Renewable Energy vs Fossil Fuels Presentation

Found this old footage from 2020 of a presentation I did for high school students.
Covers global energy consumption, renewable energy, fossil fuels, oil exploration, coal, nuclear energy, and careers in the industry.
Bonus critical thinking section using Solar Freak'n Roadways as the example.
This was also given in person where I handed out lumps of coal to everyone, Oprah style.
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#Energy #renewableenergy #nuclear

[@EEVblog2]

NOTE: Many people have wondered why I didn't cover nuclear "properly". It is because nuclear is not technically a renewable, which was the focus of the talk. I had a brief from the school to do something on renewable energy specifically because the kids were about to embark on a week long project of building a solar air heater. That is why I didn't go into detail on nuclear, as I couldn't call it a "renewable", and I couldn't exactly leave mention of it out. This video was not shot for my general KZbin audeince, it was shot for a high school group with a specific brief. But it was interesting enough to share.

(YT deleted my comment) Nuclear is moot at this point. Here's a good book on the topic: 50 Years in Nuclear Power: A Retrospective (2007) by Saloman Levy. PV and wind are just too cheap but need V2G, distributed NMC, and PES to make work.

[@Lavadawg]

Solar air heater? Have they heard of the sun 😂

[@14lou]

You mean hydrocarbon fuels as there is no such thing as fossil fuels.

[@TradieTrev]

Good stuff Dave; I have personally learnt so much off you to excel my career as an automation/industrial electrician (now 20+ years). First started doing IT, so now both of these cool worlds combine with the robots I get to play with.

[@Superwip]

Bernhard Cohen argued in his 1983 Paper "Breeder reactors: A renewable energy source", that nuclear energy can be considered to be a "renewable" energy source because it uses so little uranium, especially if we use breeder reactors in a closed nuclear fuel cycle, that we could power the whole world with it and, if we would use uranium from the seawater, the uranium would replenish itself by geological processes faster than we would use it. It can be further argued that (some types of) terrestrial uranium deposits would be formed quicker than we would use them as well.

[@vihai]

Hydrogen is listed in "Renewables" but hydrogen is not an energy source

[@suey1690]

Technically it could be collected from he solar wind 😂

[@vihai]

@@suey1690 then the source would be solar and wind

[@UlrichHarms-ci1ov]

To a large part hydrogen is only a storrage mode. There are a few rare cases where vulcanos actually produce hydrogen in the depth and hydrogen could be collected similar to natural gas. So the solar wind is not the only "natural" source.

[@argh100100]

Most hydrogen is produced by methane, which is just fossil fuel...

[@alch3myau]

if you're a full time youtuber, why am I waiting forever for every bodies favourite segment! maaaaaaaailbag!

[@EEVblog2]

People don't send as much stuff as they used to.

[@alch3myau]

@@EEVblog2 Bummer. Might have to find some postage paid stamps and get ya back in to it.. I got a lil energy meter that I am tempted to take the batt off.. then ill send it.. maybe... lel

[@Okurka.]

@@alch3myau Send a GPS tracker.

[@JAKOB1977]

No' in the pacific ocean with "mailbag" Dave needs to finalize his two commig full fledge "expert reviews" on SDS1000HD and SDS800HD that he has been working on full time for last 7 weeks and been teasing viewers on the forum with. Its a new Expert grade review under the label "“Back off man, I'm a scientist." where Dave will go into a depth level, that we haven't seen previously on EEVblog. No doubt Dave will likely do "Mailbag" after that. 🙃

[@KeritechElectronics]

An oldie, but fun to watch! Not getting too deep, but I like your SFR rants. Speaking of which, the South Korean bike road with solar panels above it... It's complete bonkers too. No way in, no way out for kilometers. Noise from four lanes on the left and another four on the right, all you see is tarmac and cars, and you breath in the fumes. It's a nightmare. Oh, and Sagan and Huxley have grown so much since the other video :)

[@clmdcc]

If you rename refueling torepair, nuclear reactors are more renewable than solar and wind, because the installation remains operational for much longer.

[@pin65371]

That is the key. The reactors will last for 40 years before a refurbishment. The site will last for 80-100 years. The highest carbon output comes from all of the concrete for the reactor site, cooling towers and containment which is part of that 80-100 year life cycle. If you actually look at carbon output for an equivalent amount of power once you get to grid scale then nuclear has a much lower carbon footprint than wind or solar.

[@Daniel-dk7do]

Hello Dave, wonderful video as always. I got curious though about your comment about the lifespan of solar panels. From my own research, the only data i could find on this is the

[@remsku8118]

Would have loved to have someone like you hold presentations when I was in high school, so glad that you have been doing this, and hopefully you have been and will continue doing presentations for younger students!

