Comments by "Tony Wilson" (@tonywilson4713) on "Is the World Going to Be in Trouble Soon?" video.

  1. I'm an engineer and have been trying to point out that we just can't simply pull technology out of our collective ass. Turn switch from coal to clean energy takes time and the coal industry has done so much delaying of replacement technology we really are in a very, very bad place. I'm Australian and my first major revelation was 4 years ago when I did dippy little consult job where I had to do a Power Point for a Taiwanese outfit into Australia's future energy needs. We haven't built a major base load power station on our eastern side since 1999. Our population has gone from 20 to over 25 million in that time, because the coal industry has held up any and all development. The lack of supply has almost quadrupled our basic power costs. To get past it we need a bunch of large base load power stations and those just can't be built overnight. Even coal fire power stations can't be built fast enough to help. 🤷‍♂️🤷‍♀️
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  2. Yeah its bit obvious. 🤷‍♂️🤷‍♀️
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  3.  @AMortalDefiant  Australia is 1/13th the population of America, but unfortunately we have a coal industry that's incredibly powerful. I think it was in 2018 or 2019 China installed in a single year more wind & solar then America had in its entire history. So America is not only behind its being surpassed. I'm an engineer and the real problem with nuclear is the actual reactor technology used. There was an alternative technology developed in the late 1960s called "Molten Salt Reactors" (MSRs). MSRs use salt instead of water to transfer the heat. At around 600C salt is just a liquid that flows like water while water flash boils. The problem with water reactors is they containment technology which if it fails you get Fukushima or Chernobyl or worse. But MSRs lost out the same way Betamax lost to VHS in that it was the second technology developed and those who owned the patents on the first won. This tech was reviewed as part of a NASA study into powering a moon base. Since then its gone further and instead of using Uranium they can now use Thorium it just works better in an MSR and is much easier to process into useable fuel. Uranium is a pain in the ass to purify into a useable fuel. I have worked in the Australian Uranium industry (on the mining side) and as part of that went through the ANSTO induction which covers the Uranium fuel cycle form in the ground to back in the ground and all the in between steps. And yes the Iranians do have a weapons program but that's another issue. On the Wind Solar front up to a certain point they are now way better than coal, hydro or anything else in terms of investment. If you think in terms of building a gigawatt of coal/nuclear/hydro you have to spend years building the thing. As an investment you get zero return until its 100% complete. But if you are going to do a gigawatt of solar or wind you are starting to get a return almost immediately. As soon as you connect the first solar panel or wind turbine to the grid you can make money. You don't have to wait until its all built. So in terms of an investment solar and wind annihilate the competition up to a point. At around 80% it begins to hit a problem. There's only so many places the wind blows reliably or the sun shines reliably and they start getting farther and farther away from the grid they need to supply. In Australia our best solar is in the middle of the country where its bright sun 360 days of the year. You get maybe 4 or 5 days when its not as bright. But there's 2 issues. First Solar panels are less efficient when they get hot and central Australia is very hot. Second its a long way from any of our population which means very expensive power lines. For wind our southern coastline (along the Great Australia Bight) is the best place in the world for wind. Its directly exposed to the southern ocean and its mostly a 50m cliff so the turbines are already high above sea level. BUT it so far off grid it also needs a very expensive connection. There rest of the world faces similar issues. The best place for Europe to get solar power from is North Africa. The Sahara is a solar gold mine except for getting the power into Europe. Yes I know about Hydrogen as an energy medium but Hydrogen has its own set of handling issues most of all it likes to explode rather than burn and when it does burn its pretty violent.
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