Solar Energy could...

Great Debates
41

[QUOTE=Sam Stone]
Well, that’s an awfully fast dismissal of nuclear. Nuclear remains the only technology we have for generating the power we need without producing greenhouses gases for the forseeable future. We can solve the waste problem, and you’ll be surprised how fast political consensus changes when the price of energy skyrockets…Against all these benefits, dismissing it out of hand because of waste handling and political problems seems overly dismissive, especially when they alternative you are suggesting is much more radical and unproven.
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I’m not dismissing nuclear fission outright as a component of energy development, but it has some substantial drawbacks, both politically and technically, and the costs of fuel processing, plant construction and maintenance, remediation and waste disposal, et cetera are much higher than comperable coal- or oil-fired plants. As for “solv[ing] the waste problem,” either you are privy to solutions that have escaped the industry or you are downplaying the issues around nuclear waste disposal. We can vitrify high level waste and contain or bury other waste products, but regardless of how competitive nuclear might become in comparison to other energy sources, you’re still not going to find anyone willing to play host to a nuclear dump. The notion that nuclear fission power doesn’t create pollution is untrue; while the process itself is contained, the process of enriching fuel to achieve fissile potential creates quite a bit of caustic, chemically reactive waste. And safety concerns about transporting waste to a central entombment site like Yucca Repository are very real, as are concerns about plant accidents and safety failures.

Nuclear fission may very well become an important near term source, but ultimately we should be moving away from fission and into something that is renewable, cost effective, and that has little or no byproducts to process or bury.

Stranger

42

But…but…in 22 years none of this will matter, will it, Ray? We’ll all be posthuman and any prediction beyond that is impossible, right , Mr Kurzweil? So all that effort for what, two years of forseen future?

or, less sarcastically - I don’t trust Kurzweil’s predictive power. But there is a thin solar plant going up in the next town over using thin film CIGS tech, and it’s got a lot of German money behind it, so who knows?.

43

Kurzweil overstates but solar technology is approaching grid parity and is well suited in many areas for meeting peak demands. There are also a variety of technologies that will make storage of energy (saving for a cloudy day) more cost realistic.

Solar can easily be a major part of a new mix of energy resources and solutions located both in centralized plants and producing energy in a distributed fashion.

44

To get right down to it, it’s pretty much all solar, isn’t it? Oil, coal, natural gas are all produced from solar energy by biological organisms during the Paleozoic or some such era. Whether you use photovoltaic cells or solar fired steam turbines or biodiesel made from cellulose or algae you’re just replacing the storage media. Even nuclear depends on elements forged in the heart of a nova. That oughta hold the tree huggers. It’s not nuclear, it’s trapped solar energy, we’re just letting it out.

45

[QUOTE=Stranger On A Train]
Nuclear fission may very well become an important near term source, but ultimately we should be moving away from fission and into something that is renewable, cost effective, and that has little or no byproducts to process or bury.
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Nuclear is the only technology we have that can produce enough energy. The majority of problems with nuclear are political, and will hopefully ease when people get desperate enough. And solar panels produce plenty of waste, both being manufactured and disposed of; and as has been pointed out, they compete with space for living things. If there’s such a terms as “space pollution”, solar panels are guilty of it; they are space hogs.

If not, it won’t be solar, but probably coal that produces our power, which produces plenty of CO2, and plenty of waste, including radioactive waste ( plenty of uranium and thorium in the coal ). More pollution, and more ecological damage.

As for nuclear’s waste disposal problem, that too is largely political. Massive facilities designed to hold nuclear waste for millenia aren’t necessary; we could get away with far simpler methods of disposal. The really dangerous stuff doesn’t last all that long; it’s only paranoia about some tiny bit getting out in a few centuries that makes all these precautions “necessary”. Mostly, waste disposal for coal and oil is cheaper not because it’s safe, but because it’s just dumped somewhere, or into the air. If you want to make nuclear ( or solar for that matter ) more economically competitive, passing a CO2 tax would do it.