[@EEVblog2]

If I'm invited, I do them.

[@davidpowell8249]

It's great that you did this talk for the kids, I hope it inspires them to become scientists or engineers.

[@zapfanzapfan]

The pace of renewable build out has been incredible lately, electricity prices where I live in northern Europe used to go negative at some nights with strong wind before, now they regularly go negative in the middle of days because of the massive installation of solar panels. 50% of electricity mid day in Europe now regularly come from solar panels.

[@derstrom8]

Phenomenal presentation Dave, thanks very much for sharing!

[@ronaldgarrison8478]

~19:00 Even easier than that, if your needs are modest enough, you can just let water build up in the reservoir while solar and wind are buzzing along, then at night or when the wind is quiet, open the dam gates and let the water roar through.

[@universeisundernoobligatio3283]

Hydrogen is not a energy source but a expensive energy storage method thats best at extracting money from goverments.

[@atmel9077]

One solution would be to produce hydrogen from natural gas using methane pyrolysis (which produces hydrogen and solid carbon, no CO2), and then turn the hydrogen into ammonia using the Haber Bosch process. Ammonia doesn't pose too much of an explosion risk like hydrogen and can be liquefied at a moderate pressure like LPG, but it is unfortunately quite toxic and corrosive. Unfortunately this process produces less hydrogen than Steam Methane Reforming because in this process, some of the hydrogen comes from water.

[@universeisundernoobligatio3283]

@@atmel9077 Far more efficient and less polluting to use the NG in the first place.

[@atmel9077]

@@universeisundernoobligatio3283 Far more efficient, yes. Less polluting, no, because burning the natural gas produces CO2. The whole point here is to avoid producing CO2.

[@universeisundernoobligatio3283]

@@atmel9077 Producing Hydrogen from NG is very polluting. Lots of CO2 and methane released.

[@davidpowell8249]

​@@atmel9077ammonia is safer to handle and transport, but as ammonia production accounts for 2% of global carbon emissions, it's on rather dodgy ground.

[@crazyboy2006cashier]

How long before Sagan becomes a main guest or joint presenter on Eevblog main channel :)

[@ronaldgarrison8478]

~8:00 Yes, U-235 is very energy-dense, but to get there, you need to handle a lot of ore, and a lot of largely useless U-238. And for the cherry on top, there's the Carnot losses. So it's not quite as efficient as it might look.

[@konradcomrade4845]

Since You are in engineering a fun fact: depending on the coal_grade, there can be more nuc energy contained in the ashes (U238/235, Th232) then was released by burning the coal. 8:07 A rarely mentioned problem of nuc Fission and Fusion is the release of humungous amounts of (Anti-)Neutrinos from the reactor (Beta decays); no technical trick, no shielding to avoid this! Another problem is Tritium. Hydrogen is the smallest of all atoms; so is Tritium! it slowly diffuses through every/almost every material and is a bio_problem if inhaled or ingested as tritiated water! That difficulty in retaining tritium in the reactor_fuel is one reason why rad(iation)_regulations are less stringent on tritium than other isotopes. And why La Hague disposes its waste water by a long tube into the Atlantic ( -> dilution, underwater). These details are rarely discussed.

[@ronaldgarrison8478]

~13:30 Just remember: Once all energy is carbon-free (or carbon-neutral), the carbon footprint for making hardware for that renewable generation hardware is ZERO.

[@johnbash-on-ger]

Great video!

[@CharlesGregory]

Great presentation! Hopefully the kids don't read the comments here...

[@curtstacy779]

I know I was naughty but hey it will be a day of truth for them. lol

[@radman999]

Missed opportunity to discuss how Bitcoin can actually help with our energy debacle. Bitcoin mining can be used to help offset all of these costs by making use of otherwise wasted, stranded and flared off energy. Especially true in third world/developing countries. Nice to see it mentioned in passing, but it really could have been the focus of your presentation.

[@deepwinter77]

I think Solar thermal isn't competitive anymore with the drop in price Solar pv panels

[@ronaldgarrison8478]

~23:00 There are millions of videos that are just beyond ridiculous, but I must admit, I'd be hard pressed to top that one.

[@ronaldgarrison8478]

14:31 The Hell there isn't. 100% renewable is possible, and something like it is NOT that far off.

[@Someone_in_the_chat]

The Solar Roadway promo can't even one simple fact right! The Sun's expected life is not 15 billion years, but 4.5-5.5 billion years until all hydrogen is consumed and it collapses to a white dwarf.

