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Climate Change or: How I Stopped Worrying and Love Rising Sea Levels

That_GuyThat_Guy I don't wanna be that guyRegistered User regular
While I should have been working, I was instead reading several articles today about just how bad Global Climate Change is getting and just how out of touch the general public and lawmakers are. There doesn't seem to be a recent thread on this topic already, so here we go.

Even with a production ready 100mw fusion reactor in 10 years, I am worried we have just done far too much damage to the environment for it to matter. The west will become a barren desert while the eastern seaboard will be underwater. Florida will probably be the worst hit with up to half the state underwater. Assuming the worst, what is your plan? Run, fight, give up?

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Posts

  • Captain MarcusCaptain Marcus now arrives the hour of actionRegistered User regular
    We're boned! If I recall correctly, what we're seeing now is the effects from the 1970s, and it's only going to ramp up.

    But the American West is already going to become a barren desert because Las Vegas, Los Angeles, and farmers are sucking up all the water. Las Vegas in particular, with a whopping 219 gallons of water per day per person, is planning on putting a pipe at the very bottom of Lake Mead and sucking it dry.

  • ShadowfireShadowfire Vermont, in the middle of nowhereRegistered User regular
    That_Guy wrote: »
    Assuming the worst, what is your plan? Run, fight, give up?

    I'm not worried about the water rise right here since I'm on the side of a mountain in Vermont. Plenty of water, and we can weather a couple degree increase in temperature. But I'm sure worried about the food situation up here since we don't have tons of stable cropland thanks to those same mountains. And I'm sure we'll run into problems with people wanting the water from the northeast along the same lines as Lake Mead.

    We're a rich nation, we'll be able to get through this with damage, but minimal loss of life. I'm far more worried about poor nations that are already losing their lands.

    WiiU: Windrunner ; Guild Wars 2: Shadowfire.3940 ; PSN: Bradcopter
  • That_GuyThat_Guy I don't wanna be that guy Registered User regular
    Shadowfire wrote: »
    That_Guy wrote: »
    Assuming the worst, what is your plan? Run, fight, give up?

    I'm not worried about the water rise right here since I'm on the side of a mountain in Vermont. Plenty of water, and we can weather a couple degree increase in temperature. But I'm sure worried about the food situation up here since we don't have tons of stable cropland thanks to those same mountains. And I'm sure we'll run into problems with people wanting the water from the northeast along the same lines as Lake Mead.

    We're a rich nation, we'll be able to get through this with damage, but minimal loss of life. I'm far more worried about poor nations that are already losing their lands.

    That's a good point. I could see the scientists and engineers of America coming together to create artificial habitats in the western wastelands fed by underground water pumps from the east. We could repurpose all the oil pipelines when everything is powered electrically via fusion.

  • JepheryJephery Registered User regular
    edited March 2015
    Desalination would be more efficient than pumping it across the continent though.

    Jephery on
    }
    "Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
  • That_GuyThat_Guy I don't wanna be that guy Registered User regular
    Jephery wrote: »
    Desalination would be more efficient than pumping it across the continent though.

    We already have the pumps and the pipelines. I don't see how it could get much cheaper. In the desert, water is more valuable than oil.

  • XaquinXaquin Right behind you!Registered User regular
    edited March 2015
    None of that will happen

    Well, the boning will. The humanity banding together won't.

    Half this country has their fingers in their ears, hates the other half, and actively sabotages any attempts to avoid this train wreck.

    We'll be good and proper fucked, and it's scary to realize that we already missed the chance to avoid it.

    Edit: I wish I had the funds to grab a dozen or so acres some place up north. Oh well though!

    Xaquin on
  • Phoenix-DPhoenix-D Registered User regular
    This isn't an either/or light switch. It's gradually accumulating effects. What we get now isn't the same as what we get if we keep pumping out CO2 til all the coal and oil is gone.

  • XaquinXaquin Right behind you!Registered User regular
    The worst case scenario is what we will get because the people in charge don't give a shit and the public that realizes this isn't a large enough voting block to change that.

  • HacksawHacksaw J. Duggan Esq. Wrestler at LawRegistered User regular
    edited March 2015
    I'm not having kids. I suggest you all do the same. We're too late to prevent catastrophic environmental damage: looking at Bangladesh alone, we're already there.

    Hell, at this point we'll be lucky if the oceans can sustain life by this time next century.

