Green Energy Now, And On The Tide

thpr writes "The Electric Power Research Institute and its partners have completed their Offshore Wave Power Feasibility Demonstration Project, which defined potential wave energy projects off the shores of the United States. This is building off of work already done in Scotland (and elsewhere). San Francisco, New York and other areas are considering trial installations of the technology. It is interesting to note (table 1 in the report) that the energy density (kW/m^2) that can be achieved is much higher than wind or solar. In addition, harnessing 24% of available wave energy near the US at 50% efficiency is equal to all of the hydropower currently generated in the US (~7% of total electricity production). On a separate note, in the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy's $1.2B 2006 budget the Department of Energy is closing out the Hydropower Technologies Program. Maybe that's why this technology is missing from our National Energy Policy?" Until it reaches maturity, though, U.S. readers can pay for other forms of green energy.

Comments

So wouldn't that be ...

[isometrick]

nothing for you to "sea" here?

Other green energy sources

[momerath2003]

Don't forget nuclear power!

Re:Other green energy sources

[cyberfunk2]

I cant wait for someone to start a silly flame war about nuclear waste.

To head it off at the pass: Nuclear power: it came from the ground, we're extracting energy from it, and we put it back in the ground. Fundamentally, that's the same as oil. Except, with oil we put the excess into the air we breathe. Now which is better?

Re:Other green energy sources

[Jaidon]

Let us not forget about the Green Lantern's green power ring!!

Re:Other green energy sources

[britneys 9th husband]

...we put it back in the ground. Fundamentally, that's the same as oil.

My car's about due for an oil change. I take it you wouldn't mind me dumping out the old oil into the ground? After all, it came from the ground, so I can put it back there, right?

No? How about if I wait until next time I go to Nevada and dump it out there, in the middle of nowhere where no one (and nothing) lives? What if everyone did this?

If we're using a lot of the stuff, we need a good place to put the waste, or a way to recycle it. Not saying it can't be done, but there aren't too many good places to put spent nuclear fuel rods.

Re:Other green energy sources

[dasunt]

The main advantages that nuclear has over solar, wind, hydroelectric, geothermal, and tidal:

• We have the technology now.

This is a biggie. We know how to build nuclear power plants. Other countries have been doing so for years. Even in the US, nuclear is a proven energy source: IIRC, the US derives 24% of its electricity from nuclear power.

• The technology can replace full US capacity.

Look at how much energy the US uses now, and how much the US predicts it will be using. Can solar cells, wind farms, hydroelectric, or tidal replace that? It doesn't seem that wind nor solar can -- it doesn't have the capacity nor the constant power generation. Hydroelectric isn't unlimited either: sooner or later you run out of damnable rivers. Geothermal? It seems location dependent (but I'll admit, I haven't done my homework on this one). Tidal? How much coastline would we need again?

• Relatively non-disruptive.

Hydroelectric power creates lakes and turns rivers into streams. It changes aquatic ecosystems. How about tidal? How many shorelines are we going to line with tidal energy power generation? What do you think that will do to the environment? (Wind power is also relatively non-disruptive.)

• Cost effective.

Nuclear has been competing with traditional electric generation for decades. We know we can generate nuclear power at a relatively low cost. The same can't be said for many other alternative energy sources.

Effective at limiting pollution.

No matter what "green" energy we use, there will be pollution. Check out the byproducts created in the manufacture of solar cells. Yes, nuclear does require some mining, and it requires proper disposal of nuclear waste. Yet, in the end, nuclear is amazingly efficient at eliminating greenhouse gases on a level with other green technologies.

So, lets sum up - Nuclear is:

• We have the technology now.
• The technology can replace full US capacity.
• Relatively non-disruptive.
• Cost effective.
• Effective at limiting pollution.

Perhaps this is why noted scientists such as James Lovelock also advocate nuclear power.

The main problem is the public and the greens. They are convinced that nuclear power is unsafe, that radiation will kill us all, and they are playing a NIMBY game with nuclear waste disposal.

To be honest, nuclear power isn't my first choice for green energy: That would be orbital space platforms harvesting the energy of the sun, or fusion reactors. Perhaps one day, those technologies would be feasible. Right now, they are slightly more of a pipe dream than other green energy. Nuclear exists now, and it works. Conservation goes only so far -- the third world is slowly turning first world, and that will require an enormous consumption of energy.

We need to be realistic about our energy problem and about what solutions will work. Most alternative energy sources won't work right now. Nuclear will.

Re:Other green energy sources

[dolphinling]

Well, considering that burning coal puts out more radioactivity than nuclear energy (not to mention all the soot, CO2, CO, etc), I'd say that nuclear is pretty green. It could be made even more green if we didn't ban reprocessing. A recent discover (or was it wired?) had a nice article on it, pick it up, it can tell you a lot more than me.

Re:Other green energy sources

[Mercedes308]

Wind power is also relatively non-disruptive I used to live near a wind turbine that is on the outskirts of a medium sized wind farm. They are the most disruptive energy producers I can think of to be near in terms of effect on people (and possibly animals). The low frequency noise produced by the machine played havoc on sleep (you got none) and can drive you to the point that you think of any stupid excuse not to go home. I had to sell up and move, it had got so bad, due to the fact it was starting to effect every part of my personal and professional life from sleep deprevation and stress. I realise you were referring to the environment, but some of these 'green' solutions to power generation produce an effect to its surrounds other than what is normally addressed when their impact is reviewed. Wind power is often viewed, here at least, to be one of the most cleanest methods of producing energy and I believe that to be true.....as long as you don't live near them.

Re:Other green energy sources

[Eivind]

Nuclear is a lot better than oil/coal burning, that much is for sure. Atleast in countrys with enough of a reliable infrastructure that failing safety-mechanisms won't just be disabled to avoid interupting the production. (as in Chernobyl)

That said, hydroelectric is also *very* well-tested mature technology, wind and solar less so.

Norway, for example, have produced like 98% of the electricity needed (including the humongous amounts needed for large aluminium-plants) by hydroelectric since a century. That should count as well-tested I think.

Different areas have different possibilities for different energies. Where there are large amounts of water (i.e. rain) falling in mountains, there'll be large amounts of hydroelectric power to earn with relatively modest negative consequences.

Some places there's a lot of wind, and some places there's a *lot* of area and a lot of sun. Those places I think we should use it. Basically the only thing stopping us is that currently solar and wind is more expensive than burning fossil fuels. hydroelectric on the other hand is a lot *cheaper* than the alternatives on good locations.

Re:Other green energy sources

[spencerogden]

Good article on Wired about a safe way to do Nuclear power. Still need to get rid of the waste, but at least meltdowns wouldn't be a problem.

We've missed out on a lot by not developong nuclear plants over the last 25 years. As other posters have said, its here now, and its the cleanest we have.

Re:Other green energy sources

[Anonymous Coward]

"Check out the byproducts created in the manufacture of solar cells"

Here's a link

http://hem.dis.anl.gov/eehem/01/010305.html

I'm still a big fan of Solar and will be adding a grid-tie system
to my home.
It is a technology that is here today that we can take into our own hands and apply without having to wait for big companies to come up something.
p.s.
I do have solar hot water if you are thinking about solar for your home this is a great place to start.

Re:Other green energy sources

[rsborg]

I'd say that nuclear is pretty green. It could be made even more green if we didn't ban reprocessing. A recent discover (or was it wired?) had a nice article on it, pick it up, it can tell you a lot more than me.

Not sure if Discover/Wired did something on this, but PBS Frontline did an awesome show on our fear of anything "Nuclear" (IMHO, I think we're only scared of "Nukular" but whatever).

Re:Other green energy sources

[Insanity]

Let's look at what the article argues.

Its first point is that, because new nuclear capacity will merely replace plants scheduled for decomissioning, new nuclear plants won't actually reduce CO2 emissions. This is true. But then, not building said plants would create additional amounts of CO2 from the new power plants that would have to be built to replace the decomissioned ones. The article says that "In essence, the industry is merely fighting to preserveits 20 percent share of the domestic electricity market." So, does that mean that the 20% is not worth fighting for? Especially given that most of it is generated on the densely populated east coast, where replacing it with coal would add much to an already polluted area.

Second argument: pebble-bed isn't ready yet, so the new plants built in the next few years would have to be conventional designs. True, but this ignores the fact that twenty years of development have gone in to reactors since the last one was built. Today's reactors, while based on old principles, will be quite different from those of yesterday. They will operate more efficiently. I don't know much about their economics, and they may indeed be subsidized. We have to ask ourselves whether taxpayer money for clean energy is acceptable.

Third argument: some nonsense about how nuclear energy denies the option of "an innovation economy." I'm not going to bother with this one, really.

Final argument: distributed power generation is the future. The author emphasizes small-scale gas turbines, which do nothing to reduce CO2 emissions and ignore the fact that natural gas supplies are getting increasingly expensive. It seems intuitively obvious to me that efficiency losses in small generating equipment are higher than transmission losses from large power plants. Solar power is mentioned, which is a marginally useful solution even in the middle of the desert.

Well, my tune has not changed...

Re:Other green energy sources

[1u3hr]

To head it off at the pass: Nuclear power: it came from the ground, we're extracting energy from it, and we put it back in the ground. Fundamentally, that's the same as oil. Except, with oil we put the excess into the air we breathe. Now which is better?

Point 2, that oil may be even more polluting, worth considering.
Point 1, bullshit. U238 with some U235 impurity is mined; 238 has a half life of 4.5 billion years; so it's not terribly radioactive, though not healthy either, mainly from the radon it breaks down to (as accumulates in cellars in some locations with granite containing some uranium). After fission we have a whole lot of short half-life, very active, highly poisonous isotopes. The activity goes down rapidly, but some, like plutonium has a half-life of about 250,000 years, so it will be a problem forever, in human terms. Not to mention the huge amount of low-level waste, from contaminated building materials, etc. Nuclear waste may be manageable, but it's not a trivial problem

Re:Other green energy sources

[eh2o]

here is the link... http://www.wentworth.nsw.gov.au/solartower/

Re:Other green energy sources

[dasunt]

One of the problems with solar energy is that its not constant.

Assume (roughly) 5 hours of effective sunlight each day. This will vary based on location, season, and climate. Google tells me that the average for Los Angelas is 5.5 hours/day. A location such as Hamburg, Germany, receives 2.5 hours. But lets be generous.

