Can We Rely on Wind and Solar Energy? | 5 Minute Video
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- Опубликовано: 30 сен 2024
- Is green energy, particularly wind and solar energy, the solution to our climate and energy problems? Or should we be relying on things like natural gas, nuclear energy, and even coal for our energy needs and environmental obligations? Alex Epstein of the Center for Industrial Progress explains.
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Script:
Are wind and solar power the answer to our energy needs? There’s a lot of sun and a lot of wind. They’re free. They’re clean. No CO2 emissions. So, what’s the problem?
Why do solar and wind combined provide less than 2% of the world’s energy?
To answer these questions, we need to understand what makes energy, or anything else for that matter, cheap and plentiful.
For something to be cheap and plentiful, every part of the process to produce it, including every input that goes into it, must be cheap and plentiful.
Yes, the sun is free. Yes, wind is free. But the process of turning sunlight and wind into useable energy on a mass scale is far from free. In fact, compared to the other sources of energy -- fossil fuels, nuclear power, and hydroelectric power, solar and wind power are very expensive.
The basic problem is that sunlight and wind as energy sources are both weak (the more technical term is dilute) and unreliable (the more technical term is intermittent). It takes a lot of resources to collect and concentrate them, and even more resources to make them available on-demand. These are called the diluteness problem and the intermittency problem.
The diluteness problem is that, unlike coal or oil, the sun and the wind don’t deliver concentrated energy -- which means you need a lot of additional materials to produce a unit of energy.
For solar power, such materials can include highly purified silicon, phosphorus, boron, and a dozen other complex compounds like titanium dioxide. All these materials have to be mined, refined and/or manufactured in order to make solar panels. Those industrial processes take a lot of energy.
For wind, needed materials include high-performance compounds for turbine blades and the rare-earth metal neodymium for lightweight, specialty magnets, as well as the steel and concrete necessary to build structures -- thousands of them -- as tall as skyscrapers.
And as big a problem as diluteness is, it’s nothing compared to the intermittency problem. This isn’t exactly a news flash, but the sun doesn’t shine all the time. And the wind doesn’t blow all the time. The only way for solar and wind to be truly useful would be if we could store them so that they would be available when we needed them. You can store oil in a tank. Where do you store solar or wind energy? No such mass-storage system exists. Which is why, in the entire world, there is not one real or proposed independent, freestanding solar or wind power plant. All of them require backup. And guess what the go-to back-up is: fossil fuel.
Here’s what solar and wind electricity look like in Germany, which is the world’s leader in “renewables”. The word erratic leaps to mind. Wind is constantly varying, sometimes disappearing completely. And solar produces little in the winter months when Germany most needs energy.
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geothermal energy is some of the best renewable energy.
+Aaron Ainaire
Not every country has that resource (availability). More so, countries who have it, are also relying on tourism to promote "geothermal treatment". Think of the outcome when such _tourist hotspots_ (the term doesn't belong to me) close down for renewable energy projects and politics isn't something to rely on smart, long-term efficient, decisions (political campagins, manifestos, promises, bravado, strong arm and the rest of the potpourri that doesn't include honesty, logic, critical thinking, rationale).
+Aaron Ainaire The problem is that geotherman energy comes from high sismic places that make it not so safe to use... Nuclear ironically is the cleanest source of energy.
Hedley Quintana nuclear isn't the cleanest per say, hydroelectric power is pretty clean.
+Aaron Ainaire If that is true, why isn't it being developed?
Joshua Vig I said some of the best, I didn't say THE best. Like most "green" energy it's just not available everywhere. Not yet at least.
that still leaves nuclear energy.
it is really their fault tho? the country's near major fault lines.
But some country's don't use nuclear energy like is kiwis
Vaibhav Gupta I would agree, if they weren't warned by General Electric that the nuclear reactors were unsafe.
Confuzzled Tomato
That's true, but the entire thing could have been avoided if they took General Electric's advice and didn't use highly outdated and dangerous reactor designs.
+TheFishCostume I worked at a nuke for over 10 years and 6 refueling cycles. Unsafe? Please quit lying on the internet. Gasoline is unsafe and we have gallons of it traveling on the freeway at 60 mph. How many people are burned to death by gasoline every year?
Behold, my master plan!
Step One: Build factories.
Step Two: Get thousands of fat people together.
Step Three: Hire them to run on treadmills so that they generate tons of electricity. They will be paid by the amount of electricity they generate.
And we're done! Not only does my brilliant idea function as a cheap way to generate large amounts of renewable energy and create thousands of jobs, but it also serves as a weight loss program! IT'S GENIUS!
...or, uh, we could create geothermal and hydro energy programs... but that's too logical and boring.
Or nuclear!
+Reshad Alavera Geothermal and hydroelectric energy isn't available everywhere.
i think your factory needs a fast food chain inside .
+TheFishCostume I don't understand why people talk about geothermals as if there's tectonic activity under every country. So silly. More evidence of bad education system. Hydro and geothermal energy is geography/geology dependent. Not wishful thinking dependent.
+AdeToz that May be right, but you don't need tectonic activity for it, because the important thing for geothermal energy (which is already said by its name) is heat (thermal) by the earth (geo), which is everywhere, if you dig deep enough, I once knew how deep this was, but I forgot ^^ But when you dig that deep and then pump water there through a pipe, it will be steam and then it works like in any other power plant
Best renewable energy plan ever? Lots of kids... and stationary bikes.
... You're welcome.
Yeah, but more kids need more power when grown up. Reduce the world population, problem solved!
false, they need food, shelter, entertainment, health checking etc costing lots of money.
They don’t need entertainment if they have a 16 hour work day.
@@rederikviking9353 true, haha
I can certainly see how that would help, beginning with how it would keep kids out of trouble and keep them off their cell phones...
I can safely say this because I master cell phones and hate being lazy!
There's a TON of hot air and wind. Just listen to the 2020 Democratic Candidates
😅😂nice
Include your messiah and the Republican'ts Yuri.
I've read that one can burn shit, o even process it for methane. Trump and his followers are full of it.
@@albertrogers2506 : You say that now, Albert, but watch Sammartino vs. Koloff Steel Cage Match 1975
NUCLEAR is the answer. Every other energy source is shit in comparison.
Except wind, solar and even oil cannot do the devastation that nuclear can. Does Fukushima or Chernobyl ring a bell? Plus, what do we do with all the waste? It stays radioactive longer than the concrete we encase it in can withstand.
John Rocker Literally no one died in the fukushima meltdown. Chernobyl was horribly mishandled. In either case, the problems that caused the failure were entirely preventable and serve as valuable lessons.
As for waste, just leaving it out behind the parking lot has worked for past 70 years.
Until it makes it's way into the water table..
It shouldn't. If your plant is close to a populated area (for which there is no reason whatsoever, since you can build them anywhere), you can just invest more to create a storage facility. Nuclear waste is massively overblown as a danger.
John Rocker It certainly produces far less than fossils. Thousands die every year from the shit dumped into the air by coal plants.
What is the best source of power?
It's simple
Nuclear!
Tidal, can be timed to the second, for the next thousand years, with no ( half life) involved.
Alistair Ewen But what do you do at the top n bottom of the tide? More intermittent problems. I strongly urge people to learn about the gen 4 nuclear reactors and what they are capable of doing to alleviate problems (both past and present). Did you know that spent nuclear fuel still has 98% of its stored energy to be used? How about burning up weapons grade plutonium as a fuel? How about burning uranium 238 (which is 97% of the uranium out there as well as thorium. (The nature of the post fissile products (some of which can be extracted and have value on their own) can value add. The minute amount of ‘waste’ has a half life of 300 years. Please take a good long unbiased look at these reactors. The dirty F and C words (Fukushima and Chernobyl) are the steam engine trains of the 19th century in comparison to a bullet train. Even the damage caused by both of these accidents is grossly over exaggerated in the real terms of exposure and what is normal anyway. Please I urge you all to do your research.
Hi! Nuclear isn't the best!
Signed, the people of Fukishima and Chernobyl
@@justsomeguy934 the solution of that is built a nuclear power far away from people 200miles from community i mean isolated so even shits happen the people ate not in danger..the only damage is the people who work in nuclear power plant
Hydropower can turn itself on and off whenever it wants so it can be follow the demand of the Grid, even if there are intermittent renewables involved. I know they block rivers but still. If done properly it's good.
Hahaha, this guys whole argument is about “cheap and plentiful”, and a majority of the comments are for nuclear power.
If u want cheap then stay on fossil
Cheap nuclear energy is possible
France gets about 75% electricity from nuclear power and is prices are comparable to rest of Europe
South Korea actually reduced cost of nuclear reactor construction with design standardization and by building more reactors at each site, about 5-6 reactors, insted of typical 2-3 reactors we see in US Today
*Abundance*
Uranium is actually quite abundant, but it's diluted in sea, it can be extracted, some research programs have actually done that, i read somewhere it's about 25-30% more expensive than mining from land, but it can be done, or we could use thorium instead which is about 3-4 times more abundant than Uranium
yeah cause nuclear is cheap and plentiful
@@ΔημοσθένηςΒαρνάς It costs billions of dollars to build a single nuke plant. It isn't cheap at all.
