could someone more clever than me please tell me why we couldn't

>>719861474
Not a fast enough method.

Sun doesn't shine all the time.
would be way to expensive

'fucking huge'
like if some company or rich dude invested in a stupidly large scale parabolic mirror or something you would get tons of power right?>>719861521

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_thermal_energy

>>719861559
what would be expensive after the initial cost of building the structure?

>>719861585
dont think u get what im saying

>>719861474
>Overcast

>Shut down all the factories!

>>719861474
cuz this more efficient

>>719861647
you could still rely on other forms of power for when the suns not up

File: 1457264959089.jpg (77KB, 781x643px) Image search: [Google]

77KB, 781x643px

>>719861474
That would be really fucking boring.

>>719861474
Nighttime.

>>719861474

Overcast, temperatures, daylight hours, and daylight hours in winter are even worse. Once you run out of temperature, water won't heat up enough to drive a turbine.

Also, I have doubts we can heat water up enough to boil it into an efficient steam, without the cost/facility size being a factor.

>>719861657
build a bunch of them? apart from maintaining the turbines and the surface of the mirror and general stuff like that there wouldn't be many on going costs apart from more profits from producing a shit ton of energy from the sun

I just want to know when the fuck we're gonna get some goddamn solar paint, it's been 5 years away for the past 40 years, what the fuck is the holdup?

>>719861607
maintenance. thing would need to be cleaned just like a solar cell.
Speaking of which why would you use this method instead of photovoltaics? if you are gonna build a structure that big just build a solar farm

>>719861474
one giant parabola would be super exp[ensive to prouduce, but many small ones lined up seems to be feasible:
http://spectrum.ieee.org/green-tech/solar/a-tower-of-molten-salt-will-deliver-solar-power-after-sunset
this one works even during the night

>>719861963
because it would produce somewhere around as much energy as a nuclear power plant?

>>719861981
as i said im not an expert on the subject but that does definitely look more feasible

>>719861963
PV is much more expensive to produce and loses efficiency over time.

>>719861858
tru

>>719861474
Cost and efficiency, but besides that it is already done in deserty parts of the USA, Northern Africa and Australia

>>719862144
i don't understand why it wouldn't be efficient, on a much larger scale it would increase a lot more right? and the cost of maintaining a nuclear power plant and buying and disposing of fuel and shit would be negated

>>719861963
yeah but cleaning a bunch of mirrors is not a technically difficult thing. not like maintaining a nuclear reactor

>>719862401
solar cells die over time, after 6 years the ones you can get on your roof start to get less efficient im pre sure

>>719861948
its aready built bro
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crescent_Dunes_Solar_Energy_Project

>>719862489
no not solar cells u muppet just a mirror focusing the sun to create steam to power turbines instead of nuclear fuel

>>719862139

What should really be looked into is Helium-3, and why we aren't mining it from our own abundant source and making it into energy.

>>719862029
the more energy conversion you add to the process the greater the inefficiency. Going from Radiation to physical-chemical energy to mechanical energy to electrical energy would be much less efficient than PV of the same size. PV goes from Radiation direct to Electrical energy.

>>719862401
It wouldn't be efficient space-wise, it wouldn't be efficient resource-wise and it would have huge risks of it breaking down. You probably were one of those kids, who asked why we don't just install some streetlights on our solar farms to have them produce power even at night. Chances are you still one of those kids.

They do that tho OP? You aren't some brilliant genius. That's a real power gen method

>>719862489
they lose about 1% capacity per year every year. source; i worked 12 months installing them and thats what we used in our design calculations

>>719862523
fuck hahaha well there goes my cool cooked idea

>>719862628
Because we still have no way to sustain a nuclear synthesis reaction for any meaningful period of time

>>719862628
where is this abundant source u speak of?

>>719862779

The moon good sir. China already wants it.