US uses about 10 billion KWH each day (according to google). Assuming that its evenly divided throughout the day, we need to store 7.5 billion KWH each day. Again, we are being generous: We should build a system that expects several cloudy days of winter throughout most of the country.

I want to see your proposal for a system that can generate over 2 billion KWH for each effective hour of sunlight a day, with a storage system that charges at the rate of 1.5 billion KWH and stores 7.5 billion KWH. (Note we are assuming 100% efficiency).

Then I want to see the KWH cost of solar when you are done. Average in the US is about $.075 KWH or so.

Re:Other green energy sources

[Rakishi]

Hydroelectric also destroys the ecosystem where it is built, flooding large areas of land. Environmentalists will eat alive anyone who even attempts to create hydroelectric power plants in the US, asfaik we are actually getting rid of some at this point.

Re:Other green energy sources

[Rakishi]

Are you aware of how many solar panels you'd need? The amount of ecological damage that covering all that land would cause is not trivial. Are you aware of how much pollution the creation of a solar panel creates?

Re:Other green energy sources

[tehdaemon]

Ummm.. the land issue.

I haven't done the math, but I would bet that the combined land use of buildings + paved areas is a lot greater than that needed by solar power. That and the buildings can usually do both.

Re:Other green energy sources

[tonyr60]

But not as much radioactive waste as coal fired stations. And it does not dump its waste into the atmosphere, like coal fired stations. And does not kill as many workers in the extraction of the raw material. etc. etc.

Re:Other green energy sources

[dbIII]

Well, considering that burning coal puts out more radioactivity than nuclear energy

Please stop trolling with the reference to the junk science article which stirs up alarm about background radiation. Get enough of anything (including people) and you will be able to find radioactive elements - it is the way the world is. It's only when you get a high enough concentration of radioactive material in one place that radiation becomes significant.

It would take a lot of effort to extract radioactive heavy metals from fly ash in any quantity - while the junk article seems to imply that fly ash is nuclear waste. Coal has its own problems as a fuel source without making things up.

It's funny, but people only believe nuclear is cost effective, clean or "green" in the USA. It appears that the advertising money must have been well spent. Bring on pebble bed, and maybe it will live up to the promise of being more than just the peaceful side of the bomb.

Back to tidal - it's often old technology that has been in use in large scale facilities for decades (it's just hydro in plants like the big one in France) - and the problem is finding somewhere with enough of a tidal difference close enough to populated areas which is not already built up. Wave power is based on a less dependable source, but it is easier to find a location.

Re:Other green energy sources

[dbIII]

Nuclear has been competing with traditional electric generation for decades

Thanks to help from the taxpayer, it even looks like it breaks even sometimes. The UK, USSR, French, Isreali, South African, Pakistani, Indian, North Korean, Iranian and Indonesian experience is that it is a very complicated and expensive technology which is only worth doing if you are developing weapons. The Canadians appear to be making money selling their technology to others, so they can break even - addicts can make money when they turn pusher. The Japanese had the navies of the USSR and the Chinese to worry about, and an energy supply that only came by sea, so expensive nuclear was an option for strategic reasons. It is still an unproven technology - even pebble bed is still at the prototype stage and it's forerunners are expensive white elephants running on 1950's technology.

We have the technology now.

Not after fifty years we don't, but China may surprise us soon.

To be honest, nuclear power isn't my first choice for green energy: That would be orbital space platforms harvesting the energy of the sun, or fusion reactors

What can I say? Sometimes it's better to go for a simpler solution instead of complex high tech dreams. Nuclear power is an incredibly complex way to boil water - containment requires exotic materials which do not come cheap. The theory has always been that the incredible capital cost is offset by the low running costs with nuclear power - but this has not yet been the case. Fraud has certainly occurred on a large scale in the US electricity market - now is it that or some strange superiority over the British that has provided the huge disparity in apparent costs between the USA and the UK with respect to nuclear power. Another question to consider, is why Jimmy Carter, the nuclear engineer president, stopped building nuclear power plants? The answer appears that they were no longer economicly viable once the amount of weapons material sold as a by product was reduced. Economic rationalism was the enemy of nuclear power, not some tiny green group of the time.

Sorry guys, it's still SF - but it may be worth building soon.

Re:Other green energy sources

[Lisandro]

I kindly disagree. Nuclear power has it's peeves, but nowadays it's a well understood technology; we're well past the days of Chernobyl. Very safe nuclear reactors can be made, and what's more important, are being made. The newer, so called "fast" reactors can actually generate more fuel than they consume! (to an usability limit - it's not a perpetual motion machine).

I don't have a link handy, but i recall reading the vast majority of the worlds' power was generated by burning coal. I'd much rather have nuclear plants. Then again, i'd much rather have eolic, tidal and solar powerplants, but if we have nuclear now, why can't we use it?

Re:Other green energy sources

[myowntrueself]

I think that underneath it all is the problem of long-term management.

People who are agin' nucular energy typically distrust the ability of governments or corporation to sucessfuly manage anything over a long term period eg decades or centuries.

This problem is exacerpated in the democratic world because more people just *know* that 10 years down the track (say) everyone in power is going to have different priorities and different plans and that the effort to change things to suit the latest corporate mission statement or political slogans will screw things up.

Therefore, ok perhaps a little subconsciously, people protest against nuclear power not because the technology is inherently unsafe but because the ability of modern society to manage long term projects end-to-end is *dismal*.

Truly *DISMAL*

Ergo nuclear technology, in the context of modern society, is dangerous.

Re:Other green energy sources

[Anonymous Coward]

TF(W)A:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.02/nuclear.h tml

Re:Other green energy sources

[D-Cypell]

Yeah, cos if the sun explodes.....

Re:Other green energy sources

[Goth Biker Babe]

I work here. The building is limestone/sandstone and has been cleaned so the stonework is a sort of sandy colour. Everything around it is black. In fact most of 'old' West Yorkshire is black. That's because of all of the soot from British industry in the Georgian and Victorian eras and the early Twentieth Century. In fact, all the way up to the point where the clean air act was introduced which prevented the burning of coal which hadn't been treated. That made it expensive and caused the destruction of many fine Victorian cast iron fire places as gas fires were fitted. Coal is not clean.

Re:Other green energy sources

[nathanh]

Then I want to see the KWH cost of solar when you are done. Average in the US is about $.075 KWH or so.

Solar power costs are closely tracked on Solar Buzz and the average industrial cost is 20c/kWh. Those plants are commercial enterprises operating at a sustainable profit.

New solar power plant designs from Australia (google for Big Dish ANU) have gotten the costs down as low as 12c/kWh, all inclusive. It's still not as cheap as coal but it's definitely competitive.

Re:Other green energy sources

[aXis100]

Then the solution is simple!

All nuclear reactors should grind up their waste and send it up a stack. The NIMBY freaks have been fine with that method for ages!

Re:Other green energy sources

[nilenico]

not necessarily flooding.

In Norway, it's been done by piping up and damming waterfalls.

Not pretty either, but at least it's not flooding large areas.

Re:Other green energy sources

[The Original Yama]

Nobody is saying that coal is clean, but when you consider the entire life cycle of the fuel, it is safer and cleaner than nuclear eneregy. Nuclear fuel is environmentally damaging to extract (often more so than coal), and the waste needs to be reprocessed and stored securely for thousands of years.

Today we have technologies which can filter out most of the pollutants which plagued Britain during the Industrial Revolution. I certainly don't like coal, but I'd prefer to use it over being lulled into thinking that nuclear energy is somehow clean.

Re:Other green energy sources

[The Original Yama]

The flaw in this argument is that nobody is saying that 100% of our energy should come from photovoltaic cells. Solar panels are only one source of energy.

Re:Other green energy sources

[mre5565]

I saw a documentary about oil and energy efficiency a while ago that stated that solar power would required 1/3 of the world's land in solar panels in order to meet the world's energy needs. Hmm...

That seems quite high. Let's look at some publically available info.

http://www.jc-solarhomes.com/solar_energy_facts.ht m

Assume each square metre can receives 1 KW hr per hr. Assume 20% efficiency for photovoltaics. So 0.2 KW hr per hr per metre.

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0001729.html says a kw hour is 3412 BTUs, so photo voltaics produce 0.2 * 3412 = 682.4 BTU/hr per square metre.

http://energy.cr.usgs.gov/energy/stats_ctry/Stat1. html says the 1998 U.S. energy consumption was about 94 quadrillion BTUs Assumong 8 * 365 hours of decent sunshine in the desert year around. So that's 100 * 10^15 / (8 * 365 ) = 34 * 10^12 BTUs/sunshine hour.

(34 * 10^12 ) / (682.4 ) = 49 * 10^9 square metres = 49 * 10^9 / 10^6 = 49000 square kilometres = 223 KM by 223 KM or 140 miles by 140 miles.

If you "want" the entire world to consume energy at per-capita rates like the USA, then assuming the US population is 300M, and the world population is 6B, then 6*10^9/(300*10^6) * 49000 = 980000 square km. The Earth's land surface area is claimed to be 148,300,000 sq km, so 980000 / 148300000 = .006608 or less than 1% of the Earth's land surface area.

Mind you, for infrastructure that huge, you have to build roads, support buldings, etc. So even if a factor of 3 off, that's still about 2% of the surface area.

Also, once demand for photovoltaics reached 1% of the above, I imagine the industry would drive efficiency from 20% to higher levels. So 1/3 of the land surface area is way too high.

The real problem with photovoltaics is the cost. http://store.yahoo.com/sancor/50w.html will sell you a 502mm x 939mm panel for $588, or 588 / (502 * 939) * 1000000 = $1247 per sq metre. Let's be hopeful that in quantity, wholesale lots, we could buy this for $1000 per sq metre. 980000 * 1000 * 1000 * 1000 = $980 trillion. Note that the annual GDP for Earth, according to http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/print /xx.html is $51.48 trillion. That figure is at purchasing power parity. I'll leave it others to speculate whether photovoltaics can be manufactured cheaper in third world countries or not. If you don't think so, then considering that the U.S. economy is about $11 trillion, and that it is blamed for consuming about 1/2 the world's resources, the non purchasing power parity world GDP is probably closer to $22 trillion.

There needs to be a 10X reduction in the price/energy ratio of photovoltaics. Do that, i.e. reduce the cost of the solar energy to meet the world's needs to an investment of about $100 trillion, amortize it over 30 years, and I'm sure we can find the money and land to do this.