LETS GO NUCLEAR!!!
I'll have a slice of that nuclear fusion
Fusion won't be much of an answer. Do you have any idea how much neutron radiation fusion generates?
Do you have any idea how much it costs? A new nucleair plant is 3 times as expencive as the same capacity in wind/solar, ignoring all the upkeep needed during production.
www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/assumptions/pdf/table_8.2.pdf
They also pollute less and are more reliable. I also doubt that this chart takes into account power storage, which is easily the most expensive part of an all-solar system.
Neutron Radiation is as meaningless as Microwave Radiation.
Alone no. We need Hydro, Nuclear and research in other more efficient sources of energy
The_Pyromancer yes.
Might as well just go all out on only hydro and nuclear.
Hydro is not practical in most places. Just let the market decide.
Hyrdo is a bit player at best. The electrical output of the Hoover Dam, for example, is worth less than the price of maintaining and operating the dam. It's a minor byproduct of a dam that was built for flood control, NOT electricity generation. And hydroelectric dams have enormous negative effects on the environment. They're handy for humans, but everything else suffers.
Solar makes sense for your rooftop. My home runs 100% on solar. The panels will pay for themselves in 20 years at current energy prices, but in reality will reach break-even in about 10 years as rates continue to skyrocket. HOWEVER, the panels are filthy to manufacture and require materials that can only be sourced from nations that are ideological and cultural rivals and which have nuclear weapons pointed at us. I highly recommend rooftop solar as long as the taxpayers are dumb enough to pay for it. In fact, it's almost at grid parity even without subsidies. But it can never replace the grid. It's supplemental at best.
Wind is a trivial energy source. We'd have to cover the landscape with a sea of ugly, unreliable, expensive windmills to even make a dent.
In the long run NUCLEAR is the only solution, supplemented by other sources. Especially rooftop solar. But going nuclear is a quarter century of expense and effort, at best, and if we wait until we NEED it it'll be too late.
Mickey Bitsko you forgot about the interest expense on the capital outlay for Hoover Dam. It never paid for itself. It was just a make-work project for the Great Depression by which the government claimed to solve the problem it created in the first place by making more problems. They would have been better off just borrowing the money and distributing it. At least then the people could do something profitable.
As for solar, there was a very easy way to do it, we can develop self-replicating robots that will convert deserts into superconducting Global power grids, on solar power alone. Maybe we could also temporarily power them with nuclear power to make them develop faster. But it is a very real possibility, since we already have self-replicating robots, they simply are not economically feasible in any other application.
what was the use of this video? he only brought down renewable energy and basically said keep using fossil duels. that'll work untill the natural resources run out or our environment goes to hell, which is already bad.
+Deynea, exatly my thoughts.
I don't think anyone who spends a few minutes thinking about it can claim that solar + wind are "the answer to our energy needs", but that is not actually the question we should have. So while everything mentioned in the video is true and the problems are very much relevant, there are other problems that are at least as relevant to us that are completely glossed over here. Four minutes are not even an good attempt to discuss energy problems of humanity.
+Deynea The amount of fossil fuels available to us is certainly enough, even by conservative estimates, to tide us over for at least a number of centuries. With the help of human ingenuity and innovation (made more practical by cheap, reliable energy provided by fossil fuels), humans will have developed a sound, and inexpensive alternative to fossil fuels that is far more sustainable, before these fossil fuel sources have come close to being depleted. For now, however, the only clear alternative available to us, if we wish not only to sustain ourselves, but to progress as a species and improve our standards of living, is to pursue and expand fossil fuel energy production.
+Ludwig von Rothbard i really thought we were running out of fossil fuel. But, considering you support the advancement of the pursue of fossil fuels, do you believe in climate change? Because it sounds like you dont or cant see the consequences.
The use of this video was to answer the question 'Can we rely on wind and solar energy?' which I think he did pretty well..
LEEDSmix Agreed.
Simple Solution: Use Nuclear and Hydro to do all of the heavy lifting instead of Coal
Especially since coal is a limited resource. Regardless of whether or not burning large amounts of it changes the climate.
@@kaic1649 Coal is the worst emitter of carbon dioxide, which may be catastrophic for the oceans by 2050. In the ocean, its acidity can inhibit coral formation. But even the sulphur and nitrogen oxides, the mercury vapour, and the lung-damaging fine particulates, are a better reason to quite using coal, than the limitations of the coal mines.
Nuclear and renewables, but hydro not. It's the worst renewable energy of all.
@@thepuirox1997 wind and solar are worthless. I think they damage wildlife more, per usable kilowatt, than hydro, IF the hydro has a decent fish ladder. They CANNOT be run without spinning reserve.
@@albertrogers2506 hydro has a biggest impact than hydro and wind, it destroys entire habitats, ecosystems, and destroy a lot of plants and that causes high co2 emissions, a lot of the hydro don't produce what they are supposed to produce. I also think that wind and solar are not so good, but if we continue to develop them, they could be better in the future. Same thing with hydro, but that has been for decades and there is not change.
we have to use better nuclear energy like thorium molten salt power plants.
+zombiewarking
Sure... but who pays? Last time I checked, companies that build nuclear power plants are oblivious on deadlines. This really needs focus, not mass-media circus blabber.
+Trexmaster12 there are government owned nuclear powerplant they could upgrade or switch and can tax companies that don't.
***** Great target for what?
+OXI Soldier The religion of peace, who else?
+Neil Carpenter there's no point targeting a thorium reactor due to the way they work
I run into this issue all the time: people hate fracking, but love wind and solar energy. Little do they know that we are expanding on fracking technology precisely _because_ of the wind/solar markets. Since these energy sources are so horribly unpredictable, we need a backup generator that can react quickly to the wild variances. The most ideal technology we have for this is a simple-cycled gas generator. Gas, as in natural gas, as in the same stuff we get by _fracking_. Meanwhile, simple cycle generators are not very efficient - that is to say, we use them for their versatility, not their efficiency.So if you hate fracking, you must therefore hate wind/solar energy. It's that simple.
Alex McGersey You bring up several good points, but you misunderstand my post. I'm not opposed to fracking at all.
The wind/solar industry really can't be supplemented by coal or nuclear because neither of these technologies are capable of reacting to the erratic nature of the wind/solar industry. The only technology that is feasible for this is simple-cycle gas power generation. These units typically have a fire-up timeframe of about 10 minutes. We are only building these type of electrical generators to cover our butts for when the wind isn't blowing.
FWIW, I work as an engineer in the power utilities. I see first hand how the money is being spent to turn the lights on. Even for many of the engineers who are paid to help build the wind farms we see popping up everywhere, this is all a bunch of garbage.
My original post was only meant to point out the complete hypocrisy of those who are the biggest proponents of the wind/solar industry.
Alex McGersey I apologize, I misread your first statement and didn't read your second statement at all. Mea culpa. I appreciate your exceptional patience in not calling me an idiot - in this case it would be warranted.
I still stand behind the larger premise of my previous statements. Both wind/solar come with all sorts of problems that most people realize - though you seem to acknowledge this at least in part. Of course we don't frack _only_ to support the wind/solar industries because the ideal use for natural gas is used for home heating. The fact that it does so _cheaply_ is a nice perk.
You say, "there are vast quantities of solar and wind power generated world wide free of fracking."
Where? How?
I wouldn't be surprised that in each of these cases, these places have to deal with much higher electricity costs, or intermittent black/brown outs. Neither of these options are acceptable for countries that want their economy to grow.
Alex McGersey "they supplemented 33% of their energy consumption with renewable sources. "
Renewable sources aren't entirely made up wind/solar. Burning trash, geothermal and hydro are considered renewable. The video was only making reference to wind/solar. I will admit that I don't care for how PU splits the difference, but their numbers aren't technically too far off.
But even if the 33% were accurate, what do they gain? They pay a lot more for their energy production. This is a huge burden to their economy.
I like the French model. Their energy rates are typically about half that of Germany's, while their carbon footprint is among the smallest of any first world nation.
"their wind grids are generating so much power, they're causing overloads in neighboring grids due to overloading the systems"
This is not a point that helps your argument. When a power source produces too much energy one day, and not enough the next, we lose both ways.
As the article states: "Poland and the Czech Republic are spending $180 million on equipment to protect their systems from German power surges..."
...this is bad.
+Alex McGersey You didn't refute a single word of Mr. Evans' argument. All you said was "I like wind" and "I hate fossil fuels." Doesn't matter; wind relies on something like fossil fuel energy, and can't produce a single watt of commercial energy without a corresponding fossil fuel or nuclear plant right next to it.
And the Germans are currently running away from wind power as quickly as their Teutonic legs can carry them, as though the wind turbines were on fire. They've had 15 years of dedication to wind, and in all that time have not reduced their carbon usage by a single ounce because of the reliance of wind turbines on fossil fuel plants. Now their power bills are out of sight, and they've had enough.
