Electric vehicles emit more CO2 than diesel ones, German study shows

I read this before, and I know CA is doing it but again if we are talking about moving our entire fossil fueled transportation network to H we would have to produce a massive amount of energy that is literally going to be wasted

Erm, except we don't necessarily have to. Note all the non-electrical generation processes listed in the article.

You can make H2 from natural gas in a purely chemistry reaction that produces enough energy to power the plant making the stuff - just like current petroleum refineries only need external power to bootstrap themselves up from cold, once fully running you can disconnect a petroleum refinery from external power as it is self powered at that point.
 
Lead crystal is surprisingly expensive - worse, charging an LC battery can take significantly more complex charging systems to avoid problems. They also have the problem that they tend to be extremely fragile. Even slight mishandling in shipment or installation means you have a damaged or dead battery. LC has been around since 1979 and there's reasons why it didn't take off.

Modern lead crystal technology has come a long way since the 1970s. They are being used in overlanding for the "house battery" in dual battery setups without problems, if they can stand up to being pummeled off road for days at a time, I think they can handle being shipped by truck, rail, and ship.

Back in the 70s LC was using glass as an insulator, now they use super absorbent mat (SAM) that is both insulator and cushions against vibration and damage. LC also has a greater operating temperature range, is safer than lithium to transport, costs about 40% what Lithium does; and when it is only producing 12v of power is only half way to being depleted - lithium and lead acid batteries are effectively flat at that point. LC just takes and releases charge better than lithium does.

As for charging, LC doesn't even need onboard battery management systems the way lithium does.
 
Which is something that we can change. You can't ever power an internal combustion engine by anything but combustion, but an electric car can get it's energy from combustion (natural gas/coal), sun, wind, nuclear energy, or even ocean waves.

I agree with your position, but didn't Germany have fully functioning nuclear plants they decided to shut down a few years ago for flimsy reasons? They're changing alright, just in the wrong direction.
 
Erm, except we don't necessarily have to. Note all the non-electrical generation processes listed in the article.

You can make H2 from natural gas in a purely chemistry reaction that produces enough energy to power the plant making the stuff - just like current petroleum refineries only need external power to bootstrap themselves up from cold, once fully running you can disconnect a petroleum refinery from external power as it is self powered at that point.
While cool that still requires mining for natural gas, and I have a hard time believing that it is more efficient than straight burning it.
 
I agree with your position, but didn't Germany have fully functioning nuclear plants they decided to shut down a few years ago for flimsy reasons? They're changing alright, just in the wrong direction.

Flimsy reasons such as "humans, let alone human governments, aren't capable of dealing in millions of years".
 
Modern lead crystal technology has come a long way since the 1970s. They are being used in overlanding for the "house battery" in dual battery setups without problems, if they can stand up to being pummeled off road for days at a time, I think they can handle being shipped by truck, rail, and ship.

Back in the 70s LC was using glass as an insulator, now they use super absorbent mat (SAM) that is both insulator and cushions against vibration and damage. LC also has a greater operating temperature range, is safer than lithium to transport, costs about 40% what Lithium does; and when it is only producing 12v of power is only half way to being depleted - lithium and lead acid batteries are effectively flat at that point. LC just takes and releases charge better than lithium does.

As for charging, LC doesn't even need onboard battery management systems the way lithium does.

On a client's recent 'tiny house' development (2018), they had a 40% DOA/DOI rate for LC battery units intended to be used as solar batteries from a reputable vendor. They aren't nearly as fragile as the original 80s ones were, but they're still far more fragile than the competition. The chargers were also more complex than the ones used for the eventual lead-acid batteries the buyers were offered as alternatives.
 
So you're petrified of nuclear waste again? That is indeed rather flimsy.

What is your magic solution to deal with material that stays radioactive for tens, or even hundreds of thousands of year?
 
While cool that still requires mining for natural gas, and I have a hard time believing that it is more efficient than straight burning it.

Ummmm... Natural gas isn't mined, it's simply drilled for. And it's so ridiculously easy to find in many parts of the US that the country has been called the Saudi Arabia of natural gas.

In fact, in some parts of the US, natural gas bubbles up to the surface and occasionally some farmer will light up a cigarette only to accidentally detonate his farm and most of the surrounding farms when the undetected natural gas lights up too.
 
Hah, and it's not like the CANDU units are cutting-edge either. I don't think any other country in the world pre-emptively shut off their plants due to fear of waste management and went back to buying coal-generated power.

