Apr
10
Energy is no different from a river, it flows or it is stored. We obtain all the required energy from the stored energy resources, otherwise we construct dams to capture the flowing energy and hence make it usable.
The fake term “renewable energy” often used and advertised by environmentalist is nothing but the stored energy of the sun.
In reality, there is nothing like “renewable energy”, every energy resource including the sun is limited.
Environmentalists often shout against the use of Fossil fuel energy. Fossil fuels are also nothing but stored solar energy. The capturing of solar energy in form of fossil takes millions of years and fossil fuels are highly concentrated source of energy, almost 10 times more concentrated than wood. The wind energy or raw solar energy the flow of energy is too weak to be used. Solar energy is 10 to 50 times less concentrated than fossil fuel. There is no technology to concentrate solar or wind energy and hence, to harvest any significant amount of energy directly from flowing solar or wind energy, the only way is to use more and more land, but land space is limited and that limits the use of both solar and wind energy.
According to T. Boone Pickens’s famous wind energy drive,1 a single wind energy power station would require some 12,000 square miles of land area. That is too much when compared with the land space required for a Nuclear power plant.
Another natural store of energy is coal that is extremely abundant in nature. We may never run out of coal no matter how much we use it. Coal is a concentrated store of energy, much concentrated than wood.
Octane molecules of gasoline are further dense source of energy; they are densest form of all resources of carbon energy. Carbon energy itself is nothing but a natural dam of solar energy that is carbon energy is solar energy.
Yet, environmentalists want to reduce world’s carbon footprints; hence, they want to ban usage of carbon energy resources. On the contrary, they support the use of solar energy, wind energy in crude, and dilute form.
Nuclear energy is very different from any of the above discussed energy resources.
Nuclear energy is not a form of solar energy; the Sun is not the source of nuclear energy. People in general know less about nuclear energy.
A pinch of uranium contains more energy than 100 full trucks of coal. Despite the governments throughout the world providing support to solar and wind energy power plants by means of government subsidies (regulators forces utility companies to but renewable energy), the solar and wind energy plants produces only about 0.9% of the total electricity we consume.
The most effective solar panels (used on the space stations) are expensive and their conversion efficiency is only about 20%, which is too less. We cannot support the idea of using those much expensive solar panels with such less efficiency rate to be adopted on earth. Twelve miles of solar reflectors generate a meager 300 megawatt of energy, we can not rely on them, also, the reflectors must be kept exceptionally clean and maintained to the hilt, and otherwise they will not work. At the stage of current technological knowledge, no conceivable mix of solar, wind, sea or wave energy can fulfil even half of our demand for energy.
Environmentalists are against carbon energy resources, one may think they are right, but they are against nuclear energy resource too and they support only the crude form of solar, wind and water energy. Obviously, they want to push us back to the dark ages2 .
The wind, solar and wave energy can be made more efficient with improving science and technology, not by forcing all of us to go without electricity.
The environmentalists call for massive subsidization for wind and solar energy, while they want to abort usage of carbon energy by applying carbon taxes.
Subsidies for wind and solar energy along with ethanol, recycling and many other similar issues clarifies that they are not efficient, because if they are efficient, why do they need to be subsidized? They need to be subsidized because they are not efficient.
Energy resources for which the environmentalist cries for are those, which benefit no one. The only reason environmentalist want them to be subsidized is the fact that they cannot compete in the market. No one will opt for wind or solar energy in a free market because it is inefficient very less, causes loss. In order to force people to opt for solar and wind energy, environmentalists suggest carbon taxes.
All this clarifies solar and wind energy is not good enough yet.
When the technology will improve and with that improve the efficiency of solar and wind energy, the free market will adopt them freely.
Wind will still fail to be any major source of energy because of the difficulty of transmitting the wind energy power. Wind is also unpredictable and hence the production of energy will also remain unpredictable.
Energy through nuclear fission is the proper alternative to any form solar energy that may solve out all the genuine environmental concerns, and they will ensure that we keep progressing in the future rather than being pushed backward to dark ages.
Uranium produces enormous amount of energy in a very little place that wind and solar energy together can not come close to.
Those who oppose nuclear energy are simply against any realistic way towards sustaining and improvement of technological advancement and our life in turn.
Uranium is abundant, clean and safe to use, furthermore, the residual of the nuclear reactors, that is, the “nuclear waste” can also be re-used after enriching plutonium.
The environmental geeks show their concern about the safety of nuclear reactors.
One of such nuclear accident happened at Chernobyl,3 every green geek puts up that case, what they do not tell us is the fact that, that mishap happened just because that US government run reactor was highly unsafe.
The greatest scientific feat of 20th century was the discovery of neutron and the knowledge about the highly concentrated nuclear energy. We discovered that the energy concentrated in nucleus of atom is 2 million times as more as the energy concentrated in the shell of atom.