I still cannot fathom why American liberals think it is somehow praiseworthy to repeat the mistakes of 20th century Europe.
philWynk The US has had the advantage of enormous coal reserves, which in turn has provided cheap domestic energy. The draw backs to this are of course the enormous pollution implications. But, the coal industry has gotten much cleaner these days. When was the last time you heard about acid rain? Indeed this is still a problem, but _much_ less today than 20 years ago.
Understanding this is simple: to encourage economic growth, energy needs to be reliable first, and cheap second. Outside of France (who has quite possibly the smartest energy policy of any nation in the world), the EU is going in exactly the wrong direction on both counts. It would be wise for the US to not follow. Since the recession of 2008, a huge chunk of the economic progress we have made has come from fracking. None of this can be attributed to our current President nor his policies.
I live within 20 miles of a hydroelectric plant. The strange thing is, the energy it generates gets sent over 100 miles away, it doesn't supply the power to where I live.
+NecroLord Unless it is on a separate grid from your house (there are 9 in North America so it could be on the other side of an interconnect), then it does provide power to your house...supply and demand on a power grid is instantaneous across the entire grid (where the power lines go is irrelevant).
+DAN and who told you solar panels are cheap and renewable? solar panels have an average life of just ten years..
You people will eat whatever bs that is peddled by the other tree huggers ...
+Mike Williams No, there are 3, arguably 4, if you count Hydro Quebec as being separate from the Eastern Interconnection.
+NecroLord We have wind tower where I live and we don't get one watt of energy, all of it goes to the cities and by the time it gets there more then half is gone do to the distance.
Mike Williams I tried to find some maps of the serc zones and found many different conflicting ones. I live in south-central missouri, the power goes to St Louis. Some maps showed the 2 being in the same zone, others I found showed them being in different zones.
I just hate it when new technologies aren't perfect from the start! Grrr!
I thinks problem of solar and wind will be solved by something like Tesla Power Pack.
so utilities can have 5 kWh of power pack to replace 50 kWh coal plant.
+Vaibhav Gupta are you stalking me?
Confuzzled Tomato haha
Confuzzled Tomato my sentiments exactly.
+Vaibhav Gupta Powerwall does not have that capability. At least not yet. Only battery back up and not designed to be used on a daily basis. The idea is to have the battery shift the power to the peaks from the valleys. However, that technology should be coming out in a year or so from Enphase Energy.
+John Guerin Tesla Power Pack, which was the originally mentioned thing, is different than the Tesla Power Wall that you mentioned, however I understand your confusion between the two. Power Wall is designed to be, as you said, more for residential and occasional use rather than large scale daily use. Power Pack, though, was designed to be used in large industrial settings on a daily basis thus the problem of storing large amounts of energy on a daily basis is solved. Source: www.teslamotors.com/presskit/teslaenergy
I couldn't disagree more. there actually places in the world that gotten negative electricity prices due to the wind and solar
Geothermal is the cleanest and cheapest theoretically in a timely sense, just the how remains elusive.
There's a pilot project in Alberta to see if old oil wells can be tapped for geothermal energy, they're moving to a full scale plant next year
I'm honestly surprised that geothermal doesn't make at least 10% of the energy we use...
This video is just a pack of lies and complete non-sense, I can say this as an energy engineer. About 46 Percentage of energy in Germany is from Renewable and this figure will Increase from here on. Renewables are always reliable and all we need are investments, Energy experts and more importantly stop listening to Fossil fuel lobbyists
What about , gerbil power ?
if you want to use rodents, use big ones. They need far less food per kilogram of rodent.
@@albertrogers2506 You're right and Gerbils will eat each other is they get hungry enough . What was I thinking ?!👍 🙂
Thats what the middle east and central asian nomads use, they turned all of the grass into goats, horses, and oxen to power their civilization but it may have caused their areas to turn into desert.
You forgot that the UK used renewable energy only for a month and practically no one noticed because it generated a surplus of energy. It is reliable. But I still like thorium nuclear energy, it’s reliable, clean and safe. It is the way to go.
Angry Man, kittensofdeath, Let me refer you to thorconpower.com, where thay reckon that of course the thorium is actually consumed as uranium, and just for maximum discouragement of extracting weapons grade anything, thet add High Assay LEU as 20%, to 80% thorium in the fuel-salt. The point is to "contaminate" the actinoids for weapons purposes with the spontaneously fissile, neutron-emitting Pu-240 -- or even Pu-241 and 242.
The difference between weapons grade uranium and weapons grade plutonium is that the uranium version does not have too much neutron capturing U-238, whereas it's the neutron-emitting Pu-240 that makes bombs go off too soon!
@Lissa Popova no
So i am german. And if we can believe our newspaper our energy consists out of 25% of renewables. And something like energy poverty is a term i have never used/seen/heard of. And this video only describes the negative aspects of Wind and Solar energy, there are a lot of benefits too! Additionally what is the alternative? Using Fossile Fuels? That wont stop the climate change.
+4eversoccer100 Check the german Wiki article (and sources of course) on Renewable Energy. He's missing Biomass and Water, but even then his numbers are wrong.
And I agree, I never hear "energy poverty" in Germany as well.
+4eversoccer100 and more over, German Coal usage have risen because nuclear plants are being phased out.
+4eversoccer100 There is no energy shortage in Germany because the margins provided by non-renewable sources are large enough to cover any deficits from wind and solar. This leads to the completely opposite issue in fact. On sunny and windy days the powergrid would actually overload. To prevent this, the "waste" electricity is pushed into the grids of neighbouring countries for very high fees.
Unfortunately, neither the renewables nor the conventional plants are capable of high flexibility in power output, leaving only this expensive and ironic solution.
I say nuclear (thorium) until we have the capability to build a Dyson sphere.
When we get to the point where we have the technology to build a Dyson sphere energy will have stopped being a problem a long time ago.
You can get a Dyson sphere at Target. They're very manueverable.
We will get fussion long before that so I would say
Thorium until we get fusion
Fusion until we get a dyson sphere
The LFTR's most important property was not that it bred fissile uranium from thorium, which is plentiful but non-fissile. The really brilliant feature is that the fuel medium is a high temperature liquid that is nowhere near boiling point and does not require nine inch steel to hold it at high pressure so it won't evaporate.
The other advantages of the liquid state fuel-salt are that unlike ceramic solid fuel, the working fluid gets ALL of the fission energy immediately, and that the neutron-grabbing fission product xenon 135 is a gas, and can be bubbled off at the surface almost immediately.
@@abner20bushi Nope, we will invent things that require more energy. We will turn the entire moon and Earth into a giant quantum computer and we will connect our brains into the computer so that we can work on the next break through to allow us to compete with the people who invested on the older break throughs. Thats gonna take lots of energy.
One Problem in Germany is that we produce too much renewable energy, so that prices on the market are go down and our energy provider are not able to compesate that. Today we arrived at the point, that wind energy is really the cheapest energy type.
+Zar Putinov Oh and we pay really 5% more for energy but there is nobody who have to die, because of that.
+Zar Putinov no its not, theres a tax which provides that.
It is a rational decision. Cheap nuclear energy is an illusion, the long time costs are enormous. These 5% are better than a possibility of nuclear accident or diseases for employees.
+DerEchteSenf I think we are on right way, the reason for poverty is a natural behavior of capitalism not of the green movement.
Wind energy is now the cheapes type of energy in germany. that is a fact. www.google.de/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=newssearch&cd=2&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CCIQqQIoADABahUKEwij0Y7pydjIAhXMXRoKHfNdC8s&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.agitano.com%2Fwindenergie-guenstiger-und-lohnender-als-gedacht%2F87029&usg=AFQjCNH1PEqW-gfncVgNoQya5Ilj8cLFjw&sig2=2gdppgww_dI8QVzPoH98XQ&bvm=bv.105841590,d.d2s
Excellent explanation to those tree-huggers.
The backup for solar and wind should be hydro and nuclear, coal is not necessary.
The left hate nuclear because it is "dangerous"
And they hate hydro because it works perfectly and they don't want a solution.
But whereyou will put all the radioactive nuclear waste?
@Charzey That's incredibly stupid, solar and wind energies are quite inefficient and it's a complete waste to invest in them if what you're saying is true
However if the purpose is not to profit from the solar and wind energy itself, but from the publicity and claps you get for standing up for the evil Republicans who hate the nature, then yeah that would make sense
@@rustyscrapper I can't speak for others, but I have a few problems with hydropower.
1. The reservoirs that dams create often flood large amounts of organic matter that end up anaerobically decomposing to form methane. Recent studies have found that these emissions are nearly as bad as buring fossil fuels, and far more than the emissions involved in building wind and solar.
2. Dams are built out of concrete, and the production of concrete has large co2 emissions.
3. Dams disrupt rivers, cutting off important migration routes for fish that live in rivers, and changing the temperature, turbidity, and nutrient levels in rivers for the worse. These large local environmental costs ought to not be ignored.
4. Even if hydropower had no environmental impacts whatsoever, there is not enough of it to power the world. While there is 23000 TWy/year available in solar energy hitting the planet, and 25-70 TWy/year available in wind, there is only 4 TWy/year available in hydropower in all of the world's rivers. This is less than the global energy consumption of 16 TWy/year in 2009, and that is expected to grow to 28 TWy/year in 2050.