[@alexv3780]

I would like to see a study about the energy needed during the "life cycle" of the fossil fuels vs green energy. How much energy is used for excavating the fossil fuels, refining them, store/transport them, for the construction of building or device to burn & convert them to electricity. And on the other side the renewable energy, how much energy is used for excavating the raw materials, refining them, transport them, building the final product and for the recycling after the "End Of Life". How much waste do we get from all these steps fossil vs renewable? How much electrical energy do we get? All these normalized in a 100 year period. It's a big problem the recyclability of the broken/EOL renewable devices plus they broke much faster than what they say. For example PV inverters need repair after 5 to 10 years and the manufactures just replace them, that's a lot of e-waste. What it maters is how much energy did we used to get X amount of electrical energy over the span of 100 years (let's say 100 years as it is a really big number) as well much waste was created during this period from start till the end (from mining to recycling). I'm a bit skeptical that solar & wind renewable source are just "dirty green" and not that great they are prased. And we need the same comparison for storing energy, for example batteries. The differences of energy used & waste between different types of batteries. Are lithium batteries recyclable the same amount as older tech batteries?

[@6581punk]

Clearly the fossil fuel approach was cheaper or it wouldn't have been used for so long. It's controllable production and wind, solar aren't. Wind can drop to nothing, the sun goes in at night. If you don't meet demand exactly then blackouts occur which can be followed by surges that damage the grid.

[@a4000t]

They purposely do not calculate it because they know so called green renewables would show how badly it looses. Another thing to look into is the millions of gallons of bunker fuel burned in ships from china to deliver the stuff as well as the effect of windmill blades and solar panels that get buried in landfills. In the last few years there have been giant solar arrays destroyed by hail or bad weather,as well as wind blades damaged... its too expensive to recycle(using more oil) so it gets buried.

[@PaulaXism]

I'm interested in the nuclear stuff. In the 70's when I learned about nuclear power plants they included the amount of energy it took to make the fuel in the equation.. and it seems a nuclear power plant (of those days) was a minus.. It would never produce the energy back from the fuel that had been used to create the fuel. I can't seem to find any figures about this from after 1981.

[@jimmybrad156]

Some sort of scalable fuel cell 2.0 that would render (most) batteries obsolete would be good. Usually these things get bought out & shutdown or ridiculed. Optimist says that those tables will turn sharply.

[@Shredxcam22]

All I got from this is we need nuclear phone batteries.

[@johnbash-on-ger]

A bigger section with all kinds of "free energy" and greenwashing scams and crackpot schemes to watch out for would've been nice.

[@andljoy]

I have to strongly disagree. Nuclear is really the way forward in combination with solar wind etc.

[@EEVblog2]

Disagree with what? Did I say nuclear wasn't viable?

[@andljoy]

@@EEVblog2 I may have misunderstood but did you not say we should not use it ?

[@markusresch9889]

Nuclear is an awful supplement to renewables. Mostly because, just like every big thermal plant, its output is hardly adjustable. It's also expensive af especially when you take insurance and disposal into account.

[@mensor]

@@markusresch9889 Whats the answer then?

[@rkan2]

​@@markusresch9889I dunno what you are smoking... Before electric grids go completely DC, rotating generators are essentially necessary to maintain inertia and frequency. Modern nuclear plants (e.g. ones designed in the digital era) are also more often than not quite throttleable. Not in a way to respond to your kettle being turned on like a hydro plant could, but still managing to keep up with wind and solar power and the demand between them. E.g. you can throttle many newer plants 50% of their peak power within less than a day.

[@joeyjustin6895]

6:22 DAVE. GAS WAS 69 CENTS IN 1980. SO WHY THE HELL CANT IT BE THAT NOW. OK YOU TELL ME

[@emmoemminghaus6455]

@da Are you sure that it is 43 Million Liters of Oil? My guess is 43 BILLION Liters!

[@EEVblog2]

No idea now, I reasearched all this stuff 4 years ago.

[@Bluelagoonstudios]

I don't know in your country, but here they're going to need fast smart grids, our grid is not made for injecting power in the grid, because it's not bidirectional. Now there are fires in houses because of falling converters that overload. And you probably know that electric fires are, very spooky things. Can only be extinguished with CO² extinguishers, or even foam. Like batteries, these need to be submerged, just like EVs.

[@jimmybrad156]

Most "Fossil" fuels are more renewable than "Renewables". All life depends on carbon. Nuclear costs are held up by "politics".

[@universeisundernoobligatio3283]

Too much carbon makes the planet uninhabitable for humans, makes plants less nutritious.

[@whocares281]

Just don't burn them.

[@ronaldgarrison8478]

Aren't there major opp'ys for saving energy use by cacheing Internet traffic? This is probably more true for video than for anythinng else. If a video has millions of views, does each of those views need to be conveyed from one central server? If I want to watch a music video 200 times, does that need to be streamed from KZbin every one of those times? I think we could do better.

