Bah Humbug - Clarkson

[DaBeeeenster]

You actually ever been to a coal fired power station?
Often the biggest most difficult component, where waste most occurs is in fact, the generators. These are very expensive, difficult to manifacture + understand the effects of what the wire winding in practice will entale. And worst of all, moving parts. You clearly have no idea about basic electronics at all.
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DON'T make personal attacks. This will be your last warning.

You are not looking at the bigger picture regarding nuclear. It's not just a technical problem:
- Security
- Waste management
- Disaster scenarios

These are three HUGE issues that make nuclear far, far more complex than coal or natural gas power stations.

The point i was making about the idea of peaking oil, theres still plenty left, its just its harder to get too. If you think the oil industry dosen't spend sheadloads researching more effictive collection methods your really not looking at the wider perspective.

They have spent shedloads on increasing the efficiencies of extraction, and they have not come very far. I suggest you read this book and then get back to the forums.

[herulach]

So you stated that industry only uses fossil fuels for transport, yet agree that fossil fuels and carbon based products are the same thing, so my point stands. Almost EVERYTHING that we produce is touched by fossil fuels. Many things drastically so.

if we moved to electrical transport systems the amount of oil available for plastics manufactur e would increase massively. Youve read all the books, whats the spilt between oil used in plastics and for fuel? i bet its at least 70/30 if not more.

Ah yes...

Dont be so daft, comparing a modern nuclear power plant to chernobyl is like comparing a horse and cart to a veyron. Massive advances in safety have been made, not least of which the pebble bed reactor, which couldnt meltdown if you tried to make it do so (ridiculoussituations/bombs aside). I think it says a lot theres been what 2 serious nuclear accidents? none of which have been in the last twenty years (just) despite the fact that huge amounts of power are produced with them nowadays (iirc 75% of frances demand and about 20% of the US).

[herulach]

DON'T make personal attacks. This will be your last warning.

You are not looking at the bigger picture regarding nuclear. It's not just a technical problem:
- Security
- Waste management
- Disaster scenarios

These are three HUGE issues that make nuclear far, far more complex than coal or natural gas power stations.

see above for disasters, and waste management is a problem, but not as big as you might thing, breeder and integrating(gral?) reactors produce very little waste, and reprocessing techniques are getting better all the time.

As far as security goes, well, id hope theres good security round all power stations

[DaBeeeenster]

if we moved to electrical transport systems the amount of oil available for plastics manufactur e would increase massively. Youve read all the books, whats the spilt between oil used in plastics and for fuel? i bet its at least 70/30 if not more.

Well, that's really my point of this thread. There's not much chance of us moving to electric vehicles with comments like the one made by Clarkson, is there?

Dont be so daft, comparing a modern nuclear power plant to chernobyl is like comparing a horse and cart to a veyron. Massive advances in safety have been made, not least of which the pebble bed reactor, which couldnt meltdown if you tried to make it do so (ridiculoussituations/bombs aside). I think it says a lot theres been what 2 serious nuclear accidents? none of which have been in the last twenty years (just) despite the fact that huge amounts of power are produced with them nowadays (iirc 75% of frances demand and about 20% of the US).

I broadly agree, but the issues of terrorism have replaced those of dodgy old russian tech IMHO...

[herulach]

Well, that's really my point of this thread. There's not much chance of us moving to electric vehicles with comments like the one made by Clarkson, is there?

since you clearly missed it

o put the whole invalid carriage thing to bed. The original invalid carriage:
http://www.virtualgaz.co.uk/invacarpage.htm
Cameron with the car in question:
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/green...760328,00.html

Striking similarity? I think so.

I broadly agree, but the issues of terrorism have replaced those of dodgy old russian tech IMHO...

Terrorism isnt as big a deal as we are led to belive, planting a bomb in a public place is an order of magnitude or 5 easier than putting one anywhere even close to a nuclear reactor. Hell, even getting close to a nuclear is nigh on impossible, they have what 10 metres of concrete round them? I dont think terrorsit have the kind of hardware that could take that out. A worst case scenario is maybe taking it offline byt killing the coolant system

[dangel]

DON'T make personal attacks. This will be your last warning.

I'm curious - what exactly happens next?
And how does his post come off any worse than some of the many you've made?

And I've yet to see you counter the fact that the car in question does look exactly like a blinking invalid vehicle (whether you like it or not).

[DaBeeeenster]

I'm curious - what exactly happens next?
And how does his post come off any worse than some of the many you've made?