Fortunately, storage is getting cheaper, and there are even options emerging for seasonal storage, such as underground thermal energy storage, and power to gas, both of which are quite efficient. Relying on either hydro or wind is a bad idea since harvesting significant quantities of either can disrupt the environment. Solar panels can be placed on cropland without hurting agricultural yields, and using already cleared land would have no environmental impact. Given the immense amount of sunlight available, it is the best source of energy.
@1:45 Yeah, because mining and refining oil doesn’t “...Take a lot of energy!?!” It has more to do with the means of production are already in place. Oil and gas refineries cost tens of millions to build too. But that infrastructure has been in place for decades. It’s not because digging crude oil out of the ground, then refining it into gasoline is any cheaper or easier!
This video didn't age well. Sun and wind is really cheap.
It has aged like milk that has been stored outside of the refrigerator.
3:25
Gross energy production 2015 in Germany regarding wind + solar was just under 10%, but counting all renewable resources back then it was already about 20%. Last year in 2020 gross energy production for renewables was already more about 45% of the total energy mix, with coal producing an all-time low of less than 30% of total gross energy production.
And utility bills went down? Or up ?
@@MyMuse1111 They went up, because our government decided that it's a good idea that more than half of the price for energy consists of taxes 😂 but that's another story for another day.
Great news, you can tell Putin to stick his gas and oil where the sun doesn't shine. Same for the Iranian terrorist regime. The major source of "renewables" is wood chips, i.e. trees. Yep burning trees is so green. And Germany needs no heat anyway because its winters are thing of the past just like the "scientists" told us.
@@Rafa1589 bs
@@Brandon_letsgo right now gross energy production for renewables went up to more than 50%, so...
In other news, technology doesn't develop, coal prices will always stay the same, and the law of supply/demand doesn't exist.
New Zealand 85% renewable.Mainly hydro then wind.
Our electricity bills are horrendous.A month of electricity is roughly = to a weeks rent. $300-500.
Average income is about $850 pwk
Petrol = $2:20per lilter.
well that's the case for Germany. Here in Greece we are burned by the sun for like 250+ days a year and don't get me started in the winds in the Aegean sea. If we were not unorganised and less corrupted we could have many MWs of power from wind and sun.Like many other countries in the same geographic latitude. Really strange the guy doesn't mention not even one advantage on RES...
Theodoros Kefalopoulos Yeah here in turkey we can use this methods too. We have sun and wind way more then Germany but we are keeping to buy natural gas and burning coal. I don't say we can completely rely on natural methods of energy but we can increase it to a point that we stop polluting the nature and pay less money for natural gas
Theodoros Kefalopoulos And Ireland gets a good amount of energy from wind, hydroelectric and solar. Once fusion is working though, countries will go 100% clean
Way before my time, they were experimenting with Thorium nuclear reactors as well as molten salt reactors. Both are much safer than current reactors and they can produce a lot of power.
What we need to do is move from fossil fuels to more nuclear energy then slowly get into the more refined versions of solar and wind, or whatever will be better in 50 years. Unfortunately theres a bad stigma around nuclear energy, even though it can be safe and there are better redundancies to make them safer.
To use improved versions of solar and wind, we'd need an improved sun and improved weather. These are hopelessly intermittent and non-dispatchable power resources. That was the reason for the Industrial Revolution, and even the occupation of the woodcutter that we find in the old tales for children.
The fossil fuel industries have great power in the news and entertainment media. They know that ONLY nuclear can put them out of business. The stigma to which you refer is no doubt encouraged by those industries.
An example of that power is that NPR's NOVA has as one of its contributors the "Koch Fund For Science", which I particularly noted at the beginning of the video "The Nuclear Option", Twenty minutes of the first half hour of it was the usual talk of how much radiation and hydrogen explosions and even devastation that probably was all from the earthquake and tsunami, but no mention of the fact that all those who stayed at the reactor survived with nothing worse than, I presume, fatigue. But there was no mention of the fact that the option is the reactors of the second half hour that are immune to meltdown!
@@albertrogers2506 No, refined solar and wind energy means an efficient generator plus an efficient energy storage system.
@@xwtek3505 By far the most efficient energy storage system is the three isotopes thorium 232, uranium 235, and uranium 238. A few kilograms of any one of these contain as much stored energy as the largest electrical energy storage plant in the world. That's in Bath County, Virginia, and when fully loaded has 24,000 MWh , which is a day's worth of one GW power, 1000 MW. It has a higher reported efficiency than other pumped storage, but I'll believe their figure of 80%. At Gen 2 temperatures, one kg of fissile provides about 8 million kWh, i.e. 8 GWh. So 3 kg of uranium 235 is storing as much energy as the biggest "energy storage system" in the world. Dilute it with uranium 238, as fuel enriched to 3.6% and 2 kg actually provides and consumes 1 kg of fissile plutonium.
So we need about 66 kg of enriched uranium oxide fuel .
Generation 4 breeder reactors, for instance the USA's Experimental Breeder Reactor in 1986, or Russia's on-line BN-600 and BN-800, are designed to convert and consume the common isotopes to fissile ones. In a breeder reactor, every kg provides more like 10 GWh, because they can produce higher temperature steam.
Virginia's average daily requirement (I can't be sure of the peak demand)) is just over 10,000 MW. But worse than that, the sun and the wind are capricious enough that you need more than three times the average demand power, of maximum power rating.
Worse still, the power of the wind is proportional to the cube of its speed. A wind turbine is rather a waste of exceedingly clever engineering, although it really isn't a turbine.
At speeds up to 12 m/s, i.e. 27 mph, the blades present their maximum area to the wind.
So a wind power device with a maximum rating of 6 MW and a "capacity factor" of 1/3 does NOT produce 4 MW when the wind speed drops to 8 m/s (18mph). the cube of 2/3 is 8/27, so it doesn't quite deliver 2 MW at that speed. To capture the MWh that amount to 1/3 of the rating times the number of hours, you mostly have to store the energy of power near the highest rating.
Above the rated speed, they are designed to adjust their angle so as NOT to overstress the device with the force of the wind.
This means that the root of a 50 metre long blade has to have an accurately powered spindle that can nevertheless resist the leverage of quite a strong wind.
Sometimes they fail.
@@albertrogers2506 I'm not antinuclear and I think it would be a great substitute for fossil fuel, because of safety, eco-friendliness and great baseline performance. However, it is NOT renewable
@@albertrogers2506 Not to mention that we are actually discussing the future, so while energy storage system is currently immature, it can be still speculated that it will become the cheaper forms of energy storage system.
I have solar panels on my home. I send my energy produced to my electric company which they distribute to other households. It's kinda like I'm selling them energy so that they can sell to others. My last light bill was 3 dollars and this was in February. Every month since February my bill has come with a surplus energy credit which means I don't need to pay anything until possibly winter when my energy production decreases.
Do you get money for your surplus energy?
@@FrainBart_main yes electricity companies pay for your surplus
When one looks at the yearly power yield of wind farms, the annual power yield drops off into the low single digits. Due to man's inability to store electric charge in the amounts needed to power urban areas for extended periods of time in hours, wind farms integrated into the power grid cannot function without the backing of a conventional power plant that is usually fossil fuel driven. This is because the power yields off of a wind farm is uncontrollable and unpredictable due to atmospheric conditions. To properly operate an electrical power grid, power grid operators have to around the clock monitor power demand and quickly adjust the power output of a plant to closely match the demand referred to by engineers as baseload. Not doing this time tested procedure results in brown and costly blackouts. Because wind farm output power is neither predictable, controllable, or even reliable, power utilities that are forced to use this wind energy by state governments have to use fossil fuel driven power plants and what is referred to as peaker power plants. Peaker power plants are not much different than ordinary fossil fuel plants except that they can energize a lot quicker than standard plants during times of instant high demand. Peaker power plant do however utilize much more expensive types of fossil fuel. Because of the unpredictable nature of solar energy, peaker power plants are used much more often and inefficiently than is the case with a standard setup, raising the costs of operation and thus higher prices for the public while having to idle uselessly in case wind power yields cannot match base load power demands. As an example, the nation of Germany generated about 28% of it's national power for 2015 from renewable sources. Back in 2014, German solar plants ran at a capacity factor of a measly 11%. That contrasts to an average of over 90% for a typical American nuclear plant. Additionally, German electric customers pay about $0.39 cents per Kilowatt-Hour. That rate is about four times the national average in the USA. With the current technology, wind and solar power is the biggest public greenscam going promoted by the utopian political Left."
@Charlie K Even more to the point, it produces most of the energy in high winds. So if it goes into the nameplate production level at 12 m/s (metres per second) and up, varying the angle of attack of its blades for the higher winds, that's 27 mph. Suppose it is in a site so favourable that the expect a production factor of one third. At what wind speed can you expect a 300 MW wind farm to produce 100 MW? No, it isn't 4 m/s. It isn't even at twice that. The power of the wind is proportional to the cube, the third power of its speed, on account of simple physics. So at 2/3 of the lowest speed that gives 300 MW, you get 8/27 of the rated power, which is less than one third!
