Comments by "Laurence Fraser" (@laurencefraser) on "An Introduction to District Heating Systems" video.

  1.  @TheAmericanCatholic  pretty sure no one has a problem with waste Heat that is incidentally from a nuclear plant. The 'anti nuclear crowd', that part with any actual influence anyway, is generally rather more concerned with the downsides of putting a nuclear plant anywhere near a population centre in the first place. And the ones making actually sensible arguments are fully aware that a properly functioning and maintained nuclear plant is actually Less dangerous, radiation wise, than a coal plant in the same condition (they don't want Those anywhere near population centres Either), the concern is that if a Coal plant fails... you get a steam explosion and a fire. Bad, but design can render the explosion sufficiently non dangerous to the surrounding area, and a fire is a fire, cities have to deal with those anyway, and have been forever. You take what measures you can to prevent it then send in the firefighters to deal with anything that overcomes it. A nuclear plant failing is rather more catastrophic. Yes, yes, make all the arguments you like about modern nuclear plants not failing ... they always end in 'so long as the people in charge (and certain key workers) aren't the sort of idiots who disable important safety features or refuse to pay for necessary upgrades or maintenance' which basically invalidates the entire argument because it doesn't matter if it's a corporation or a government entity, that absolutely WILL happen eventually. Too many perverse inscentives encouraging it. And that's before acounting for potential sabotage. At this point, if you found a practical way to stick a nuclear plant on essentially a raft sufficiently far out to sea (and somewhere suitable wind wise) while still getting the power back for use (and built it with all appropriate safety measures etc.), very few people would actually have a problem with it (well, in and of itself. Political propaganda is always a thing one needs to account for). And a few countries have enough empty space and suitable geography (without endangered species that people care about living there) that would be equally suitable. But no one half way aware of how humans work wants one anywhere near where they live, work, etc., and it's not just NIMBYism or ignorant fear of nuclear power in general. It's more similar to how people often don't want to live down stream of hydroelectric plants (well, maybe WAY down stream).
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  2. nuclear power is precisely as safe as those in charge of it are trustworthy and compitent. Given how often both corporations and government entities have perverse inscentives encouraging bad practice, and given the consequences of a failure? It's entirely reasonable not to want such a thing anywhere near you (or, for that matter, upwind of you). Doesn't matter how safe the design is when everything's in good repair and everyone is doing their jobs properly, it matters how safe it is when that's NOT the case. Coal plant? Steam explosion that probably doesn't do much to the surrounding area, and a regular fire (which, well, cities have systems in place for dealing with That already). Nuclear plant? Much bigger deal. Mind you, no one wants a coal plant anywhere near their house if they can help it Either, given the smoke and the fact that the things put out a mildly concerning amount of radiation in the course of normal operation (more so than a nuclear plant, in fact). Gas is, of course, less bad, but still not the greatest thing ever. And, of course, no one wants to live immediately down stream of a hydroelectric plant. Wind is Less bad, but the noise is still an issue. No one cares about living near photovoltaic cells, heck, they'll stick 'em on their houses, but those have their own downsides, and using mirrors and lensese to focus solar energy to drive a steam turbine takes up a tonne of space and actually screws up local weather patterns (for much the same reason as cities, particularly those full of excessive amounts of road and carparks, do, only much, much more so) and are rather bad for birds that make the mistake of flying through the beam. And those idiots trying to bill Orbital Power Transmiters as the solution to 'clean energy' generation... they're litterally dumping heat that would Miss the earth otherwise, Onto the Surface of the earth (kind of the oposite of the desired result) in the form of what amounts to a Giant Doom Laser (well, not Technically a laser, but functionally indistinguishable in effect)... ... if a person can't see the ways for THAT to go horribly wrong (both with and without bad actors involved) they have no business being involved in any project that might possibly have the capacity to actually implement the thing. ... Though they're at least right that it wouldn't be producing much of anything in the way of greenhouse gases.
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  3. Depends how you go about filtering the resulting smoke etc, I'd expect. Most places have laws regarding that sort of thing, after all. Depends on the type of garbage you're burning too. I know that where I live we have to sort our trash into organic/recyclable/other and the 'other' includes a Lot of stuff you wouldn't want to put through an incinerator if you wanted it to keep being usable, for example. Japan has more complicated trash seperation requirements, and one of the catagories is specifically 'burnable' stuff, that is, things that can go into the incineration plants (compared to various types of recyclables and the other things that Can't go into the incinerators.
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  4. you... do realise that district heating can be fueld by things Other than burning trash, right? In some places it's run off waste heat from industrial processes, for example. heck, my understanding is that a lot of places seperate out (most) organic waste for processing into fertaliser and such before the trash even leaves people's residences.
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  5. given how cheap heatpumps are to run, I would have expected that to be the baseline to compare to to begin with <_<
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  6. at 25c most people can hapily wander around in shorts and tshirts, in my experience.
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  7. well, yes, no, and sort of. In a lot of cases we've had things all along... but it's only recently that they've become Practical outside of certain very specific niches, for example. You'd be amazed how many things were invented Long before ways to actually apply them on a large scale came about. (for example: The ancient greeks had figured out the steam engine. Metulurgy sufficient to allow it to be actually Used for anything other than toys wasn't figured out until sometime in the 18th or early 19th century. Then you started getting steam powered pumps being used to prevent flooding in mineshafts. It took quite some time after That before steam engines started being used in other applications, and longer still before steam locomotives became practical for general use. It's intersting looking back through history for when things were invented. Many things were invented much earlier or much later than you'd expect. Of course, we've had issues with oil companies/decades spending decades actively spreading misinformation and engaging in campaigns of economic and political manipulation to keep their profits up even after the reality of global warming was known. (it was actually scientists working for ... Enron, I think it was, who first figured it out. The oil companies' response was... to build their oil rigs with taller legs against the possiblitiy of rising sea levels and start a campaign to suppress knowledge of the issue... then actively promote the myth of Global Cooling... and sabotage the development of photovoltaic technology, delaying its widespread adoption by decades).
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  8. In New Zealand most of the powerplants aren't even anywhere near the cities to begin with (we get a Lot of our power form hydroelectric dams, and most of the rest from coal and gas plants that are also generally further away from populated areas where possible), so cogeneration isn't really a thing that could really be done. On the other hand, every school I attended (didn't go to university or the like, mind you) had its own furnace, which would burn coal to provide heat for the entire campus via hot water pipes (and most of the school's rubbish would end up burnt in it too, to my understanding). Of course, that's largely because the schools themselves are mostly pretty old. Newer schools, and newer buildings, are just hooked up to the electrical grid and heated that way.
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  9. 'greater than 100% efficiency' is a bit misleading. in terms of 'electricity/fuel consumed to heat delivered', yes, sure. But it's not magically creating heat form no where :P Arguably, if it's exchanging heat with the outside air, it's functionally compact solar heating.
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