
>Biomas
>Concetrated solar power
and they are the best in terms of efficiency, cost, and actually green.
Meme tier
>Solar cell
>Wind turbines
>The rest

Not when it is already vitrified and a lot of the old waste is. We still have to deal with that.
Fast reactors still produce waste too (that can't be further recycled) although the decay time is a couple of centuries instead of millennia we would still need to work out a long term storage strategy.

Yess! I have been researching batteries for a while, and I think there will be a huge leap in the next few years. The school I go to has a partner program with a battery and solar company, and I hope I will be able to get a summer job there and work with solar and batteries so I can get a little extra inside information

Technologies that reduce energy consumption. For example replacing cars with public transport and remote presence/work/...
Also technologies that facilitate lifestyle/behaviour change such as knowledge-related tech, social reputation etc.
But also microgeneration and smart grids and smart heaters and improved thermal insulation.
Also tech that changes what, where and how things are produced. For example tech for production on demand and local production and for sustainable supply chains and product-selection etc.
Obviously batteries and once again smart grids for storing excess energy as you can't regulate wind and solar energy production.

Also see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_energy

Attached: global-primary-energy.png (3400x2400, 360K)

storage of energy is still problematic, the only positives I can see in the whole field is it requires turbomachinery expertise and regular maintenance, so a mix of quality jobs overall.

Yes, of course we have to deal with waste, it's a pretty big problem, but there is actually not that much waste produced as you might think. And there is plenty of space to dump the waste (for example inside mountains)

wind power is noisy and gay. solar is the future. literally an infinite amount of energy floaring in the sky, waiting to be harvested. do you see any plants absorbing energy from the wind? fucking no

I have a friend who works at IMEC and he is fairly optimistic about the solid state batteries they are working on. Though those still contain Lithium they would still be a step up from current batteries.

Ah, we still consume coal?! No wonder I see a lot of coalburner posts recently.

What you call "fuel that can be used in fast reactors" is actually just material that Mohammad is going to use to make a dirty bomb if nuclear ends up as widespread as /sci/ wants it to.

Yes, we need regulations and laws that prevent this from happening. But I think nuclear power will be really important for the future, and denying many countries from getting it would be bad.

It's finding those places that's pretty challenging, it has to be geographically stable for centuries or you risk contamination.
The list of operational repositories is ridiculously short.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_geological_repository#Repository_sites

If we want to keep doing nuclear this has to be solved soon because we can't keep stockpiling it forever at our nuclear plants like we are doing now.
It suffers from the same problem that fast reactors and alternative fuels suffer from. It costs a lot of money and nobody in the west wants to spend it. :(

>literally an infinite amount of energy
It's literally not infinite.

I'm sure regulations and laws will prevent the nuclear materials from Liberia or Syria or Somalia's reactors from falling into the wrong hands.

Hydroelectric is pretty good.

Closed fuel cycle produces virtually no waste. That's the point.
There's a reason why the vodkas don't bury nuclear waste. Because it's fuel.
See
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast-neutron_reactor
>Fast-neutron reactors can reduce the total radiotoxicity of nuclear waste using all or almost all of the waste as fuel.

With the proposed 10x scale up of nuclear power generation we will have uranium reserves for just 20 years. After that we have to use new tech that is far more expensive. I know people are talking about sea water extraction but people have talked about that for 100 years and talk is all it is.

Talk is not all it is. Nuclear energy has had a steady advance in terms of effeciency as well as new fuel technologies since its creation.

>nuclear waste is a problem
Toppest of the keks. Are you brainlets serious? Tell me, what volume does all spent fuel waste produced since the 1950s fill?

Hint: it's almost nothing.

Attached: an-hero.png (661x549, 499K)

go drink some bleach, shit for brains

Wind turbines and solar will basically forever be too expensive to be worthwhile for the average country. Not only are the installations themselves large and expensive, but they degrade over a decade or two, and produce power in sporadic, semi unpredictable bursts. Balancing all that out requires a buffer of some kind, which is technology that we don't really have. Resultantly, countries are having to leave their coal plants idling just in case such a drop does happen, and leaving a coal plant idling is fucking terrible as far as emissions go. See: Germany
Now if you have hydroelectricity to buffer your solar and wind, you can likely make it work, depending on location, because hydroelectric dams can be made to start up pretty quickly. But you'll still have the ever-present reliability issues even in ideal conditions. Offshore wind turbines are a fucking meme, tidal energy is even worse.

As far as environmental impact goes, thermal solar plants and wind turbines kill birds, wind turbines are fucking noisy, solar plants requires a large amount of glass and silicon, both of which require high-purity silica sand which is being dredged unsustainably. Hydrodams can involve a fair bit of habitat destruction and can cause problems for migrating marine life, but at least they produce convenient power in large quantities.
Go nuclear.

Bioethanol made from maize (or anything else) that's grown specifically to make into bioethanol is stupidly economically unsustainable, but if it's just waste products (especially waste cellulose) that could be turned into energy it could likely be sustainable. Though I imagine it's cheaper to just burn things like corn husks (possibly after gasification) than to go through the trouble to ferment it.
Getting cheap and dense energy storage to power motorcars is an entirely different issue, that I believe will only be fully solved with catalytic production of hydrocarbon fuels.

Solar and wind are good in certain applications, but are completely stupid in places like the midwest. Nuclear is is far superior. A good portfolio of majority nuclear, natural gas, biomass, and renewables is most likely the best approach.

this as well

To be fair we only send stuff that would not make sense to recycle to China, where cheap labor and lax/nonexistent laws made it possible to recycle such low value trash. Things like plastic trim/upholstery in cars, low grade plastics, plastic bags, et cetera

We recycle more valuable stuff like aluminum, brass,copper, even cast iron and steel in-country that's why the price doesn't really drop especially for small guys because large companies took a nice margin off retail price and what looks like 10,15 percent reduction of scrap price per tonne is pretty much non issue to these scrap collectors