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Not in my backyard and all that.

So you're saying, then, that it's better for our nation as a whole to have waste stored in unmonitored, insecure, and in some cases failing, storage containers and sites at over 150 locations randomly scattered around the country, indefinitely, than in one place that is at least quasi-permanent?

And why do I have to live within visual distance of a nuclear power plant to (correctly) say that it's a very compelling answer to our power problems? Possibly because nuclear power has been so vilified by some people that others are irrationally deathly afraid of it?

Your argument is extremely poor, because:

1.) It's based on "non in my backyard", and,

2.) You make a fallacious argument that living closer to a power plant somehow makes one more able to comment about nuclear power.

The fact is, the city where I live doesn't have a nuclear power plant. Frankly, I wish it did.

Good job using nothing more than scare tactics to frame your argument. Why, exactly, would it be bad to live close to one of the 104 operating nuclear plants in the United States?

Because of irrational fear and nothing more?

Or perhaps we should eliminate nuclear power altogether! I'm sure that would help us down the road to solving our energy problems!

HST has broad spectral sensitivity, from
IR to UV, with excellent results. The Webb
telescope is strictly IR.

[...]

Dubya and his Congressional cronies are not the "sharpest knives in the drawer", and obviously have some agendas that DO NOT INCLUDE SCIENCE. Science is actually antithetical to their neo-con right-wing militant Christian belief system, just as the "big bang" theory is antithetical to their "mythology" about creationism.

In fact, the IR and microwave spectra are what tend to be important in studying the physics of the Big Bang. Yet Bush and his "cronies" don't mind supporting the JWST. Furthermore, the DOE 20 year outlook gave the Joint Dark Energy Mission (JDEM) one of the very highest funding priorities.

Neglecting Hubble, while a bad idea, has nothing to do with anyone's alleged problems with the Big Bang. Perhaps it is you who are blinded by prejudice and ignorance.

Pay attention! It's not about population density; if anything, higher (local) population density is better, as it means less driving back & forth to work, the market, etc. It's about energy use per capita. See some reports from the Energy Information Administration. Pay particular attention to Appendix E, World Energy Consumption (Btu) (unfortunately only available in Excel format; used to be able to get an HTML or PDF version, too). Note how the US used about 340x10^6 Btu/capita, while the world as a whole (even including that disproportionate part) used about 66x10^6 Btu/capita.

Pay attention! It's not about population density; if anything, higher (local) population density is better, as it means less driving back & forth to work, the market, etc. It's about energy use per capita. See some reports from the Energy Information Administration. Pay particular attention to Appendix E, World Energy Consumption (Btu) (unfortunately only available in Excel format; used to be able to get an HTML or PDF version, too). Note how the US used about 340x10^6 Btu/capita, while the world as a whole (even including that disproportionate part) used about 66x10^6 Btu/capita.

Direct money wouldn't make sense as you do not know which hospitals will be doing which services and how much they will be doing.

Also, direct service would effectively require the government to "own" all the hospitals which would probably drive up costs even more. My reasoning for that last part is as follows: Most forms of government have little reason to make things more efficient and much incentive to maintain the status quo. I have a friend who works in the civil service and gives testimony to us that there are people sitting on their buts doing 8 ours a week work and collecting a paycheck for 40. (He's a starting GS4 and was told to slow down since he was doing as much work as a GS-12, 22k vs 60k)

Bottom line, I don't trust (and don't like) the feds getting into the health care business. Take a look at all the problems with the wellfare department (now Health and Human Services) and you will see why. H&HS now takes up about %25 of the US annual budget and recieves more in funding than the DoD. Source: http://www.mbe.doe.gov/budget/04budget/content/app endix/hist.pdf
Document page 75/PDF Page 79

[...] a very poorly designed reactor, a shutdown of the insufficient safety systems, and a government that didn't care about its people. None of those conditions exists in US nuclear power plants.

That'd be Davis-Besse.

The same people flailing about global warming are also flailing that our oil reserves will be gone in a week. If they're right about both things, who cares, right? If fossil fuels go away, global warming won't be a problem, right?

Also, you are totally wrong about "every shred of evidence...". Well, not totally wrong -- because I'm assuming that you're saying that every shred of evidence points to global warming...caused by humans. You made this statement without actually objectively looking at the data.

The fact is that if you look at climate changes over geologic time, the climate change that we have witnessed is not even a blip on the radar screen. In fact, the climate change we've seen doesn't look like anything that falls outside of normal long-term climate trending.

The way you can tell that this is a political piece, rather than a scientific one, is the lack of mention of nuclear power. They want countries to commit to generating 25% of their power through "renewable means." Why? Why not just "non global warming" means?

People talk a lot, but look at what is really happening in the world - not what people are talking about. Nuclear power is unpopular, but we still use it for 20% of the US electric power generation - we just do it quietly.

This is obviously an environmentalist editorial - nuclear power is a much better answer, and probably is better for the environment too. (Studies have shown that wind mills and solar cells cause climat shifts too!)

After sitting around for decades, radioactive material must be reprocessed (as in repurified) before it can be used in the same reactor.

The material used in RTG's decays at a fixed rate. Confusing the two may account for your misconception.

This is the case because oil is still relatively cheap. Expect this to change in the future.

You sound like one of the "our current known oil supplies will run out in a decade" fear mongers. Every 15 years or so people tend to make statements like this, and every 15 years they are proven wrong.

Economics will keep our oil prices cheap and supplies plentiful for centuries. Sometimes people even point to the rise in oil prices during 2004(oil is %30 more epensive in jan 2005 than jan 2004).

Here is some historic crude oil price data

Notice how it is all scaled to 2002 dollars. Everybody in the US was complaining and whinning about prices of gas. As this chart shows gas was cheaper than it has been for the last 30 years.

Everytime oil prices get 'too high' one of two things will happen. 1) it will become more ecnomically viable to invest millions of dollars in locaing new drilling sites for oil companies. 2) it will become more economically viable for people to invest in alternative energy resources.