Re:Other green energy sources

[PMuse]

Hydroelectric isn't unlimited either: sooner or later you run out of damnable rivers.

Now, _there_ was a Freudian Slip.*

(*When you say one thing, but mean your mother.)

Re:Other green energy sources

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the problems with solar energy is that its not constant.

for anyone who thinks that large scale solar power generation has anything to do with the dime-sized solar cells you played with in highschool, i invite you to do a quick search for:

"mirrors" "salt" "solar power"

high pollution production for cells that dont work a night?
try concentrated sunlight, heating salt so water can be boiled round the clock.
stable, simple, clean solar collection that works.

http://www.energylan.sandia.gov/sunlab/Snapshot/ST FUTURE.HTM
"The plant operated successfully until 1988... operating with 96% availability during its final year. It generated more than 38,000 megawatt-hours during its lifetime and consistently ran at its 10-megawatt rating."

Read the whole page and keep reading more if you want, it really is a sophisticated and inexpensive form of power generation that gave me a quite a 'good vibe' when i first came across it. this kind of simplicity would work so well for developing nations, cant you just imagine plants like this creating jobs and supplying energy to towns the world over. :)


-yours truly, AC

Re:Other green energy sources

[Surur]

This is a myth. Funny how old myths refuse to die. Energy Payback Time is in the order of 1-2 years these days, and then will run efficiently for 10-20 years.

http://www.otherpower.com/otherpower_solar_new.h tm l

Solar cells are not just "batteries" and have not been for a very long time.

Surur

Re:Other green energy sources

[AdmiralWeirdbeard]

The real problem with nuclear energy is not the actual energy production and waste management as most people seem to believe. We can make safe reactors, and we can make safe waste-storage systems. The real proplem, from an ecological perspective is the mining of uranium.
You have the proportions of fissionable Uranium to inert Uranium backwards. Fissionable Uranium is the much less common isotope, and must be concentrated, through gas-diffusion, or other methods to achieve the concentration necessary to be considered "enriched." Mass quantities of ore must be mined in order to accumulate the requisite amount of Uranium, and the tailings are the real environmental problem, as is abandoned mines. Uranium mine tailings are saturated with radon, and heavy metals in such concentrations as to poison entire watersheds for several thousand years. We have this fear mentality about nuclear power stemming from 3-mile island and chernobyl that focuses all of our concern for the safety of nuclear power on activities pertaining to the reactors, at the expense of the totality of the process, beginning with the mining of the ore and ending with the storage of the waste.

Nuclear reactors can and are made perfectly safe. WAste storage systems can be made perfectly safe. However as long as uranium ore is mined in an unsound manner, the process as a whole will fail to be environmentally sound.

Re:Other green energy sources

[AdmiralWeirdbeard]

I assume you are reffering to the older, high-rpm, turbine farms such as the ones in southern cali. The newer turbines, such as the Horseheaven Hills Wind Farm near Walla Walla, Wa, turn at a sufficiently low rpm that they make almost no noise at all.
In fact, having spent a good deal of time studying them, i'd have to say that the entire wind farm was eerily silent. But I wasnt sleeping underneath one, of course...

Re:Other green energy sources

[TheSync]

Just FYI...

Lithuania gets 86% of electricity from nuclear power. France gets 78%. Belgium gets 57%. Sweden gets 52%. Switzerland and Slovakia get 45%. Ukraine gets 44%. Germany gets 29%. Japan gets 28%. The UK gets 23%.

The US only gets 20% of electricity from nuclear.

Re:Other green energy sources

[Ignignot]

You are missing a key relationship: the longer a half life is, the less radioactive the substance is. So while plutonium will stick around for a long time, its radioactivity is relatively low in comparison to some of the other nuclear wastes. In addition, the plutonium can be reprocessed and broken down again and again. But the most important thing is that the radioactivity is well understood, and can therefore be diluted and safely stored in a specially designed facility. Of course we don't have such a facility right now, but that's a completely different issue.

Re:Other green energy sources

[wjwlsn]

The UK, USSR, French, Isreali, South African, Pakistani, Indian, North Korean, Iranian and Indonesian experience is that it is a very complicated and expensive technology which is only worth doing if you are developing weapons.

You're right, I'm incredibly frightened of what could happen as a result of the burgeoning nuclear weapons arsenals in Finland and Sweden.

The Canadians appear to be making money selling their technology to others, so they can break even - addicts can make money when they turn pusher.

Wow, what a fair and balanced analogy.

The Japanese had the navies of the USSR and the Chinese to worry about, and an energy supply that only came by sea, so expensive nuclear was an option for strategic reasons.

Expensive compared to what available alternatives? Japan's large and abundant reserves of coal and natural gas? Their mighty rivers? Broad expanses of unpopulated land for wind and solar?

It is still an unproven technology - even pebble bed is still at the prototype stage and it's forerunners are expensive white elephants running on 1950's technology.

Unproven compared to what? LWR technology may not be the latest hot, new concept in power generation, but it has a lot of advantages... not the least of which is that it is fairly well proven. Improvements are possible, yes... but look at the improvements over the past twenty years. US plants are now running 90% of the time, unplanned shutdowns are at a very low level, planned outages now take two weeks instead of two months, personnel exposures and radwaste are at all-time lows... what else do you want, free milk and cookies?

Nuclear power is an incredibly complex way to boil water...

Complex, but manageable. It also has the benefit of extremely low fuel, operation, and maintenance costs. Oh, and it's reliable baseload.

containment requires exotic materials which do not come cheap...

Yeah, concrete and steel are pretty exotic, and so expensive.

The theory has always been that the incredible capital cost is offset by the low running costs with nuclear power - but this has not yet been the case.

That depends on where and when the plant was built, and in comparison to the available alternatives at the time. If your benchmark is coal, then nuclear usually doesn't look so great economically. If your benchmark is wind or solar, then nuclear looks much better. Oh yeah, go talk to Finland about how terribly expensive nuclear is compared to the alternatives... maybe they'll decide not to build a new 1600 MWe reactor.

Fraud has certainly occurred on a large scale in the US electricity market - now is it that or some strange superiority over the British that has provided the huge disparity in apparent costs between the USA and the UK with respect to nuclear power.

Actually, there is a big difference betweeen US and UK nuclear. In the UK, you have old Magnox plants operating at very high cost relative to average LWR technology used in the US and elsewhere. Magnox was basically the first generation of nuclear power technology, and a lot of its design was dictated by the desire to extract plutonium for weapons production. Then you have AGR, which appears to be very good technologically, but was eventually dropped in favour of LWR technology. So, in the end, the UK has just one fairly modern LWR at Sizewell B, and a bunch of old, expensive plants based on technology that nobody else is using.

Another question to consider, is why Jimmy Carter, the nuclear engineer president, stopped building nuclear power plants?

Jimmy Carter was a nuclear engineer, and he was President, but to say he stopped all building of nuclear power plants in the US is simply false. Old plant orders were

Re:Other green energy sources

[Firethorn]

Most mines now replace the tailings into the mine once they're done with the mine. So while they do have to do some work to safely store the tailings in the short term, it ends up more or less neutral. Especially in areas where they have multiple shafts, and they put the tailings from the new mine shaft down the old mine shaft. Due to processing, they should be able to stuff a little more into each mine than just the tailings from that mine, given that they are removing material.

Also, the tailings issue comes up with just about every mine, whether it be lead, iron, copper, or the more rare elements.

Re:Other green energy sources

[The Wannabe King]

Try this.

There are much better ways of storing the energy than using battery banks, especially when you don't have to carry the storage around (think cars). Many places hydro-electric power and solar cells could be run togehther very efficiently. Shut down turbines and save water in the reservoire when there is much sun, restart them at night.

Re:Other green energy sources

[DigitalWallaby]

The problem is that you can't unrefine it. When you take Uranium out of the ground it is usually processed in to the form of yellowcake, which is Uranium Oxide. Yellowcake is insoluble, as is the original ore.

After it has gone through the reactor, a lot of it is no longer Uranium. There's a lot of radioactive isotopes of elements like Cesium, and Iodine, and some of these elements are, or easily form compounds which are soluble. Also, a lot of these elements are used in life processes, and accumulate up the food chain.

So just putting the waste back in the ground would be a nightmare. You'd be putting a huge amount of soluble radioactive material into the environment, where it would gradually accumulate in your body. That is pretty dangerous.

That's not to say there aren't solutions. I remember that the CSIRO a number of years back invented a ceramic called SynRock which basically trapped the radioactive material in a hard non-porous ceramic disc. Stored in a safe place something like that might be an option. And, material science has come a long way since SynRock was invented.

I even wondered if we could drill a deep well at the edge of a continental plate that was going to be sub-ducted(?) in a few hundred years, and put the waste in there. In the mantle there wouldn't be anything to worry about.

Re:Other green energy sources

[mre5565]

Thanks for the kind thoughts.

I don't however think "big solar farms in the desert" are the way to go. Solar power makes the most sense to generate right where you need it, avoiding transmission losses.

This is true of any energy source. During the rolling-backout years in California a few years ago, my employer, stung by a couple of blackouts, bought their own natural gas powered generator. The next time there was a blackout, the automatic cutover didn't work, and time and data was still lost. It's not exactly straightforward to manage an electrical system, which accounts for part of the reason why we use centralized utilities.

That said, I accept the possibility that decentralized solar could work in many cases (just a small manner of programming and computers). But not everyone will have enough acreage to produce their own energy, nor will they live in high sunshine places, so the utility is always going to be necessary.

Re:Other green energy sources

[The Original Yama]

I should also add that we have already covered a significant portion of our landscape with roads and buildings. What if we could put solar panels on top of some of those buildings, and use the roads for heat production (roads can get very hot during the day)? This is already being done in some countries.

Re:Other green energy sources

[wjwlsn]

I wish posters on slashdot would at least read the complete sentences they reply to. I'll make it shorter: Japan has nuclear in case of blockade = strategic reasons.

Oh, I read your whole sentence. The problem is that your claim glosses over a whole number of reasons why Japan, or any other nation without abundant local energy resources, might choose nuclear over other alternatives. Strategic concerns definitely contributed to the choice of nuclear, but that doesn't mean it was the only reason.

Um, actually existing in a full size prototype of the technologies that are supposed to break even? I thought lask of existance would make it self evident that it is unproven.

