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Japan to place renewable as major energy source in long-term plan

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While most progressive nations have stopped keeping their heads in the sand, and are now including renewable energy as a major part of their SHORT-term plans.

0 ( +1 / -1 )

I wonder what percentage of off-balance sheet costs of nuclear power have been spent on subsidies for renewables. I bet it is tiny.

5 ( +5 / -0 )

Ya think? Japan is now finally waking up to the same conclusion that the rest of the world has been increasingly implementing for years.

I find this quote too rather interesting... "Observers say resource-poor Japan, ..."

Japan is surely rich in resources, ie rich in solar, rich in hydro, rich in frozen methane, rich in potential wave and tidal power, rich in wind, and and rich in geothermal energy sources. No need to be modest, Japan! Go grab it!!!

2 ( +3 / -1 )

Haven't Japan heard free energy source of sunshine? Entire California use solar energy now. There are many states that use only sunshine as energy resource in USA..

0 ( +1 / -1 )

noted the importance of continuing to develop safe nuclear reactors and train personnel in the industry, seeing atomic power as a clean energy source not emitting carbon dioxide.

Yeah, nuclear power does not emit CO2, but it creates something far worse and far more difficult to manage, nuclear waste, which can stay radioactive for upwards of a thousand years. Japan does not have the means to deal with the nuclear waste they have at present, but they want to make more? That's just stupid! Furthermore, recent history shows that Japanese nuclear power cartels do not have the integrity to operate nuclear reactors appropriately with all their scandals, lies and fraudulent safety reports. The only reason they won't let nuclear power go is because of the tens of billions of dollars (not yen) they have invested in it although, most of their reactors are reaching the end of their 40 year lifespan. Playing on the CO2 emissions is just a smokescreen to get favor from voters.

"resource-poor Japan" - Don't they ever get sick of repeating this same self-pitying rubbish? Japan has a virtually endless source of geothermal power, which is totally under-utilised. The technology exists and is proven to be virtually free after the first few years. The major argument against utilising geothermal power is that most of the active fields lay within national parks, which is just another convenient lie. The reason they don't develop geothermal power is because of all the money they have invested in nuclear power. Therefore, even utilising natural resources comes back to the amount of money they have invested in nuclear power. It's all about the money! It has nothing to do with 'resource-poor Japan'.

5 ( +5 / -0 )

One of the saddest sights I have ever seen is a field of solar panels in Aso town. That land is some of the richest, most productive farmland anywhere in the world and now it has been destroyed for a solar farm. It is a real ecological disaster. Nothing is living there, not even a weed or centipede.

-2 ( +0 / -2 )

Zero carbon emissions I'm not against. On the other hand, radioactivity levering up is a trigger to provoke catastrophic events. Nuclear power won't be "Japan to place renewable as major energy source in long-term plan", anyway.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

One of the saddest sights I have ever seen is a field of solar panels in Aso town. That land is some of the richest, most productive farmland anywhere in the world and now it has been destroyed for a solar farm. It is a real ecological disaster. Nothing is living there, not even a weed or centipede.

Given that every roof could host a solar panel, it barely seems necessary.

2 ( +2 / -0 )

when the nukes are turned off is the only way I'll ever believe it.

Yes Japan has a lot of resources in renewable, especially geothermal. But even so, 5m down it's 10C (at least in Canada) so some other temp differential would make a great air-con for any building anywhere in the country. Just make it a part of any building design and the cooling needs are greatly reduced. This also reduces the dreaded last 4km of electrical delivery which tends to be where the efficiencies are the worst. Better efficiency of electricity means more of it for other uses.

Also as an island nation with most cities on the coastline deep water cooling is also entirely feasible. (See Deep Lake Water Cooling installed in Toronto in 2003). Again by subtracting demand, this removed the requirement of having a natural gas plant right in the middle of the city. This could be gold in Japan IMHO

And this is all before solar panels, panels that use the same tech as plasma TVs. The country should have been flooded with panels two days from yesterday.

2030 is ridiculous when the technology is available now

2 ( +2 / -0 )

hydroelectric and solar (up to 13 grams per kilowatt hour), 

zichi, where did you get that number? On googling, the first few articles I came across gave figures from 12 to 88 grams per kWh.