Naturally those who are in control of the worlds oil supplies do not want this to happen. So they let out the worlds oil at such a rate so that it is cheaper to use oil than to invest in other drilling sites or different techhnology.

This is what happened this year when Americans began complaining about high oil prices. Both OPEC and non-OPEC suppliers increased their output to compensate for the uncertainty created by the iraqi oil market and the increased consumption by China. To see this in action just look at the crude oil futures market.

I do not think oil prices will change their current trend, save some large disaster.

In the United States, hydropower has grown steadily, from 56,000 MW in 1970 to over 90,000 MW today. As a portion of the electricity supply, it has fallen to 10 percent, down from 14 percent 20 years ago -- but it still accounts for a greater share than petroleum. In fact, US hydropower plants produce the energy equivalent of 500 million barrels of oil per year.
Source: The Union of Concerned Scientists.

In order for hydro to maintain its current customers, and take on the automobile industry, it will have to triple its power output. Two more Hoover Dams for the left coast. Is there that much water out there?

People working in DOE labs, perhaps?

This is a big deal folks. Geothermal is quite abundant but it is relatively low grade energy. If you can get drilling costs down and figure out how to use the low grade energy along the lines the Icelanders are doing, you can not only resolve most subsistence energy problems, you can localize most food production for consumption in colder climates with articficial hot springs just as the Icelanders are doing.

You would somehow have to get the soda water back to the hydrogen producing facilities(or the hydrogen to the soda water), which may be a non-trivial energy cost (including building infrastructure).

The Linde report lists an average price of $150/metric ton, with the price sometimes going to or below $100/metric ton. The density of methanol is 0.7914, so a metric ton is 2786 liters or 736 gallons. If the processing cost is $100 per metric ton, the cost of the methanol over the hydrogen would be less than 14 cents per gallon of alcohol.

The real problem with a scheme like this is infrastructure. You not only need the hydrogen supply network, you need a fleet of vehicles set up to perform carbon capture and the filling stations able to offload their carbon and transform it to alcohol. This isn't trivial. The infrastructure problem is the reason I've been pushing the plug-in hybrid as the one way to make an immediate dent in US petroleum needs; we already have an electric grid that is underutilized much of the day.

A very thoughtful comment on fusion was made to me recently by a person who observed that it might prove to be the worst thing that ever happened to us if we succeed in using nuclear fusion to generate electrical energy because this success would lead us to conclude that we could continue the unrestrained growth in our annual energy consumption to the point (in a relatively few doubling times) where our energy production from the unlimited fusion resource was an appreciable fraction of the solar power input to the earth. This could have catastrophic consequences.

Today, human energy consumption is 411 quads per year, or 4 x 10^20 Joules per year, which works out to a power of 1.3 x 10^13 Watts.

About half the sun's power is absorbed by the earth's surface, so solar energy heats the earth with about 690 Watts per square meter. Multiplying this by the cross-sectional area of the earth gives 9x10^16 watts, or about 6400 times the human energy use.

Following Bartlett's reasoning, we see that in nine doubling-times, human activity will amount to 10% of solar warming---a significant, if not mind-blowing fraction. In 13 doubling times, human activity will match solar heating.

If we increase energy consumption at 10% per year, it would take about 90 years to achieve this. It's worth noting that per-capita GDP scales nicely with energy consumption, so if we were to sustain 10% world per-capita GDP growth for a century, we would need to increase energy consumption in this way, even if population stabilized.

Doubling the sun's heating would increase the temperature of the earth's surface by a factor of the fourth root of 2 (Stefan-Boltzman law), or a bit less than 20%: It would warm up from 288 K to about 350 K, or around 150 F. Decidedly uncomfortable, but many orders of magnitude less warming than would be required to turn the atmosphere incandescant.

Bartlett's point was not that we really need to worry about making the sky glow. It was that even if we had a completely free energy source and stopped population growth, we'd still need to think about using energy wisely. In that, he's right.

I'm not a rocket scientest or anything.. but it looks as though the information on eia.doe.gov contradicts what is shown on the graph you have provided. http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/25opec/sld004.htm

Overall, the top suppliers of oil (crude and refined products) to the United States during 2003 were Canada (2.1 MMBD), Saudi Arabia (1.8 MMBD), Mexico (1.6 MMBD), and Venezuela (1.4 MMBD).

(MMBD = million barrels per day) from

http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/usa.html

Dang Canadians! Lets stop giving those hockey playing moose chasing beer drinking hoosiers our money.

i thaught the majority of hijackers on 9/11 were from iran? correct me if im wrong. the usa has sancations against iran and libya, so they dont get any oil money from us.

maybe once we set up a democracy in iraq, they will become a big supplier of oil for america, who knows...

just read this while waiting for the preview...

U.S. competitors in Europe and Japan depend much more on Gulf oil than the U.S. does: 30% of European oil imports and nearly 80% of Japan's come from the Gulf. The U.S. exerts significant influence on these countries through control of Gulf oil.

from http://www.fpif.org/briefs/vol2/v2n4oil_body.html
its old, but lots of stuff hasen't changed from 97.

You might be forgetting their huge amounts of oil.

They might be the only country in the world who would find these solar cells attractive at one point or another, though, having the capital to use them.

I'm with you on the the nuclear thing, but I'm not so sure that coal powerplants feeding partially-electric cars are such a bad thing compared to the status quo. (Anything you can do to change the mix of generating sources changes the CO2 emission from grid-connected transport right along with it; this is easier than re-engineering the vehicle fleet.)

Where did I put that envelope... ah, here. Suppose you have a car that gets 30 MPG, gasoline is 6.167 pounds/gallon and is 12/14 carbon by weight; 12 pounds carbon converts to 44 pounds CO2, so the car would emit 0.646 pounds CO2 per mile. Suppose instead that you have an IGCC powerplant running at 40% efficiency (that's 8530 BTU/kwh), burning pure carbon at 14,000 BTU/lb. It emits 2.23 lb CO2/kwh (pessimistic, coal has considerable volatile matter). If it feeds a plug-in hybrid consuming 250 WH/mile at the plug, that's 0.558 lb/mile. That's not spectacularly better, but it's still an improvement.

