Japan energy policy: What will they do next?

#26
#26
For Japan, tidal energy would be more consistent and along the shoreline wind is pretty consistent. The real reason wind farms havent been built isnt the lack of wind, its the eyesore aspect of having them on the shoreline.
 
#27
#27
oklavol said:
Enough for our lifetime but it's not a permanent solution. Wind, solar, tidal, and geothermal energy. Look at the big picture, eventually this will the only form of energy available to us. Oil, natural gas, coal, even uranium etc will run out.
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Again, if there was ever a country and a time for these renewable energy alternatives to be fully implemented, it would be in Japan right now.
 
#28
#28
droski said:
all of those listed have significant problems most significantly the storage issues and time of days they produce energy. not including the nimby problems.
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So what do we do when we run out of coal, uranium, oil, and natural gas?

Stop using energy?
 
#30
#30
droski said:
all of those listed have significant problems most significantly the storage issues and time of days they produce energy. not including the nimby problems.
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Well, I'll say this. Japan and most other non-Western countries don't have nimby issues too often. They simply act on it whether people like it or not. You think the Chinese, Saudis, Koreans (North or South) really care if a group citizens get together to oppose a project? The same is true in Japan.
 
#31
#31
oklavol said:
For Japan, tidal energy would be more consistent and along the shoreline wind is pretty consistent. The real reason wind farms havent been built isnt the lack of wind, its the eyesore aspect of having them on the shoreline.
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Until a tsunami comes along and washes the windfarms and tidal generators away...
 
#32
#32
oklavol said:
So what do we do when we run out of coal, uranium, oil, and natural gas?

Stop using energy?
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The argument I've made is that we are probably 50 years away from a real (economically viable) alternative to fossil fuels or nukes. But in the meantime, we have enough fossil fuels to last the planet 100+ years. Use what we have right now, and if the environmentalists would just be patient and not so tyranical, the energy needs of our great grand children will be met. They need to just relax. The present coal technology is more than adequate. Scrubbing towers remove enough of the bad stuff. CO2 is not a pollutant... and these environmental tyrants need to get off of that horse.
 
#33
#33
oklavol said:
So what do we do when we run out of coal, uranium, oil, and natural gas?

Stop using energy?
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this country isn't running out of natural gas anytime soon. uranium is unlikely to be completely tapped either. maybe in 50 years we'll be able to work out the storage issues. currently you could be in the sahara desert and still not be able to run your house off the grid at night with solar.
 
#35
#35
droski said:
this country isn't running out of natural gas anytime soon. uranium is unlikely to be completely tapped either. maybe in 50 years we'll be able to work out the storage issues. currently you could be in the sahara desert and still not be able to run your house off the grid at night with solar.
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1. The US is a natural gas importer. It does not produce as much natural gas as it consumes.

Don’t count on natural gas to solve US energy problems | Our Finite World
 
#36
#36
oklavol said:
So a coal-fired or natural ga power plant would have been able to survive that Tsunami?
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The nuke plant survived the earthquake tsunami... it was the loss of external power that created the panic. The newer nuke designs have a passive system that doesn't require external power for cooling if station service is lost. The Japanese nuke facilities were from an older "active" design that required external power for the cooling systems.
 
#40
#40
oklavol said:
1. The US is a natural gas importer. It does not produce as much natural gas as it consumes.

Don’t count on natural gas to solve US energy problems | Our Finite World
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We have massive supplies of Nat Gas. The only people who would sell us NatGas is Canada and that because we have the infrastructure to move it easily around to homes and businesses and store it when not needed. If they didnt sell it to us, then they would just flare it off at the well site.

There is a reason why NatGas went from $15 to $3.5 in 18 months
 
#41
#41
IPorange said:
Anything can be a pollutant. Prove to me (yes, I'm putting the burden on you) that it is not a pollutant.
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I get what you are saying but if anything is (can be) a pollutant then the word essentially has no unique meaning.
 