[@LawpickingLocksmith]

All my plants are screaming for their vital CO2. And back to my shoephone to save the world!

[@xponen]

Let's avoid increasing atmospheric CO2 just to feed plants. High CO2 levels cause headaches and fatigue.

[@LawpickingLocksmith]

@@xponen why?

[@xponen]

@@LawpickingLocksmith because CO2 has sedative effect on the brain (ie: sleepy) and also increase intra-cranial pressure in the brain (ie: headache). Source: "The influence of carbon dioxide on brain activity and metabolism in conscious humans" - Journal of cerebral blood flow & metabolism, 2011

[@LawpickingLocksmith]

@@xponen Keep dreaming, humans drank soda pops which is essentially CO2. It is the carbon monoxide from engines without proper pollution control like motor bikes and garden to farm engines.

[@jeffmassey4860]

1: Watt for watt,I would say that my American water heater and A/C system burns through more energy than the fridge running about 150 watts even accounting for the defrost heater on the evaporator coil too. I think that the fridge being more visible in a home gives it the bad reputation... 2: How about "Solar Freakin' Roadways" done in the voice of Jack Nicholson? 3: American solar interests are building panel farms on productive farmland-robbing cities of natural cooling/CO2 green space and shrinking places where crops could be grown. Meanwhile cities have acres of unobstructed roof acreage being practically unused. Politics! SMH

[@jwestney2859]

Good job teaching kids about energy. We need actual engineers teaching kids how to actually do stuff! Fission of uranium already provides a lot of carbon-free energy, Fission of Thorium will provide carbon-free energy without any new mining. And if fissile fuel ever did become scarce (maybe in 1,000 years) well maybe we will actually use fusion power by then! Energy = prosperity. That is the motto of Copenhagen Atomics. They are doing great things - and making great videos too! Fizzy power deserves some love. And we need kids to understand fizzy power (i.e fission power).

[@jimmybrad156]

Might want to check out who's funding most of those projects. Hint: keep everyone poor.

[@user-ur7wd2zp2v]

I'm a truck driver. All my appliances, computer, tablet and phone are diesel powered.

[@PaulaXism]

Which in theory could be made 100% from plants.. The UK grows as much oil plants as food plants these days.. mostly for the chemical industry with around 10% going to fuel. I used to run my car off straight cooking oil.. straight from the shop to my tank. no different than diesel from the pump in performance.

[@gabest4]

4:30 He helped finding oil and caused global warming! But I don't blame him, he was just following orders.

[@konradcomrade4845]

just a Q: how do You heat Your home in January, and February? Wood?

[@gabest4]

@@konradcomrade4845 Yea, it's the why do you eat meat if you can't butcher them argument. Natural gas is being phased out in the EU, but we still have those heaters.

[@whocares281]

Nuclear fanboys are going wild... 😂

[@LeelooMinai]

That "10g could power your phone for a month" calculation seems off to me. 240kJ is only 66Wh or so, at less then 50% efficiency, you get maybe 30Wh and that's it?

[@GlutenEruption]

Yeah, WAY off. By like 6 orders of magnitude. 1kg of U235 can produce about 24,000,000 kWh of heat, and the heat to electric conversion efficiency of a nuclear power plant using steam turbines is around 33% efficient, so 1g = about 8000 kWh of electricity or 80,000 kWh for 10g. A phone probably uses around 1 kWh a year, say ~0.1 kWh a month, so closer to a MILLION phones for a month.

[@EEVblog2]

@@GlutenEruption Huh? I said 10g of uranium could power your phone for 200,000 years, not a month.

[@Kris_M]

@GlutenEruption Leeloo was referencing the 10g of coal... 7:19 "if you compare that little 10g lump of coal that you've got there to, say, the lithium ion battery inside your phone, that little bit of coal could actually power your mobile, that 10g could power your mobile phone for more than a month"

[@EEVblog2]

@@Kris_M Using his numbers, 30Wh is 6 times more than a typical phone battery. I can get 3 days from my phone battery. Ballpark accurate.

[@joejoe4games]

You might be a bit off when it comes to phone battery sizes. These days around 15Wh is a more realistic number for a typical phone...

[@rkan2]

11:50 - There are many type of hydrogen... And mainly today hydrogen is cut from natural gas, and can thus not be called renewable. It is an important distinction when having an argument with anything hydogen. Commercial renewable electricity production was there in the form of hydro from the dawn of time, but it is still pretty far from it for hydrogen!!

[@PaulaXism]

Surely as it's the fundamental and most common element of the Universe there is only one kind of hydrogen.. Hydrogen is Hydrogen..

[@rkan2]

@@PaulaXism Absolutely, but the context is energy. Hydrogen is not energy, just a transport medium for it.