46

[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
Nuclear is the only technology we have that can produce enough energy. The majority of problems with nuclear are political, and will hopefully ease when people get desperate enough…As for nuclear’s waste disposal problem, that too is largely political. Massive facilities designed to hold nuclear waste for millenia aren’t necessary; we could get away with far simpler methods of disposal. The really dangerous stuff doesn’t last all that long; it’s only paranoia about some tiny bit getting out in a few centuries that makes all these precautions “necessary”.
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Wow, what a bunch of ignorant handwaving. Since you aren’t “paranoid” about the “tiny bit getting out”, perhaps you’d like to buy some shorefront property on Lake Karachay. The history of nuclear energy and fissile processing in the Soviet Union stands as a warning to being insufficiently prudent about safety and storage; not that other nations with nuclear industries have been immune to accidents. This is only a small sampling of commercial nuclear accidents, and doesn’t even get into accidental and intentional release of radiation and radioactive material involved in fuel and weapon grade material processing. It is true that the hazards and risks of the nuclear fuel cycle are manageable and can be mitigated by the intensive and consistent application of risk management methods and redundant safety systems, but the criticality of failure can be very high. Before making blasé pronouncements that the hazards of nuclear waste are nothing but paranoia and politics, you should educate yourself on the issue.

The amount of solar energy potentially available is vastly exceeds current or foreseeable needs, and in the long term is essentially limitless, unlike fissile fuel sources. The issue isn’t whether there is enough energy, but how to access and store it in a cost-effective manner. The technology to do this currently is in a primitive state, which may dictate developing nuclear fission power sources to bridge the gap and reduce dependence on fossile fuels, but long term fission is costly, hazardous, and ultimately unsustainable. Those arguing against solar energy based on a conception of PV panels covering the landscape from horizon to horizon are akin to prognosticators who insisted that the need for computers would be limited to a handful in the entire country based upon ENIAC-type vacuum tube integrators.

Stranger

47

Solar energy will become an important tool in reducing our fossil fuel dependency. As time goes on it will improve and become more important. It probably will never provide all our energy needs but it can help quickly. But if the technology gets there The sky is the limit.

48

[QUOTE=Stranger On A Train]
Wow, what a bunch of ignorant handwaving.
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Just for laughs, what say we add up the total amount of environmental damage and premature cancer deaths and whatnot and compare it the current state of fossil-fuel power production?

I’d like to see widespread solar, myself, but let’s not ignore the reality. A tightly-regulated nuclear infrastructure can do quite a lot while we wait for the maybe-someday-soon solar bonanza. The biggest barriers now are legal obstructions and political fear, not engineering or realistic environmentalism.

49

[QUOTE=Stranger On A Train]
Wow, what a bunch of ignorant handwaving.
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It sure was…but incredibly it wasn’t Der Trihs who exhibited it this time. In fact, I find myself strangely agreeing with him on this one. Even factoring in accidents in the Soviet Union and other communist countries you can’t seriously think that the number of deaths or the environmental damage from, say, the generation of energy by coal is comparable to those from nuclear…do you?? Just the MINERS of coal suffer more deaths a year than have died from all the nuclear accidents in the world on a yearly basis…even the year a certain reactor actually melted down in the USSR. And this doesn’t even get into all the OTHER problems generating power from coal has caused (respiratory problems, Global Warming, etc).

As for solar…perhaps you would like to tackle exactly the reasonable foot print WOULD be if we switched over based on reasonable projections of the technology…and what the associated costs would be. And what the environmental impact would be. I seem to recall that to generate power for a city you would need 2 or 3 times the cities foot print in solar cells to achieve that…however, perhaps with new projected technology that figure has come down. If so, what do you propose it is exactly?

-XT

50

[QUOTE=Stranger On A Train]
Those arguing against solar energy based on a conception of PV panels covering the landscape from horizon to horizon are akin to prognosticators who insisted that the need for computers would be limited to a handful in the entire country based upon ENIAC-type vacuum tube integrators.
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PV Panels are never, ever going to be more than 6 times as efficient than they are today. If computers never got more than 6x as powerful as ENIAC, there WOULD be only a handful in the country. Computers are ubiquitous because they are hundreds, thousands of times more powerful than ENIAC, dirt cheap and tiny.

Solar is never going to be tiny, never going to be more than 100% efficient, will always have the problem of cloudy day/nighttime power generation, and will always cost significant money to install and tie into the power grid.

