From what I understand just about all of the car companies are discontinuing PHEV. VW discontinued a few years ago, and the Volt is EOL I think next year. The BMW i3 is a joke as a PHEV. The gas tank is less than 2 gallons/7.2L.
Not sure why, but GM/Chevy and several of the other car manufactures are all going with no-plugin hybrids. Why? If it's got a battery when not allow it to be charged by electricity inseads of just gasoline.
From what I understand just about all of the car companies are discontinuing PHEV. VW discontinued a few years ago, and the Volt is EOL I think next year. The BMW i3 is a joke as a PHEV. The gas tank is less than 2 gallons/7.2L.
Not sure why, but GM/Chevy and several of the other car manufactures are all going with no-plugin hybrids. Why? If it's got a battery when not allow it to be charged by electricity inseads of just gasoline.
From what I understand just about all of the car companies are discontinuing PHEV. VW discontinued a few years ago, and the Volt is EOL I think next year. The BMW i3 is a joke as a PHEV. The gas tank is less than 2 gallons/7.2L.
Not sure why, but GM/Chevy and several of the other car manufactures are all going with no-plugin hybrids. Why? If it's got a battery when not allow it to be charged by electricity inseads of just gasoline.Probably because the tax incentives ended. AFAIK most of the Mitsubishi Outlanders got sold in the Netherlands. When the tax incentives stopped the sales also dropped to zero.
Question I have is how/why do nuclear power plants release CO2?So much steel and concrete needed in construction and things like that.
Question I have is how/why do nuclear power plants release CO2?So much steel and concrete needed in construction and things like that.
This goes for ANY construction project though and it's a 1 time thing for that particular plant.
Pro oil people use the same argument against electric cars and renewable projects "but they're not green since there's a carbon footprint to manufacture them!". So do gas cars and oil projects...
Hopefully eventually we can eliminate even the manufacturing carbon footprint of things, but baby steps. Let's concentrate on making things that don't pollute during their main usable life time first.
From what I understand just about all of the car companies are discontinuing PHEV. VW discontinued a few years ago, and the Volt is EOL I think next year. The BMW i3 is a joke as a PHEV. The gas tank is less than 2 gallons/7.2L.
Not sure why, but GM/Chevy and several of the other car manufactures are all going with no-plugin hybrids. Why? If it's got a battery when not allow it to be charged by electricity inseads of just gasoline.The battery in a Prius like hybrid and the one in a PHEV are very different in both size and operating characteristics. If you put a charging socket on a Prius it would only take you a kilometre or so. Its about energy recovery from braking, and operating the gasoline engine in the more effective parts of its envelope. Its not about electric drive. Its really the electrification of the mechanical braking energy recovery systems that Volvo and others put in many commuter buses well before the Prius was launched.
The BMW i3 is a good example of the problem with trying to make a PHEV effective. They tried to make that car light, for efficiency, using carbon fibre and novel construction. A big engine and tank would have wrecked that strategy. So, they used a small lightweight engine and a small tank, and produced a result few people liked. If they had made it more like other PHEVs it would have weighed so much that people would not have liked the poor efficiency. You can't win. The Prius approach focuses on keeping all the additional hardware compact and light weight.
Has any PHEV hit a sweet spot where it has sold a lot of units? I believe the Mitsubishi Outlander bas been the best selling PHEV in Europe, but it's quite a rare car on the roads. Most PHEVs have only sold in very small numbers that can't sustain the business, and not the focus is now shifting to pure electric, as many new models are being prepared for market.
Question I have is how/why do nuclear power plants release CO2?So much steel and concrete needed in construction and things like that.
This goes for ANY construction project though and it's a 1 time thing for that particular plant.
Pro oil people use the same argument against electric cars and renewable projects "but they're not green since there's a carbon footprint to manufacture them!". So do gas cars and oil projects...
Hopefully eventually we can eliminate even the manufacturing carbon footprint of things, but baby steps. Let's concentrate on making things that don't pollute during their main usable life time first.Its not a one off thing. These plants only last 30 years or so, so the thing gets repeated every 30 years. You need to factor this into any analysis, as some concepts have such massive once every 30 years things that they dominate over day to day things.
Question I have is how/why do nuclear power plants release CO2?So much steel and concrete needed in construction and things like that.
This goes for ANY construction project though and it's a 1 time thing for that particular plant.
Pro oil people use the same argument against electric cars and renewable projects "but they're not green since there's a carbon footprint to manufacture them!". So do gas cars and oil projects...
Hopefully eventually we can eliminate even the manufacturing carbon footprint of things, but baby steps. Let's concentrate on making things that don't pollute during their main usable life time first.Its not a one off thing. These plants only last 30 years or so, so the thing gets repeated every 30 years. You need to factor this into any analysis, as some concepts have such massive once every 30 years things that they dominate over day to day things.It's a one off thing for each plant built and the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from cement depends on how it's being manufactured (same as with PV panels) so it will likely improve with time. As can be seen here solar produce more GHG emissions than nuclear (page 3, fig 2):
https://www.parliament.uk/documents/post/postpn_383-carbon-footprint-electricity-generation.pdf
But if we compared to coal, gas and oil it's obviously silly to fuss about the tiny GHG emission levels that you get from solar and nuclear.