    Hacksaw on
  • RamiRami Registered User regular
    I don't really have much to say other than it is absolutely maddening how little of a fuck is actually given about the environment by almost everyone.

    But one hopes that in a thousand years places like Vegas are remembered with the deepest scorn. Perhaps we all should bury time capsules containing just a piece of paper that reads 'I fucking told you!'

    Steam / Xbox Live: WSDX NNID: W-S-D-X 3DS FC: 2637-9461-8549
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  • XaquinXaquin Right behind you!Registered User regular
    the pisser of it all is that a lot of people are doing all they can do and it's not helping because everyone that doesn't care doesn't care.

  • HacksawHacksaw J. Duggan Esq. Wrestler at LawRegistered User regular
    I'm going to teach my nephew how to hunt and fish. How to purify water. Wilderness survival. Everything. Poor kid's generation is going to bear the brunt of all the bad fallout. If shit goes bad in civilization, I want to make sure he can cut it on his own (or in a group) in the nearby wilderness if need be (we live in the Pacific Northwest, so wilderness is right around the corner).

  • burboburbo Registered User regular
    Hacksaw had the right idea. We should be preparing by learning practical homesteading skills and building sustainable communities. There is going to be a ton of challenges for us and future generations,but humans have dealt with this stuff for thousands of years. So we won't all get to have a white picket fence and work a 9 to 5 and buy cheap plastic Shit until we die. Oh well. Only one generation has ever really lived their whole lives live that (our parents), and they all hate their fucking lives. I really hope the refugee situations abd resource wars don't lead to nuclear destruction, because then we are all fucked, but if it doesn't, maybe we can actually build new civilisations based on cooperation, sustainability, and compassion.

  • monikermoniker Registered User regular
    I live next to the largest surface source of freshwater on earth with the most productive agricultural land surrounding it for hundreds of miles and half of everything electric powered by nukes. Mostly I just plan on feeling really guilty about the Maldives.

  • burboburbo Registered User regular
    It's not going to work like that moniker. The people who live on the coasts don't just disappear. They will come to your utopia and want your land and water.

  • IncenjucarIncenjucar VChatter Seattle, WARegistered User regular
    Half of our favorite stuff is digital anymore, which aside from being kind of disturbing is really potentially great if we can slow the obsolescence and failure rate of technology.

    Hacksaw wrote: »
    I'm not having kids. I suggest you all do the same. We're too late to prevent catastrophic damage at this point: looking at Bangladesh alone, we're already there.

    Hell, at this point we'll be lucky if the oceans can sustain life by this time next century.

    You could always, like, tone it down instead of outright halting, too.

  • BrainleechBrainleech 機知に富んだコメントはここにあります Registered User regular
    Not all the west is going to turn to a desert.
    This area is turning more humid but it's going to be quite messy as it turns back to what this area once was 40k years ago
    I do find it sad we have had our annual rain fall for the year already and they still in the paper and on tv say we are still in a draught.

    I really find it beyond stupid the power company in a failed lawsuit over their coal plants [they were really messy even for a coal power plant} lost and is trying to stick the cost to the people instead of looking forward.
    With the amount of easy to access geothermal areas here and the amount of sun they boast about they could solve both their power and water problems with those
    But again it costs money and a silly company going down in flames is not going to build it or let others build it.


    I do find it scary how fast Florida is dissolving. And why.

  • ShadowhopeShadowhope Baa. Registered User regular

    I want to see Belgium and the Netherlands now, before they either cease to exist or build newer, bigger seawalls all around the country.

    Civics is not a consumer product that you can ignore because you don’t like the options presented.
  • CantidoCantido Registered User regular
    Its okay guyz, Jesus will come back before anything consequential happens!

    3DS Friendcode 5413-1311-3767
  • CaptainNemoCaptainNemo Registered User regular
    Lotta doom and gloom here. Some stuff is totally fucked, but technology is leaping ahead in other areas, so there's hope yet. And if not, then eh. We've had a good run, gone farther then anyone else we've ever discovered, and created a lot of neat things.

    PSN:CaptainNemo1138
    Shitty Tumblr:lighthouse1138.tumblr.com
  • Emissary42Emissary42 Registered User regular
    Popping in to comment on what exactly a working fusion reactor would mean: you could literally stop caring about energy concerns, forever. Well, not forever per se, but at least until the sun boils off the Earth's oceans in about a billion years. Fusion is that ridiculous. Using fusion-powered refineries, you can do wonderful silly things like fix CO2 and water back into hydrocarbons. Need plastic? Just mine it from thin air. Too much CO2 in the atmosphere? Catalyze it into something else.