Chancellor Angela Merkel said the nuclear power phase-out, previously scheduled to go offline as late as 2036, would give Germany a competitive advantage in the renewable energy era, stating, "As the first big industrialized nation, we can achieve such a transformation toward efficient and renewable energies, with all the opportunities that brings for exports, developing new technologies and jobs".

My sides.
 
What is your magic solution to deal with material that stays radioactive for tens, or even hundreds of thousands of year?

The spent fuel rods from a light water reactor is fuel for a CANDU reactor. See graphic above - a CANDU uses the most contentious nuclear waste as fuel.

Alternately, run the thorium cycle instead.
 
Hah, and it's not like the CANDU units are cutting-edge either. I don't think any other country in the world pre-emptively shut off their plants due to fear of waste management and went back to buying coal-generated power.

The 'other' CA, California, actually did. In fact, they had a perfectly good, brand new reactor that they decided to tear down instead of fire up... and they're buying electricity generated by coal.
 
The 'other' CA, California, actually did. In fact, they had a perfectly good, brand new reactor that they decided to tear down instead of fire up... and they're buying electricity generated by coal.

Ah yeah I could see CA doing that, just never heard of it on a national scale before. Japan even had a relatively major disaster and yet still recognize they need to continue with nuclear to meet emissions obligations.

Considering that per unit of energy production, nuclear causes far fewer deaths than any other generation method, you could argue that going back to coal is not only harming the environment, it's actively killing people.
 
Ah yeah I could see CA doing that, just never heard of it on a national scale before. Japan even had a relatively major disaster and yet still recognize they need to continue with nuclear to meet emissions obligations.

Considering that per unit of energy production, nuclear causes far fewer deaths than any other generation method, you could argue that going back to coal is not only harming the environment, it's actively killing people.

Not to mention that coal plants release more radiation into the atmosphere than nuclear waste.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste/

Also: https://www.sciencefocus.com/science/do-coal-fired-power-stations-produce-radioactive-waste/

Do coal-fired power stations produce radioactive waste?
Them pesky greenhouse gases might not be the worst thing coming out of fossil fuels.
By Jack Serle

Yes – and the waste contributes far more radiation to the environment than nuclear power stations. The radioactivity comes from the trace amounts of uranium and thorium contained in coal. These elements have been trapped in the Earth’s crust since its formation and are usually in concentrations too low to pose any serious threat. But the burning of coal produces fly ash, a material in which the uranium and thorium are much more concentrated.

The exact amounts depend on the source of the coal, but are usually in the range of a few parts per million. That might not sound a lot until you realise that a typical gigawatt-capacity coal power station burns several million tonnes of coal per year. That means every such station creates fly ash containing around 5-10 tonnes of uranium and thorium each year. Multiply that by the number of such stations worldwide and the total amount of radioactive waste produced is truly astonishing.

There is no such thing as a perfect filter for coal ash. Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying their ass off.
 
I don't think any other country in the world pre-emptively shut off their plants due to fear of waste management and went back to buying coal-generated power.

The data doesn't support that, our coal fraction is lower these days than it was prior to the 2011 acceleration of the already-scheduled nuclear phase-out. 2018 we had 35.3% coal, 11.7% nuclear. 2010? 41.5% coal, 22.2% nuclear.

1024px-Energiemix_Deutschland.svg.png
 
The data doesn't support that, our coal fraction is lower these days than it was prior to the 2011 acceleration of the already-scheduled nuclear phase-out. 2018 we had 35.3% coal, 11.7% nuclear. 2010? 41.5% coal, 22.2% nuclear.

Can't read German, is this chart only showing domestic German power production, or the source of German power consumption? I was under the impression the nuclear shutdown caused them to import greater amounts of power from surrounding countries that was indeed coal-generated.
 
The spent fuel rods from a light water reactor is fuel for a CANDU reactor. See graphic above - a CANDU uses the most contentious nuclear waste as fuel.

Alternately, run the thorium cycle instead.


Just because it can use spent fuel rods does not mean there is no waste.
 
Just because it can use spent fuel rods does not mean there is no waste.

No, but repeated cycles through CANDU cuts way down on the amount of waste and the half-life of the waste.

It is also worth mentioning that the politically motivated ban on reprocessing is why we have a nuclear waste crisis on the scale we currently do in the US.
 
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