>>719862656
i wasn't saying i had some crazy idea or anything dude i just had an interesting thought and couldn't find anything on google cos im shit at researching apparently so i thought maybe someone could tell me something new

>>719862779
not that guy but apparently the moon
http://www.explainingthefuture.com/helium3.html

>>719862523
I think you quoted the wrong person. I was talking about solar paint, the stuff that's supposedly able to be applied like regular paint but also has the capability to catch solar power. Basically paintable solar panels. Fuckin cunts have been promising it's right around the corner for decades now but it's never actually been finished.

>>719862656
learning new things is good my man

>>719862884
yea dude why don't we just like you know send a guy up there and have him just drop all the helium down here i mean hell we just need one of them fireman catching blankets and a nice pitcher to send to the moon then we got ourselves inifinite powa bruh

First of all the power output of a solar installation is nothing compared to a NPP.
Second, the power output of a solar installation varies a lot (think at night --> no power production) While with a NPP, it does not vary.

>>719862621
Mirrors are used in solar towers, but they have an insanely low efficiency. You'd have to pave a huge area with mirrors and tower to come even close to 1 nuclear power plant. These solar towers are build in areas with a lot of sun-hours per day, near the equator, but thats not where the energy is needed and transporting that energy is a huge cost factor again.

File: Solar thermal2.jpg (1MB, 1774x1104px) Image search: [Google]

1MB, 1774x1104px

>>719862489
Those are PV cells, not the same as solar thermal setups. Solar thermal are just mirrors focuses on a boiler. We use them in the southwest U.S..

>>719863018
that is true, but without the costs of the nuclear aspect you could probably build many more of them or make it really good or something haave some creativity

>>719863135
Take your advice and apply it to yourself: you've come up with no details, just "well duh if you throw alotta money at it it gotta be real good, right?"

>>719861474
many reasons for it

- efficiency: quite small nuclear plant can produce so much energy as the most of wind, solar and hydro-plants combined
- cost: again, ONE nuclear plant produces same amount of energy as most of solar plants
-reliabilty: for solar plants to be effective, you need basically to fill several square miles with panels, that will need constant maintanance

one thing bad about nuclear energy and why it isn't the only one obvious solution to all our energy needs is almost impossible way to dispose waste, which takes millenia do stop being radioactive

if you just burry it deep in the ground (what exactly how many countries do atm) it have a risk in future with earthqukes or other cataclysm to endanger our future generation into alot of radiation, which would be very selfish from our side

>>719862029
It really wouldn't. A fairly low-end nuclear reactor produces around 200MW of electricity. The energy density of solar radiation is around 1.4kW/m^2, of which you can turn into electricity about 30%, so effectively 0.42 kW/m^2. This means you'd need to cover about half a square kilometre with mirrors to match that. Easier said than done. Mind you, this is for a low-end reactor - high-powered nuclear reactors can produce more than 1 GW at their peak - and this is just the peak production, the nuclear plant can push out that much energy pretty much 24/7 whereas your solar plant would do so for about 6 hours per day on average, unless it's cloudy.

Environmental concerns aside, it's really hard to compete with nuclear power when it comes to efficiency, raw power and carbon footprint.

>>719863135
Actually nuclear energy is not that expensive. I live in Belgium and we rely on nuclear energy. I agree with you that we need to search for alternatives. however solar energy depends on the presence of the sun. And in some areas (deserts, etc.) this is not a problem. The goal is to produce a lot of energy and store it, so we can you use it when the production is low.

>>719862523
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palo_Verde_Nuclear_Generating_Station

Yeah but this is still not as efficeinet as a nuclear plant in 2015 it peaked at 30GWh in august. Output was also very high for june and july, but for the rest of the year output remained below 10 GWh per month.

The link above is to the US's largest nuclear plant which averaged 29,250 GWh throughout the year. Nuclear power is just better and more versatile right now

>>719862984

Sure man, exactly what I was thinking, you're so smart /b/ro.

Maybe if the world was more interested in expanding our horizons would people see this a feasible. We're so shut in worrying about who's going to blow who up to do anything.