Um, cost comparison is not usually the primary indicator of whether a technology is proven or not. However, if you insist on break-even, I can point to several proven (your definition) US plants constructed prior to the regulatory meltdown that occurred in the mid to late 70s.

Now I understand where you are coming from - nuclear power is not a magic bean you put in a pot of water in a concrete bucket.

Wow, are you sure about that? It sure seemed like magic to me when I was working on my Master's degree in nuclear engineering, or when I was writing codes to calculate neutron flux distributions in nuclear fuel assemblies, or when I was a reactor engineer telling operators which control rods to pull during startups. It must be magic, 'cause that math stuff is hard!

Concrete and plain carbon or stainless steel isn't going to get you far - that's just what you see on the outside. Fuel rod casings are an interesting and complicated application of metallurgy - reactors that use sodium have all kinds of special requirements etc.

Concrete and plain carbon or stainless steel are used all over a nuclear plant... yes, even for containment. Granted, "fuel rod casings" are generally made of zircaloy, but are generally not that complicated based on the fuel rods I have seen put together and those that I have actually handled during new fuel inspections. Oh, by the way, there aren't that many sodium cooled reactors around.

There is no person anywhere who knows anything about nuclear power that will tell you that the capital cost of a nuclear plant is cheap - they are complicated and expensive things and are designed to get the money back by saving on fuel and in earlier plants by the sale of material for weapons production.

Oh, the capital cost is expensive? I never would have guessed. I mean, I've only been working in the industry for 11 years, and have only been involved in the construction work for two major nuclear refurbishment projects. What do I know?

By the way, I'd love some citations regarding this sale of material for weapons production. Please note that I'm talking about US commercial nuclear plants here.

Then why didn't Reagan bring it in, old Bush, new Bush even Clinton - since he would have probably managed to put a green slant on it? Why did Thatcher stop building them? I think if you were correct, one of those I mentioned would have jumped at the chance.

In one short phrase... the rush to natural gas. Gas prices were low, and new technology became available to burn it very efficiently. Ten years ago, putting up a natural-gas fired merchant power plant was almost a no-brainer, financially. Today, you have to think a little harder. As gas prices go up, the pressure to find an alternative increases. That's one major reason that nuclear hasn't been of major political interest until the past couple years.

Anyway - what is a nuclear troll post about coal doing in a tide power article?

Hey, I was just responding to an anti-nuclear troll post that contained a lot of inaccurate statements. I'm apparently doing it again.

Re:Other green energy sources

[wjwlsn]

I call bullshit on this - otherwise you would never have been clueless enough to made the concrete and steel comment. Exotic, expensive, and very interesting materials are used in areas exposed to radiation. Please ask your science teacher to post here, they may say something useful.

Believe me, or don't... it doesn't matter. However, you may be interested in the following web pages, which will tell you a little bit more about the materials used in nuclear reactors. By and large, fairly common steels and concretes are used. The "exotic" materials are generally found in fuel (uranium, gadolinium, erbium), control rods (boron carbide, silver, indium, cadmium, hafnium), and detectors (too many to list here).

• http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf32.htm
• http://www.nucleartourist.com/areas/cntm-ovu.htm
• http://www.azom.com/details.asp?ArticleID=2139#_Ma terials_For_Light

Anything else?

24 percent is a lot

[Anonymous Coward]

24 percent is a lot .. that's basically thousands of miles of coast. For what? 7% of energy? And what about maintenance costs? Effects on marine life .. Imagine dolphins or whales getting caught in this .. ships .. can ships operate safely?

The only question I have about energy

[zyridium]

Is when nuclear energy is going to be put back on the agenda. I mean compared to coal it is squeaky clean!

Re:The only question I have about energy

[Anonymous Coward]

When we run out of coal.

Adoption

[Anonymous Coward]

As great - or as needed - as green energy may be, we'll never see widespread adoption of it. At least, not so long as the oil industry exists.

Why call it green energy when...

[LearningHard]

Most likely this will have massive effects on oceanlife and beachlife in the areas they are installed. I view it as a technology with its uses but the greenies have yet again started blabbing about how ecofriendly it is without thinking about the true long term consequences.

Re:Why call it green energy when...

[MikeCapone]

It's effect of ocean life (and the planet in general) is microscopic, infinitesimal, compared to the effect of the coal plants and other brown and black energy sources.

Low impact system?

[irhtfp]

When you take energy out of a system, you affect that system and all other systems that depend on it.

In other words, these projects affect the currents, at least locally which in turn *will* affect the biological systems that depend on these currents, to what extent? I don't think we know.

We need alternate energy, but we need to honestly compare the impact of each energy extraction method we consider. Personally, I think nuclear is the lowest impact energy tech.

Re:Low impact system?

[mtrisk]

Save the Sun! Stop the use of solar power now! By taking energy out of the solar system, we will affect the local energy structure, causing quantum fluctuations in the time cube!!!!

Do YOU want to kill the sun and cause the solar system to collapse into a single point? That's quite un-american! Perhaps you're a terrorist!

I'm sorry, Valentine's Day got to me pretty hard.

Re:Low impact system?

[MikeCapone]

Yeah, and wind turbines will suck out all of the wind on earth. *sigh*

Ever considered that the boats we have sailing around the earth - including massive huge mountain-like things - probably disrupt the ocean a lot more than even 10,000 installations of these wave-generators would?

Ever thought that tall buildings and forests probably disrupt the wind paterns a lot more than even thousands of wind-turbine farms?

And even if they did have a negative effect on the ocean and life in general, it would be almost imperceptible compared to the effect that the coal plants they would replace have.

Re:Low impact system?

[TheOldFart]

No, I don't. Nor does he as he stated in his post. That's the point. Unless you have good data to back it up, any argument in any direction is religion and not science. This is not peculiar to this small subthread but to this whole conversation. I see a lot of "religion" and very little math.

Re:Low impact system?

[plastik55]

Well just read the article summary--they propose potentially using 25% of available wave energy (to equal merely 7% of our present electricity usage). That's a huge percentage and it's hard to believe that it wouldn't have a substantial impact.

Compare this to wind power--100% of the present energy needs of the planet (including heating and transportation, not just electricity) could be met by taking somewhere around 0.02% of the planet's wind energy. (Wind is powered by solar heating causing convection and is slowed by surface drag and viscosity; this figure is based on the additional surface drag that would be required.)

You argue about comparing the effect to the negative effects from coal and oil systems that it would replace. This is the right idea to begin with, and you go on to conjecture that one set of efffects would be smaller than the other. However you do not seem to have anything to back up your conjecture. As a believer in evidence-based politics, I cannot accept "probably."

Side effects

[cyberfunk2]

Do people know of any serious downsides to wave energy ?

I hear that you cant put it in densly populated water ways, as it really impeeds boats moving (at least the surface variety, are there deep buried kinds, too ?).

If anyone could comment on the negatives of this, it'd be nice to see the other side. For instance, wind power is usually cited as an eyesore, and solar as having problems w/ where you are located (same w/ wind to some extent).

Re:Side effects

[cyberfunk2]

how bout solar? It's just energy that'd be going to space anyhow.. that looks like a free lunch.

mmm... lunch..

Re:Side effects

[wayne]

"Slows the planet's rotation?" Please cite your source for THAT one, I'd love to see who came up with it.

Yes, tidal forces DO cause the earth's rotation to slow down.

The tidal forces created by the earth on the moon have slowed the rotation of the moon down to the point that we only see one side of the moon. That is, the moon rotates about once a month. Similarly, the tidal forces of the moon are slowing the earth's rotation down, and it will eventually reach one about one rotation per month also. Assuming that the sun doesn't become a red giant first. And, speaking of the sun, there is also a tidal force that from the sun that will eventually cause the earth to rotate once per year. I'm not sure who this conflict between the moon's and the sun's tidal forces work out.

Conservation of angular momentum means that the tidal forces are causing the moon to orbit the earth faster, and thus further away.

While all these tidal forces are very small and only add up over very long periods of time, they can be measured. In particular, things like variations of the amount of snow on mountains, the amount of water in man-made lakes, the force of huricanes, and variations in the shape of the earth caused by earthquakes all add up to enough to cause the need for leap seconds.

Leap years keep the seasons from rotating through the calendar. Leap seconds keep the zenith of the sun ("noon") from rotating through the day. I forget the exact value, but there is something like an accumulated 20-30 seconds difference caused by these forces over the last 50 years, and therefore there have been 20-30 leap seconds added since then.

Re:Side effects

[StrawberryFrog]

..Back under the bridge, troll. "Slows the planet's rotation?" Please cite your source for THAT one,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_locking or a google search on "tidal locking" will do you.

Don't be so hasty with the troll label, or you'll be labeled a troll yourself. Troll.

It takes two sides to make it work...

[helioquake]

Both power providers and consumers need to work in harmony: (1) the power companies are to increase the efficiency in generating more power and (2) the consumers are to utilize the available energy in an efficient manner.

There isn't much I can do for (1). But I can do for (2) by replacing light bulbs with energy saving bulbs (ESBs, or compact fluorescent bulb that fits in an incadescent lamp), turn off the light where not needed, and turn the damned TV when /.ing. You can do a little to cut some energy expenses by following these actions. In reality I am not going to save over $20 a year. But when people start doing the same, it soon becomes a real money.

Re:It takes two sides to make it work...

[helioquake]

The demand had better not grow exponentially, as the available energy resource is finite within our reach (or in the universe).

It's utopian thinking to assume that there will always be some power source available to meet the demand. Example? Blackout in NYC. Humans are going to learn this in a hard way unless we individuals start waking up and smell the coffee.

Besides, what I'm saying is not entirely unreasonable. Imagine a light bulb that consumes 60W of the electrical power. A cheap one will generate a lot of heat (IR). And unless you have IR vision, it ain't gonna make your room any brighter. On the other hand, design a light bulb that radiates mostly in the visual wavelength, while little is radiated away as heat. Now that will allow you to consume less energy but generating the same lumen as the cheap light bulb. Isn't that a profoundly wiser course of action for the civilization to take?

Think about that one a bit.

Re:It takes two sides to make it work...

[ivrcti]

Actually, if you looked at your insulation/windows and replaced that 20 year old hot water heater, you'd probably save a lot more energy than the items you mentioned. Don't get me wrong, I fully support your ideas. As a father of 4 kids, I preach turning of lights/tv's radios, etc every day. But the fact remains that the vast majority of your electric bill comes from heating/cooling your air and your water.