You can do much better than the coal-plant-charged PIH with hybrids like the Honda Insight, but if you start putting wind or solar power into the car-charging mix the plug-in hybrid is going to kill any petroleum-powered vehicle for CO2 emissions.

First, you're using 1998 numbers, which doesn't account for the natural gas generator production boom of 2001 & 2002. Energy Generated by Fuel Type for 2003 is about 69%, so 71% capacity sounds right. 2004s numbers should be out spring 2005.

Non-utility is the nomenclature for small units that are not owned by the vertically-integrated-monopoly utility companies (where "small" is on the order of less than 50 MW). NUGs could be anything from trash & landfill gas (sometimes called biomass), to wood (factory waste), to your local community's hydroelectric station. However, the vast majority of the NUGs run on traditional market fuels (oil/natural gas), so it is safe to add about 4/5ths of that 11.2% to the fossil fuel total.

The article states that 71% of the US grid electricity comes from fosil fuels. Unless I'm mistaken it's more like this.

coal 50%
petroleum 3%
gas 8.5%
nuclear 18.5%
hydro 8.4%
hippy stuff 0.2%
"nonutility" (?) 11.2%

That's like 61% fosil. How off are my numbers?

Actually, there are quite a few oil-fired power plants in the US (according to DoE figures, they make 3-4% of the electricity in the US). They're being phased out in much of the country by more efficient (and cleaner) combined-cycle natural gas plants though.

We already grow all the biomass we need to replace fossil petrol.

Biodiesel isn't a good way to provide electricity... imagine running diesel generators non-stop to try and supply all the energy needs for even a small country.. impossible.

So I'm not even attempting to say that all fossil fuels will be replaced, just diesel and gasoline

If you add it all up we already produce billions of barrels of viable oils and with a demand market farmers would have even more incentive to grow these cash crops.

Tell me how much you're willing to wager, I can use the money.

We already grow all the biomass we need to replace fossil petrol.

Biodiesel isn't a good way to provide electricity... imagine running diesel generators non-stop to try and supply all the energy needs for even a small country.. impossible.

So I'm not even attempting to say that all fossil fuels will be replaced, just diesel and gasoline

If you add it all up we already produce billions of barrels of viable oils and with a demand market farmers would have even more incentive to grow these cash crops.

Tell me how much you're willing to wager, I can use the money.

This is what we refer to as basic math, and it can be helpful.

Compare a windmill that produces a few kilowatts against a nuclear waste facility that services several terrawatt years of nuclear energy.

In order to provide for all our energy needs, we'd need something like a billion windmills (simple math will confirm this)

The U.S. Department of Energy says otherwise.

Kyoto wasn't about emissions since it didn't apply to China and let India and Eastern Europe slide as well. It was about attempting to immediately stop American production.

Okay, for the sake of argument let's say that is the case. What, then, is the Bush Administration's alternative plan to stop global warming and reduce CO2 emissions? Since they didn't like Kyoto, surely they've come up with a better alternative approach?

No, of course not -- their plan is to continue to ignore the problem for as long as possible, because that's how they can maximize the short-term profits of their corporate supporters.

Must be tough to be a leftie these days.

It sure is -- the hardest part is trying to ignore the constant ad hominem attacks from the newly empowered and insufferably smug right wing.

this article is based solely on europe - its projections are vague at best: mainly, one would deduce, due to the fact that it only seems to cite data from 2003. perhaps it's intended to be alarmist by citing the human death factor, for the average joe who doesnt keep at all abreast of such issues - but other recent data, namely, the mauna loa anomaly and the international arctic science committee's report, appear to harbor much more catastrophic potentiality.

mauna loa is the big one to watch - with 2 years (some would argue even 1), we should know whether or not the major 2 year co2 increase is a fluke - or if it's a sign of runaway global warming (which many say we're technically in now, but accelerated to varying degrees depending on the source). this could trigger methane hydrate deposits to break free from river and seabeds by warming said bodies of water - and then, we're in anything from some really hot water (har) to aworld of shit. (note: latter link is distant future, but theoretically possible)

CF_Final_120104.pdf
WARNING: PDF

Funding recommendations are similarly indecisive:

The nearly unanimous opinion of the reviewers was that funding agencies should entertain individual, well-designed proposals for experiments that address specific scientific issues relevant to the question of whether or not there is anomalous energy production in Pd/D systems, or whether or not D-D fusion reactions occur at energies on the order of a few eV. These proposals should meet accepted scientific standards, and undergo the rigors of peer review. No reviewer recommended a focused federally funded program for low energy nuclear reactions.

A short technical summary of the process can be found at http://www.ne.doe.gov/hydrogen/HTE.pdf. A couple interesting points:

1. The electrolyzer breaks up steam, not liquid water. So high pressure operation is not required.
2. The electrolyzer is using a solid oxide electrolyte. Basically a high temperature fuel cell running in reverse. As is the case with solid oxide fuel cells, sealing to prevent leakage is a problem, resulting in lower efficiency.

If 25 tons can power the US for a year... really... it's not that difficult to move 25 tons of anything from the moon to the earth for the billions we spend on electricity a year.

The DoE says we produce about 3900 billion kilowatt hours. Electrical costs vary from place to place, but let's use the national average of about 8 cents per kilowatt hour... 312 billion dollars. Transportation costs from the moon for 25 tons don't look so huge now, do they? :)

The World Trade Center towers took 7 years to finish. The Apollo Project took roughly 8 years (from 1961 to 1969) to get someone on the moon. The Hoover Dam took 6 years to finish construction. Each of these (for all their majesty) were either constrained to a relative small geographic space, and a small amount of material.

Broadband has been available to the public since about 1997, and to be complete, requires running cable to every household in the USA. The only hard number I could find comparable for that was Miles of High Voltage Transmission Wire in USA, approx 160,000 miles for bulk transmission. On google, some renewable energy sites indicate that the US has over a million miles of wire for distribution networks (last mile connects). That's a lot of material to run.