51

[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
Nuclear is the only technology we have that can produce enough energy…
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I just can’t let that go unchallenged. The available energy from wind, solar or geothermal could each produce ample energy. The issues for them each is cost and ease of integrating with our current grid system. So that statement is plain false on the front that other sources cannot produce enough energy. It is also false on the front that nuclear can meet those needs. As we have discussed previously nuclear is not a realistic option for meeting much of our energy needs in the near term. There is a bottleneck in producing the parts for plants and for training those who would need to staff the plants.

Some nuclear will be part of the mix. And some less dirty coal (if not FutureGen after all). And wind. And solar. And geothermal. And biomass. And tidal. And so on … depending on the specifics of each region’s resources and needs.

52

[QUOTE=Cheesesteak]
PV Panels are never, ever going to be more than 6 times as efficient than they are today. If computers never got more than 6x as powerful as ENIAC, there WOULD be only a handful in the country. Computers are ubiquitous because they are hundreds, thousands of times more powerful than ENIAC, dirt cheap and tiny.

Solar is never going to be tiny, never going to be more than 100% efficient, will always have the problem of cloudy day/nighttime power generation, and will always cost significant money to install and tie into the power grid.
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Why not? Is there something inherent in the way solar energy is collected that wouldn’t allow for something like nano-technology to make whatever comprises solar cells smaller, more efficient?
And also, with regards to nuclear energy…isn’t uranium or other enrichable elements needed for nuclear energy also a finite resource, like coal or oil?

53

[QUOTE=xtisme]
It sure was…but incredibly it wasn’t Der Trihs who exhibited it this time. In fact, I find myself strangely agreeing with him on this one. Even factoring in accidents in the Soviet Union and other communist countries you can’t seriously think that the number of deaths or the environmental damage from, say, the generation of energy by coal is comparable to those from nuclear…do you?? Just the MINERS of coal suffer more deaths a year than have died from all the nuclear accidents in the world on a yearly basis…even the year a certain reactor actually melted down in the USSR. And this doesn’t even get into all the OTHER problems generating power from coal has caused (respiratory problems, Global Warming, etc).
[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=Cheesesteak]
Solar is never going to be tiny, never going to be more than 100% efficient, will always have the problem of cloudy day/nighttime power generation, and will always cost significant money to install and tie into the power grid.
[/QUOTE]
It’s like I’m pissing into the wind here. First of all, I didn’t, am not, and am not going to say that nuclear fission isn’t viable or shouldn’t be considered, so we can bury that strawman argument; ditto for the non-sequitur comparisons between the damage done by producing and combusting fossil fuels. What I have said (and provided information regarding) is that there are significant hazards and risks associated with fission, and waste products and residues that have to be reprocessed or disposed of. Lapses in processing systems and safety procedures–which, if you’d bothered looking through the short list previously provided, did not occur only in “the Soviet Union and other communist countries”–can result in failures with a high criticality. There is no question that many more people have died mining coal and in accidents with fossil fuel power production; however, no fossil fuel accident or “excursion” has resulted the kind of long-term damage that uncontained nuclear accidents have or potentially can. While the residue of fossil fuel combustion contributes to in a variety of ways to atmospheric pollution that is not an issue with nuclear fission, this is no way mitigates the potential hazard of nuclear waste and issues with disposal, which are not “paranoia about some tiny bit getting out in a few centuries that makes all these precautions ‘necessary’”. Dismissing these issues superficially without consideration for the cost and risk is an inane approach to risk management and comparison of the lifecycle costs of the different energy production methods.

Regarding the efficiency of solar power: first of all, the definition of solar power isn’t just photovoltaics, but should include all forms of solar and solar-derived energy (thermal solar, wave and wind, et cetera). PV certainly has theoretical efficiency limits, and no, neither PV nor any other form of energy production will “going to be more than 100% efficient”. Of course, the efficiency of any steam-cycle power production is also limited by thermodynamics, with the most efficient facilities delivering only <50% through the power cycle, on top of inefficiencies in fuel processing, transportation, handling, combustion, et cetera. No form of solar will ever be as dense as coil, oil, or nuclear power plants owing to how the energy is distributed. But solar has the advantages of being readily accessible (i.e. doesn’t have to be dug out of the ground or processed), produces essentially no pollution in the energy conversion cycle itself, and is unlimited in adequate supply for any foreseeable future, which compensate for lower efficiency as compared to other methods of energy conversion. Neither nuclear fission nor any other method of wide scale power production short of nuclear fusion can claim these advantages.