Something I don’t get is why when folks talk about CO2 emissions from the burning of coal they don’t mention the burning of coal/fossil fuels also releases millions of tons every year of nuclear radioactive isotopes into our atmosphere. And the waste, the slag heaps from the burning of coal are also radio-active and the radio-active waste is leaches out into the ground water.
QuoteSomething I don’t get is why when folks talk about CO2 emissions from the burning of coal they don’t mention the burning of coal/fossil fuels also releases millions of tons every year of nuclear radioactive isotopes into our atmosphere. And the waste, the slag heaps from the burning of coal are also radio-active and the radio-active waste is leaches out into the ground water.And the coal/gas/oil industry doesn't even have to take care of their own (radioactive) waste (like nuclear does). Often it's just dumped in a landfill somewhere.
People are irrational and afraid of things they don't understand. Burning of wood and coal at home in the cottage is cosy. Big power plants with educated (probably ateist) types in lab coats are scary and evil. (And since coal and gas is such a big industry they have much better lobbyists).
Maybe it would not make a difference as Germany's Chancellor is one and yet Germans are shunning nuclear power and burning more coal.
Maybe it would not make a difference as Germany's Chancellor is one and yet Germans are shunning nuclear power and burning more coal.It is strange Merkel did that, and at the same time making Germany more dependent on Russian LNG.
Germany has a strong political movement (the green party) that were founded on anti-nuclear rhetoric. I suppose Germany also have lots of domestic coal and a powerful coal industry. The European union has its roots in the European Coal and Steel Community which gives a hint of how important the coal industry have been.
Here's what Finland is doing to store nuclear waste.
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The "risk" that some hypothetical future post apocalyptic civilisation will have forgotten all about ionising radiation, while still managing to dig a km down through solid bedrock and get in contact with nuclear waste, seems sort of ridiculously unlikely.
The "risk" that some hypothetical future post apocalyptic civilisation will have forgotten all about ionising radiation, while still managing to dig a km down through solid bedrock and get in contact with nuclear waste, seems sort of ridiculously unlikely.After the fall of the Roman Empire, Europe fell hard, and retreated into insular pockets of activity. When things started to improve again, those wealthy enough to travel and see the world were frequently shocked at finding massive structures from Greek and Roman times. They had no clue who had built them, as all connection with history had been lost. There is a reason why the Dark Ages have that tag name.
The "risk" that some hypothetical future post apocalyptic civilisation will have forgotten all about ionising radiation, while still managing to dig a km down through solid bedrock and get in contact with nuclear waste, seems sort of ridiculously unlikely.After the fall of the Roman Empire, Europe fell hard, and retreated into insular pockets of activity. When things started to improve again, those wealthy enough to travel and see the world were frequently shocked at finding massive structures from Greek and Roman times. They had no clue who had built them, as all connection with history had been lost. There is a reason why the Dark Ages have that tag name.A lot of stuff has been re-invented during the past 5000 years. But then again non of the old empires got to book printing. IMHO book printing has been the turning point because it allows sharing information on a global scale. And internet is taking sharing knowledge to the next level. All in all information is much more widely spread and less likely to be lost.
The "risk" that some hypothetical future post apocalyptic civilisation will have forgotten all about ionising radiation, while still managing to dig a km down through solid bedrock and get in contact with nuclear waste, seems sort of ridiculously unlikely.After the fall of the Roman Empire, Europe fell hard, and retreated into insular pockets of activity. When things started to improve again, those wealthy enough to travel and see the world were frequently shocked at finding massive structures from Greek and Roman times. They had no clue who had built them, as all connection with history had been lost. There is a reason why the Dark Ages have that tag name.A lot of stuff has been re-invented during the past 5000 years. But then again non of the old empires got to book printing. IMHO book printing has been the turning point because it allows sharing information on a global scale. And internet is taking sharing knowledge to the next level. All in all information is much more widely spread and less likely to be lost.
Let's not forget the first nuclear fission reactor was all natural. It ran for a few hundred thousand years and we were able to find it and I don't think anyone was killed or became ill due to radiation sickness.
Let's not forget the first nuclear fission reactor was all natural. It ran for a few hundred thousand years and we were able to find it and I don't think anyone was killed or became ill due to radiation sickness.Yes, 1.7 billion years ago. At that time, the Earth was a very different place. Even oxygen in the atmosphere was a relatively new thing.
First vertebrate land animals are from 380 million years ago.
Let's not forget the first nuclear fission reactor was all natural. It ran for a few hundred thousand years and we were able to find it and I don't think anyone was killed or became ill due to radiation sickness.Yes, 1.7 billion years ago. At that time, the Earth was a very different place. Even oxygen in the atmosphere was a relatively new thing.
First vertebrate land animals are from 380 million years ago.
True and dispite that radioactive decay that's still going on to this very day land animals. vertebrates and man was able to evolve.