[@deepwinter77]

Unicorn Farts is the answer. Bill Gates is building an interesting Nuclear power plant in Wyoming Natrium.

[@entropyachieved750]

Nuclear would hold frequency and keep the grid stable. Wind turbines can do it with gear boxes that don't have a great life span and along with solar it's only good when the sun or wind is favorable...

[@markusresch9889]

No, nuclear would make grid stability even harder. Mostly because it's hardly adjustable in power output. For frequency stability you need fast responders like gas, hydro or that new fangled battery-s**t. Even solar and wind plants that are not at the top of their output power can be great frequency stabilizes with modern inverter tech.

[@entropyachieved750]

@@markusresch9889 I thought it had more to do with the inertia of the turbine/alternator that kept a stable frequency even under fluctuations in load... They don't seem to have too much issues on nuclear power plants...

[@rkan2]

​@@markusresch9889Many newer plants can throttle a lot of their peak power. Not as fast as a hydro plant, but within hours. E.g. they can respond to changes in weather, which is plenty with solar and wind.

[@filipbataz6684]

@@markusresch9889 Battery based storage on grid is really bad for frequency. And plus all electrical batteries suck. From lead acid to lithium they are all terrible. Lead acids don't hold as much, lithiums are fire and mining hazard, all can be mitigated at higher cost and potential to fail. All generator based power is stable for frequency not only because of the speed governors but inertia itself. We could store solar energy in form of water towers. Not only for power but also irrigation. How ever ridiculous sounding that is I see it as better alternative for batteries. Best form of energy by all metrics is water, where possible there should always be a dam. They not only produce power but regulate water fluctuations and flood control. Water can also produce compressed air, useful in mining world.

[@peterjol]

The trouble with changing to clean renewable energy is that you are fighting against the many millions of people in the fossil fuel industries who don't want to lose their jobs and they will fight to death to KEEP their jobs. The only possible way out of that problem and to provide them all (quickly) with an alternative ..would be to make it financially worthwhile for people to SHARE the jobs we need people to do (jobs that aren't destroying the planet) and work much less.

[@a4000t]

No,the problem is all these so called green renewables are made from fossil fuel in the first place and don't work half as well as oil. Nothing beats oil's energy density and almost your entire modern life is due to oil. Look at all the windmill blades buried in landfills,wind generators broken standing dormant as well as giant solar arrays smashed with hail. It all ends up in landfills,and if you calculate the maintainence it takes to maintain stuff like wind generators,its absurd. Also,no one seems to calculate the millions of gallons of bunker fuel these ships from china use per trip to bring you these so called "renewables".

[@russell2952]

You've got the radiation symbol upside down in your thumbnail. Makes you look very smrt.

[@andyhello23]

Just remember though dave, without first making wrong ideas, the south korean one was probably born So, like i said before, you should not be against ideas that people know are wrong, so humans can learn why they are wrong, and you just never know what people ie humans will learn from it.

[@esoterex]

I've read somewhere that it takes as much energy to construct a nuclear power plant than it will produce over its life. All that cement takes a lot of energy to make. Coal plants can be made pretty clean, but at high cost. There is no free lunch.

[@rkan2]

Imo it is an easy calculation to make how much a nuclear plant generates over 40-60 years compared to building it for 20. Let's say 1600MW plant. If you factor in all the equipment and worker consumption, I doubt you even get past 100MW. In America the energy consumption per person is about 10kW so if you extrapolate from that or even double it you arrive at 40-80MW energy consumption for a nuclear plant being built by 4000 people. Over the course of 20 years that adds up to 14TWh, or just a little over one year's worth of electricity production for said example 1600MW plant. Remember, the heat power is about double electrical generation, so if you used that for something, it would be 6 months production's worth. Basically a nuclear plant produces almost two orders of magnitude more energy during 60 years of operation (700TWh) than it took to build one (7-14TWh)

[@vihai]

You've read on the wrong place. Nuclear is on the very opposite end of the energy return ratio. A single reactor may produce 1000 MW for 60 years at 90% of availability, it's a huge amount of energy for the amount of concrete and steel that equals the amount used in an average sized dam.

[@whocares281]

I remember that we calculated that in university back then. You are right, depending on the reactor type. Nuclear was heavily subsidized.

[@vihai]

@@whocares281 please show the calculations, how much concrete and steel is needed for a 1 GW reactor? How much energy is required to manufacture it?

[@whocares281]

@vihai Sorry, it was actually the cost of building the plant vs. the earnings from the power produced over its lifetime, not energy. Of course, I don't have any numbers from 40 years ago anymore. Anyway, why don't you show us some numbers?

[@6581punk]

No source of energy should be off the table. We seem to need more and more yet relying on the weather (wind) or sun in some parts of the world just won't cut it. We should always have coal, gas an nuclear as a backup.