Hello German here never heart the term: "Energy poverty" "Housing poverty" is a new term. Rents went up by 100%. Buying flats and houses by 200%. Energy costs are not our Problem.
Held der Nacht energie ist ein ein problem hier du kek. Das wird von Jahr zu Jahr teurer
You re right, that weirdo is just some paid one for his lies by some non - renewable energy company.... As he was trying to persuade people that wind energy needs generaters and to make it, it cost lots of energy ha, ha, ha... Carbon footprint of each energy says how much energy it requires throughout whole lifespan of energy generation or power station - from building it, run it, to decommission..... This is how experts talk.... He was deliberately misleading public
You guys are paying a lot for electricity.
@@Brandon_letsgo They are paying high rent, high insurance, high taxes, high everything. Not just electricity, german, denmark, sweden, spain, portugal, iceland, ireland etc are a garbage countries now.
@@SlutGdanteChosenOneSwinger14 Spain electricty costs are 12% oc the salary
As a German with a wife working in the energy sector I can confirm almost every information in this video. One flaw: There are method to store the power from wind mills and solar pannels, via pumping water (in Scandinavia) or batteries (ok, those are still a subject of research, but are not neglectible).
The main problem, Gemany is confronted with, is that its power grid is not designed to transport those large amounts of energy from shore to south and to work with the fluctuations of injection from the mills and pannels. The latter lead to a tremendous increase of manual intervention into the grid, which is very expensive.
I hope, I could describe the challenges Germany is facing at the moment a bit more precisely and why it is still a looong way away the fossil and nuclear energy souces.
(And I am fully aware that there were some mistakes made by German politics on the course, and surely a lot that will follow, but that's life...)
Germans are paying roughly 4 times more for electricity than Americans. April 2022.
Visit your answer with the benefit of hindsight today.
Nuclear: The most efficient, the least waste, and even results in less workplace accidents.
And you also get a nuke bomb or a Fukushima or Chernobyl waiting for an accident that might take 2,000 years before it at safe levels.
Vigilante Salazar small price to pay compared to annihilating the climate
@@vigilantesalazar2864 not with a thorium reactor
Utkarsh Sinha
Let me first say this:
Nothing is 100% safe when it comes to man-made items. Under the laws of thermodynamics and entropy everything has its stable and unstable qualities. Everything is fighting disorder. When dealing with energy especially nuclear energy we get levels of risk and never 100% safety. The risk might be less than something else but never 100%. Thorium is just as dangerous as any other man-made energy system maybe less risk. The only safe energy is natural energy such as the sun. Even the sun has an expiration date to explode so it too can be dangerous.
www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a11907/is-the-superfuel-thorium-riskier-than-we-thought-14821644/
Chingo Putoh either way still annihilate the climate and environment after paying that small price.
Canada is 80%+ clean energys, most of which are hydro and nuclear. I understand that the USA is much bigger, and doesn't have the hydro capacity; however, nuclear is still a viable option.
Never heard of "energy poverty" or "Energiearmut" in germany. I had to google it.
tobi s werden in deutschland nicht atom reaktoren abgeschaltet während solar, wind und kohlkraftwerke gebaut werden? und dass obwohl atom energie billiger und sicherer ist all alle anderen? und umweltfreundlicher
Sponsored by your local fossil fuel producer.
Why don't you ever say a word about hydroelectric power?
It's definitely the cleanest and safest energy ever produced!
Its location restricted ! limited
Animal rights loonies (I mean REAL loonies, not that animal rights people in general are loonie) claim it’s harmful to fish breeding and is an ugly eyesore.
It's good when it can be implemented, same with geothermal
I agree about the problems with alternative energy, but there are solutions to those problems such as making the manufacturing process cleaner and using things like hydrogen for energy storage. The dirtiest alternative energy manufacturing country is China given how dirty they make batteries, solar panels, and wind turbines. The best way to make an energy source of any kind work is to analyze its Energy Return On Energy Invested (EROEI).
I think this video needs updating as battery technology has made huge strides in the last 5 years that makes solar and wind much more reliable.
No. Battery tech made almost no progres in the last 10(TEN) years. Let alone 5.
@@shashankkumar5163 There is no way to power any city by using any kinda battery. Modern socities requires reliable and huge amounts of electicity.
@@Brandon_letsgo space based solar power
@@shashankkumar5163 Can you show us a single example of that?
@@Brandon_letsgo "Solar PV or wind paired with four-hour battery storage systems is already cost competitive, without subsidy and power purchase agreement by selling peak power in Indian Energy Exchange, as a source of dispatchable generation compared with new coal and new gas plants in India"......From wikipedia of title "solar power in India".
Nuclear is the future!
batteries exist you didn't even bother saying how batteries could evolve in the future to hold enough power.
and you didn't even bother spending the five minutes it would take to go look up by batteries are not a viable solution even IF they could do the job. here's a hint; having enough batteries to store tens of times the average daily energy use, or having enough panels/turbines to be capable of producing that much, would be a disgustingly massive waste of money, considering you would only need those amounts for only a few days a year. the rest of the year they would be sitting there doing nothing. except of course costing you money to maintain.
Shadow Fan yes, i agree. But at the same time, don't forget that this video was made in 2015, before most advancement of large scale battery technology. Before Hawaii ever dream of powering one of their entire Island with Solar Energy entirely. Before Tesla Energy was really recognized as feasible. So... they was in the past, making video base on the past experience. Their other video is still great though.
soamd123 that doesn't explain why we shouldn't be focusing on advancing battery Energy and solar Energy. How about comparing with Geothermal Energy? They could only apply to some area of the world such as Iceland. What if we only apply Solar and Battery Tech at the area where their are more constant sunlight, let's say, Central America, Hawaii, Africa or Australia? That's enough to decrease our reliance on fossil fuel. (If you don't want to use it, fine, but you may also benefit from this in the way that "demand go down, excess supply, price go down"?)
Is it me or did this guy claim there is no free lunch (as an excuse to ignore solar) while trying to ignore the costs of Global Warming in both money and lives. BTW my neighbor had solar panels put on his roof and he is very happy with them and the sizable drop in his electric bill.
LIFTR - just one type of nuclear reactor among several others that is safer, doesnt produce waste that is toxic for hundreds of thousands of years (NIMBY), IFR is another that - if the plant loses all power like say a tsunami, as coolant shuts down - rather than spiral upwards in temperature to disaster, the physics of it causes the reaction to shut itself off and temperature spiral down -= no disaster. ITs operating internal pressures and temps are low enough that containment is much cheaper, not 9" thick steel. Then if some week you get all of the loss of coolant etc fixed, you can just restart it and sail on. Politically, we seem blind to exploring that road. Todays light water reactor design was stolen from nuclear subs 50 years ago as an immediate solution (And it can help make bombs, which we were totally focused on back then. ) Thorium is much cheaper and safer. Some designs have been so so, other thorium designs have been much safer, no nasty waste, self shutting down if things go awry. It has become "common knowledge" that nuclear is dangerous toxic and expensive. The Chinese are not bothered by public opinion, and I suspect they will lead the way in better safer reactors,. And we will eventually see how that is working and get a much later start by following their example.
You are correct in saying that the molten salt design, whether thorium or uranium fed, and the IFR design, are meltdown-immune, and indeed idiot-proof in that respect.
It's pretty hard to say that a reactor is "much safer" than LWR and the CanDU reactors which have NO proven deaths in the world at all in a little more than half a century. There has been exactly one incidence of deaths, that was the graphite-moderated RBMK at Chernobyl, and IT probably killed fewer people at a proven total of fewer than a hundred, than it saved during its lifetime from dying of atmospheric pollution from coal or even gas burning.
Another false and silly accusation made about currently deployed reactors is that of producing"waste that is toxic for hundreds of thousands of years". Anti-nukes are fond of it. It is silly because human civilization if it gets even as far as one thousand years from now will have things to worry about that are unimaginable to us.
But it is false because the radiotoxicity diminishes as a sum of negative exponentials. The older it gets, the less radioactivity, because it's radioactive DECAY. In the first five years, less than a thousandth of any isotope with a half life of half a year is left. The radioactivity has dropped by a factor of 400. It can quite safely be taken out of the cooling pond, allowed to dry or be blown dry by fans, and put in large casks of a concrete shell with a steel lining.
The idea that it's still so deadly it has to be buried is quite simply false, and even the NRC has said so.
There is a problem with this nuclear power, take the u.s example. It needs to produce trillians of nuclear to power the cars the u.s has, the houses the u.s has, the businesses the u.s has get it. And the 10 years thing, yeah take one year. Billions of tons of nuclear in one year, then there is the other year. The first year that nuclear gets put where?, to wait 10 years to use it for something else. Then the nuclear from the next year where will that be stored?, ok see where I am getting at, space. There is not enough space to store trillians of nuclear.
@@SlutGdanteChosenOneSwinger14 Clearly you know worse than nothing about actual waste quantities, and in fact even the trillion, correctly spelled, is a number, not a unit either of power or of material.
But the phrase "Billions of tons of nuclear in one year" is more factual. It is just monstrously wrong.