  • dlinfinitidlinfiniti Registered User regular
    so california no longer has to worry about running out of water cause the water is coming to them?
    wooo

    AAAAA!!! PLAAAYGUUU!!!!
  • AbsalonAbsalon Lands of Always WinterRegistered User regular
    Fusion reactors could be 40 or 90 years away. Humanity has 90 years, many poor nations just don't.

  • Emissary42Emissary42 Registered User regular
    Absalon wrote: »
    Fusion reactors could be 40 or 90 years away. Humanity has 90 years, many poor nations just don't.

    The exact timeline depends on who you ask, but they're definitely not a sure thing. There has been a lot more investment and interest recently, and Lockheed isn't usually a company to brag about black projects unless they're far more than onto something. The bigger point is if one group figures out how to build them, they'll almost instantly be proliferated as fast as they can be churned out for the purposes of national interest and environmental reasons. There's no reason to mine hydrocarbons if you have enough of them (so long Middle East, and thanks for all the fish), and there's no reason to have a fission power plant once fusion exists other than to produce nukes or certain industrial isotopes.

  • CalicaCalica Registered User regular
    Sometime in the past few months I think I started believing we're going to drive ourselves to extinction (or close enough to it) within a century or two, as opposed to just wondering about it. (I still wonder, and hope; but my subconscious assumption has flipped, if that makes sense.) I'm not sure how I feel about it. I'm disappointed, of course, but I've never wanted kids anyway, so the outcome for me personally is more or less the same. I still hope I'll live to see exploration of our solar system's oceans, but that's pretty much it.

    I hate how just by existing in a first-world country, I contribute far more than my fair share to climate change, and there's not much I can do about it.

    Nobody's going to rebuild a civilization based on cooperation. As long as there's resource scarcity, we will form tribes and fight each other.

  • TL DRTL DR Not at all confident in his reflexive opinions of thingsRegistered User regular
    I'd like to ask what everyone here is doing about this, whether writing their representative or direct action like planting trees.

    For example, our community garden is on its second year and demand is strong. We get free wood chips from the local tree board and everyone chips in on a community plot which largely goes to the homeless as well as local charities.

    It's my understanding that beyond really radical stuff like chaining yourself to a tree to thwart clear cutting, the best thing to do is simply consume less. Take your bike or the bus when possible, eat local, grow your own food, etc.

  • TL DRTL DR Not at all confident in his reflexive opinions of thingsRegistered User regular
    And giving up meat, of course.

  • fugacityfugacity Registered User regular
    Preparing for some wilderness survival dystopia is the height of the dumbs. If we don't maintain or grow our level of civilization, we'll be boned when an extinction level asteroid hits us. Maybe you could get away with resetting civilization for a couple hundred years, but next time you try to start it up, you won't have the big push cheap energy has given us.

    I'd rather see us convert to a desalination / hydroponics / nuclear fission economy while we wait for that ever elusive fusion technology to become available.

  • PhasenPhasen Hell WorldRegistered User regular
    edited March 2015
    TL DR wrote: »
    And giving up meat, of course.

    How do I do this? Cause I feel terrible about eating all those animals but hamburgers.

    Phasen on
    psn: PhasenWeeple
  • AbsalonAbsalon Lands of Always WinterRegistered User regular
    More chicken and cheaper fish like cod, herring, pollock and dolphin-safe tuna (in cans though, because the big 'uns have too much mercury in them).

  • PhillisherePhillishere Registered User regular
    edited March 2015
    It's interesting to see the shift on this topic just in terms of this discussion forum. As recent as a couple of years ago, the discussion here would have been a couple of alarmists like myself being drowned out by posters who believed that ultimately climate change was no big deal, as the tech would come along really soon to mitigate any problems.

    I think its finally sinking in the scale of the problem. If the entirety of human civilization were to make global climate change their first priority - as in the same priority that Germany and U.S. gave WWII during the conflict - it still would not be enough to do more than minimize the effects. The scale we are discussing is just too immense for local and individual solutions. Any change has to be international and focus on the behaviors not just of individuals, but also government and industry.