Compared with coal, I don't think the CO2 emissions of solar versus nuclear are that significant. Issues such as safety versus reliability seem much more important. Personally, I'd like to hear more about about developments of storage of power from renewables, whether batteries, hydrogen or some other means. At the moment, this is the weak point. Other than for hydro, we generally have to have 100% backup for other renewable sources in the form of conventional power stations. It seems very wasteful.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

albaleo

you might like the concept and application of molten salt as a storage system. Salt is crystalline by nature so wants to return to solid form, giving off heat. Spain uses it in a solar thermal array. Salt is held at 500C or something like that and used to boil water to generate electricity 24/7.

Not everyone has that kind of stable sunlight though. But the concept similarly could be used more in wind and solar or any intermittent system that needs to even its output. Not a new concept. In other countries with mountains, stored potential energy in the form of pumped storage is already in wide use

The proton battery out of Australia lately looks promising but it's in the early stages. If it scales it will add to the above not requiring exotic materials or destructive waste leftovers to run things.

I expect these developments to leapfrog over lithium and hydrogen due to simplicity of materials lowering costs and development.

The only people peddling hydrogen are those in the natural gas industry, but it will get to the point that all energy will no longer be based on finite resources, but good renewable design instead

1 ( +1 / -0 )

Joke of the day.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Japan and India should become major partners in promoting renewable energy in the world and to meet their future energy needs

0 ( +0 / -0 )

zichi, sf2k

Thanks. More reading to do.

The only people peddling hydrogen are those in the natural gas industry

How true is this? I understand that most current hydrogen production come from methane, and so the natural gas producers have an interest. But are there not various projects underway to generate hydrogen from other sources (e.g. simple electrolysis of water)?

0 ( +0 / -0 )

You're using energy to run the electrolysis to get less energy back. Then if you want to use it again, you lose even more energy. Versus just using electricity directly hydrogen remains a white elephant.

Say you're at a plant you convert hydrogen into Magic Widgets (tm). Let's say you lose 25% of the energy but now you can transport the Magic Widgets safely. You'll now need 25% more transportation energy to transport it as well, unless the fuel trucks are not running on hydrogen based fuel. You've added more costs to your truck fleet. Now when you want to use it, say at a charging station, it has to go through another conversion back to electricity, losing another 25%. Do you see how silly it gets? (Note it could be much less than 25% but the point is the accumulative losses).

This link is from 2006, and much has changed I'm sure, but it gives you an idea of what issues they had to deal with versus a more straightforward and cheaper electric design: https://phys.org/news/2006-12-hydrogen-economy-doesnt.html . Batteries have their own inefficiencies as well. As long as that keeps going up and hydrogen stands still, it'll lose the race.

I think they were able to make it scale for limited single car trains in Germany and power plants in South Korea. But again if you have a battery-grid it disappears. The R&D of renewables makes everyday hydrogen's last as renewables continue to improve where hydrogen can't. Such a battery-grid can be powered via multiple sources, providing externalities of change beyond oil and gas. We're really trying to force something to work in our favour and the universe is saying not so fast.

As alternative non-exclusive means of energy generation increase then hydrogen production exclusivity becomes its own cost limitation, on top of the losses. Inevitably the rich nations that pursue the use of hydrogen will lose out to other nations that went with progressive R&D renewables that can work anywhere.

Add grid connected vehicles and you don't need exotic batteries either. Changing the transportation paradigm to think of the road as a battery-grid and not just a vehicle place and it wipes out many issues.

I think what happened was that engineers were merely told and paid to make hydrogen work from their managers in oil and gas related companies or subsidiaries. And not asked if making a battery out of the most corrosive element in the universe was a great idea. (No!) It's like all the companies decided to base themselves on sulphuric acid and thought it was a good idea. (Double No!)

As the progression of renewable energy storage continues, such as molten salt, various new batteries that don't use any lithium, or any other limited resources, local generation and construction efficiencies that reduces massive "the last km" losses, then hydrogen continues to be a non starter.

Progress is about eliminating losses. The diminishing returns of hydrogen will continue to make it a boutique system. It works, sure. But at its fundamental core, why not work with physics and chemistry instead of working against it? Everything else today is safer and easier to handle. Everything invented tomorrow that is safer and easier to handle won't be hydrogen.

As our energy usage becomes more solid state, dealing with hydrogen increasingly seems to be a fanciful waste of time and money. Hence car companies that had hydrogen cars have abandoned them for full electric vehicles. They're probably tired of the complexity in managing all the losses

0 ( +0 / -0 )

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