[@tschuuuls486]

Sure. Let some parts of the world drown or boil as long as we have enough energy. Investing in anything but a renewable grid is bonkers.

[@cdnron75]

​@@tschuuuls486 Investing in a renewable grid is bonkers. We should be using mixed energy sources. Nuclear is the best option for clean, stable power for households. Hybrid vehicles would be much better to wean ourselves off of fossil fuels but governments are overhyping electric vehicles as the saviour when they're not.

[@tschuuuls486]

@@cdnron75 Nuclear Plants take 30 years to build and are one of the most expensive sources of energy to run. We don't have the time. Look at current projects, their budgets and when they are operational (eg. England). Nuclear Plants are just to slow to do more than cover base load, if you want to combine them with pv/wind you still need gas plants, or huge batteries. Hybrid vehicles are not needed for most people, with battery tech that will easily support you for 400km a charge. Why carry another engine with you when you usually don't drive more than that a day.

[@cdnron75]

@@tschuuuls486 In my province, more than 50% of our energy comes from nuclear with more SMRs being built. Nuclear is the future for the most clean source of energy. You say we don't have the time? So you believe all of the doomer propaganda? As far as hybrid vs. EV, the benefits are more than just range, it's the massive environmental impact of battery production and how much it would need to be ramped up to replace all ICE vehicles with EVs. We're just trading one problem for another, and one non-renewable resource for another. Hybrid would lessen our reliance on both resources. Plus, hybrid vehicles don't need to be plugged in so there's no reliance on the grid to operate. Ever hear of the phrase, don't put all of your eggs in one basket? It applies to energy as well.

[@vihai]

@@tschuuuls486 all nuclear plants take 30 years to build? Or are you taking the single worst case? Are you aware that this is hypocrisy?

[@jagdtigger]

Renewable or not nuclear is our best option atm, most of the viable renewables dependant on the weather making it unrelaible and storing energy in batteries at grid scale is.aimply.not viable financially. At best renewables are only viable as a supplement to smooth out the peaks during the day. /edit Also wind is not renewable IMO because the blades are only good for 20 years and as it turned out those aint getting recycled, there is a cemetery for them in the desert.

[@Teslaharmonic]

is population reduction the "BEST SOLUTION" as the w.e.f spokesman "Dennis " recommends.

[@PaulaXism]

Interesting thought. Every human alive generates around 1KW of heat a day.. so just by existing humans are pupping out nearly 9 gigawatts of pure heat into the environment daily.. That has to go somewhere.. maybe it's not greenhouse gases we should be worrying about?.

[@nashaut7635]

It's not a solution, it's going to be a very unfortunate yet foreseeable consequence of human's pathological dependency on energy. As the IPCC scientists put it: we *need* to reduce our voracity for energy because we can't go past planetary limits. If we continue to (believe we can) increase our energy usage the way we did since the industrial revolution, there won't be enough resources to sustain life as we know it. Anything industries produce is based on the systematic destruction of spaces that once contained life, at a rate that is too fast for nature to heal. When they're done with those spaces, these are left completely devastated, sterile, lifeless and barren for dozens, hundreds or thousands of years. So no, population reduction is not **the** solution. But it'll be a consequence if Mankind don't change our relation with nature and reconsider what we really need and desire. I for one do not keep my hopes high though... I believe it's going to happen anyway, whether we want it or not.

[@davidjernigan8161]

Nuclear is not technically renewable, however breeder reactors can produce more fuel than they consume via transmutation

[@instanoodles]

Nuclear is renewable, uses the least amount of land, least resources and the only energy source that is required to account for its waste and end of life costs. Uranium is easily extracted from sea water, the oceans contain a massive amount of it. As you extract the uranium more is leeched out of the sea floor back into the ocean where there is enough uranium to last essentially forever. Renewables are the ones that are not renewable. The sun and the wind are renewable but the machines we build to harvest that energy are not renewable. Wind turbine blades are buried underground, solar panels are shipped to 3rd world countries to be "recycled" where the heavy metals will pollute their environment forever. Believing that renewables are all recycled is no different from the 80s when the plastic industry convinced the public that all their plastic waste can be recycled so there are no problems with excessive plastic usage. Where are we now?

[@h2rider953]

Cost of wind and solar are cheaper than nuclear.

[@jimmybrad156]

haha "Blockchain" 18:50 Lots of talks on Bitcoin incentivising cheap power production.