    As it is, I think we've hit peak free market capitalism at the absolute worst time to deal with this issue. As little as a half century ago, if they had had the data, the world would have been in decent shape to move together to fix these issues. In fact, the global community, with the full cooperation of the United States, was pretty good at dealing with things like pollution and environmental degradation as late as the 1990s.

    But you can't fix collective action problems in a system where the government is frozen by deadlock and beholden to political ideas that put wealth and private property rights above all other concerns.

    Phillishere on
  • Dis'Dis' Registered User regular
    Emissary42 wrote: »
    Absalon wrote: »
    Fusion reactors could be 40 or 90 years away. Humanity has 90 years, many poor nations just don't.

    The exact timeline depends on who you ask, but they're definitely not a sure thing. There has been a lot more investment and interest recently, and Lockheed isn't usually a company to brag about black projects unless they're far more than onto something. The bigger point is if one group figures out how to build them, they'll almost instantly be proliferated as fast as they can be churned out for the purposes of national interest and environmental reasons. There's no reason to mine hydrocarbons if you have enough of them (so long Middle East, and thanks for all the fish), and there's no reason to have a fission power plant once fusion exists other than to produce nukes or certain industrial isotopes.

    Nah there's lots of useful stuff you can get out hydrocarbon deposits that would be insanely cheaper than doing it otherwise (plastics, sulphur, other compounds). Burning it for energy would be right out for sure though.

  • PhillisherePhillishere Registered User regular
    edited March 2015
    Absalon wrote: »
    More chicken and cheaper fish like cod, herring, pollock and dolphin-safe tuna (in cans though, because the big 'uns have too much mercury in them).

    Aside from the ocean acidification worries, global fisheries are being depleted rapidly. The move to fish is crashing the populations of wild stock. Aquaculture has grown, but it is also proving to be much more resource intensive and polluting than anyone expected.

    Chicken remains cheap, and there's definitely an argument that more people should keep chickens in their backyard, but the poultry industry is an environmental nightmare. Pollution from the waste runoff of the mega-farms is fucking up entire regions of the American Southeast, and the concentrations of that many animals together is creating disease incubators for animals and humans alike.

    And, thanks to the industrial nature of mass production farming, there are even issues with switching to an all vegetable diet. With its reliance on monoculture crops and chemical farming (pesticides and petroleum-based fertilizers), the farming sector is very vulnerable both to both climate shocks and resource scarcity.

    While I and everyone hopes for solutions through scientific breakthroughs, I think the quiet realization is that the human project cannot maintain seven billion and growing people indefinitely through existing methods. And since no one in power wants to address how to back down from that precipice, it looks like the next century or so is going to be a wild ride where nature takes care of the problem for us in the most brutal way possible.

    Phillishere on
  • monikermoniker Registered User regular
    burbo wrote: »
    It's not going to work like that moniker. The people who live on the coasts don't just disappear. They will come to your utopia and want your land and water.

    And they shall pay tribute to our majesty.

  • tinwhiskerstinwhiskers Registered User regular
    We've actually had several threads on this in the past. And I'm just going to recycle a couple posts of mine, because I feel they are still very germane. Which is unfortunate, because they are not optimistic.

    This is my go to post on the subject, because people i think just don't really get the scale of the issue. Power plants get stuck out in the middle of no where. So people see the one outside of the city and think that is what powers the entire county.

    Huge image
    2013USEnergy.png


    So the last time I posted this is was the 2011 Chart. https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/energy.html

    Here are the changes from 2011
    Total 97.3 ->97.4


    Solar 0.158->0.320
    Nuclear 8.26->8.27
    Hydro 3.17->2.56 (YAY DROUGHTS!)
    Wind 1.17->1.60
    Geothermal 0.226->0.201
    NG 24.9->26.6
    Coal 19.7->18.0
    Biomass 4.41-> 4.49
    Petro 35.3(25.1 transport) ->35.1(24.9 Transport)



    Want to replace coal plants, okay. We just need to increase the number of windmills, solar installs, and geo-thermal projects, by 900%. And keep energy growth flat. Electric cars, will require another 1200% increase...



    6ylyzxlir2dz.png
  • KaputaKaputa Registered User regular
    Absalon wrote: »
    More chicken and cheaper fish like cod, herring, pollock and dolphin-safe tuna (in cans though, because the big 'uns have too much mercury in them).

    Aside from the ocean acidification worries, global fisheries are being depleted rapidly. The move to fish is crashing the populations of wild stock. Aquaculture has grown, but it is also proving to be much more resource intensive and polluting than anyone expected.