The energy in the shell of atom is known as the chemical energy. Everything from wood to coal, from crude oil to gasoline is the play of chemical energy. Using chemical energy thus does not necessarily decreases the carbon footprints. The only way to successfully decrease our carbon footprints without pushing us backward to dark ages is the Nuclear energy.
The danger of nuclear waste is false because in reality, there remains nothing like “nuclear waste”; the waste of nuclear reactor can be used for further production of energy without hurting the environment by any means.
That so-called nuclear waste is also being used as the medical isotopes. About 40% of advanced medicines now are Nuclear medicine.
Conclusion: Nuclear energy is the safest, cleanest and most effective and efficient way we have, to not only to fulfil our current requirements but to meet all futuristic demands without leaving any carbon footprints.
Anyone who opposes Nuclear energy is whole out wrong and is against human progress and prosperity.
- T Boon Pickens, Pickens plan [↩]
- The Catastrophic Lovers want to return to Dark Ages, Reason for Liberty [↩]
- The Chernobyl Disaster, wikipedia [↩]
13 Responses to “Going green or Going Nuclear?”
Leave a Reply
nemodot Says:
April 11th, 2010 at 6:17 pmI often side with the environmentalists, at least with the reasonable ones. And I do think nuclear energy is a good alternative, it doesn’t produce carbon dioxide and the people who fear this technology are generally ignorant.
Even though I find great the success of countries like Denmark, Germany or Spain with alternative sources of energy.
pdxjmorris Says:
April 12th, 2010 at 6:58 pmI own the Soviet stamp image you used in this article under a Creative Commons copyright. Please either site me as the author of the image or remove the image from your site. You are welcome to use the image, but only if you site the source. Sorry to leave this as a comment, but you have no contact email on your site.
Thanks,
Pdxjmorris
Renegade Division Says:
April 12th, 2010 at 7:05 pm@pdxjmorris
I am sorry but we have linked back the image to your site, anyone clicking on it gets taken to your flickr page. I believe that’s pretty acceptable practice for using CC images.
Bala Says:
April 13th, 2010 at 12:57 pmIt’s not for nothing that many people like me prefer to call environmentalists as “eco-terrorists”.
balirand Says:
April 14th, 2010 at 2:49 pmUmpretentious Diva
was reviewing Indiblogger…led me here and to this post.
A question, as a libertarian, do you support the imposition of pollution taxes, such as for greenhouse gas emissions? I would argue that we should and that doing so is well within libertarian tenets, because polluters infringe on the liberty of others.
I agree with some of what you say….particularly the call to action for pursuing nuclear power. however, regarding power subsidies…if we are to get rid of subsidies for such activities as solar and wind, we should remove the substantial subsidies now directed at fossil fuels.
.-= balirand´s last blog ..The Future of Jobs – Part I =-.
ranjit Says:
April 14th, 2010 at 11:20 pm@balirand
how can the increase in taxes be well within the libertarian tenents?…libertarians seek minimal government but you are encouraging more governemnt by your opinion…the best way to decrease pollution is to establish and encourage absloute property rights…
Unpretentious Diva Says:
April 15th, 2010 at 9:14 am@ Balirand
When I breath, I inhale oxygen and convert it to Carbon Di oxide. The so called dangerous polluting gas which makes life possible on earth.(Without that CO2, there is no possibility of life on earth.)
What you want to say is, I should be charged for breathing and there should be a breathing tax because by breathing I cause pollution, increase carbon di oxide.
I would prefer to die rather than supporting Carbon taxes or breathing taxes. (Why? Because I am libertarian!)
Renegade Division Says:
April 15th, 2010 at 10:05 am@Baliran
Polluters do infringe on the private property rights of others but how are govt determined taxes are solution to that? Even if you do think its a solution to that, it is definitely not a libertarian position. The libertarian position would be property rights in everything, so that people can sue anyone who infringes on their property rights, like the mountains, rivers, oceans, air etc must be liberalized and allowed to be owned privately.
I have written two articles making a case for private ownership of natural resources:
Case for private ownership of natural resources – I
Case for private ownership of natural resources – II
balirand Says:
April 15th, 2010 at 10:34 amUnpretentious Diva,
If you are a global warming denier, then you are in good company with GWB and Sarah Palin. If however you are a thoughtful libertarian, then you are also a person of science, and the science on global warming is incontrovertible. The global warming argument does not state that we need to get rid of CO2, on which all plant life is dependent, but that our use of fossil fuels has rapidly increased concentrations of global warming gases in the atmosphere and that such concentrations, and the trend additional increase based on the do-nothing scenario, will cause significant negative impacts on our climate and to humans. The probability of significant negative ramifications is high enough that it would be the height of folly for us not to take any action (think of it as an insurance policy).