And I've yet to see you counter the fact that the car in question does look exactly like a blinking invalid vehicle (whether you like it or not).

I'm not here to debate the moderating rules. Personal attacks are not allowed. That's it. Sorry. I've not personally attacked anyone on this thread.

I agree that the cars look similar. I still think the comment was uncalled for.

[dangel]

I'm not here to debate the moderating rules. Personal attacks are not allowed. That's it. Sorry. I've not personally attacked anyone on this thread.

Then by that reasoning neither did he attack you. And what are you apologising for?

I agree that the cars look similar. I still think the comment was uncalled for.

Well I think we can all agree that we've got your POV on this - but having agreed they looked similar then surely someone saying one looks like the other isn't exactly stretching reality beyond the bounds of reason? Perhaps it's just time to put this thread to bed now eh?

[DaBeeeenster]

Then by that reasoning neither did he attack you. And what are you apologising for?

I'm not debating the moderating here. If you want to PM me, please do.

Well I think we can all agree that we've got your POV on this - but having agreed they looked similar then surely someone saying one looks like the other isn't exactly stretching reality beyond the bounds of reason? Perhaps it's just time to put this thread to bed now eh?

Maybe if Clarkson refrained from making puerile points for the benefit of his own ego and actually addressed the question of electric cars at hand, we'd not have reason for this thread. Instead, he resorts to his usual trick of getting a laugh and barking over the subject.

[badass]

The IPCC is probably based on work of the largest collection of scientists ever brought together for 1 project (possibly with the exception of the Manhattan Project).

And that project seems to be to justify themselves by only looking for evidence for 1 possibility, rather than highlighting all of the evidence, including evidence against their theories. All I ever hear from the IPCC in things that support man made global warming. There is plenty of evidence to the contrary.
Plus I'm a little disturbed that the largest collection of scientists ever bought together for one project cant work out how to find someone to keep their website up.

If you choose to ignore the work of all these disparate science groups, and the opinions of almost every scientist alive, that's your choice.

That is a completely false. A very significant number of scientists actually believe its a myth or is completely unproven. The most sgnificant group of sceptics being retired scientists. Scientists whose funding cannot be affected by their opinions on political issues like Global Warming. The majority of retired scientists IIRC do not believe this nonsense. I'll find a link to that.

[TheAnimus]

DON'T make personal attacks. This will be your last warning.

Hardly a personal attack, its just a case of don't start spouting stuff to someone who's had to sit through too much motor theory, given tours around a coal fired powerstation about damn electronics or coal fired powerstations. I guess its offensive to a point, but if taken heed can save face in the longer term.

Okay so waste management of nuclear, well its actually quite simple really, there are working practices for this, it is however time consuming and expensive. But when you think how little waste has to be proccessed encased and berried, its cheap compared to the cost of acid rain say. How simple and low cost do you think the partical settling systems places like didcot use? Do you realise how much it costs to take them to the insane efficency level they use? How many times the same "lump" of coal will potentially get burnt? This also isn't cheap, this sort of thing wasn't done 50 years ago, because it wasn't cost effective. Guess what, now it is (and its also better for environment too).

Security, now this is an intresting one. France has a history of domestic terrorism. How many times have people got to their nuclear plants? Where's the precedent that not enough security is in place? Its worth noting that to take school kids, aged 15, round a power station, they all had to be background checked, and then simple metal/plastique checked on the way in, i say the way in, its more a case of walking around the outside, to get near enough for a suicide bomber to blow up something that could even begin to reach the turbines / anything important would be very unlikely (even with claymore style explosions). What I'm saying is a coal power plant has to be safe enough against terror attacks, what would happen if the plant went 100% offline with no warning/notice. It would be easyer to blow up the pylons to get terror effect. As for dirty bomb, what would happen if one ignighted the coal feild at didcot (you can see the tail end of this from the train) in an ineffcient burning method, the environmental impact would be disasterous too. So all plants need good security, nuclear is actually easyer in the respect that it dosen't require such a large fuel storage area. It amuses me when people harp on about safety of nuclear plants because of that fact alone. As for waste, that again, once proccessed/encased/berried takes would be nasty person a long time to get too. Think about gas storage for towns, imo thats far more dangerous as most storage tanks don't require a "bunker buster" type missile to perice them.