The actual figure is 25 thousand tons of natural U₃O₈, and 25 hundred of actual fuel that becomes "waste".
The EIA, the US Energy Information Agency, is politically influenced in its predictions and analyses, but its actual data are fairly trustworthy. You will find that the annual input to the entire US nuclear power plant fleet has been running at about 50 million _pounds_ of uranium oxide per year. That's near enough 25 thousand tons a year. To produce just one gigawatt of electric power for a year takes 2.5 million tons of coal, and emits about three times that mass of carbon dioxide.
Our present fleet of reactors, technically obsolete compared with either the MSR designs pioneered at ORNL in the 1960s, and the IFR at Argonne National Labs in the 1980s, uses uranium oxide fuel that has been "enriched" to 3.6% fissile uranium 235, by a process that produces 25 hundred tons of fuel a year from that 25 thousand. After three to five years in these quite inefficient but stalwart reactors, the slightly used fuel (it's still "richer" in fissile than the natural uranium) is still solid, and can quite safely be put in cooling ponds where the radioactivity drops by a factor of 400, and can then be given "dry cask storage" on platforms in concrete and steel casks about 4 metres high, an area that the mere ash from equivalent coal burning would need walls two kilometres high to contain it.
@@albertrogers2506 Ok how many cooling ponds does the take the u.s need, to store one years worth of uranium to store it for 10 years. And mind you there is the next year and the next for 10 years, to get the first years worth of uranium out to use it again right. So how many cooling ponds and where will the cooling ponds will be put to store?, see my point.
I am going by the amount you said takes to store 1 years worth, which is 10 years, by the years after. Which will need to store the other years, up to the 10th year to get even the first years stored uranium. By that time, there have been trilliens of used urianum on the 10th year. Again where will the u.s store the amount of urianum?. And, is urianum abundent meaning is there a lot of it like oil is?
@@SlutGdanteChosenOneSwinger14 You are totally wrong. To answer your question, one cooling pond per state should be entirely sufficient. Even with today's obsolete reactors (obsolete because of Jimmy Carter and the NRC), in five years, the total amount of wasted nuclear fuel in cooling ponds is 2500 tons a year. The radioactivity drops in those FIVE years by a factor of 400. In other words, the cooling ponds in that short time have got rid of as much radioactivity as the dry stored casks of the five-year-old product of the previous 2000 years. NOBODY has even been made sick by the handling even of the most highly radioactive "spent" rods.
This is going to look silly in a very short time.
Massive batteries, like the one Ellon Musk built in Australia.
2:31
They essentially are just car batteries stacked up in a house. The problem persist with batteries, they degrade quite rapidly and they are harmfull to extract from the earth. Every 1 kWh of battery capacity releases 200 kg of Co2 so there is no real benefit to current battery technology.
For some more context:
ruclips.net/video/jW75oqGKcdE/видео.html
ruclips.net/video/BfKTIYZ-8R8/видео.html
No need, just built your solar/wind farm next to a water dam and store the water.
Compared with pumped hydro, which is nowhere near enough to deal with a peak "renewable energy" load of 700,000 MW (i.e. the peak that 100% "renewable" would have to meet), Elon Musk's 100 MW achievement is very puny. Dinorwig in Wales can deliver 1,800 MW and store (pumping) at almost that power, or the biggest in the world, Bath County in Virginia --- 3,000 MW and 24,000 MWh storage, are still not nearly enough.
Note that 24,000 MWh is one gigawatt.day of energy. By my calculations from the published figure that one kilogram of fissile in a PWR reactor supplies about 8 million kWh, that's eight GWh, so three kg. of fissile in 300 to 400 kg. of "enriched uranium oxide" fuel, can deliver as much power and energy as the biggest hydro storage in the world, and it'd take thousands of tons of efficient battery chemicals to compete with that.
1000 kg = one tonne, which is about 10% more than one 2000 lb. "short ton".
Seriously your answer is to just use fossil fuels? Right so what happens then when we run out of oil and coal? You might then say we should turn to hydroelectric power or nuclear power. But hydroelectric power isn't widely sustainable on land so we need to find ways to extract energy from waves or sea currents in the world's oceans, and no matter how much people worship nuclear power it comes with great risks and it has been proven multiple times that humanity isn't able to control it if something goes wrong and it creates toxic waste products that we won't be able to storage on the long run. So yeah in stead of just degrading alternative energy sources because it's inconvenient to your comfi selfish lifestile how about as an actual capitalist to see the potential other energy sources might have - let entrepreneurship and the free marked come up with ideas that can make these power sources more widely accessible or ways to storage the energy it produce..
You can't just turn a power plant on when it gets dark it has to run 24 7 365 . It takes days to bring power plants on line .
that's not how peaker plants work.
That tide is changing. Our local utility refurbished a 50 year old plant with new GE gas turbines. From "go" to full output in ten minutes. This complements the new solar farm installed on the acreage just outside said plant.
You are entirely wrong about the nature of the problem. It is a handicap of solid ceramic fueled reactors only, and it was perfectly well known to Alvin Weinberg, who designed the best known one. He subsequently, in the 1960s at ORNL in the Molten Salt Reactor Experiment designed and proved a reactor immune to that problem.
One of the fission products of a nuclear reactor is ¹³⁵Xe , a xenon isotope with a huge "cross section" for capturing neutrons, turning it into ¹³⁶Xe which is the non-radioactive isotope, and more importantly doesn't capture neutrons. ¹³⁵Xe is also a decay product of iodine 135, and if the reactor is shut down, it builds up, and stays in the ceramic pellets. So a wise operator will delay restarting until he (or she) has allowed the ¹³⁵Xe to decay far enough.
In the molten salt version, being a gas, it can be and is bubbled out into a separate chamber, at the surface of the liquid. So the problem totally disappears, and what's more, the reactor is more obediently able to respond to sharp changes in demand.
@@steve32627 Solar and wind are devil-sent aids to the shale-fracturing methane gas trade.
It is popularly believed that receiving as much power from gas as from twice as much carbon is a huge improvement in combating the risk of deadly climate change, which is more accurately called global oceanic acidification AND warming. But methane leaks are tens of times as strong at capturing infrared energy, as carbon dioxide.
Worse, the harmful effects of fossil CO₂ emissions, are NOT proportional to the current emission rate, but to the total accumulation of atmospheric CO₂. So halving the emissions rate, only halves the rate of making the problem worse.
Remember that some of the energy of wind is used (at least in Spain) to repump water into dams to compensate the problems the video points out. Energy storage.
The biggest pumped hydro storage in the world stores less energy than is available from 3 kg of fissile nuclear fuel, using today's inefficient PWR technology, and even that is safer, cleaner, more reliable and environment friendly than any non-nuclear technology.
Yea that is true. But to have a lot of capacity you need a lot of height. If theres a lake on a mountain, good. But wherever there are no height differendes this doesnt work.
So your argument is that one of the problems with renewables pointed out by the video is to use some of the energy generated by them (which can’t put a dent in our needs in the first place) to address just one of them?
That’s like using the bilge pump on a sinking ship to direct water away from the computer room. Yeah, you don’t want that stuff to get wet, but you’re not seeing the forest for the trees here.
@@TBustah Projective blaming fallacy. There’s not enough yet because the lunatic right wing has done everything it could to stop it. Lying, cheating, stealing elections with gerrymandering & voter suppression, horrendous abuse of power... They’ve poured tens of billions into an coordinated industrial campaign of lying.
There is, however, more renewable energy than nuclear being used, & almost all new energy being built now is renewable.
How much energy in concrete does it take to build a nuclear power plant? How close would you want to live to a nuclear power plant? Would you want to live downwind from a coal fired power plant? Where do we locate the gas and petroleum storage facilities how close do you want to live there? The price of oil gas and coal can fluctuate the price of sun and wind is consistent.
Consistently expensive and consistently unreliable. You cite problems with nuclear and fossil fuels as if they never existed and we have these issues that we never thought of. People have lived next to nuclear plants for decades all over the world. Coal fired plants are being replaced with natural gas. Coal fired plants would be embraced by people who burn wood and dung in their homes.
@@anthonymorris5084 Gas is as bad as coal for climate. Scores of studies show it.
Nukes have had serious accidents all over the world for decades, & if we try to build even a small fraction of the ones we’d need to make the world nuclear, the world would be nuclear. Very unpleasant.
Efficiency, wind & solar are the cheapest energy sources of all. Even including batteries, W&S are still cheapest. So they (& other renewables) are the things that make the most sense for rich & poor alike.
@@anthonymorris5084 you didn't answer me How close are you willing to live to a nuclear or gas/oil powered power plant.? Must be dangerous to have a solar panel on the roof. Why you could get...ahhh well the birds will...ahhh my children will ....ahhh
@@J4Zonian You're citing fallacies. If wind and solar "made the most sense" they wouldn't have to be subsidized and mandated. Data clearly shows that within the Western world nuclear is the safest form of energy. Planes also crash, but planes are still the safest form of transportation, and nobody is banning airplanes because they crash.