You breathe air, I breathe air, so let’s set aside this straw man argument about wanting to charge you for breathing, since we cancel each other’s infringement of property rights out. Polluters infringe on the (“global”) commons…they get a free ride because they do not pay the full cost of their activities. In some limited cases, you could privatize what is now a common resource, so that the private owner could seek damages from the polluter through legal action (say based on nuisance laws, whatever. However, (to Renegade Division)it is impractical to assign all global common assets to the private sector. For one, some assets such as air and water cannot be contained or corralled and properly demarked. Second, under your scenario of privatizing resources, you would have legal jurisdictional issues across international borders. Plaintiffs would lack standing; defendants could get off scott free because neither would plaintiffs necessarily be able to prove proximate cause for damages. Finally, it is simply not economically efficient to privatize all the global commons because there are very real cases of market failure (market failure could still happen if you privatized global commons but was left in the hands of many relatively small owners, or you end up with the opposite case of monopoly/oligopoly if resources are in the hands of too few – I caveat this by referencing back to what I said earlier, there may be some limited cases where privatization could work).
I’ll end with this. On a practical level, global warming requires immediate attention, so we don’t have time to debate the merits of privatization of the commons. In any case, I especially do not think privatizing the atmosphere can solve the problem. Cap and trade or a carbo tax (either gets you the same result) is proven to work (google acid rain US/Canada, a cap and trade market that has worked for 20 years very effectively.
Apologies for the long post…
Renegade…I will try to peruse your articles.
cheers
.-= balirand´s last blog ..The Future of Jobs – Part I =-.
balirand Says:
April 15th, 2010 at 10:59 amRenegade
I read your artciles. Thoe ideas are wholly unworkable. What you fail to understand are the very real effects of market failure. Adam Smith himself would have seen the obvious need for a government solution. In any case instead of a government monopoly, or regulated entity, your ideas would leave people in the hands of a private monopoly against which they would have little recourse. Your argument about marginal utilities shifting up and down is irrelevant – private monopolies will produce where MR=MC and end up with at price too high and a quantity too low compared to the efficient/competitive level. With the government as monopoly, the politicians are responsible to the voters and are incentivized to move towards the competitive level of production and sales.
Finally, if you as the private owner of your river has to sue polluters, you and what army is going to enforce the judgement against, say, a population of millions along a river? Your government-less country run by courts is gonna need some bailiffs and sheriffs.
Sorry to be snarky…it’s just that kinda day. I did enjoy the conversation.
thank you kindly
.-= balirand´s last blog ..The Future of Jobs – Part I =-.
ranjit Says:
April 15th, 2010 at 11:33 am@Balirand
There is a difference between global warming and anthropogenic global warming (AGW)…many scientists do not deny global warming but deny AGW…global temperatures have cycles of warming and cooling…its nature…there is still no concrete proof that burning fossil fuels is increasing the global temperatures…
how can you say anarcho capitalism (the system which renegade is proposing)its not workable?
balirand Says:
April 15th, 2010 at 7:17 pm@ Ranjit
Putting all resources in the hands of private owners with enforceable property rights will still not work in cases where the natural structure of the market for a particular good or service leads to market failure.
The UN Panel’s report on climate change is a definitive case for man-made contributions to global warming. If you do not subscribe to the sound science…as I said before, you’re in such luminous company as George Bush, Sarah Palin and Fox news, none of which are credible or particularly thoughtful sources.
One of the few really smart and thoughtful global warming skeptics out there is Freeman Dyson, a highly acclaimed physicist. He does believe in man made causes, but is skeptical about that the climate models are accurately forecasting the trends, which is a valid point.
The climate models may be wrong about the impact, but the point is nothing is 100% certain, but I do not wish to gamble with the planet. It is reasonable to take out an insurance policy.
.-= balirand´s last blog ..Daily Links Courtesy of Sticky Feet at TrivCap =-.
ranjit Says:
April 16th, 2010 at 12:31 am@ Balirand
your quote
please explain me the natural structure of market you are refering here and also how does this strucutre fail for these good and resources?
well most of the scientists who talk about AGW doesnt even know how to define climate…they call it somehting long term…so is it 5 years, 10 years, 50 years or 100 years or any other number? and most of the data from the mainstream research is tampered…this was evident from the IPCC scandal…IPCC is the same organistation which was awarded Nobel Prize…how relaible is the data from such organizations?
you can read thearies and data of natural cycles of global warming and cooling like sunspots etc
Bush quoted once “I’ve abandoned free market principles to save the free market system”…doesnt this sounds smilar to your argument regarding the taxation of fossil fuels?…taking away the freedom?