What's really important is kW-hr per dollar...

[aquarian]

It is interesting to note (table 1 in the report) that the energy density (kW/m^2) that can be achieved is much higher than wind or solar.

Yeah, but what about what really matters -- kilowatt hour per dollar.

Re:power is important

[cyberfunk2]

Seeing as these things tend to be a while outwards in the ocean, where the waves arent really that high yet, I'd guess that they would (I could be dead wrong here).

Now would their support systems survive and still allow them to produce effective power? That, I'm no so sure about.

No free lunch

[earthbound kid]

There's no such thing as a free lunch. Once we install enough tidal energy collectors, there will be no more big waves. Before long, all the newspapers will be full of stories about sad and lonely surfers:

"Dude, I heard about a gnarly 1 foot wave off the coast of the Bering Strait."

"Woah, what are we waiting for? Let's grab our boards and ride!"

Won't someone please think of the surfers!

Wave-Powered Whisky

[Geek Yid]

Interesting how these wave generators wind up at whisky-distilling islands. Orkney has the wonderful Scapa and better known Highland Park, not to mention the Orkney Brewery. Islay, meanwhile, with its seven working distilleries has much of its electricity generated by a 'Limpet' wave generator. (See http://www.fujitaresearch.com/reports/limpet.html for more.) Environmentally friendly power: it's just one more good thing about Scotch Whisky!

Fusion

[iamacat]

We know it's the future. We know with adequate research spending it can be achieved and will make any talk of green or nuclear power pointless. It can be both done before going to Mars, for comparable price, and will help greatly with achieving that goal. It will eradicate global warming by letting us produce cheap hydrogen. So what are we waiting for?

Re:Fusion

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I say throw as much money at the physicists/engineers as they need until they get an efficient fusion reactor happening. If there was a proposal to spend 10% of the world's GDP each year purely on Fusion research, I would vote for it in a second! In the long run, it will probably cost much more than that to fix the mess caused by global warming.

Why even waste our time with wind/wave power schemes that have such obvious limitations? This research sounds like a attempt to appease the science-ignorant hippies who shudder at the word 'nuclear', but you know, really dig the ocean man.

Re:Fusion

[Renegade Lisp]

I think it's pointless. We do have a working fusion reactor right at our doorstep. It's got a perfect security distance (150 Mio. km). We've got a perfect radiation shield (the Van-Allen-Belt). And it produces billions and billions of times more energy than we could ever use. Even just the energy from it that hits the tiny spot called earth is several million times more than our total energy consumption, second by second. We really just need to find efficient means to harvest that energy, right down here on earth, rather than try and build our own tiny fusion reactor.

Re:Fusion

[fnj]

We know it's the future.

A lot of us certainly hope it is.

We know with adequate research spending it can be achieved ...

Ahem. We know no such thing. Not in an engineering and economic sense. Certainly we have proven we can achieve fusion reactions in the lab; this has been done for many years now; but we just don't know if we'll ever be able to make sustained and safe reactions which have a high enough energy return to be worth doing. And yes, cost matters. If it bankrupts the entire world to make enough energy to run one town for a year, that would not help anyone, even the one town, because it would be the planetary end of civilization.

It can be ... done before going to Mars, for comparable price ...

Oh really. And you know this ... how? Guesswork?

I am a big proponent of trying A LOT harder and more urgently to perfect fusion power, but let's have a little realism here.

Re:Fusion

[mre5565]

10% of the world's a GDP is quite a hunk of change, like $5 trillion. With a one time expense of $5 trillion, we could probably solve the cost problem of photovoltaics, and thus harness the ultimate fusion reactor.

That said, I'd be perfectly willion to spend 0.1% of the world's annual GDP on fusion, since after we solve the world's energy problem, I'd like us to reduce trips to other planets in the solar system to a few days each way. :-)

Re:Fusion

[danharan]

I disagree. Nuclear was supposed to be "too cheap to meter" and it's more expensive than coal or natural gas.

So after spending billions on old nuclear, we spend billions more on fusion- the same people make the same promises and we're just supposed to believe it?

Solar and wind have been going down in price in predictable ways. Every new tech- cars, tvs, computers ends up offering better value for consumers as competition and economies of scale work their magic. Spending billions on those technologies guarantees results.

Re:Fusion

[Dun Malg]

I disagree. Nuclear was supposed to be "too cheap to meter" and it's more expensive than coal or natural gas. So after spending billions on old nuclear, we spend billions more on fusion- the same people make the same promises and we're just supposed to believe it?

The only reason "old nuclear" has been so expensive is that ever single plant built in the US was designed and built separately. They essentially never got out of the "experimental design" mindset. France has standardized plant design and it's been relatively cheap as a result. The electricity isn't "too cheap to meter", but that line was from a 1950's "atomic energy will save the world" pipe dream anyway.

Re:Oh man, this is going to suck

[DoctorMO]

It'll be a barrier to coastal erosion which badly effects some parts of the world.

Re:Sea power will cause an Ice Age

[mpesce]

The energy is still there, in the form of waste heat, after the electricity is used to _do_ something. It may be taken out of the ocean, but it ain't taken out of the Earth.

green pricing programs?

[Lackaff]

Until it reaches maturity, though, U.S. readers can pay for other forms of green energy.

Hey, if Timothy says green pricing is on-topic for this discussion, who am I to argue? Green pricing programs are not only available in the US. I helped compile this information about international green pricing programs a few years ago. Looks as if it hasn't been updated in a while, but non-Yankee Slashdotters might find something useful there.

Idiocy

[Squalish]

Wave power is a total ridiculosity - you want to sacrifice TWENTY FOUR PERCENT of US coastline in order to supply SEVEN PERCENT of the electricity.

This is our electricity usage BEFORE we tack on the electricity used to power our hydrogen cars, which will raise our consumption an order of magnitude.

Using algal biodiesel, breeder fission(with development on fusion), and wind where suitable, are the only remotely practical eco-friendly choices that are sustainable - Photovoltaic trumps them all, but to convert even just our current electrical needs to photovoltaic would cost more than we've spent on imported oil since we started importing oil. We could create an infrastructure to supply the entire nation's demand for fuel with algal biodiesel on an amount of money that's similar to what we spend anually on importing oil, which is coincidentally about the same amount of money it would cost to install a single hydrogen pump at every gas station in the US.

Wave power is and has always been a crock as an energy scheme.

whoops, forgot to log in :)

Re:Oh man, this is going to suck

[DAldredge]

Did you stop to think that the ocean life in those areas needs those waves and currents to survice and that this system might damage them?

A look at solar.

[Malluck]

How viable is solar power? I was asking myself this question and here's the numbers I came up with.

In 2001 the USA used 96275 trillion BTUs of energy that year. This comes to 3.22 trillion watts.

Now there are about 295 million people in the US, so this comes to about 11Kw per person at any given time.

This means each person uses is responsible for 262 Kwh of power per day.

Now lets say that square meter of sunlight provides 1 kw of energy on average and the average area gets 5 good hours of sunlight per day. Looking at this chart, you can see that this assumption isn't too far off.

The typical solar panel is about 30% efficient. This means that for every square meter of solar panel would render 1.5 KwH every day.

This means that each man woman and child would need 174 square meters of panel to be responsible for all the energy made and used in their name!

If every person in the united states of America put up solar panels. We would have over 51 billion square meters of panel, that's close to 20,000 square miles of panel or the equivalent of covering most of over in panels.

Now these numbers account for all energy used both domestic, industrial, and exported. Also these numbers do not account for the added or lost efficiency of converting systems over to pure electrical power as opposed to other energy processes like those used in the internal combustion engine.

I left the links to my math in just incase I botched anything.

Re:A look at solar.

[Anonymous Coward]

Just some minor corrections.....BTU is energy, Watts aren't. Watts are power, or Energy / Time. KW-Hr is not power, but in fact a measure of energy. Yeah it gets really confusing and I am an EE.

1 BTU = .2933 Watt-hr

Re:A look at solar.

[utexaspunk]

This means that each man woman and child would need 174 square meters of panel to be responsible for all the energy made and used in their name!

This, of course, sounds like a lot, but consider the amount of roof surface the average suburban home has. The Average US home is 2,300 sq. ft., which equals ~214 sq. meters. (Okay, so the average 2,300 sq. ft. home is probably 2-story, but humor me) Also consider the amount of roof space there is on office buildings, etc. and consider the reduced amount of line losses there would be in such a distributed grid. It would still likely be prohibitively expensive, and even if it weren't, it probably wouldn't be feasible at 30% efficiency, but there is a pretty good chance that efficiency will continue to increase, and that at some point it could look like a very reasonable option.

Re:A look at solar.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not going to bother to check your math, I'll just quote from a January 2005 report of the Solar Energy Industries Association:

"Solar collectors on a 100-by-100-mile area in the Southwest could generate as much electricity as the United States consumes in a year. Alternatively, solar systems on roofs, parking lots, and other developed land across the nation could generate all the electricity we need--now, in 2030, and 2050--without building on the nation's open spaces."

I've seen similar figures from Sandia labs.

I'm really puzzled why people always try to figure out how much space would be taken up by a centralized solar power plant. The appealing thing about solar power (and fuel cells, and wind power) is that it's distributed--generating units are scattered wherever power is necessary. If you think about it that way, the space taken up by solar panels (or whatever) is negligible.

Go into an urban or suburban area and see how much space is taken up by buildings with flat roofs, parking lots, etc. Imagine that space covered by solar panels. Now realize that you can clad tall office buildings in solar panels that look like glass (and that let light through to the interior). There's an idea--make the buildings generate some of the power that they consume.

Re:A look at solar.

[Platinum Dragon]

That's why you don't rely on a single power source. AFAIK, we don't do that now in the US or Canada. I can't speak for other parts of the world.

There are a lot of rooftops that can be used for panel installations--and if that solar paint pans out, sweet.

Wind generators are quiet, look kinda neat, and can be set up to scare off birds with scarecrows. Again, you can't rely on it everywhere--but that goes for everything, least of all sources that require mining for fuel and either particulate/gaseous exhaust, or waste products that shouldn't go near biological habitats for, oh, a few thousand years. That includes the reactors that will ultimately have to be decommissioned and replaced.

Then there's the biggie--drastically reducing individual consumption and increasing the efficiency of what energy usage remains. What a concept. Unfortunately, I don't see this last one taking off short of a catastrophe (or a simple reduction in remaining supply) that would make fossil fuel sources unavailable and nuclear or renewable systems unusuable or too minimal to make available in short order.