At what price does oil and gas have to be for wind and solar to be cheaper? You don't even know. Wind and Solar will never be cheaper because they require coal, nat gas, or nuclear to back them up. Why do climate zealots keep ignoring that wind and solar are not reliable? There is no battery technology in existence today that can power a city. Batteries will create unprecedented mining operations. It's a fool's game.
How can bull dozing farms, forests, meadows, jungles and deserts to lay hectares of solar panels be characterized as "clean" or "green" energy? This represents permanent and unprecedented plant and animal habitat destruction. I thought that this was what we were trying to avoid.
@@earllsimmins9373 Because it's a stupid question. Millions already do and you're obviously already aware of this, so why ask this question? I have no problem living near a nuclear plant, are you any wiser now?
I understand and agree with the logistics of this video, but I disagree with the idea of giving up on renewable energy. There is too much energy given to us by the sun alone to think that there's not enough to use. Imagine how many coal and nuclear plants it would take to simply keep the earth warm if the sun were gone for good, that's how much energy is available from the sun alone, not to mention wind and water.
Well its all great if you do not take into account external costs. The dangers of the nuclear accidents and the falling prices of installed wind and solar have now become cheaper than some coal and gas. Germany produces about 28% of its energy from renewables... So I don`t know where you got those facts. Germany has had a huge net benefit because they have been able to export there new market goods and expertise. There is also a reason China is installing more wind and solar than the world combined. I was in Beijing last year and it is a must, you can hardly breath! Anyways I love your other videos but this one is pretty much all wrong. Regardless of whether we agree on climate change or not...
I am from the USA, Im republican but I also have studied in Germany my masters in Renewable Energy. I disagree. We have a max of 400 yrs of coal and there is no sense in releasing this into the atmosphere. WE need renewable sources and smart grid to use the electricity when it is produced. As we transition to electric cars the grid will be much more flexible. As I should know I worked at the one of the largest power transmission companies in the USA before coming here.
P Mason Local generation is too inefficient to install this is why residential solar costs double the cost of utility scale, which is more than enough to pay for transmission from regional solar hubs. I have my Bachelors and masters in Renewable energy power systems and HV electrical transfer with a specialization in Energy storage, I might take your consideration. Batteries actually use almost no lithium. They are called lithium ion batteries because of the lithium ion transfers but inside there is normally no more than a lithium coating of a few grams. This layer is getting thinner with nano technology and who knows fuel cells are making great advances. Lithium is 100 recyclable. :)
P Mason Well of course I think most people support that. Local utility scale is the best option.
+Gunnar Shaffer The European economies are subsidizing "renewables". The ACTUAL cost is far higher than the propaganda pretends. I'm not opposed to that. It is a country's choice to divert funds to clean energy...........just don't LIE about the cost.
+Robert Simpson Don't lie about the cost of fossil either - wars, pollution, destroyed ecosystems involved in mining and disposing. Just because they are harder to quantify doesn't mean they don't exist.
You have a point, they won't work alone, which is why hydroelectric power and nuclear power are needed, they provide a backup system.
His point is that we must use only fossil fuels. He shills for it.
They do not have a point, because chemical energy can be (and has been) created from electricity.
You can make GASOLINE ITSELF using water, carbon dioxide and solar panels.
Think about it. How do you suppose plants managed to make the hydrocarbons in oil to begin with? Did they have to burn coal, to bootstrap their photosynthesis process?
watching this video all I can think is "last gasps" and "koch"
They have their issues sure, but if it works well enough for an place why be opposed to it. I know it's because PragerU receives funding from a fracking company, but logically
Wind and solar (in addition to hydroelectric and geothermal) are exceptional *SECONDARY* sources of power, but they really do lack the capacity to be replacements for current primary sources without unprecedented jumps in technology to offset efficiency and economic concerns.
*HOWEVER*
There is *ABSOLUTELY ZERO* excuse for our current dependence on fossil fuels, and in truth we should have largely phased them out in terms of power generation decades ago.
Nuclear power generates nearly exponential amount of power versus the economic investment, and contrary to popular opinion they produce a fraction of the pollution. Furthermore we have stubbornly *REFUSED* to invest research into Thorium based reactor technology, which has been proven to generate as much or more energy than current generation nuclear reactor while creating zero nuclear waste (fissionable material) as a long term by product.
I'll have the discussion about the unsustainability of Wind and Solar as primary power sources as soon as the advocates making those claims admit that we DO NOT NEED fossil fuels for power production, we haven't for decades, and we only keep them around because certain interest groups get rich so long as they are used.
+TymeTwyster Dollar for dollar, Nuclear gives you the most bang for your buck, no pun intended
Missed out on one small detail.
We can store energy from wind and solar.
They are called batteries
Salman Hisham on a large scale? There is not enough lithium in the world to make that much batteries. The earth would be destroyed from all the mining in search of lithium
Did you know that the production of lithium-ion batteries is one of the most destructive things we can do to the environment. Every 1 kWh of battery capacity releases 200 kg of CO2.
We used to have wind power ships and wind powered agricultural machines and hydro power factories but what made them obsolete fossil fuels
Wind Farms have been declared by some to be a health hazard. According to experts the infrasound the turbines create (more studies are needed argument has been tossed around)
can cause a host of problems for animals, humans and plants.
Perhaps even more to the point, the irritation and sometimes sleeplessness which the infrasound causes at least some people, depresses the value of property in the region. That cost should be charged to the wind turbine owners, and recompensed to the victims.
Dude this guy looks like he doesn’t even know where he is or what channel He is filming for Jesus people please go anywhere but prageru for this kind of information
We need nuclear Energy.
I'm from brazil and some years ago,our ex-president Dilma Rousseff told a UN conference that we need a way to stock wind,that's a example of a conscious person,idk why she suffered a impeachment tho...
As someone in the field of renewables, this video gives me a great laugh. There's so many amazingly ridiculous logic jumps and misinformation spread all throughout this video lol
Name one.
Greg White wind turbines are much shorter than skyscrapers, ~130m max
Skyscrapers are defined as tall building over 100M. The newest turbines like the Vestas V164 = 220m. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skyscraper
Oh wow I didn't know skyscrapers were defined as over 100 m, thank you for providing me with a fact and citing your source Greg. Industry standard is to measure the height of wind turbines by how tall the tower is. If you include the blade diameter, yes you could say the turbine reaches a height of 250 m or so above the ground, but that is not how they are typically measured.
Let's try another point: 3:06: stating that fossil fuel use in Germany has increased with integration of renewables, just as I said 130 m turbines are "much shorter than skyscrapers", is objectively false (130m>100m) because DE fossil fuel consumption before renewables> DE fossil fuel consumption after renewables. Fossil fuel consumption has been dropping steadily since renewables really began in Germany in the 90's (and even earlier). As you did Greg I will also provide a source for you to verify what I am saying: data.worldbank.org/indicator/EG.USE.COMM.FO.ZS?locations=DE I hope you enjoy looking through the data on the website, there are plenty of data for different statistics on energy usage in different countries that I hope you will find interesting and insightful.
Germany's co2 have emissions have gone up for the last 2 years and they have scrapped their 2020 emissions goals. Where did that co2 come from? www.cleanenergywire.org/news/germanys-energy-use-and-emissions-likely-rise-yet-again-2017 and here uk.reuters.com/article/uk-germany-politics/german-coalition-negotiators-agree-to-scrap-2020-climate-target-sources-idUKKBN1EX0OW and here weather.com/science/environment/news/2017-11-28-germany-ancient-forest-coal-mine
Soooo, if l build a perpetual Motion Device that ONLY WORKS 1/2 the time, It's as efficient as Solar Power, Right??? l know, l'll use batteries for the Other 50% of the time...Yeah, THAT'S IT.......
like si vienes por clase de física
sisisisissisis
So are you saying we should continue to rely on oil, gas and coal exclusively? Whatever are the problems with wind and solar, they pale in comparison to those of continuing to drill, frack, mine for fossil fuels, then burn them and fill the atmosphere with CO2. And continue to be at the mercy of Russia and Saudi Arabia, who control the flow of oil and gas, and thereby its price. Be aware that PragerU is funded largely by people with a strong interest in delaying the adoption of renewables.
This guy is literally exactly how the stereotypical greedy oil businessman is portrayed in political cartoons and environmentalist movies.
If we should or not is not a decision we can make. It is an absolute necessity if we want this planet to survive
Whilst Prager U argue that fossil fuels are good, they don’t propose alternatives for when they run out.
@@maxleonard5723 Which leaves waste we cant just dump. Renewable has no such drawbacks.
@@frangipang1955 source please
Well when they run out,you won't be able to manufacture renewables! And like peak oil,we still have 200 years of supply,so that is not a problem!
Green energy is as useful as dark energy to us at the moment. This guy needs to get his ass to Australia so he can talk some sense into our leaders
I disagree won the "weak" part. My home is 100% runner on solar panels while selling as in buy back my own energy so I'm making a profit that goes to free snacks at 7 11
We should put leftists in the matrix battery packs.
I agree that solar and wind plants should not be subsidized. But we can do it the capitalist way by making it more affordable. Only spend money on research until it's competitive.