[@cdnron75]

I appreciate that you touched upon the fact that even renewable energy is not clean. I get that you are pro renewable energy, especially solar, but I think you should have done an in depth comparison of renewables to nuclear, not fossil fuels. I think everyone already knows that fossil fuels are the least environmentally friendly and that we should curb our reliance on them. Not going in depth on nuclear is a disservice to your audience. Or are you just not very familiar with nuclear energy? If you compared it to renewables, you would find that the environmental impact of nuclear is substantially less than renewable energy sources like solar or wind, and we should be pushing more nuclear to ease reliance on fossil fuels. We're doing that here in Canada. In my province, more than 50% of our energy comes from nuclear and they are building three new SMRs.

[@frankderks1150]

At this point in time money spent on nuclear gives less return on investment than investing in renewables and storage. And you wouldn't object to dump the nuclear waist in your backyard?

[@a4000t]

We do not agree, everything we use is made from oil in one form or another. It is why we have the standard of living we have.Nothing replaces the energy density of oil. It is even used to build windmills.electric cars and solar which are not green. As for nuclear,if we can put the waste in your backyard i'm all for it.

[@EEVblog2]

As I replid to another person, will rpeat here: "I understand it, but it's "wierd" because it's not technically a renewable which was the focus of the talk. I had a brief from the school to do something on renewable energy specifically because the kids were about to embark on a week long project of building a solar air heater. That is why I didn't go into detail on nuclear, and I couldn't call it a "renewable", and I couldn't leave it out."

[@cdnron75]

@@EEVblog2 Just because it's "weird" doesn't mean you shouldn't talk about it. The whole premise of the presentation was, "Why do we need renewable and sustainable energy?". You're educating young, impressionable minds about cleaner forms of energy but leaving out the cleanest, most sustainable and most dense source of energy there is. Yes, you touched briefly on how energy dense it is but it was kind of a passing mention when talking about coal. You could have educated them more on nuclear and told them the advantages of it as well, like one small portion of Uranium could power more and for a longer time period than vast fields of solar. Admittedly, teaching them something like that might push them more towards nuclear than renewables but if you truly want kids to be critical thinkers, educate them on all of the forms of energy without bias and let them come to their own conclusions. Leaving out nuclear is a huge disservice to their education. You dedicated 7-ish minutes to the evils of fossil fuels but without fossil fuels, you wouldn't even have wind and solar. You could have left out the Solar Freak'n Roadways portion and spent more time on nuclear. You also stated that the only field that's growing is wind and solar, which is also a disservice because that's not true for some parts of the world. Like I said in my original comment, in my province over 50% of energy is provided by nuclear and they are building three more SMRs. Only 8 percent is currently wind and half a percent is solar. It seems like finally some parts of the world are waking up to the fact that wind and solar are not all they're cracked up to be and investing more in nuclear.

[@davidwilkie9551]

Because new students in combination with their Teachers are very focused on learning, apparently 20X above average, and repeat the kind of learning rates of babies to preschoolers, for whom we're all teaching and unfooling examples of learning, High School Students are at a pivotal level of fooling/unfooling transition.., Sciencing Re-search being the unfooling technique required. The suspension of the use of Nuclear Weapons in the usual boiling over of human frustrations with the conglomerations of abstractions that have accumulated to pass as Civilization, is due to self restraint on the part of the victims of mafia-like criminal defense that is Control Fraud presented in faked-up rehash religious terminology, and Sciencing analysts who substitute Mathemagical rigorous Math-Physics for didactic religious practices-without reason, play the role of the debaters of ancient wisdom in the constant turnover of knowledge, the emulation of Actuality. (A Delicate and morally dangerous contradiction of zombie politics).

[@DimasFajar-ns4vb]

dear sir bacon ham pork is unhealthy

[@alch3myau]

nuclear is the greener energy!

[@patrickwright8552]

Just convince your neighbors to store the waste in your neighborhood

[@bobweiram6321]

Better yet, convince them to store spent fuel in your neighborhood and that there will never be any interruptions in its cooling for one or more decades.

[@MrTripcore]

Let's stick our bird brains in the sand and pretend nuclear waste doesn't exist.

[@alch3myau]

Whats old mate Bill doing? Huh? HUH?! NUCLEAR! *mic drop*

[@patrickwright8552]

@@alch3myau Yes, those with the wealth of governments may act as if they are governments. Some governments act intelligently, others do not. That a man of otherworldly wealth is pursuing some objective says little about the objective's utility.

[@artur8403]

21 million tons of coal per day and some madman thinks cows are bad

[@EEVblog2]

Yeah but you capture the vegan vote.

[@thegreenpickel]

Californian here, don't be fooled, it's about taxes and credits.

[@artur8403]

@@thegreenpickel same with carbon tax. One says it gets more money into poor families pockets. Those politicians really think we are idiots

[@vihai]

How much methane do cows produce? How much its GWP compares to CO2 emitted by fossil fuels burning? Maybe it's not irrelevant.

