> From what I can tell, e-transfers will continue using interac's network, so I'm not sure if this will benefit users at all.
quote from the page:
As Interac e-Transfer payments begin to clear and settle on the RTR, we will put this world-class infrastructure to work for consumers and businesses.”
Jeremy Wilmot, President and CEO
Interac Corp.
The one thing that low carbon grids around the world share is high portion of nuclear (or hydro, which you can't build unless it naturally exists). Therefore, the only thing a SMR cost should be compared to is other nuclear reactors. Natural Gas may be cheaper (startup cost), may be more expensive (ongoing fuel), or will definitely be more expensive (carbon in the atmosphere doesn't go away), but regardless there is no reason to compare nuclear to natgas.
> The one thing that low carbon grids around the world share is high portion of nuclear (or hydro, which you can't build unless it naturally exists).
This is an historical artifact. When that generating capacity was built, nuclear was the alternative to fossil fuels. It isn't today; renewables are now cheaper and faster to install.
Your argument can be seen as a way to ignore the cost decline of renewables without at first glance doing so.
(As you say, there are hydro-dominated grids with no nuclear, for example Costa Rica, which gets 98% of its electrical energy from renewables.)
I was responding to the thread, which is comparing nuclear to natural gas.
Comparing to renewables is a different story - it can be done but it's much more complex (not dispatchable, seasonally variable) but certainly renewables makes sense in some or many places, (and in all places for a portion of the supply). I'm all in favour as long as it is actually done with the intent of getting to zero CO2, and doesn't just stall when it gets to the more difficult part of the transition. So many places get to 50% annual generation as renewable and throw up their hands about the remainder and leave it on coal/oil/natural gas
> I was responding to the thread, which is comparing nuclear to natural gas.
It's comparing nuclear to alternatives, one of which is natural gas. Others are renewables. One cannot make or justify a decision on nuclear without considering all the alternatives.
Weather dependent renewables (wind, solar) are not an alternative to nuclear, even when they are perceived in this way by the public.
From point of view of an electrical grid operator only wind/solar+fossil are alternative to nuclear, if you want to maintain stable electric grid without blackout or rolling blackouts.
> Weather dependent renewables (wind, solar) are not an alternative to nuclear, even when they are perceived in this way by the public.
This is a common misconception. The reality is that coupled with storage in a cost-optimized way renewables are no more expensive than nuclear for providing 365/24/7 power and likely considerably cheaper.
Weather dependent renewables (wind, solar) without storage are not an alternative to nuclear.
Now we can discuss more precisely the kinds of storage: pumped hydro, battery storage, H2 storage, thermal energy storage, the costs and space and material needs of each kind of storage.
There are basically two kinds of storage needed: a sort term, high efficiency storage, and a longer term low-capex storage. For example, batteries for the former, and either e-fuels like hydrogen or low capex thermal for the latter.
This optimizes cost because different properties of the storage drive cost in the two cases. For the first, there are thousands of charge-discharge cycles, so high round trip efficiency pays off. For the second, there are many fewer such cycles, so efficiency has a much lower payoff; instead the name of the game is minimizing capex.
In practice the second will not be installed until later in decarbonization, especially if the storage is being used to counter rare dark-calm periods when neither wind nor solar are available for a prolonged period. But it can be done, and so little of the total energy flow would go through in that case that high per-kWh costs for that small fraction can be tolerated.
Anyway, your clarification destroys the argument that was being made that nuclear is needed.
The original argument was that renewables are alternative to nuclear:
> It's comparing nuclear to alternatives, one of which is natural gas. Others are renewables. One cannot make or justify a decision on nuclear without considering all the alternatives.
Renewables (solar, wind) alone are not alternative to nuclear, without energy storage. This additional energy storage can be: short term energy storage, long term energy storage, or fossil fuels. Fossil fuels are solar energy stored in ancient times.
China is currently building many new coal plants as an backup for solar and wind power plants.
Germany is building new gas power plants, in future possible running on H2.
Certainly you can use those, but they're not mandatory (here in Canada at least). Can easily get a card and use physical bank and ATM to do everything, and website logins use email as 2fa.
I'd note that south or southeast would work, even southwest might. But East would clearly lead to the Netherlands. (they may also eat better bread there too, I wouldn't know)
> Here's a graph of total freight volume (a proxy for the real physical economy)
In 2008, people and businesses were still buying new computers every year or two, printing everything on paper, buying physical media. I don't know anyone that does this anymore. I don't think that is a good proxy.
In the US there was a slight drop around that time, but not close to 25% in the eu. If it was due to businesses buying less physical media wouldn't it be sth seen in the US data in some year too?
I would note that the population increase 2008-present in the EU (340M to 350M) is much lower than the US (305M to 345M), which could account for a rather significant difference too. I don't think either of these is a "smoking gun" but they both seem pretty significant confounding factors.
No, almost every one is above 1GW - divide the net capacity by the number under construction to see the power [1]. They appear to be almost all CAP1400 (1.4GW), Hualong One (1.0GW), or CAP1000 (1.0GW). I see a single Linglong 1 (100MW) under construction. Proposed are all above 1GW.
> Can anyone defend this? Why would anyone purchase anything from this company ever again?
I mean, if you want my personal reason - I assume any company warranty is barely worth the paper it's printed on - I'm very hesitant to do a bios update ever, only to address specific issues. So yea, I'd buy another framework (currently have a 12, and I love it despite the many flaws)
Emphasis mine. US median household is 2.53 persons [1]. 193/2.53 = 76k, which is within spitting distance of the 69k per person listed. The wikipedia is median wealth per capita
I think this analysis is conflating two different kinds of household -- a 2.53 (average) figure must include non-financially interdependent roommates, which aren't included in the $193k household figure.
Planes still need like half throttle to maintain altitude, that’s why airplane engines are rebuilt every few thousand hours vs lasting hundreds of thousands of miles (tens of thousands of hours) for a car engine that only uses a small fraction of its power to keep a car moving.
> Planes still need like half throttle to maintain altitude,
Yes, bit less than half, but anyway that is exactly why I said takeoff would be the peak power output.
> that’s why airplane engines are rebuilt every few thousand hours vs lasting hundreds of thousands of miles (tens of thousands of hours) for a car engine that only uses a small fraction of its power to keep a car moving.
Ratio of max power to average power is very low on the list of reasons why a gas turbine engined plane needs maintenance more frequently than a piston engined car.
> Ratio of max power to average power is very low on the list of reasons why a gas turbine engined plane needs maintenance more frequently than a piston engined car.
I meant for the comparison to be between an internal combustion engine in a car and an air-cooled piston engine in a plane, I should’ve clarified in my post.
I’m amazed we even figured out how to make reliable gas turbines (single crystal blades still astound me) so any required maintenance makes sense, they operate at the edge of engineering in a way that most machines don’t.
quote from the page:
As Interac e-Transfer payments begin to clear and settle on the RTR, we will put this world-class infrastructure to work for consumers and businesses.” Jeremy Wilmot, President and CEO Interac Corp.
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