    Chicken remains cheap, and there's definitely an argument that more people should keep chickens in their backyard, but the poultry industry is an environmental nightmare. Pollution from the waste runoff of the mega-farms is fucking up entire regions of the American Southeast, and the concentrations of that many animals together is creating disease incubators for animals and humans alike.

    And, thanks to the industrial nature of mass production farming, there are even issues with switching to an all vegetable diet. With its reliance on monoculture crops and chemical farming (pesticides and petroleum-based fertilizers), the farming sector is very vulnerable both to both climate shocks and resource scarcity.

    While I and everyone hopes for solutions through scientific breakthroughs, I think the quiet realization is that the human project cannot maintain seven billion and growing people indefinitely through existing methods. And since no one in power wants to address how to back down from that precipice, it looks like the next century or so is going to be a wild ride where nature takes care of the problem for us in the most brutal way possible.
    This is why I think making "save the world" the goal is unrealistic and arguably dangerous. It is letting the impossible perfect be the enemy of the maybe possible good (or "less bad," anyway). The belief that global industrial civilization can and should be saved, and that a population of 7-10 billion is in some way sustainable, mitigates against any realistic individual/collective solutions to the problem. If you believe that our current form of civilization is pretty much fucked regardless, your focus naturally becomes more local (and more realistic, in my view) - we can't save the world, but depending on where we live we might be able to save ourselves and most of the people in our geographical area. If you know the ship you're on is inevitably going to sink, bailing water out and trying to patch the holes is not the best course of action; you're better off trying to build a lifeboat and escape the ship.

    This isn't meant to advocate disengagement from national politics and such - if your lifeboat isn't finished yet, you have to keep bailing, if only to give yourself more time. But expecting national and international solutions to the crisis, or any worldwide solution, is only slightly more realistic than hoping Jesus returns in time to save us. As you and others have said, limiting consumption and attempting to shift from reliance upon global capitalism to more local and sustainable forms of production are our best prospects for survival.

    The downside to this approach is that some areas will be totally fucked. As someone who lives in semi-rural Maine, post-crisis survival, while daunting, does not seem completely impossible - we already produce a lot of our own food, and have the capacity to do much more. Much of my state is also very sparsely populated (north/west areas especially), which seems like it would reduce pressure on the environment. But someone living in Santa Fe, New Mexico or Riyadh, Saudi Arabia might not be so "lucky." My position might sound like it boils down to "fuck you, got mine," but it's more "I can't save everyone everywhere, but maybe I can save myself and the people I care about most."

    I also agree that the shift in public opinion on the severity of this crisis has been interesting to watch, and that arguments which many perceived as alarmist doomsaying a few years ago have gradually become more mainstream.

  • PhillisherePhillishere Registered User regular
    edited March 2015
    Kaputa wrote: »
    Absalon wrote: »
    More chicken and cheaper fish like cod, herring, pollock and dolphin-safe tuna (in cans though, because the big 'uns have too much mercury in them).

    Aside from the ocean acidification worries, global fisheries are being depleted rapidly. The move to fish is crashing the populations of wild stock. Aquaculture has grown, but it is also proving to be much more resource intensive and polluting than anyone expected.

    Chicken remains cheap, and there's definitely an argument that more people should keep chickens in their backyard, but the poultry industry is an environmental nightmare. Pollution from the waste runoff of the mega-farms is fucking up entire regions of the American Southeast, and the concentrations of that many animals together is creating disease incubators for animals and humans alike.

    And, thanks to the industrial nature of mass production farming, there are even issues with switching to an all vegetable diet. With its reliance on monoculture crops and chemical farming (pesticides and petroleum-based fertilizers), the farming sector is very vulnerable both to both climate shocks and resource scarcity.

    While I and everyone hopes for solutions through scientific breakthroughs, I think the quiet realization is that the human project cannot maintain seven billion and growing people indefinitely through existing methods. And since no one in power wants to address how to back down from that precipice, it looks like the next century or so is going to be a wild ride where nature takes care of the problem for us in the most brutal way possible.
    This is why I think making "save the world" the goal is unrealistic and arguably dangerous. It is letting the impossible perfect be the enemy of the maybe possible good (or "less bad," anyway). The belief that global industrial civilization can and should be saved, and that a population of 7-10 billion is in some way sustainable, mitigates against any realistic individual/collective solutions to the problem. If you believe that our current form of civilization is pretty much fucked regardless, your focus naturally becomes more local (and more realistic, in my view) - we can't save the world, but depending on where we live we might be able to save ourselves and most of the people in our geographical area. If you know the ship you're on is inevitably going to sink, bailing water out and trying to patch the holes is not the best course of action; you're better off trying to build a lifeboat and escape the ship.