Hey, no one said this shit would be easy, but I think such changes will be necessary to ensure the viability of widespread human, and even animal and plant habitation on the surface and in the seas of this rock.

Re:A look at solar.

[nathanh]

The typical solar panel is about 30% efficient.

Why would you build a solar power plant using photovoltaic cells. Mirrored surfaces focussed on a water pipe, generating steam to drive a turbine, is considerably cheaper and far more efficient.

If every person in the united states of America put up solar panels. We would have over 51 billion square meters of panel, that's close to 20,000 square miles of panel or the equivalent of covering most of over in panels.

Now find out the total roof space in the USA. The figure should pleasantly surprise you.

Re:A look at solar.

[Renegade Lisp]

I think these numbers, and this perspective, are very much mistaken.

R. Buckminster Fuller, in his 1980 book Critical Path, claims that humanity's energy income from the sun (the amount of energy from the sun that reaches the earth every second) is several million times larger than humanity's total energy consumption, world-wide. Granted, you have to find ways to make use of that energy, but the energy is there, and it's nothing but solar energy.

How does that relate to your numbers? Well, to begin with, we need to ask what 30% efficiency of solar cells refers to. Does it really include all the energy from the sun that hits a given area, and the resulting electrical power that's generated? What about thermal solutions, as another poster pointed out?

Also, keep in mind that practically all other forms of energy that we know on this planet are ultimately solar energy. Wind, for example: it's flow of the atmosphere because the air is heated differentially by the sun (we're using the atmosphere as a big turbine, as it were). Water power: the water is elevated to higher levels by solar energy, and then we take some of that energy out of it again as it flows downward. Examples abound. So, in fact, there is far more solar energy than you'd think, and certainly far more than we could ever use.

Interesting points

[CBob]

That even when a totally non-CO2 emitting, non-radioactive power source is found we still get the "OMG!! It's could cause xxx", uproar.

Living here in the post-industrial wonderland of NJ, I find this amusing in a bad way.

The other thing that shocked me was the supposedly "higher" costs for "green" energy. Bad news folks, it's lower than what I pay to Conectiv/Pepco.

And now back to our regular insomnia...

Re:Idiocy

[Tiger the Lion]

Not 24% of coastline, but 24% of total tidal energy. You can't assume that the waves are equal everywhere along the coastlines.

And 7% of total energy demand is nothing to scoff at. Imagine if it was actually realised - a lot of greenhouse gases would be saved. All I hope is that the picture is still rosey after an in-depth environmental assessment.

------
Daily energy news and discussion: http://www.thewatt.com/

Want more on the subject?

[MikeCapone]

For those who want more, the best links on for intelligent green reading:

WorldChanging.com -- which also has an article about wave power.

TreeHugger, which is already linked in the story.

Dave Pollard, which writes very insightfully about lots of things including environmental philosophy.

Green Car Congress, where you can get the best news about green mobility, cool cars & industrial developments.

IDFuel, which is more about design but covers some of the same ground as TreeHugger.com

FuelCellWorks for all the latest news about fuel cells.

Grist Magazine, for news and a touch of humor, plus lots of interviews.

Re:Want more on the subject?

[JPriest]

At one point I thought to myself that will all the progress in green energy surely some day soon we will hit that critical point where it is cheaper to take the plung and leave the grid. That day is not yet here, and I don't know when or if it will be.

The reason I believe this is because electronics in peoples homes are growing at a faster rate than "green technology" (like solar power) is improving.
The amount of solar panels required to power the 3 computers, 4 TV's, 2 PlayStations, DVRs, cordless phones, etc. in my house in cloudy/rainy NY would be crushing.

Sure the green tech will improve, but then add in faster/more computers, another DVR, Xbox 3, dual core 4GHz processors, several more gig of RAM, and a few TB of HDD storage and I am right back at square one.

Re:Want more on the subject?

[Aggrazel]

Well if you're going "green", you won't use 4 televisions and 3 computers and 2 playstations and all that at the same time. Plus you'll buy things like LCD flatpanel monitors which require a lot less power than the CRTs.

Also, in theory if you are generating the electricity on premesis, you could power a lot of things with DC directly, instead of needing to convert it at the outlet. That would help some too, I imagine.

Re:Want more on the subject?

[mikael]

The reason I believe this is because electronics in peoples homes are growing at a faster rate than "green technology" (like solar power) is improving.
The amount of solar panels required to power the 3 computers, 4 TV's, 2 PlayStations, DVRs, cordless phones, etc. in my house in cloudy/rainy NY would be crushing.

It's not your home computer equipment that sucking up all those kilowatts, it's the electrical appliances you take for granted. We once stayed in a rural cottage with a 5 kilowatt trip switch - any time the energy demands exceeded this limit, the main fuse would cut off.

Our morning would begin with putting the laundry into the washing machine(3 kW/h), switching on the kettle (2kW/h). By lunchtime, the cooker would be on (3kW/h), and the washing machine would now be in spin mode (2kW/h). Not forgetting the television (300 watts), refrigerator (500 watts), and a computer (120 watts), and maybe a couple of light bulbs (100 watts x 2).

Needless to say, our power supply was tripping out more often than hippies at a summer festival. A short term measure was that we had to switch off all lights and appliances whenever the cooker or washing machine was on. The long term solution was that the trip switch was upgraded to 9 kilowatts.

For 3 computers, 4 TV's, 2 playstations, DVR, the power demand would be an additional:

3 x computer . .= 3 x 200 watts = 600
4 x TV . . . . .= 4 x 80 watts = 320
2 x playstation = 2 x 80 watts = 160
2 x DVR. . . . .= 2 x 120 watts = 240
3 x cordless phones = 3 x 5 watts = 15
Total = 600 + 320 + 160 + 240 + 15 = 1335 kilowatts

Sources: Energy Efficiency Guide, Energy Whiz and Saving Electricity

Re:Want more on the subject?

[Firethorn]

Not really, the thing about AC is that it's very easy to adjust it's voltage with a transformer. It's also safer than DC of the same voltage, so unless you really want to run heavy lines, we're better off with AC for the moment.

Though I do agree with you that doing little things like turning off the TV, lights, playstations, etc will help. Not only in saving electricity directly, but also likely the need for air conditioning.

Sure, we could power the services/appliances that homes had in the 1950's home with green electricity today(using modern power efficient appliances), but do we really want to go back to that?

That being said, 24% of our coastline is still a HUGE amount of area, especially when the graphic in the article included Alaska & Hawaii. And that's only to match hydroelectric, 7% of total electricity generation? At 50% efficiency I'll note that increasing efficiency would likely have more effects on the enviroment, which would make the power less 'green'.

Impact on the oceans

[mishan]

I'm curious as to what potential impact on the ocean wave power may have. I believe there was a /. story recently about how wind power will actually take the kinetic energy out of wind and affect global weather patterns. Surely taking the kinetic energy from the ocean must have some sort of impact on some sort of ecosystem.

Hopefully it won't have any serious negative impact as this technology seems promising.

Re:Oh man, this is going to suck

[MikeCapone]

Did you stop to think that the ocean life in those areas needs those waves and currents to survice and that this system might damage them?

Hmm, first of all.. These generators won't keep people from surfing because they'll be pretty far out at sea.

Secondly, they are not going to "stop waves" or affect much the area where they are.

Thirdly, they'll have a much smaller impact on local and global life than coal plants and other ancient technologies. Global warming will affect billions - basically all life on earth, I think that a few barrel-looking things at sea is a good price to pay to help generate clean energy.

Waves are cool, but don't forget ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Waves are cool, but don't forget ... OTEC (Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion)

My father was a primary designer on this, so I had the "real scoop" on what was going on there in real time, it was real exciting stuff back then!

Mini-OTEC, 1979

In 1979, the first successful at-sea, closed-cycle OTEC operation in the world was conducted aboard the Mini-OTEC, a converted Navy barge operating in waters off Keahole Point.

This plant operated for three months, from August-October 1979, and generated approximately 50 kilowatts of gross power with net power ranging from 10-17 kilowatts.

Its turbine generator produced a gross output of up to 55 kW. About 40 kW were required to pump up 2,700 gallons/min of 42F water from 2200-ft depth through a 24-in diameter polyethylene pipe and an additional 2,700 gallons/min of 79F surface water, leaving a maximum net power output of 15 kW.

This was a joint effort by the State of Hawaii and a private industrial partner.

More linkage: NREL's OTEC site

Google

Re:Waves are cool, but don't forget ...

[amliebsch]

Haha, blast from the past...that was our chief affirmative plan for my 1995 high school debate team...none of the other teams had a clue WTF we were talking about - but then, neither did the judges...

Re:Oh man, this is going to suck

[DAldredge]

Only if you ignore the massive amount of power and materials that will go into building 2000 to 4000 kms of power generating stations.

This would be one of the largest, if not the largests, enginering projects that mankind has ever done and the production of it would have a negative effect on the environment.

Nuclear power would be much cheaper and less disruptive to the environment.

Re:Idiocy

[Leo McGarry]

Photovoltaic trumps them all, but to convert even just our current electrical needs to photovoltaic would cost more than we've spent on imported oil since we started importing oil.

Not to mention the fact that we'd basically have to pave over New Mexico. Have you ever been out there? It's a desert, but even a desert is prettier than 40,000 square miles of solar cells.

Re:The PROBLEMS with nuclear (not nukular)

[momerath2003]

Summary of said article: the industry is going to be building 20-years-behind-the-times reactors which will merely replace the existing reactors. And a lot of other hot air/meaningless commentary.

This guy needs to check his facts. No one is trying to say that pebble bed reactors are going to solve the energy crisis. The industry is developing (and has developed) more efficient, smaller, safer 3rd generation PWRs (pressurized water reactors) that use the same concept as traditional reactors but with vastly improved design (source: Nuclear News, November 2004). As a nuclear engineer, I can tell you that these will be the new reactors.

There is, of course, also the point that old reactors are aging. Yes, they are. Maintenance and reevaluations of those facilities are constantly under way, and they will likely be safe to operate for many more years. In the meantime, more modern reactors will be built at an increasing rate that will not only compensate for reactors that must be shut down in the future but also provide more energy.

Re:Sea power will cause an Ice Age

[MikeCapone]

Not this again?