>>719862934
lol no i just went retard and read plant instead of paint.
the paint idea is pretty cool though. i think before they had to use lead to make the efficiency viable but they had some advance recently where they could do it without.

>>719862401
After the initial investment of getting the reactors running, nuclear power is LUDICROUSLY cheap when comparing price per kW/h.

>>719863272
yea na im hella cooked so thats how im thinking atm but i get what you are saying i am definitely naive on the matter

>>719863397
Why do we need to search for alternatives?

File: 1479908917955.png (985KB, 1280x720px) Image search: [Google]

985KB, 1280x720px

>>719863304
>>> implying nuclear plants don't require 24 hour supervision and constant maintenance and checks.

We've got Homer Simpson here guys.


Germany is doing amazing with clean energy sources.
Time to think of the long term and not the short term.

Not one good argument has been made to keep poisonous nuclear plants running.

>>719863526
despite what you think, maintanance of nuclear plant does not require alot of attention or even manpower

infact there will be much more sequrity personal than maintanance

>>719861474
clouds

>>719863522
We are out of fossil fuels, and storing nuclear waste is still a challenge. It will take up to 1 million years to be sure that the waste is safe. A possibility is to treat the waste so it decays faster, however these techniques are still not an experimental phase.

>>719863373
shit u seem to know what your talking about, i only thought of it in the sense that with the heat produced from a stupidly big parabola would boil the water making enough steam to power the shit outa some turbines

>>719863722
It does bro', unless you work for countries like China.
I work in one in SC. On shift right now.

>>719863779
Surely you'd rather build a dozen waste storage facilities than have to construct hundreds of solar farms or wind turbines

>>719863724
build a wall to keep the clouds away

>>719863925
No, I'm not saying that I'm pro nuclear energy, we just can't live without it for now. One possibility I see is to rely on renewable energy ( it is the only option) and store the energy as hydrogen gas.

>>719863925
This.jpg

I can not even comprehend why some people would rather make a mess that could potentially poison the planet for which there is no cure except time....or build solar panels and wind turbines.

>>719863807
It's not like they're using kettle like steam in power generation. It has to be superheated, and hotter it is the better efficiency you get. Steam around 600 degrees celcius is being used now. With that temps you can produce significant amount of energy and your turbines won't corrode as much

>>719864120
It's because solar panels and wind turbines don't magically appear once you decide to drop the evil ways of fission and progress, you have to make them using factories and producing pollution, and you'll produce a whole lot of it before you have enough wind turbines to replace one nuclear power plant. Phrases like "kill the planet" are reliable signs to detect a person, who has bit the "go green" bait, I imagine you consider global warming real too.

>>719864120
Reliability. What do you do when it's cloudy(or the sun isn't up) and the wind isn't blowing very much? Export energy from the other side of the continent and waste huge amounts of energy, place extra stress on the electricity grid and make yourself much more vulnerable to any kind of disruption? Start your hugely polluting coal plants? Or rely on safe, reliable and cheap nuclear power?

Renewable energy sources might be the future, but they can't replace nuclear power at the moment.

>>719864415
Nuclear power plants don't magically appear either, and they need tons of maintenance too, just the steam->electricity system.

>>719863418
yeah but this depends on how you judge efficiency. for me its not very efficient to cause a problem you have no solution to. what do you do with the waste? what about security? what if there are political problems in the region that supplies the uranium?

>>719864538
there were some ideas to export energy across a kindof supergrid from the sahara to europe. the idea was to use such high voltage that the losses were minimal even over those distances

>>719864797
You are once again neglecting the scale of the green setup, both building it and keeping it running requires more resources than the nuclear way

>>719864954
>there were some ideas to export energy across a kindof supergrid from the sahara to europe. the idea was to use such high voltage that the losses were minimal even over those distances

Personally I think we should put a solar array into the orbit and beam electricity to earth. But, you know, that's just not going to happen at least for a few decades, so we're stuck with nuclear until then.

>>719861474
temperature of the steam makes all the difference.