Question: although fossil fuels are cheaper, the argument has always been the need for clean energy. Solution?
Solar and Wind Energy is not clean batteries is made of different metals the take a lot of Energy to mine and it's impossible to take anefe Energy with soler and Wind Energy
@@loona7740 well you've got to move on towards renewable at some point because that's the future so bit of hardwork for mining will not be of any waste.
@@vaibhavnagare8549 Or we just go with nuclear so we don't have to mine half of the world to get some shity solar-powere that only last for 15 years we will die because of a lack of resources before we die of global warming and also the big problem isn't the way we gets our energy it's about how much resources we use please stop thinking that changing the way we get power will solve climate change there's only one way to really solve climate change take down capitalism and stop using as much resources.
@@loona7740 look there's this interesting things coming up called smart grid I don't know if you're aware of it but do your research because smart grids will be amazing to work with solar and wind
I know this is an old-arse comment, but fossil fuels are not cheaper. They are heavily subsidized to be affordable to the average person, yet renewables are still cheaper (and are almost completely unsubsidized). And that's short-term! Not even including the environmental cleanups we will inevitably end up needing to do per GW generated using fossil fuels.
Fossil fuel are way more efficient and low cost. All others are subsidised to try and make it even considered. Without governments paying the costa it can't compete.
Fossil fuels are still heavily subsidized
Great job Alex. Well compressed facts in four minutes!
Where I live, some street lights operate on solar energy, it works, but I'm sure it's expensive as hell, wasting money which could be used for better things, like nuclear.
disappointing...
Irrelevant facts and information,
One form of energy is only expensive to another in comparison, to to free...
One year from the upload date of this video. We've already solar electricity cheaper than coal in many places. In India, punjab they cancelled plan for a coal power plant because it was costlier per unit than a solar plant, which is the new plan now. And guess what, modern solar panels return all of the energy debt (that was consumed during the manufacture) in 1 year. The same number for a windmill is 46 days. So, after that time, it's basically free except for the maintenance cost, which is negligible.
Solar electricity cheaper than coal? No, you are lying and you know it.
Just here to remind comment section about using nuclear power
Don’t dump those damn nuclear waste barrel on the ocean, put it in your country soil. It is your problem, not the ocean nor other country problem.....
It's fine to dump them in the ocean. It will get diluted
Short answer: no
Long answer: definitely no
Homo Sapiens: Doesnt use or try to use actual solar and wind energy
Also Homo Sapiens: We cant use solar and wind energy beacause we havent been using them before and we dont know how to overcome their problems, therefore they are useless.
Great logic PragerU, as always.
We should continue to make progress. But as reported, the sun and wind are not really great solutions right now.
konroh2 they are
@@shashankkumar5163 If sun and wind were great economical solutions that were completely equal to others, we'd be using them.
@@shashankkumar5163 That's great. Hopefully the use of the land will have great electrical benefits and be economically sustainable. But solar/wind are still blended with oil/coal in order to maintain effectiveness.
Hydroelectric ftw!
Bat'el Shimoni hydroelectric destroys ecosystems
Yes. Yes we can rely on Wind and Solar Energy.
If it's a Dyson Sphere.
This is my take on it, from a non-scholarly but free thinking perspective.
We will run out of coal and oil one day. It's not a question of if, but when. Maybe in 50 years or 500 years, but one day future generations will look back and judge how generations such as ours today reacted to this notion.
Have we completely given up on pursuing reliable, renewable, doable, cheap energy?
Wind and solar are honorable endeavours, but we shouldn't be reforming our energy dependance on something that's too costly.
Oil and coal produce pollution, we shouldn't be heartless and pass on the problem of over-pollution and destruction of environment to future generations.
The answer, in my opinion, is, at a reasonable cost, diversifying, continuing researching, and in the meantime start putting more dependence on nuclear. Nuclear is safe, creates no pollution (other than radioactive waste which can be disposed of prudently and promptly).
It creates an extraordinary amount of energy and we have the technology to pursue it now for the foreseeable future.
Until wind and solar, as well as other ones like; geothermal or wave or tidal, or a completely other form of energy, becomes cheaper, and more feasible, nuclear is the answer.
Let's strive for the good of humanity; creating a good future, and keeping energy safe, cheap, reliable and feasible, no matter the source!
Filip Karwowski
Renewables can't even sustain themselves, so if we run out of coal, oil NG and nuclear renewables will go in the dustbin with them. The only viable source present is nuclear.
Filip,
wind, solar, wave tidal are all low density sources of power and all are, with the possible exception of wave, intermittent. None can react to load variation. Time and technological advances are not going to make thes sources of power much better than they are now and cost is not going to come down much as theer will still be the requirement for back up generation.
you need to look at energy in the terms of concentration
bay far the most concentrated source is plutonium, and it can be farmed in a fast breeder reactor
how do you think the usa and others made it for the nuc weapons
Your head is diluted !
I just noticed that the sun has come up every single day since I was born.
And funny thing is I have my own free standing independent solar power system on my roof which just so happens to produce 40-60 KWh every single day which powers our home and two rental units fully. And even more silly is we don't even use all the power we produce so we give 10-20 KWh back to the grid and our community each and every day. We use our shiny new lithium batteries to run on all night long (yes air conditioning in all three levels too) and we never suffer from the utility grids regular daily power outages, brownouts and appliance frying power spikes.
Extra bonuses include :
Never having to pay another power bill as long as I live. Feeling good about being environmentally friendly.
Feeling secure in our independent home and sharing it with others.
And sleeping comfortably at a nice cool air conditioned 72 degrees each night as we aren't too far from the equator and it tends to get a bit toasty !
I'm convinced the Dennis Prager gets off to videos of oil wells
That comment is lame.
@@amarreder6241 Do you think he gets off to coal mines instead? Maybe just a video of people beating seals to death?
The guy didn't blink a single time for the whole video.
you think he's on "medication"?:)
+zernestro No. He is on fossil fuel.
False, he did blink once near the end 4:10
NO NO NO THIS ISNT TRUE! Solar and wind are becoming cheaper and will only continue to become cheaper
Solar panels have a limited lifespan and can only be made so cheaply without defects. Wind power is ridiculously expensive to maintain (thousands of turbines hundreds of feet up - expensive to assemble as well as keep operational)
Once the tax subsidies end there will be no hiding how much more expensive and inefficient they are.
its sad that only 8k people understand what your saying. Ive shared your link with so many people who think we can just abolish fossil fuel stations overnight. You present such a balanced thoughtful and super easy to understand explainantion, yet still people are ignorant.
I work in this field and i can totally understand what you mean.
Its painful
Of course, not instantly. I don't think anyone save for some are asking for overnight revolution where we install solar panels and burn oil power plants. I do argue that solar panels are better suited for local uses like a home or a business. But it means that we shouldn't just ditch renewable energy. It's a developing market, you see. Over time, new tech will make solar energy to be able to compete with coal or oil in providing the same power.
Though nuclear is best. You just need to worry about what to do with those wastes, that's all.
Small CASE STUDY - i have $1000 worth of solar and battery i installed myself powering my shed and aquaponics set up in Australia. It uses 1kwh/day @$0.26/kwh so after 12ish years it's paid for itself. The larger the system the faster the ROI. This is my real world experience.
It is very close to being cheaper than grid prices for any person reading this, that has a free standing house, to go off-grid and be independent of the grid and the fluctuations and control that comes with it. In my experience with what was available to general public in 2018 in Australia.
@Franz Huber Proof of concept set up. Panels are warranted to have 80% output after 25 years. Batteries are specified to last 5000 cycles, thats 5000 nights. If you can stay alive another 10 years you will have batteries on your house i promise.
This battery also powers my fridge in the event of a blackout, making it a critical item, and powered my computer and TV during earth hour just to make the point.
There’s a technical counter argument to everyone of these points. Conservatives are embarrassing themselves over this renewable energy and EV debate. Basic laws of physics and economics prove that EV’s and renewables will win out by the end of the decade.
🤡
Of the 2050s decade
@@martinyarbrough1609 wanna bet?
@@drewgoodman7932 Obviously martin knows s/he would lose the bet. Excuse me, HAS lost.
@@J4Zonian Martin is not a big physics guy….. or economics, or debate.
I saw a good video by Tom Scott where he gave a great suggestion of using the increasingly popular electric cars, that have batteries and computers, to store the energy and be able to sell it back to the grid when it is needed. Once electric cars become mainstream, having millions of batteries all connected to the grid may help solve the storage problem of wind and solar!
Does anybody know of a battery that is even predicted to last 50 years?
I usually agree with this channel but we can't keep using fossil fuels.
They are not suggesting we do. They are looking at the reality of the current paradigm and we are currently stuck with fossil fuels. Further solutions may appear with invention.
Don’t compare to Germany. Compare to France with over 70% of its energy from nuclear. The French actually sell off 3 billion euros in excess energy each year. France is planning on scaling back nuclear in favor of renewables but I’m curious how this will financially impact its citizens with higher energy cost and taxes.
Why anyone would replace nuclear power plants with renewables when there is an abundance of nuclear fuel is beyond me.
This is great. Thank You.