You don't seem to realize just how big the planet is compared to these things.. The cargo ships and oil tankers are thousands and thousands and thousands on our seas.. Do they have a big impact?

Did tall buildings in cities stop all the wind? Forest?*sigh*

These things would actually replace coal plants and other crappy sources.. That would have a NET POSITIVE EFFECT on the planet.

Why are people so quick to complain about any minuscule disadvantage of a green source, but they never talk about coal and oil and such? Because it's new? I thought slashdot users liked new things..

Read the Fucking Document!

[EatingPie]

Aight, I've seen tons of misinformation and bogus speculation here, and I just perused the document!!

(1) The facility is out to sea. Hawaii is the closest at 2.5KM, while California is at 13 to 20 Km.

(2) They are in about 40M of water. Waves break in about 1-4M of water, depending on size.

(3) The things FLOAT on TOP of the water! (The "Pelamis" design does anyway.) They are mored with cable, and are no where near breakers.

(4) They are not so much "wave" energy as "swell" energy (ie waves = coastal, swell = deep ocean).

Huge variation in wave height makes near-shore uneconomical when waves are small (often), and SEVERELY dangerous when large. (Name a man made structure that has withstood BREAKING waves or a sustained period of time.)

Even when waves are small on the coast, deep sea swells still oscillate across the surface unhindered. The point is to harness these oscillations for energy (as far as I can tell).

The environmental impact will be truly negligable, except for moorings and swell energy depleted before it reaches the coastline.

The very environmentally-paranoid surfer in me says... Go for it!

-Pie

Sterling claims 100sq miles for all of US

[Anonymous Coward]

I find the claim that this technology provides better energy density than solar problematic if the cited stats are correct.
Sterling solar which is a thermal solar, rather than PV solar, technology. They say that a mere 100ssquare miles of their concentrators would supply the entire electricity needs of the US.

Nuclear power is greener than most

[Anonymous Coward]

First, there are no CO2 emissions. That's the most important thing. Fossil fuels leave behind CO2 which heats up the planet.

Second, there is no soot and other such trash going to the atmosphere. Third, the amount of radioactive waste is in fact very little compared to the amount of waste produced by other methods.

Yes, the waste is highly toxic. And the acquiring of the uranium leaves waste behind. But even so, nuclear power is cleaner and better than any plant fossil based fuel source (oil, gas).

Even if you are green (I am), get your facts correct and don't think with your emotions in things like these.

Silly to dismiss

[mcrbids]

It's quite silly to dismiss the power of (ahem) alternative power.

For example, the Freedom Tower now under construction in NYC, USA will generate a significant amount of its own power. (as much as 20%!)

I'm a supporter of Nuclear technology, but only if it's open. The current "don't ask, don't tell" nuclear regime is stupid, stupid, stupid, and will never result in an industry that's truly safe. Nuclear technology should, like cryptography, be open, and should only be trusted when it's withstood significant, public, peer review.

Have you ever heard of Changing world technologies and their plans to convert garbage into crude oil? I've been following this one for about 2 years, and I think it's the "real deal". It's still in its infancy, but it's viable in many places now, today!

They're taking their time to refine things, and if I were them, I would, too. When I get the chance to invest in their technology, chances are, I will.

new things and old things

[zogger]

Actually we just like to argue and call the other guy a numbskull. At least I think I read that in the FAQs someplace;)

Put me down for "all of the above", plus zero point vacuum energy and all the other schemes. I even think that has potential, along with atmospheric and ground based "natural" electricity. That's a biggee I never hear talked up and it should be. We are sitting on a huge spinning ball of molten iron that has a huge electromagnetic potential just hanging around mostly untapped, unlooked at, undiscussed. why I do not know. Maybe re-look at that, a la some tesla action.

I'm a "more power" kinda guy. We got new coal techniques that leave the coal underground and use this special bacteria to convert it to methane, easy to extract and pipe away and use in the existing natgas pipelines then. We got your nuclear batteries and somewhat better designed reactors. We got solar and wind (I got me some of that stuff). We got wood and cellulose to ethanol. We got algae that give off hydrogen gas. We got just using more insulation (still the best bang for the buck but not sexy enough to talk about usually). We got your geothermal. We got your biodiesel and making fuel from hemp a couple of ways. heck, for some cargo, they could bring back sailing ships with new dynaimc sailing designs for the long haul. Man, there's tons of solutions out there.

And so on and so forth and yada yada, I can probably rattle off another couple dozen if I think on it some and check a scosh and refresh me memories with google.

The energy solution is to use "all of the above" wherever it fits in the best. There is no one size fits all magic bullet solution. If tidal gennys work, I say throw em out there! We got umpteen millions of naked roofs with shingles rotting away on them, I say throw some solar PV up there, it'll add in. Stick a few megawatt wind gennys on every farms in the midwest, help the farmers out some and they help us out then, they got the land, we need the juice. Throw them tidal gennys off the coasts. Stick the hydropower back in and stop tearing down the old dams. Put the methane digesters in. Whatever. We been tallking about it too long.

The deal is, we can't wait for big money and bigger politics government to do all of it, we have it in our little grubby hands to all be part of producing energy, not just be total consumers and waste all our loot on stoopid toys and just kvetch about it all the time. I say it is every geeks civic duty to be the leader in their neighborhood and at least do something along these lines to get the ball rolling, just like we were the early adopters of computers and got that ball rolling.

You got "all the way" with making some energy personally, "part of the way" and "none of the way" to go with it. That's IT, three choices only that every geek gets to make on that question. "None of the way" is the only guaranteed "you fail it" selection, so everyone has a 2/3rds chance of making a correct decision..

Why waves when you have tides?

[AndyBarrow]

So, what's the problem with taking a few of those big-ass ugly wind generators up on the Altamont and sticking them below the Golden Gate Bridge(http://www.darvill.clara.net/altenerg/tidal .htm)? Tide current there can reach 6kts. Or what about off the coast of France, where the tidal currents go up to 8kts?

Sure, we need the energy, but do we have to have these things up where they get in the way of the view?

Re:The PROBLEMS with nuclear (not nukular)

[ZorbaTHut]

Wait a second.

Article summary: "Nuclear is a bad idea because a lot of nuclear plants are getting old and will need to be replaced. Also, if everyone had solar and wind and personal gas turbines, we wouldn't need nuclear. Oh yeah, and politicians are evil and trying to exploit this for their own benefit."

(1) Those nuclear plants are getting old anyway, and will need to be replaced anyway. That has nothing to do with what they're going to be replaced with.

(2) Not everyone does have those, and I rather doubt everyone's going to suddenly buy those. Great idea for new houses, lousy idea for existing ones.

(3) And there aren't any politicians trying to make a fast buck off green power either? That's practically what a politician's job *is*.

Where's the section that looks at a realistic breakdown of realistic costs and goals? Where's the section that makes any attempt to compare the two besides "hey! look! NUCLEAR POWER ISN'T PERFECT!"

-1, flamebait.

Simple economics

[mangu]

when people start doing the same, it soon becomes a real money.

People will start doing it when energy prices start going up. No one will do it for $20/year, unless either 1) they are so poor that $20/year means something for them, or 2) they are aware of the hidden environmental costs and care about such things.

IMHO, the best way would be to put all the costs in the final price. Make people pay for the true cost of energy and you'll see people worry about conservation.

Re:Simple economics

[GreenCow]

Tisn't easy to measure the true cost of energy production. If it turns out all the coal we burn melts the ice caps and puts us into an ice age then the cost is really immeasurable. A good step in that direction though would be to end subsidies for energy production and to put that money into creating new jobs in the R&D and construction of new, cleaner energy sources. And I'm not talking about nuclear either, what a dangerous money sink that is.

NIMBY?

[csk_1975]

They are convinced that nuclear power is unsafe, that radiation will kill us all, and they are playing a NIMBY game with nuclear waste disposal

You forgot to leave your address so we can send all the safe nuclear waste to your backyard - I'm assuming that the reference to "Not In My Back Yard" was an invitation to dump it in yours?

Re:NIMBY?

[dasunt]

You forgot to leave your address so we can send all the safe nuclear waste to your backyard - I'm assuming that the reference to "Not In My Back Yard" was an invitation to dump it in yours?

Works for me. I'll take a few of the ceramic-style storage containers, buried 10 feet underground in my backyard.

Natural radioactivity may be a problem: The region where I live has naturally occuring radon. I imagine that this will upset their radioactivity detectors.

Oh, and I expect a small compensation from the federal government for digging up my backyard. Say, never having to pay taxes again. :)

Sustainable choices

[mangu]

Using algal biodiesel, breeder fission(with development on fusion), and wind where suitable, are the only remotely practical eco-friendly choices that are sustainable

There is one alternative that is fully sustainable and has been working economically for decades. Brazil has been producing ethanol powered cars for 25 years. Every gas station in Brazil sells straight ethanol at a lower price than gasoline. Although the proportion is lower now, in the 1980's about 90% of the cars in Brazil were powered by straight ethanol, and the rest used a 75%/25% mix of gasoline and ethanol. Today several models of cars in Brazil come with "flex power" motors, which can burn any proportion of ethanol/gasoline mix.

The Brazilian alcohol program is the largest renewable energy program for cars in the world. The only reason why it has been pulled back a little is because the oil prices aren't as high now as in 1980, after you take inflation into account. Also, the whole country has a much better economical situation, with a lower debt, internal oil production is higher and world sugar prices are higher (Brazilian ethanol is made from sugar cane). All these factors have contributed to decrease the proportion of ethanol in the total fuel consumption in Brazil, but ethanol is the first and most viable alternative for renewable transportation fuel in the world.

Tidal power

[salec]

Back to tidal - it's often old technology that has been in use in large scale facilities for decades (it's just hydro in plants like the big one in France) - and the problem is finding somewhere with enough of a tidal difference close enough to populated areas which is not already built up.

Why? Just make a huge circular (or some shape dictated by local streams and wind/wave pattern) concrete-wall "tub" on a shallow part of continental shelf and exploit the differences in water level that occur between the tub and sea. Using ferrocement (naval concrete, used to make ship hulls) and reinforcing columns for construction should do just fine.

Wrong way of looking at things

[dbIII]

If every person in the united states of America put up solar panels. We would have over 51 billion square meters of panel, that's close to 20,000 square miles of panel or the equivalent of covering most of over in panels.