#42
#42
Marcellus shale is bigger area compaired to Haynesville, but the wells produce much less. The Haynesville shale is a tighter formation, but the wells in the sweet spot produce 10x what a marcellus well produces
 
#44
#44
volinbham said:
I get what you are saying but if anything is (can be) a pollutant then the word essentially has no unique meaning.
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It doesn't have a unique meaning. It's a general term. I'm not the one who said something was (universally) not a pollutant.
 
#45
#45
IPorange said:
It doesn't have a unique meaning. It's a general term. I'm not the one who said something was (universally) not a pollutant.
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The term has no meaning as a noun then - if everything is a pollutant then the term is meaningless; it doesn't distinguish between things.

In more practical terms with regard to CO2 the designation does have meaning as it puts it into a regulatory framework. If every thing is a pollutant then why isn't peanut butter regulated by the EPA? Why not socks?
 
#46
#46
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#47
#47
volinbham said:
The term has no meaning as a noun then - if everything is a pollutant then the term is meaningless; it doesn't distinguish between things.

In more practical terms with regard to CO2 the designation does have meaning as it puts it into a regulatory framework. If every thing is a pollutant then why isn't peanut butter regulated by the EPA? Why not socks?
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Anything CAN be a pollutant, in the right situation.

If everything on your desk could be a weapon, does the word weapon no longer have a meaning?

This is a silly semantics game.

Peanut butter would be a pollutant if it were in your city water supply, causing infrastructure damage and threatening the health of those with allergies that consumed the water.

A sock could also be a form of pollutant, if it were a brightly colored one that got mixed in with your white laundry.

This is a pretty simple concept, here.
 
#48
#48
IPorange said:
Anything CAN be a pollutant, in the right situation.

If everything on your desk could be a weapon, does the word weapon no longer have a meaning?

This is a silly semantics game.

Peanut butter would be a pollutant if it were in your city water supply, causing infrastructure damage and threatening the health of those with allergies that consumed the water.

A sock could also be a form of pollutant, if it were a brightly colored one that got mixed in with your white laundry.

This is a pretty simple concept, here.
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I understand but in practical terms everything is NOT considered a weapon. In fact a very finite number of things are that are then put into a regulatory framework.

The beef with CO2 being labeled a pollutant is not that it could be a pollutant in the right quantities. It is that it doesn't fit the practical meaning of pollutant like what we've traditionally labeled as pollutants and put under the EPA framework.

If we take the "everything is a pollutant" approach and view EPA as regulating pollutants then everything should be regulated by the EPA because in the right quantities they are pollutants.

So it is semantics but asking someone to prove CO2 is not a pollutant is just a semantic way to avoid the practical designation as a pollutant.
 
#49
#49
I'm not avoiding anything. This has come up over and over. I've demonstrated that CO2 now appears in the very definition of the word, as an example of small quantities of something still being considered a pollutant.

Short of demonstrating that various governments, NGO's, and the scientific community view it as such, what else can I do? Yahoos still say "it's not a pollutant," with no evidence to back that contrary point of view up.
 
#50
#50
An interesting read:

How Carbon Dioxide Became a 'Pollutant' - WSJ.com

The Environmental Protection Agency's decision to classify rising carbon-dioxide emissions as a hazard to human health is the latest twist in a debate that has raged for decades among politicians, scientists and industry: whether a natural component of the earth's atmosphere should be considered a pollutant.
The EPA's finding doesn't say carbon dioxide, or CO2, is by itself a pollutant -- it is, after all, a gas that humans exhale and plants inhale. Rather, it is the increasing concentrations of the gas that concern the agency.
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This is where I see the semantic problem. Enough of something can have polluting effects but that doesn't mean that by it's very nature it is a "pollutant" in the common use of that term.

Like a ball of twine could be used as a weapon, it is not by it's nature a weapon.
 
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