    This isn't meant to advocate disengagement from national politics and such - if your lifeboat isn't finished yet, you have to keep bailing, if only to give yourself more time. But expecting national and international solutions to the crisis, or any worldwide solution, is only slightly more realistic than hoping Jesus returns in time to save us. As you and others have said, limiting consumption and attempting to shift from reliance upon global capitalism to more local and sustainable forms of production are our best prospects for survival.

    The downside to this approach is that some areas will be totally fucked. As someone who lives in semi-rural Maine, post-crisis survival, while daunting, does not seem completely impossible - we already produce a lot of our own food, and have the capacity to do much more. Much of my state is also very sparsely populated (north/west areas especially), which seems like it would reduce pressure on the environment. But someone living in Santa Fe, New Mexico or Riyadh, Saudi Arabia might not be so "lucky." My position might sound like it boils down to "fuck you, got mine," but it's more "I can't save everyone everywhere, but maybe I can save myself and the people I care about most."

    I also agree that the shift in public opinion on the severity of this crisis has been interesting to watch, and that arguments which many perceived as alarmist doomsaying a few years ago have gradually become more mainstream.

    There is no local lifeboat in a global ecological meltdown. There are just the places where the refugees are coming from, and the place where the refugees are going. Some societies might get away with mass murdering refugees trying to cross their borders, but the internal politics of such places are going to pretty damn nasty even without the refugee influx.

    Semi-rural Maine is only remote because there are other places where people want to live more. If it becomes a desirable location, then it becomes the Great Maine Refugee Camp.

    Phillishere on
  • TL DRTL DR Not at all confident in his reflexive opinions of thingsRegistered User regular
    Phasen wrote: »
    TL DR wrote: »
    And giving up meat, of course.

    How do I do this? Cause I feel terrible about eating all those animals but hamburgers.

    Incrementally! It's important not to let the perfect be the enemy of the good - especially with dietary choices for some reason, I tend to see people say "Welp I'm over my daily calorie allotment my 5% so fuggit let's go to DQ and get a blizzard!"

    'Meatless Mondays' work for some people as a way to experiment without upending their entire routine. If you find dishes and habits and routines that work for you and want to expand them, awesome! If it's really challenging for whatever reason (maybe you share the grocery shopping with non-participating roommates or your only grocery access is the local convenience store) and you want to hold steady or go to every other Monday, then you're still better than you were before you tried it.

    If you like I can dig up some guides but I'm not familiar with any off the top of my head. I will say that concerns about protein are largely fiction if you eat vegetables. Going meatless and subsisting on poptarts and cheeze-its not only defeats the purpose from an environmental perspective, it's not going to be healthier or cheaper. Meat substitutes are okay - generally expensive and anything fancier than a black bean burger is quite processed, but if it helps ease the transition then go nuts. Just be wary that if you go in expecting a hamburger you might be setting yourself up for disappointment. Homemade should be your goal.

  • TL DRTL DR Not at all confident in his reflexive opinions of thingsRegistered User regular
    On the subject of the impending climatepocalypse, I would like to point out that generally natural disasters like floods and earthquakes tend to bring people together, while scarcity makes us selfish, cruel, and irrational. Check out this water shortage in Sao Paulo: http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/feb/25/sao-paulo-brazil-failing-megacity-water-crisis-rationing

  • tinwhiskerstinwhiskers Registered User regular
    Why nuclear won't save us:

    Look at Vogtle 3 & 4.
    On August 15, 2006, Southern Nuclear formally applied for an Early Site Permit (ESP) for two additional units. The ESP will determine whether the site is appropriate for additional reactors, and this process is separate from the Combined Construction and Operating License (COL) application process.[15]

    On March 31, 2008, Southern Nuclear announced that it had submitted an application for a COL, a process which will take at least 3 to 4 years.[16]