Nuclear fission is no doubt a necessary component in reducing dependence on fossil fuel energy production, but it should be considered a transitory step toward a permanent goal of reducing waste-generating energy production to a minimum. Dismissing the disadvantages and risks of nuclear is facile and nescient.

Stranger

54

[QUOTE=ralph124c]
…Finally: everybody buys one of those gas-savings gizmos (from the JC Whitney catalog)-presto: problem solved!
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You are still thinking inside the box. You need to think outside the box.
You have everyone buy all the gas saving devices in the JC Whitney catalog and install them.
This one saves 20%, that one 15%, the next one 26% and so on. By the time you are done, everyone will be saving at least 211.5% of the fuel they burn, and the US will be an energy exporting nation. Hell, we might even have to resort to pumping it back into the ground we will have so much fossil fuel.

55

[QUOTE=FoieGrasIsEvil]
Why not? Is there something inherent in the way solar energy is collected that wouldn’t allow for something like nano-technology to make whatever comprises solar cells smaller, more efficient?
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Yes. Solar energy maxes out at something like 1,000 watts per square meter, you can’t ever get more power from one square meter of collector, because there isn’t ever more than that amount of power hitting that area, often there’s a lot less (clouds, night, etc.) Your average is going to be more like 300 watts/m.

There’s no technology to go beyond that because that is all the energy available. We’re under 20% efficiency now, maybe you can double or triple that in the next decade, but no matter what you do, you will still need huge tracts of land covered in solar panels to provide enough energy for the country.

56

[QUOTE=DSeid]
I just can’t let that go unchallenged. The available energy from wind, solar or geothermal could each produce ample energy. The issues for them each is cost and ease of integrating with our current grid system. So that statement is plain false on the front that other sources cannot produce enough energy. It is also false on the front that nuclear can meet those needs. As we have discussed previously nuclear is not a realistic option for meeting much of our energy needs in the near term. There is a bottleneck in producing the parts for plants and for training those who would need to staff the plants.

Some nuclear will be part of the mix. And some less dirty coal (if not FutureGen after all). And wind. And solar. And geothermal. And biomass. And tidal. And so on … depending on the specifics of each region’s resources and needs.
[/QUOTE]

I think the point is that nuclear energy will have to be greatly expanded by the time the oil runs out. Hardly anyone is suggesting a 100% nuclear dependent energy economy, but almost anyone with any sense realizes that nuclear should be a BIG part of whatever future energy development plan we make.

57

[QUOTE=Stranger On A Train]
ditto for the non-sequitur comparisons between the damage done by producing and combusting fossil fuels.
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How is it a non-sequitor after you make a point of citing the damage caused by nuclear? Surely a comparison is worthwhile:

Fossil fuel: well-established, significant environmental damage.
Nuclear: somewhat established, less significant environmental damage.
Solar: barely established, insignificant environmental damage.

Well, welcome to the sunny shores of Lake Duh.

58

[QUOTE=Bryan Ekers]
How is it a non-sequitor after you make a point of citing the damage caused by nuclear?
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In the context of nuclear fission versus solar, pollution from fossil fuels isn’t germane. There’s no question (from my statements, at least) that fission power is less polluting and more sustainable that coal and oil, but it is also carries more risk and is ultimately less sustainable than solar and solar-derived energy.

[QUOTE=Bryan Ekers]
Well, welcome to the sunny shores of Lake Duh.
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Well, not everyone has joined us. See [post=9520320]post #45[/post].

Stranger

59

Could somebody please summon medical help for me. I’m experiencing the sensation that Sam Stone and Der Trihs are in agreement on a political issue so obviously I’ve had some kind of serious brain injury.

60

[QUOTE=Little Nemo]
Could somebody please summon medical help for me. I’m experiencing the sensation that Sam Stone and Der Trihs are in agreement on a political issue so obviously I’ve had some kind of serious brain injury.
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Expanding the nuclear energy program shouldn’t be a political issue. It should be so obvious that it’s just assumed and taken for granted, like printing math textbooks and washing your belly button in the shower.