The US Interstate system, designed in 1956, will be complete to the original spec in 2006, and that's only 46,000 miles.

I agree with your argument that we should never rest on our laurels, and strive to be the world leader, but let me just throw in that we can be the world leader in this field too, just give the industry a little time to get us there...

"Go look up background radiation - it exists and using it to pretend that fly ash is nuclear waste is where that study shows that it is pure bullshit."

I'm not certain why you keep bringing up background radiation. Forgive me if I'm misintepreting, but it seems like you are attempting to insinuate that since there are many scattered sources of radioactive materials on the planet; concentrating substances that tend to have higher concentrations of radioactive and heavy metals and pumping them into the local atmosphere does not have a negative impact. Coal is an excellent filter and does a good job of capturing heavy metals (among other contaminents) regardless as to whether it is intentionally used for that purpose. Coal mined from areas that have higher concentrations of heavy metals absorbs a higher concentration of that particulate matter. Some forms of coal processing actually unintentionally enchance these concentrations further. When the coal is later burned to produce power the heavy metals are distrubted via the atmosphere to the surrounding area. This is not pseudo-science.

Most of the coal in the US has a very low concentration of heavy metals. There are a few actively utilized deposits with significantly higher concentrations, but the US has done a relatively good job of preventing an overabundance of heavy metals from being released from coal fired power plants. From a radioactive perspective individuals living within 1 km of a US coal burning plant suffer, at most, only a 1-5% increase in radiation dosage. Though it is worth noting that residents living within 1 km of a nuclear power plant do not receive any increased radiation dosage. This is not to suggest that the radiation dosage caused by living in close proximity to coal plant causes a significant adverse effect on one's health, but it does have an effect. Coal plants have been shown to increase heavy metal concetrations in the environment, however, and without improvements in filtering and disposal systems will continue to do so in many areas. Of particular concern are developing nations with large populations and histories of cutting corners when it comes to minimizing environmental impact.

"everything is radioactive, so nuclear power doesn't need to be treated with respect"

The paper is not suggesting that nuclear power not be treated with respect. No where does it suggest that the handling of such materials is "safe." The article merely points out that the most popular power generation method is equally if not more hazardous and more difficult to contain.

I am not insinuating that nuclear power is completely clean/safe technology. My frustration lies with the popular belief that nuclear power is somehow inherently more dangerous than power generation by traditional methods. This is simply not true. Nuclear power is safer than the general public believes and traditional power sources less so. Living next to a coal plant is not going to kill you or even signifcantly shorten your life, in general. Neither is living next to a nuclear power plant.

"a town of a few thousand people can easily consume 60 megawatts"

I'm not certain where you got those numbers, but they are way off. The average energy consumption of a US home is 1.02 kilowatts. Over the course of a year a US home will consume approximately 8,900 kilowatt-hours (8.9 megawatt-hours) of electricity.

A town of a few thousand residents would consume approximately 3 megawatts. Assuming a minor amount of light industrial and commercial usage in a town that small you might bump that figure up to 4 - 5 megawatts. Over the course of a year the town would consume approximately 35,600 megawatt-hours of electricity.

The Point Beach reactor in Wisconsin (a state I used to l

Ok, lets imagine, just for fun, that the US isn't using any of its own oil. Where would we put it all? Flush it down the toilets? 8.84 million barrels per day is quite a bit of oil to flush, or to store anywhere.

Now, if we look around the DOE's site a bit more, we find this, and it looks like the US is using 20 million barrels per day, and importing 11.1. Drawing upon our grade school math skills, we deduce that since the US is using up 20 million barrels and importing 11.1, that there's 8.9 million barrels that the US is using but not importing. Now, that sounds awfully like the 8.84 million that the US is producing. Looks like its using them, too! Or wait, maybe its getting those 8.9 million barrels from stored oil?

Well, lets check that out. Is the US using stored oil on a daily basis? Our search leads us to this page, where we scroll down to the section labeled "Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR)" and read that the US indeed does have some 653 million barrels stored, but is not using them nor will be using them unless there is an energy emergency.

So, to recap: the US is using 20 million barrels per day, importing 11.1 million, and not using any that are in storage. So, its using roughly 8.9 million barrels that it has to produce by itself, which, accounting for rounding weirdness, ends up matching pretty well with the given 8.84 million barrels per day production rate.

So no, I don't "See!" that the US is sitting on its oil. In fact, I see that the US is using its own oil, and using it for over 40% of its energy needs. In fact, if you read the section named "Imports/Exports" on the page previously linked, you'll see that the US uses more of its own oil than any other country's (but not all others put together, obviously).

Ok, lets imagine, just for fun, that the US isn't using any of its own oil. Where would we put it all? Flush it down the toilets? 8.84 million barrels per day is quite a bit of oil to flush, or to store anywhere.

Now, if we look around the DOE's site a bit more, we find this, and it looks like the US is using 20 million barrels per day, and importing 11.1. Drawing upon our grade school math skills, we deduce that since the US is using up 20 million barrels and importing 11.1, that there's 8.9 million barrels that the US is using but not importing. Now, that sounds awfully like the 8.84 million that the US is producing. Looks like its using them, too! Or wait, maybe its getting those 8.9 million barrels from stored oil?

Well, lets check that out. Is the US using stored oil on a daily basis? Our search leads us to this page, where we scroll down to the section labeled "Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR)" and read that the US indeed does have some 653 million barrels stored, but is not using them nor will be using them unless there is an energy emergency.

So, to recap: the US is using 20 million barrels per day, importing 11.1 million, and not using any that are in storage. So, its using roughly 8.9 million barrels that it has to produce by itself, which, accounting for rounding weirdness, ends up matching pretty well with the given 8.84 million barrels per day production rate.