    On April 9, 2008, Georgia Power Company reached a contract agreement for two AP1000 reactors designed by Westinghouse (owned by Toshiba) and the Shaw Group (Baton Rouge, LA).[17] The contract represents the first agreement for new nuclear development in the United States since the Three Mile Island accident in 1979, and received approval from the Georgia Public Service Commission (PSC) on March 17, 2009.[18] As stated by a Georgia Power spokesperson Carol Boatright: "If the PSC approves, we are going forward with the new units."[17]

    On August 26, 2009, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) issued an Early Site Permit and a Limited Work Authorization. Limited construction at the new reactor sites has begun, with Unit 3 expected to be operational in 2016, followed by Unit 4 in 2017, pending final issuance of the Combined Construction and Operating License by the NRC.[19][20]

    On February 16, 2010, President Obama announced $8.33 billion in federal loan guarantees toward the construction cost.[21] The cost of building the two reactors is expected to be $14 billion.[22]

    In February 2012, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved the construction license of the two proposed reactors at the Vogtle plant.[23] NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko cast the lone dissenting vote on plans to build and operate the two new nuclear power reactors, citing safety concerns stemming from Japan's 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, and saying "I cannot support issuing this license as if Fukushima never happened".[24]

    One week after Southern received the license to begin major construction on the two new reactors, a dozen environmental and anti-nuclear groups sued to stop the Plant Vogtle expansion project, saying "public safety and environmental problems since Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor accident have not been taken into account".[25] On July 11, 2012, the lawsuit was rejected by the Washington D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.[26]

    On March 12, 2013 construction on unit 3 officially began with the pour of the basemat concrete for the nuclear island.[27] This operation was complete on March 14.[28]

    During the weekend of June 1-2, 2013, assembly of the containment vessel began with the bottom head of the vessel being lifted into place on the nuclear island.[29]

    By June 2013, construction schedule has slipped by at least 14 months.[30]

    3 years just to get the 'clear trees and shit' permit, another 3 to get the permit to start actual construction, lose 6 months directly, probably more like a year, to an junk lawsuit from the tree huggers.

    Finally get the first concrete pour 6 years and 10 months after they applied for the permit. And the application probably took over a year to do if not more.



    this is a pretty fair article on the whole shabang.
    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/12/business/energy-environment/nuclear-powers-future-may-hinge-on-georgia-project.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&

    here's a more pessimistic, but probably accurate view.
    http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-07-18/the-u-dot-s-dot-nuclear-power-industrys-dim-future

    Updated:
    http://www.forbes.com/sites/williampentland/2015/02/09/southern-companys-discomfort-what-kemper-and-vogtle-plants-say-about-competitive-power-markets/


    Current projection for the project in 2019/2020 for V3 & V4 3 years behind schedule. Say they streamline things in the future, and can get building a plant down to say a 7 year timeline, and get the cost down down to the proposal cost for Vogtle $7b per.

    To replace just the US's coal fleet capacity of 317,640 MW, you'd need to build 320 new plants and will it cost roughly 2.3 trillion dollars.

    To get that done in the next 50 years is maybe doable, the next 20 is impossible. In 2010 we built 8 plants over 500MW(half the size of a AP1000 unit), in 2011 we built 5. Only 7 were anywhere near the size of an AP1000 unit. We put in ~20,000MW a year in 2010 & 2011, if we pretend that was all coal replacement(And I know all 7 of the 800MW+ plants were coal fired so thats atleast 6kMW that wasn't), we'd need to do that for the next 16 years with no demand growth just to get rid of the coal plants.

    There aren't that many EPCs who can manage building a nuke plant. There are none that can manage building dozens at once. In order to build the 320 units in 27 years(commissioning 16/year starting in 2022) years at 7 years a pop, overall construction would peak at 112 plants in various stages of construction at once. And would stay there for 13 years.

    From an engineering-talent side(and staffing the finished plants) the only comparison I can think of for this would be promotions in a major war. You'd have 22 year old junior engineers reporting to 26 year old senior engineers, reporting to 30 year old engineering managers. This is probably equally true of tradesmen for the construction. Hell even the materials side of things would be a crunch. We had a concrete shortage in the US this year. And nuke plants use almost inconceivable amounts of concrete. Let alone all the weird alloys you need to make the reactor vessels and other containment stuff.


    Most of that applies to fusion too. Sure the regulatory hurtles might prove easier, but at this moment ASME doesn't have standards for building the key parts of fusion plants. ITER is super behind schedule, and its schedule was very long to begin with. If fusion tech was ready today, we'd be hard pressed to build it fast enough, and it is not anywhere near close.

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