File: image.jpg (315KB, 615x923px) Image search: [Google]

315KB, 615x923px

>>719861521
>>719861583
>>719861657
No.
>>719861836
That's not a problem. Energy could be stored.

Mechanical Engineer here.

Lemme tell you why.

Firstly you'll need a humongous plant, which will include thousands of reflective parabolas.

Fluctuation of solar energy, on a daily and yearly basis.

Cleaning would impose a problem.

The efficiency can be relatively high, at the optimum time of the day as well as the year. You'll need to employ a sun tracking mechanism. Which will need a control system to correct the optimum sun-angle offset, making the system more complex.

In order to reduce the volume of the plant, you'll need evacuated tubes to minimize convective wind loss as well as radiation losses.


A much smaller Uranium Fission plant would produce the same energy as 2 million grams of oil for every gram of Uranium.

http://occupywallst.org/forum/1-gram-of-uranium-fuel-produces-the-same-energy-as/


That's why, pop.

>>719865590
Who's that in the picture?

>>719865404
lol and then burn the city to the ground like in simcity 2000

radiation is evil guyzzzzz stop all the nuclear power, stop poisoning the planet

the universe would be a better place if we could ban all radiation and stop it from existing

oh and also, we'd die instantly without radiation.

>>719865590
>That's not a problem. Energy could be stored.

Actually, storing energy is one of the big problems for renewables. Batteries are expensive and wear quickly, and storing it as mechanical or potential energy incurs fairly big losses.

>>719864415
>I imagine you consider global warming real too.
If they do, they should support nuclear because no co2.

>>719861474
Inefficient energy conversion. We cannot harness the sun's power enough to make it worth it. Nuclear, in comparison, is completely opposite, you'd need only a little radioactive material, to generate large amounts of energy. Unless you want miles of solar panels. It just doesn't cut it.

>>719864954
>cause a problem you have no solution to
Every method to make electricity has problems.

>>719862401
Because energy conversion. Solar panels can only harness like a few percent of the sun's solar energy and turn it into electricity. That is way too inefficient.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor

http://www.argee.net/DefenseWatch/Nuclear%20Waste%20and%20Breeder%20Reactors.htm
At its best, the Breeder Reactor system produces no nuclear waste whatever - literally everything eventually gets used. In the real world, there actually may be some residual material that could be considered waste, but its half-life - the period of time it takes for half the radioactivity to dissipate - is on the order of thirty to forty years. By contrast, the half-life for the stuff we presently consider nuclear waste is over 25,000 years!

>>719865590
>You'll need to employ a sun tracking mechanism.
That's true of the systems with a central boiler, but what about those that put the steam pipes in a mirrored trough?

>>719861474
You need a lot of pressure and a lot of water. What you made is a lot of water but not enough pressure.

>>719861474
> turbine on primary circuit
> no steam condenser
> cold coolant
I hope there isn't any Nuclear powerplant running that is based on this shitty scheme

Think your better of using the waves of the ocean..

>>719865851
Wish I could tell you.

>>719866333
Depends upon the storing medium.
Flow batteries for instance use inexpensive organic fuel (fuel cells)

>>719866892
Still you'll need to reflect the maximum direct+diffused sunbeam falling upon your aperture since the sun moves east-west during day and a Siam of 15deg (I think) throughout the year.
Therefore for optimum performance, you'll need a 2 axis tracking mechanism.

You'll find it in more detail in Kalogirou, Solar Energy Engineering.

>>719868573
North-south @ 15deg throughout the year. Fucking autocorrect.

>inb4 phone detected

Kys

>>719861474
>that pic

Wasn't that some pretty old java applet keep-the-reactor-from-overheating "game" from years ago?

File: carli-rene-black-lingerie27.jpg (360KB, 1600x2400px) Image search: [Google]

360KB, 1600x2400px

>>719861474
CLOUDS

>>719868809
I'm pretty sure thats something you'd find in whats called a "textbook"
its a pretty strange concept, but people used it to communicate ideas about science, somewhat like printed memes