So no, I don't "See!" that the US is sitting on its oil. In fact, I see that the US is using its own oil, and using it for over 40% of its energy needs. In fact, if you read the section named "Imports/Exports" on the page previously linked, you'll see that the US uses more of its own oil than any other country's (but not all others put together, obviously).

These cuts having little to do with climate change. Sulfur oxides and nitrogen oxides both contribute to acid rain and various forms of smog ('London Smog' for sulfur oxides, photochemical smog for nitrogen oxides) and so are pollutants, but they are not the major greenhouse gases. Of those three substances, sulfur oxides and mercury emissions have naught to do with the greenhouse effect, and while nitrogen oxides are greenhouse gases, they only contribute to about 5% of greenhouse gas emissions - source: http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/1605/ggccebro/chapter1 .html
So the measures you have listed do nothing for 95% of the problem of climate change.

WTF are you talking about? Ever heard of Rockefeller? The man got his oil mostly from the US (not sure about his later years, though. I think he eventually expanded outside of the US). In fact, if you look here, the US is the second-largest producer of oil, right behind Saudi Arabia. The difference is that we use up our oil and thus don't appear on the exporting charts.

So no, the US isn't sitting on some magical unused pool of oil. Its using it quite rapidly.

I've done a little independent research on this issue for a class -- one of the options we could opt for (although currently banned by some sort of London Convention of 1993 which expires in 2018) is http://www.ocrwm.doe.gov/ymp/about/oceanfloor.shtm l/sub-seabed disposal. A method whereby you place waste canisters in some sort of projectile and let it bury itself beneath the sea. The pros of this is that there's TONS of space (although there are certain depth requirements) and that it's damn near impossible to proliferate. On top of this, storage is cheap. On the flip-side, if you want to get it back for reprocessing, it's a costly operations and I'm sure there'd be some heated political debates over this. A novel idea I think. Of course I have oversimplified the issue. There are many things to take into account like retardation rates and the geology of the ocean floor.

Like the natural reactor in Gabon, West Africa?

Trackers are a red herring

These parts, whilst efficient, take an energy penalty of their own

87 PW of energy average. We use 12 TW

100 times more costly in terms of real estate than our current scheme!

20-60 W/m^2 of energy for solar - which is the reference figure that I've seen everywhere except for you.

The only way 20-60W/m^2 makes any sense is if it is amortizing the light hours over the 24 hour day and multipled by 50% efficiency. If that is the case you can't multiply by 40% efficiency agian and then multiply by only 6 hours of insolation per day! AGAIN look at the data sets, read the instructions, and see for yourself. Or check out a PV design handbook.

Yes I know we haven't addressed use, efficiency, storage, and seasonality implications in our land use numbers, and they will rise some. Ready?

I avoided anything that was tracking, took all the fixed rates, added them up together, averaged them ,and multiplied by 365.

As did I, only i used NRELs annual statistics not your uninformed calculations of their raw data (no offence). Since we seem to go over this again and again I will spell it out for you. Though at this point I think you are just being obstinate. From the rredec database:

"City: ","KANSAS CITY "
"SOLAR RADIATION FOR FLAT-PLATE COLLECTORS FACING SOUTH AT A FIXED-TILT (kWh/m2/day)
"Tilt(deg)"," ","Jan","Feb","Mar","Apr","May","Jun","Jul","Aug", "Sep","Oct","Nov","Dec","Year"
"Lat ","Average", 3.8, 4.3, 4.8, 5.4, 5.6, 5.8, 6.0, 5.9, 5.4, 5.0, 3.8, 3.3, 4.9
" ","Minimum", 2.7, 3.3, 3.5, 4.2, 4.6, 4.9, 5.2, 4.8, 3.5, 3.8, 2.7, 2.5, 4.5
" ","Maximum", 4.8, 5.4, 5.7, 6.4, 6.4, 6.6, 6.8, 6.6, 6.8, 6.6, 4.9, 4.3, 5.5

Now look at that last column, "Year". Look at the row "Lat Average". 4.9kWh/m^2/day. Got it? If not, want to see a map of the same data? I don't know what you want, whack you over the head with a dozen sources? Here, here, here

So 7% of texas land mass to produce ALL of our energy use, only 0.8% for our electricity need. Using fixed panels (not even adjusting the angle seasonally), including shading. I didn't use the best location, but an average location. This doesn't translate by any stretch of the imagination into all of Texas. More importantly I showed we don't to use any new space at all.

You also are naively using 3 * 10 ^ 13 kW as our total energy source that would need to be replaced - the difference is that 90+% of that energy is in a form that we can directly use - natural gas for heating and gasoline for burning, coal for making steel, etc.

Ready to discuss storage, transmission, grids, seasonality, etc Yet? I think you've lost this part of the argument.

1) residential use is 3% per month, meaning 36% annual.

As noted

2) the mistake that you made in overestimating square footage is far more endemic than I think you realize. For the *apartments* are also counted double (or triple, or quadruple) by just taking the average and multiplying it by the number of units.

Even the EIA doesn't see solar power rising any time soon - out to 2025, solar is .1-.5%.... Of course they are not too sanguine about nuclear either, but then again I think that they are massively overestimating how much oil is left in the ground..

True enough. The EIA tracks very accurate numbers for what is, and what has been, but they bad with the future. Which works OK for consumption models (sort of, they have been horribly wrong on that to - in the 70s they assumed exponential growth, when in fact efficiency made up for it), but they do not consider technological changes, cost reductions, geopolitics, etc (for instance a decade ago their wind power forecasts were FAR too low). They are primarily a current energy information outlet for congress.

FACTS:
* Residential electricity consumption is 35% of the total (not 3% as you state)

* Roofspace is not as you stated. From the census data and DOE data: The average housing unit size is 2066 sq ft. There are 107 million units. 50% of houses are 1 story (roof=sq footage). The other 50% are 2 story or more (Census), which I estimated roof space is half of living space (this averages in the added garage roof space of some with the loss of roof space to 3 or more levels). The result was increased by 6% for the added area of the average roof slope. Commercial was 67 billion sqft. If you want to do a more detailed analysis, It would be great, send it to me. The average single family unit is 2527 sqft which I didn't use in these calcs, and are 88% of total housing units, so these numbers are likely underestimating roof space by around 15% or so. However the outcome will not likely be more than +/-10%.