[@artur8403]

@@vihai all methane prodeced by cows is consumed by cows. Burning coal doesnt remove previous co2 from air and doesnt produce new coal

[@AdamsLab]

Imagine skipping over discussing a basically unlimited clean source of power because it's "weird" (i.e. the presenter does not understand it).

[@whocares281]

It is not unlimited at all. Besides all the other problems.

[@cdnron75]

Agreed. Also, I checked out your channel and I've enjoyed the content I've seen so far. Subscribed!

[@AdamsLab]

@@whocares281 - I qualified that by saying "basically." The NEA has estimated the economically accessible uranium would last 200 years at current (estimate from 2009) rates of consumption. There's also the possibility of extracting uranium from sea water (not yet economically viable but offers an estimated 60,000 year supply) and fuel-recycling fast-breeder reactors which would take 30,000 years to exhaust the NEA estimated fuel sources. Not to mention thorium reactors. What are these "other problems"?

[@AdamsLab]

@@cdnron75 🙏

[@whocares281]

@@AdamsLab Nuclear waste, security, cost of maintenance, cost of decommissioning at the end of life (mostly to be paid by the public, at least over here).

[@jrworpjrworp7254]

Nuclear id only clean ehen you don't count the waste

[@Kalanchoe1]

even then, waste can be refined again

[@EEVblog2]

Not that hard to solve. But even then it's not "clean" as I showed in the uranium mining photos, not the mention all the other materials that go into building the plant. You don't get a free lunch with any energy source. Best one is probably hydro in an existing natural creek or river.

[@Kalanchoe1]

@@EEVblog2 I'm not knocking hydro but it isn't exactly feasible everywhere. In the many places hydro cannot be done, my hope is nuclear steps in.

[@EEVblog2]

@@Kalanchoe1 Never said it was, just using it as the example of the smallest embodied energy footprint if you already have a suitable river or falls, or whatever.

[@Kalanchoe1]

@@EEVblog2 agreed 👍

[@MrZnarffy]

Renewables are generally BAD!!!! Why? Because of EROEI. This is what we SHOULD discuss.. EROEI is the most important number for us humans, as it affects everything in our life.. It really tells how well off we are. This number basically tells us how much society can afford in healthcare, education, infrastructure etc. With a low EROEI energy is more expensive, which affects food cost, how much you have to work etc. And most renewables have low EROEI.. There is one exception, hydro power, but it has huge localised ecological costs. The ONE energy source we have which does not pollute our atmosphere AND have a high EROEI is nuclear. And it will last us a very long time. We are talking hundreds, possibly thousands of years of massive global energy use before it runs out. And the waste we actually can use over and over until it's "safe". Going the renewable way we make our society poorer, which we already see today in the western world, with increased housing and food costs among other things. We go nuclear, we stop this trend and reverse it.. And the day we finally run out of "geological" fuel, we will already be out in the solar system, which has LOADS of it around, plus fuel for fusion when we get that going. By going renewables, we also condemn ourselves to more wars, as with less energy we need more space to feed the same amount of people, so someone has to suffer......

[@kezi___]

extremely dumb take on nuclear, the amount of "non renewable" uranium needed is way less in mass than the amount of material wasted to create, field and maintain the machines that convert wind and sun to energy you said for yourself that it's not polluting, that's it.

[@EEVblog2]

As I replid to another person, will rpeat here: "I understand it, but it's "wierd" because it's not technically a renewable which was the focus of the talk. I had a brief from the school to do something on renewable energy specifically because the kids were about to embark on a week long project of building a solar air heater. That is why I didn't go into detail on nuclear, and I couldn't call it a "renewable", and I couldn't leave it out."

[@kezi___]

@@EEVblog2 neither renewables are technically renewable, the machines that harness the "renewable" energy source are electronic products that you know very well cannot and will not be recycled to 100.00%, your failing to mention this while pointing out the, comparably, trace amounts of uranium that is "disappeared" for producing energy, is disinformation, and by the way you can recycle nuclear fuel too I got your point, I'm challenging it, nuclear is more renewable than most "renewable" energy sources

[@PaulaXism]

@@EEVblog2 Dave. I don't think these people have ever seen a Uranium mine, or a fuel processing plant. Horrible environment destroying places they are. Have you heard of Krystim? (I think I got the spelling right)

[@ronaldgarrison8478]

~27:00 Solar panels in highway medians: probably not that great a choice, although I suppose not totally out of the question. I have a suggestion: ROUNDABOUTS. For roundabouts, there's always the question of what to do with the circle in the middle. You'd like to have something that people don't need to get to very much, for obvious reasons. So: Put in some solar panels. Or for some places, wind turbines. Or maybe a combination.