Disaster sinareos. Well generally speaking, as long as its purpose built, these are all rather good. Remeber that a fission reactor dosen't really need *that* much "dangerous radioactive stuff that scares daly mail types" very little in fact. The danger tends to come with water been irradated and that escaping. This isn't that difficult to prevent, you have to have tanks to vent pressurised water too. So simple. As for earthquakes, this can be taken into acount with the building structure, and obviously, don't build one on a fault line also helps. Now, about the only natural desister i can think of, is a hurrican followed by tsunami. Again this can be built against. About the only thing that can't would be a metorite. So, lets not use nuclear power because that might happen

Right now for that book, i've not read it, i might do if i've got some free time after exams. But lets just look at the type of comment from someone highly recomending it

"The bugaboo here of course is that world oil demand will not decrease, but with the rapid industrialization of places like China and India, it will increase, perhaps dramatically. The result? Higher oil prices, of course. In fact, Deffeyes's book, written last year, effectively predicted the current spike in oil prices! Clearly he is a man to listen to. But the salient point is in his title: "Beyond Oil.""

So why does that annoy me? It dosen't understand suply and demand with politics. Think about it, india and china want more. Okay, so you've got a set of countries that consume oil = {...} each has a demand and a GNP, lets make the figure based on that, then finite amount of oil. What happens, money rules the roost. Recession is forced amoungst the poorest nations, so their demand drops. Intresting scienaro. Okay governments would see that comming, and have their own reserves, currupt people might sell them, people might go to war to ensure contracts. Either way the price will skyrocket. So other substitute methods will be used for things that it can be. Look at AutoGas, thats only really used because of the tax insentive, but because its cheaper its used.

I guess what i'm trying to say is, economy + politics will control the oil supply on a global scale. The oil scare, whilst linked to the US oil peek, isn't purely because of the US running out of oil, its due to ecopolitical reasons (OPEC).

[kasavien]

In response to the original post about clarkson, if you don't like what he does don't watch it.

And about electric cars, until they can produce electricity without burning fossil fuels its far more efficient to burn the fossil fuels in the car rather than burning the fuel to heat water to produce steam to power a generator to make electricity to power the car (heh if my old english teacher saw that sentence she'd have a fit) I don't believe there is anything at the moment that can produce as much power as a nuclear power station, that could easilly replace fossil fuel power power stations.

[Nat101]

...And about electric cars, until they can produce electricity without burning fossil fuels its far more efficient to burn the fossil fuels in the car rather than burning the fuel to heat water to produce steam to power a generator to make electricity to power the car (heh if my old english teacher saw that sentence she'd have a fit) I don't believe there is anything at the moment that can produce as much power as a nuclear power station, that could easilly replace fossil fuel power power stations.

Exactly. But either way - be it electricity or biodiesel - folks are going to be happily driving around under the illusion that their vehicle has a neglible carbon footprint. I wonder how biodiesel and electricty compare when the environmental cost of their production and distribution is figured into the equation...? Is it safe to assume that biodiesel is the most sensible option?

[TheAnimus]

Exactly. But either way - be it electricity or biodiesel - folks are going to be happily driving around under the illusion that their vehicle has a neglible carbon footprint. I wonder how biodiesel and electricty compare when the environmental cost of their production and distribution is figured in to the picture...? Is it safe to assume that biodiesel is the most sensible option?

no because nuclear is just really good clean energy!

problem is the amount lost in storage. At present hydrogen fuel cells are seen as the panacia, but many don't share that view. Its also true that photvoltaic developement could follow a moore's style law of it own (hey, i'm writing energy gen for geeks ) so solar cells could be a viable option too. Wind is quite a good option, problem is its un-stable nature, but if it was used to make hydrogen fuel, that would be quite narly.

[Nat101]

no because nuclear is just really good clean energy!

Convincing the general public will be quite a task! And that will take valuable time. That is why I said that biodiesel is the best solution in the short term. The fact that it would be more beneficial economically to struggling 3rd world countries than technologically advanced society will put the brakes on, no doubt (certain motor firms being too busy trying to market the 'next big thing' rather than addressing the impending environmental disaster as the foremost priority), but surely it would be much easier to convince the general public of its worth than it would be to convince them that nuclear power can be safe enough.

[G4Z]

Thought you all may find this link interesting, should help settle some of this debate.

Somebody has in fact looked at the total impact and cost of alternative fuels and current petrochems.

Its an Interesting read and for those touting biodiesel you should know that it is in fact 15% regular diesel so is not likely to be a solution all on its own.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/scie...tml?page=1&c=y


Enjoy