* Of course not all roofs will be usable. The point is to get perspective on the land area needed. Even if 1/3 of roofs are usable, then problem solved. If you don't use roofs, the land area required is still VERY small. THE LAND AREA IS NOT THE SIZE OF TEXAS! With 17% panels on trackers the land area is a 46 mile square - 22% smaller than Dugway Proving grounds OR 0.8% THE SIZE OF TEXAS. With multijuction concentrators, its less than half of that. The problem here is you've been programmed to believe it should take a huge amount of space, BUT IT JUST DOESN'T. Clear yet?

*OK Say you want to replace ALL the US energy with solar(oil, coal, Natural Gas, wood, etc). How much land would it take? The US uses 98.3 Quads a year, or 2.88E13 kWh. Using 40% efficient multijunction concentrators ($1/Wp!) on trackers in average location (Kansas City) you get 964 kWh/m^2/year. LAND REQUIRED: a 100 mile square. OR 4% the size of Texas! VERY SMALL! 1/10th the 290,000 km^2 number you cite (Reference for this number please).

*Obviously once you see the real numbers - infrastructure isn't a problem. In fact a distributed PV system, some on roofs, some in local grids, some in large arrays would reduce distribution and transmission infrastructure substantially

FACTS:
* Residential electricity consumption is 35% of the total (not 3% as you state)

* Roofspace is not as you stated. From the census data and DOE data: The average housing unit size is 2066 sq ft. There are 107 million units. 50% of houses are 1 story (roof=sq footage). The other 50% are 2 story or more (Census), which I estimated roof space is half of living space (this averages in the added garage roof space of some with the loss of roof space to 3 or more levels). The result was increased by 6% for the added area of the average roof slope. Commercial was 67 billion sqft. If you want to do a more detailed analysis, It would be great, send it to me. The average single family unit is 2527 sqft which I didn't use in these calcs, and are 88% of total housing units, so these numbers are likely underestimating roof space by around 15% or so. However the outcome will not likely be more than +/-10%.

* Of course not all roofs will be usable. The point is to get perspective on the land area needed. Even if 1/3 of roofs are usable, then problem solved. If you don't use roofs, the land area required is still VERY small. THE LAND AREA IS NOT THE SIZE OF TEXAS! With 17% panels on trackers the land area is a 46 mile square - 22% smaller than Dugway Proving grounds OR 0.8% THE SIZE OF TEXAS. With multijuction concentrators, its less than half of that. The problem here is you've been programmed to believe it should take a huge amount of space, BUT IT JUST DOESN'T. Clear yet?

*OK Say you want to replace ALL the US energy with solar(oil, coal, Natural Gas, wood, etc). How much land would it take? The US uses 98.3 Quads a year, or 2.88E13 kWh. Using 40% efficient multijunction concentrators ($1/Wp!) on trackers in average location (Kansas City) you get 964 kWh/m^2/year. LAND REQUIRED: a 100 mile square. OR 4% the size of Texas! VERY SMALL! 1/10th the 290,000 km^2 number you cite (Reference for this number please).

*Obviously once you see the real numbers - infrastructure isn't a problem. In fact a distributed PV system, some on roofs, some in local grids, some in large arrays would reduce distribution and transmission infrastructure substantially

FACTS:
* Residential electricity consumption is 35% of the total (not 3% as you state)

* Roofspace is not as you stated. From the census data and DOE data: The average housing unit size is 2066 sq ft. There are 107 million units. 50% of houses are 1 story (roof=sq footage). The other 50% are 2 story or more (Census), which I estimated roof space is half of living space (this averages in the added garage roof space of some with the loss of roof space to 3 or more levels). The result was increased by 6% for the added area of the average roof slope. Commercial was 67 billion sqft. If you want to do a more detailed analysis, It would be great, send it to me. The average single family unit is 2527 sqft which I didn't use in these calcs, and are 88% of total housing units, so these numbers are likely underestimating roof space by around 15% or so. However the outcome will not likely be more than +/-10%.

* Of course not all roofs will be usable. The point is to get perspective on the land area needed. Even if 1/3 of roofs are usable, then problem solved. If you don't use roofs, the land area required is still VERY small. THE LAND AREA IS NOT THE SIZE OF TEXAS! With 17% panels on trackers the land area is a 46 mile square - 22% smaller than Dugway Proving grounds OR 0.8% THE SIZE OF TEXAS. With multijuction concentrators, its less than half of that. The problem here is you've been programmed to believe it should take a huge amount of space, BUT IT JUST DOESN'T. Clear yet?

*OK Say you want to replace ALL the US energy with solar(oil, coal, Natural Gas, wood, etc). How much land would it take? The US uses 98.3 Quads a year, or 2.88E13 kWh. Using 40% efficient multijunction concentrators ($1/Wp!) on trackers in average location (Kansas City) you get 964 kWh/m^2/year. LAND REQUIRED: a 100 mile square. OR 4% the size of Texas! VERY SMALL! 1/10th the 290,000 km^2 number you cite (Reference for this number please).

*Obviously once you see the real numbers - infrastructure isn't a problem. In fact a distributed PV system, some on roofs, some in local grids, some in large arrays would reduce distribution and transmission infrastructure substantially

> Exactly. Solar power is available everywhere (did
> you notice the deviation between the alaska and
> arizona is only 2-1?). Solar IS the ultamate
> distributed power source. If most of the power is
> generated locally, they carrier requirement of
> transmission is HUGELY reduced, and overall costs
> come way down.

Ok, fair enough, lets go with your numbers -

200% current electricity use if solar panels covered every square meter of roof.

Now, lets talk about transmission and storage costs.

