Why I'm against hydrogen cells, central solar plants, and question nuclear options?

[RoeVWade]

A couple guiding principle I have besides reducing fossil fuels/ climate change, is thus.

1. I believe hydrogen cells put us back at the mercy of manufacturers. While I can't manufacture electric parts, I already know it's quite possible for some in their own garage to do a lot of self-maintenance and repair at home on electric. A lot of electric vehicles can be a lot more plug-n-play if someone wants to make them that way. And as long as you can remove parts and replace you can do a whole lot on your own now. It may not be ideal now, but it could be. I could be wrong on hydrogen cars being too much of a chunk of complexity that no one really will be able to handle at home. But until I'm sure, I will say, I'm highly doubtful, unless they can be shown to be worth the cause. We could certainly focus more on fuel cells on public transport, maybe?

2. I don't necessarily object to solar plants, (maybe it can be made safer for wildlife) but we're again suggesting putting more energy to a central source. I would rather the focus be at solar at home, or other thermal options. Replace my bill to the current power company for a new kind of power company??? Why? Let's not if we don't have to. If every other Ukrainian had small solar units at home, they would at least have some electricity. With enough solar panels you can get energy even on a cloudy day. Not to mention increases in efficiency that may occur over the years.

This leads in my 3rd point.

3. You bomb a normal power plant you cut power to potentially many thousands of customers. Depending on the damage, maybe weeks to months to repair. You bomb a nuclear plant, you're likely talking years to replace, even if there is somehow no contamination. You bomb people with power options at home. You can replace them as fast as you can get parts. And only ones that are damaged suffer. I'm not saying never use nuclear or anything else but beware of depending too much on them. You can reinforce nuclear plants even against bombs, but smart bombs are capable of hitting the same place one after another. That's how we destroy really hardened facilities already. Nothing can prevent that but maybe very expensive iron domes like Israeli.

[RoeVWade]

1. BTW, I don't know that we can ever achieve total home energy, but

I'd like people to shift the focus to that as much as possible where reasonable.

[Think. Again.]

2. Well, considering...

...that we have no choice except to stop burning fossil fuels (if we want life to continue), I guess we'll have to use all those things anyway until someone comes up with something better.

Of course, the unspoken issue is that we will be drastically reducing our energy use, whether by choice or not, no matter what happens (there's only 50 years of oil left in the ground), so it might be a good idea to get used to using far less energy now.

[NNadir]

3. Fear of nuclear energy kills millions of people per year.

Seven million people per year more or less, the death toll from air pollution not including climate change.

The good old bomb paranoia is one I happily haven't seen for a while, but one should never expect any element of absurdity to go away completely.

Right now, in a country known as Ukraine, vicious bombing using fossil fuel weapons of mass destruction is going on, and the money for this enterprise was provided by antinuke paranoids, specifically the Russian oil, gas and coal sales to the German antinuke paranoids.

Ignorance and fear kills people.

At the turn of the century this bomb scenario was promoted by the actor Martin Sheen, using the 9/11 scenario in reference to Indian Point. If I recall correctly it was around 2008 that this exercise in extreme paranoia was floting around. If we assume I'm correct on the date, in the 15 years or so since this bit of extreme stupidity, around 100 million people were killed by air pollution, more than 5 times the population of New York State.

The reason the planetary atmosphere is collapsing is that people value their dark and often irrational fantasies over the observation of reality.

One again, in situations like this, fear and ignorance kills people.

[dutch777]

4. People forget any large power source requires an extensive and expensive distribution system. More home based power!

Someone else just posted about Seattle and Berkley putting rules in place that seek to eliminate fossil fuels, specifically natural gas, as a home source of heat and cooking fuel over the coming decades. I think the way more locales should look at it also is require any new building, residential or commercial, to be at least 50% powered by on site solar or wind power generation including storage. This would lessen load on the grid, begin decentralization of energy production and bring solid alternatives to scale and thereby lower costs and efficiency as more and more in situ systems are brought on line

[hunter]

5. We are all dependent on high density energy resources for our food and everything else.

If those high density energy resources went away billions of us would suffer and die.

It's these high density energy resources (for all practical purposes fossil fuels) that sustain the current human population of eight billion.

The only energy resource capable of displacing fossil fuels entirely is nuclear power.

I'm a pretty good mechanic. My favorite sort of car costs about $1,000 and I can make it reliable for $1,000 more in parts. (That's 2017 prices, which is the last time I did that.) That's probably why there are no electric cars in my future...

I bought a new car once in the early 'eighties, when I was young and full of myself, but I'll never do that again.

In the unlikely event I do end up with an electric car it will almost certainly be some kind of conversion that I can work on myself.

Hydrogen powered vehicles were always a bad idea, for thermodynamic reasons, and because hydrogen is such a squirrely gas to work with. Finding and fixing a leaky gasoline, diesel, or even LPG line is trivial compared to a high pressure hydrogen leak.

As it is now, by some planning and greater good fortune, I've managed to avoid the automobile commuter lifestyle for most of my adult life.

Generally the people with the smallest environmental footprints live in cities and don't own automobiles. I think we ought to be rebuilding our cities, turning them into attractive affordable places where car ownership is unnecessary.

[RoeVWade]

6. I believe in multiple solutions. Yes, redesigning cities is an important approach.

nt/