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18 comments on Electricity: How Much? From Where? What Fuel?

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baloghblog on March 17, 2006 - 5:38pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
First of all, these questions were not posed "as a poll" -- they were posed as a hypothetical, and meant to provoke thoughtful responses from the readers of this blog.  I agree with you that conservation and renewables, will not cut it as far as future development goes.  My point is that we will have to think seriously about the type and placement of future power plants.  I think that your response is fairly flip, and not constructive:

Of course if you ask the average person what he/she wants he/she will tell you that would very much want windmills located some 10 thousand miles away from his house.

This is not true, as ericr voiced as a comment on the previous post, who would not like windmills near his home.  However, future energy needs will need to be met somewhere.  "10 thousand" miles was not a choice in this hypothetical.  Living within 50 miles of a nuclear plant is more common than people would think.  I live within 50 miles of two nuclear plants.

You can make an estimate how much you would achieve by implementing this and that but you can not enforce everybody on the other end of the generation-consuption line to implement the measures you want. IMO you will be surprised how many people just don't care - even don't care what their bills are.

I agree, it is staggering the number of people that are ignorant of conservation and the energy crisis this nation faces.  However, the same way that you state that you cannot enforce everybody on the other end of the line to implement conservation measures, you cannot force the idea of new nuclear plants to be constructed in their neighborhoods either.  It would be political suicide for a government official to propose new nuclear in their district.

I think this is a legitmate poll to ask "Joe Everyman":

would you rather see rolling blackouts (a form of forced conservation) or new nuclear power built within X (50? 100?) miles of your home.  I don't know how the public would judge or answer this question, but it may be a situation that the country faces in the short term.

You propose 50% of your hypothetical budget for new nuclear, half of which will have to be spent convincing residents of the proposed area that it is a necessary to build it where they live.

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LevinK on March 17, 2006 - 8:22pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
First of all, these questions were not posed "as a poll" -- they were posed as a hypothetical, and meant to provoke thoughtful responses from the readers of this blog.

So it is not a poll, but a poll with argumentation. I appreciate that of course, but my experience in arguments tells me that you can defend any thesis if you accept a given set of assumptions. I definately could not accept the assumptions layed out in the initial post and even in the question asked and I don't think it is correct or fair to continue on that basis.

This is not true, as ericr voiced as a comment on the previous post...

That's why I used the exaggerated figure of "ten thousand miles away", because the instictive desire of everybody is to pick the option that least affects him/her and benefits him/her mostly, without balancing it with the consequences or even with the reality in general.

If I had to make a questionarie to Joe Everyone (whom I personally do not separate from) I would ask:

  1. Would you rather live by a nuclear plant and accept the minimal risk (hundred times lower than you to die in your car or from nose bleeding) for it to fail and emit radiation. The risks from radiation are... (btw much lower than it is percieved)... the waste will need to be stored which will cost... ta da ta da

  2. Live by wind mill farms, and accept with almost certainty that you will have to face power shortages in the near future, becoming ever worse with time going by. 99%-100% certainty of drastically increased energy costs (ok, now you will have to pay double or triple what you pay today, possibly rising with time). 90-95% certainty you will be subject to rationing or other forms of restrictions... A very great certainty your children will live worse than you etc. etc... (btw personally I dismiss the sound/landscape argument, as being too evaporative in face of shortages)

  3. Coal... also becoming more expensive... carbon dioxide... global warming... ruined landscapes... radioactive and other heavy metals emitted in the atmosphere, water and soils etc. etc.

An informed choice, that's what I'd try to offer. Anything else are half truths which are much worse than a complete lie. Like the good journalists very well know - answers are not that important, it is the question that matters.
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Glenn on March 18, 2006 - 10:10am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
These are the types of discussions about hard choices we need to start having. I remain open to all ideas, but I'm still not convinced that:

A) Conservation and efficiency gains can't reset our demand at a much lower level.

B) Taken together, a number of alternative energy projects (wind, solar, tidal, unconventional hydro, biomass, etc) can't get us past 20% of our needs and handle peak capacity issues.

C) Re-localizing energy production through distributed energy systems / batteries can't smooth out peak demand and reduce waste over the transmission lines.

Until we try these ideas in earnest, it's hard for me to support building additional supply. Specific to Nuclear, NY already gets about 30% of it's supply from that. Adding in conventional hydro and other renewables gets you to just about 50% from non-carbon sources. If we can reduce demand significantly and ramp up renewables, we could lower NY's dependence on fossil fuels from 50% to 20-25%. That's a much better place to start an analysis of how we would switch the remainder over to non-fossil fuels.

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