There are 116 million customers in the United States. Each uses on average about 907 kwH:

source:
eia energy usage

This means that out of the 3.8 * 10 ^ 12 kwH of electricity, about 1.05 * 10 ^ 11, or 3 % of the electricity is residential. And 97% is industrial.

Yet the number of commercial customers and hence the amount of square footage is reversed by a large margin. Only 15 million customers are commercial but they use 97% of the energy. Hence, a large portion of that energy generated by solar is going to need to be stored/transmitted for peak usages, and you will need to take a large cut out of that 200%.

Say that cut is 60% (generous for battery technology), minus 9% for transmission costs. Then:

200% * .4 * .91 = 74%.

Now, I went to your references - and I can see how you came up with 2.43 * 10^11 sq ft. You multiplied the number of domiciles by the average square footage. However, its not that simple - the numbers quoted there are for square footage *inside the house* not outside it. Hence, it is optimistic by about a factor of 1.5 considering houses that have more than one level or a basement:

74% / 1.5 = 49%

So, we are back to about 50% *even if* we consider your numbers, and we are back with the need to have a large infrastructure to transmit that power. And this is for putting photovoltaics on EVERY BLOODY ROOF in america along with the infrastructure to actually use these photovoltaics. And of course this doesn't even consider the necessity for large peak wattage for industrial customers, which renewables aren't even addressing.

And then again, we come to the biggie - whether or not we can use solar to take the place of oil and coal.

This would require 20 times the area of buildings and houses just to produce current energy demand - the equivalent to COVERING TEXAS WITH SOLAR CELLS. Take the costs for changing the solar energy into energy carriers like hydrogen and gasoline, and the collection and concentration of that energy, and you are up to covering ALASKA.

Now, you bemoan the current infrastructure costs for energy - but this hypothetical infrastructure is far greater than what we have today, by orders of magnitude. Right now, the *worlds* total energy structure (transmission, pipelines, refineries, coal mines, water reservoirs, etc) covers about 290,000 km^2.

Yet you are proposing an infrastructure which is about six times larger, JUST to cover the current energy costs of north america, and JUST for capturing that energy (and not storing it, etc). About 1.2 million km^2 (very generous) which is about the size of arable land we use for FARMING in the united states.

Wind isn't going to help to reduce this burden - since its power density is about 10 W/m^2, worse than solar, and worse than hydroelectric.

Hence, I highly doubt that solar is really going to save our skins. It'll reach a stable point, where the costs of its growing will exceed the benefits. Its a decent energy source, but it will reach limits, and those limits will be far lower than what we need.

Space based power is a different matter altogether, though. No real estate issues, no gravity and the ability to make *huge* power stations for focusing energy. Its the way of the future, but that future is at best a century or two off.

As

averages 170 W/m^2 when it reaches the ground.

Yikes! Here the first problem with your calculations! Solar insolation is 1300 W/m^2 outside the atmosphere, 1000 W/m^2 on the ground in peak sun conditions. NOT 170! (look it up yourself you'll find tens of thousands of refs on Google)

expect to use intermittently depending on weather and time of year.

insolation FOR A FIXED panel at an angle equal to latitude provides an average of 6 hours of peak sun per day in the average US location. (of course the solar insolation is changing based on time of day. However this is how it is specified in the industry: pre-integrated to an equal number of peak hours). That equals 2190 kWh/m^2/year. Some locations a little more, some a little less. With trackers this goes up 25-50%. See the National Renewable energy laboratory insolation database and mapservers for more data.

inefficiency of incorrect angles in capturing the energy

Already considered see above numbers are already based on tilted fixed panels. Trackers of course improve the angle and thus the energy, but I'm giving a simple case, not best case.

storage costs, maintenance costs, spacing inefficiencies

Spacing is accounted for, 17% is total edge to edge module efficiency not cell efficiency. Maintenance costs, essentially are none (solid state revolution man) no moving parts, no dusting, no snow removal required (the benefits of dusting/cleaning has been proven to be of small benefit. less than 4%). Storage is an issue. There are many storage technologies and they do cost money (some solar technologies, not PV, are self storing such as Solar 2's phase change salt storage). However, energy profile on the grid tracks the solar cycle closely. 40%-60% of our energy could be replaced without substantial storage added to the system. (another 20-30% could come from wind, as the Dutch have shown, and the base load could be largely provided with geothermal, biomass, and wave. Thought I do think storage is an important piece of the puzzle.)

I don't know where you got your 'roof space' figure (2.43e11) but it seems high

From the 2000 census data for households and the DOE for commercial buildings

From the CIA factbook we use 3.602 * 10^13 kwH.

The number you show is ENERGY consumption NOT ELECTRICITY consumption, and its a little too high (I guess the are spooks not energy experts). From the Department of Energy, Energy Information Administration total energy consumption is 2.88E13 kWh. The total US ELECRICITY consumption is 3.4E12 kWh - which is what we are talking about.

Don't get me wrong, I really *want* to believe that solar is our best bet.

Today is your lucky day. The numbers are very much right (as you can now see). And we didn't have to even invoke any extra land consumption OR higher efficiency cells OR Dye-sensitized solar cells which can be used as windows on high rise buildings, etc. PV is amazing stuff with incredible potential, 40% annual market growth, prices are nearing $1/peak watt (33

averages 170 W/m^2 when it reaches the ground.

Yikes! Here the first problem with your calculations! Solar insolation is 1300 W/m^2 outside the atmosphere, 1000 W/m^2 on the ground in peak sun conditions. NOT 170! (look it up yourself you'll find tens of thousands of refs on Google)

expect to use intermittently depending on weather and time of year.

insolation FOR A FIXED panel at an angle equal to latitude provides an average of 6 hours of peak sun per day in the average US location. (of course the solar insolation is changing based on time of day. However this is how it is specified in the industry: pre-integrated to an equal number of peak hours). That equals 2190 kWh/m^2/year. Some locations a little more, some a little less. With trackers this goes up 25-50%. See the National Renewable energy laboratory insolation database and mapservers for more data.

inefficiency of incorrect angles in capturing the energy

Already considered see above numbers are already based on tilted fixed panels. Trackers of course improve the angle and thus the energy, but I'm giving a simple case, not best case.

storage costs, maintenance costs, spacing inefficiencies

Spacing is accounted for, 17% is total edge to edge module efficiency not cell efficiency. Maintenance costs, essentially are none (solid state revolution man) no moving parts, no dusting, no snow removal required (the benefits of dusting/cleaning has been proven to be of small benefit. less than 4%). Storage is an issue. There are many storage technologies and they do cost money (some solar technologies, not PV, are self storing such as Solar 2's phase change salt storage). However, energy profile on the grid tracks the solar cycle closely. 40%-60% of our energy could be replaced without substantial storage added to the system. (another 20-30% could come from wind, as the Dutch have shown, and the base load could be largely provided with geothermal, biomass, and wave. Thought I do think storage is an important piece of the puzzle.)

I don't know where you got your 'roof space' figure (2.43e11) but it seems high

From the 2000 census data for households and the DOE for commercial buildings

From the CIA factbook we use 3.602 * 10^13 kwH.

The number you show is ENERGY consumption NOT ELECTRICITY consumption, and its a little too high (I guess the are spooks not energy experts). From the Department of Energy, Energy Information Administration total energy consumption is 2.88E13 kWh. The total US ELECRICITY consumption is 3.4E12 kWh - which is what we are talking about.

Don't get me wrong, I really *want* to believe that solar is our best bet.

Today is your lucky day. The numbers are very much right (as you can now see). And we didn't have to even invoke any extra land consumption OR higher efficiency cells OR Dye-sensitized solar cells which can be used as windows on high rise buildings, etc. PV is amazing stuff with incredible potential, 40% annual market growth, prices are nearing $1/peak watt (33

averages 170 W/m^2 when it reaches the ground.

Yikes! Here the first problem with your calculations! Solar insolation is 1300 W/m^2 outside the atmosphere, 1000 W/m^2 on the ground in peak sun conditions. NOT 170! (look it up yourself you'll find tens of thousands of refs on Google)

expect to use intermittently depending on weather and time of year.

insolation FOR A FIXED panel at an angle equal to latitude provides an average of 6 hours of peak sun per day in the average US location. (of course the solar insolation is changing based on time of day. However this is how it is specified in the industry: pre-integrated to an equal number of peak hours). That equals 2190 kWh/m^2/year. Some locations a little more, some a little less. With trackers this goes up 25-50%. See the National Renewable energy laboratory insolation database and mapservers for more data.

inefficiency of incorrect angles in capturing the energy

Already considered see above numbers are already based on tilted fixed panels. Trackers of course improve the angle and thus the energy, but I'm giving a simple case, not best case.

storage costs, maintenance costs, spacing inefficiencies

Spacing is accounted for, 17% is total edge to edge module efficiency not cell efficiency. Maintenance costs, essentially are none (solid state revolution man) no moving parts, no dusting, no snow removal required (the benefits of dusting/cleaning has been proven to be of small benefit. less than 4%). Storage is an issue. There are many storage technologies and they do cost money (some solar technologies, not PV, are self storing such as Solar 2's phase change salt storage). However, energy profile on the grid tracks the solar cycle closely. 40%-60% of our energy could be replaced without substantial storage added to the system. (another 20-30% could come from wind, as the Dutch have shown, and the base load could be largely provided with geothermal, biomass, and wave. Thought I do think storage is an important piece of the puzzle.)

I don't know where you got your 'roof space' figure (2.43e11) but it seems high

From the 2000 census data for households and the DOE for commercial buildings

From the CIA factbook we use 3.602 * 10^13 kwH.

The number you show is ENERGY consumption NOT ELECTRICITY consumption, and its a little too high (I guess the are spooks not energy experts). From the Department of Energy, Energy Information Administration total energy consumption is 2.88E13 kWh. The total US ELECRICITY consumption is 3.4E12 kWh - which is what we are talking about.

Don't get me wrong, I really *want* to believe that solar is our best bet.

Today is your lucky day. The numbers are very much right (as you can now see). And we didn't have to even invoke any extra land consumption OR higher efficiency cells OR Dye-sensitized solar cells which can be used as windows on high rise buildings, etc. PV is amazing stuff with incredible potential, 40% annual market growth, prices are nearing $1/peak watt (33

1. Its too expensive,

Tell that to France. They have a GREAT nuclear program, AND lower energy costs. The generate over 75% of their electricity from nuclear power.

2. Smart engineers know Murphy always wins.

Smart engineers are able to solve problems. With that type of thinking, we wouldn't have cars, airplanes, semiconductor plants, etc. "Murphy always wins" is a cop-out for not actually looking at the REAL risks involved. "Smart engineers" actually do the work to look at the REAL risks instead of just spouting slogans...they leave that to management.

3. Nuclear proliferation.

Pretty much a non-issue, I'm not a nuclear scientist but this particular point was debunked very well during the last story /. posted related to nuclear power.

4. Compared to alternative energy (solar, wind, geothermal, wave, etc.), it's less commercially viable with far more risks.

This really falls under #1. Just like #1 you're not really backing up these claims. For example, solar power is definately NOT cheaper than nuclear power on any meaningful scale.

5. Large monolithic power plants take years to build, the investment makes no sense without government subsidies

That's a policy issue not a technical one. Let the gov't build the plants then. It's not as if the gov't doesn't already subsidize utilities.

Nuclear power: old complex clunky mainframe, prone to bugs.

Pure FUD. Modern nuclear power plants are very safe. You percieve the risk to be greater than it actually is.

Solar power: wireless handheld with worldwide networking


Solar power is NOT PRACTICAL. Solar panels simply do not put out enough power per square meter to be able to meet out energy needs, period.
"To even come close to supplying our energy needs we would need about 500 plants which would require (figuring maintenance roads and access) 25,000 square miles of ground which is equal to the surface area of Connecticut, Delaware, Rhode Island, New Hampshire and New Jersey combined."