Solar panels are what you do if you want a bit of energy now in a spot that is off the grid - like a pocket calculator or marine navigation beacon. If you want power in industrial quantities you use heat - there are plenty of solar thermal solutions out there - some use steam and existing technology, some use hot oil as the working fluid, and some split ammonia during the day and recombine it at night for a constant output. The big problem is it has to be done on a large scale before it gets cheap - while the current solar approach is to have a dozen silicon panels in a paddock and say you are doing things for the environment. Solar panels don't scale, they are just convenient and require very little planning. It doesn't take huge areas exposed to the sun to get a lot of heat - and industrial amounts of heat can give us industrial amounts of electricity. We are still building coal fired plant designs from the 1960's despite the technology moving on there as well, people are very conservative about large capital projects.

Hydrogen is an issue by itself

[salec]

Hydrogen leaks easily, burns invisibly and, finally, given the nasty habit of "considering details later" we humans have, it would all end up with excess oxigen air polution (and it may get MUCH worse then CO2 pollution), shrinking water supply of the planet (you think Earth is abundant with water...TODAY), while "insignificant" "tollerable" "acceptable" percent (thousand tons) of leaked hidrogen annually fly on the atmosphere roof and eventually disperse into outer space.

I say forget the whole Hydrogen idea! My vote goes to electric power for most anything but autonomous systems. And for them, bio fuels made from biomass grown intensively in hydroponic facilities with assistance of electric power for ilumination, pumping CO2-enriched air into water and for maintainance.

We'll have to catch atmospheric CO2 anyway, so why don't we use the same facilities for both energy storage AND carbon catching (I guess we can carbonize biomass for storage instead of fermenting it into fuel)?

Re:less, not more

[Anonymous Coward]

Right on my man/woman.

Somewhat OT but what were the stats again on how many power plants are needed to run "hibernating" electronics ?

We have the tech now to schedule stuff to power up on state/condition.

A television that learned to turn off in non-viewing periods and come back to "warm" when viewing was likely would save a lot of base load power.

Re:The PROBLEMS with nuclear (not nukular)

[MarkedMan]

Many years ago I was a proponent of nuclear energy. What convinced me to change my position? Simply put, I saw how nuclear power plant officials, government regulators, and industry consultants lied, over and over. When the Ginna nuclear power plant near Rochester NY had a serious accident, I listened to lie after lie from the official plant spokesmen. The story started out as "there is nothing wrong, this is a regularly scheduled test" and modified itself by the hour as the last hour's lie was exposed. I certainly have no reason to believe their final story, as I think it is more likely they just settled on a lie no one could expose.

My sister-in-law lives near the Hannaford nuclear facility and the lies continue to this day. The pattern: Reassuring lie, get caught, slight mea culpa, new lie. At least twice since I've been paying attention some official spokesman has declared that the mistakes of the past are gone and they will deal honestly and forthrightly from now on, and then been caught out in another cover-up within a year or two.

So could nuclear energy help us? Yes. Can we trust the people who control it today? Absolutely not.

Available energy is not the problem

[quad4b]

There are numerous sources of alternate energy that could replace environmentally harmful sources of energy within decades.

The problem is not scarcity of alternatives but that the true cost of harmful sources is not factored into the price paid by consumers (nor charged by suppliers). This is the only reason alternative sources are more expensive. True cost would include the cost to undo the damage caused by using it. What is the cost to reverse global warming? What is the cost to reverse damage caused by coal mining (leached acids and heavy metals into the groundwater + acid rain)?

Some Canadian green energy sites

[ylikone]

I was one of the web developers for these two Canadian green energy sites.

canwea.ca
skygeneration.ca

Both of which are hosted by a green web host, appropriately called thegreenwebhost.ca

So when will we talk about where to put the waste?

[solafide]

Everybody saying that the nuclear power is the way to go, with only a few exceptions, is not mentioning the waste. What WILL we do with all that delicious fresh radioactive waste? Pile it up out back? Sure nuclear might be 'safe', and perhaps it is efficeint, and perhaps also 'green' in that it doesn't pollute the AIR, but the waste is a pretty big problem that needs to be addressed. Billy

"Green" Sources

[quanminoan]

What most people don't understand is that EVERY source of energy comes with it's own issues. Every source of green energy comes with it's own problems.

For one I don't understand why so many people are for wind turbines. On top of taking up an immense amount of space and disrupting the area they are in, they also slaughter bird populations. A somewhat recent slashdot article also talked about research on how altering wind streams could affect the climate (particularly in Europe).

Coal is so horrible and filthy I don't even need to mention it. Solar is a wonderful concept and doesn't disrupt the environment in any way comparable to other sources, but I would wait for higher conversion efficiencies before implementing anything (which should happen soon).

Until then nuclear power is the way to go. Once we work through the politics involved they're are many technologies that have yet to be fully realized. Breeder reactors would supply the world's power at least long enough until fusion power is technologically feasible.

Re:Oh man, this is going to suck

[shokk]

According to the article, 24% of the available wave energy. Doesn't sound like a little bit. What about all those people who say that changing the currents in the Atlantic will swing us to global warming? Are they on board for this?

The reason should be ...

[AmericanInKiev]

That Wave energy is more reliable - and reliable means a lot when you're competing with dispatchable power such as coal - which can be operated and amortized on a 95% utilization schedule. If your wind is only 30% available, and down in the summer when you need it most, you will need back-up generators to make it through the year. That's redundancy - as in twice the cost - twice the pollution etc ...

Backup power can pollute more than baseload power (See single cycle vs. combined cycle) and as a result, unreliable green energy may result in dirtier air - this is no a concern in Denmark, which has the highest percentage of Wind - but the dirtiest power scheme of its peers. (France by contrast is mostly nuclear.)

AIK

Otec was a bust

[jmichaelg]

I toured the plant shortly after it shut down. Otec was a bust before the first pipe section was laid. Seawater is terribly corrosive which means upkeep on the plant was a huge expense. The 15 KWH power output you cite cost several million dollars to generate and was worth less than a buck on the wholesale power market.

The common thread in most green power schemes is "efficiency doesn't matter because the energy is free..." Unfortunately, efficiency does matter because you have to pay for and maintain the equipment that captures the "free energy." The startup costs are high as are the ongoing expenses and in Otec's case, it didn't pencil out as a viable solution.

Hawaii ended up selling the cold seawater to aqua-culture firms that could sell farm grown abalone and lobster to the Japanese. The cold seawater is perfect for those folks and the profit margin on abalone, lobster and nori is much higher than it is on kilowatts.

Re:The PROBLEMS with nuclear (not nukular)

[lueckster]

I live near the "Hannaford" [Hanford] nuclear reservation and have all of my life. I worked for WNP-2 at the reactor for two years as an engineering student and have worked at Framatome, ANP for the past 7 years working with nuclear fuel. Do you think that any of us living here don't know what happens in our own back yard? I would rather have a dozen reactors cranking out power, and have to deal with the spent fuel, than one more acre of those crappy windmills ruining the horizon. And just about all of the waste problem at Hanford is from the nuclear weapons effort, not the power. For some reason people always lump those two together. There is a HUGE difference. Have you researched nuclear accidents? It's a fun little trip into human stupidity. And if you think the Ginna accident was "serious" check out the Tokai accident in 1999.

Re:Idiocy

[pclminion]

New Mexico is a bad location for photovoltaics. It's really hot, and PV efficiency goes down as the temperature increases.

Here in Oregon, a place most people think of as perpetually overcast and raining, you can actually get about the same amount of energy from a PV cell as you would in New Mexico (averaged over the year), simply because it's cooler here and the efficiencies go up.

Hint -- if you're in the market for solar cells, try to get the ones which are made from reprocessed semiconductor waste. Semiconductor manufacture is a very dirty process (lots of nasty chemicals) so it's good to try to reduce the amount of waste, and reuse as much material as possible.

Re:Solar tower vs PV..

[The Original Yama]

The project's Web site gives the impression that they're still planning and trying to secure funding. That is to be expected; a $700 million tower isn't built overnight.

Re:The PROBLEMS with nuclear (not nukular)

[tim256]

That article doesn't talk about any scientific, enviromental, or technical problems with nuclear power just political problems. Just because Bush likes nuclear power doesn't mean it's bad.

Also the artical is incorrect about natural gas as being cheap. The gas fueled units that the company for which I work cost about ten times as much as what nuclear power costs per MWh for a plant in a neighboring state. An example cost for a gas plant $70/MWh and coal plant is $15/MWh. I don't know how they consider that cheap. That's certainly not cheap of off-peak use. In fact, I don't know of any fuels currently used in large power plants that have a higher cost per MBTU than gas.

Re:Only US?

[tim256]

I'm sorry that your country is unable to build nuclear power plants, as they are very expensive. However, you have some of your facts wrong.

Aren't we threatening Iran because they are are planning to build on?...

The US doesn't want Iran to have nuclear materials because they might build bombs with the material.

Read some history - that isn't why plants haven't been constructed in the USA for years

The main reason nuclear power plants have not been built is because of mass hysteria from the accident at the poorly designed Three Mile Island plant. PBS did a wonderful one-hour special on this accident. You can see info at their website. Also, the accident at the poorly operated Chernobyl plant didn't help things. Nuclear power plants take much care to operate correctly, but are much more enviromentally friendly than coal, oil, and gas.

Construction was stopped during the days of Jimmy Carter...

The last constrution of a nuclear power plant in the US was completed in 1996. See US Dept. of Energy

It's funny how wind, waves and solar have to be cheaper than anything to be considered

Wind, waves, and solar are very expensive. Solar and wind power is more than $80/MWh compared with the average coal cost of $16/MWh (in US); this is not a good deal. A quick search on google for wind and solar costs will show you. Here is an example.

cheap by some unknown force of magic that defies reality...

I know because of experience in the energy business that nuclear power is usually cheaper than power generated from other fuels, but this article has some good facts about that.

There was a big reason for there being a lot of nuclear power in Europe - it was known as the USSR

Yes, the USSR has many nuclear reactors (probably poorly maintained), but even without the USSR, there would be plenty more nuclear power plants in Europe than in the US. See this Dept. of Energy article.

Re:So when will we talk about where to put the was

[Firethorn]

Um, I've mentioned the waste any number of times.

What WILL we do with all that delicious fresh radioactive waste? Pile it up out back?

Basically, yes. that's the best thing to do with fresh nuclear waste. You leave it on site until the radioactivity levels drop a bit. It's not like arsenic, it'll become less dangerous with time.

Nuclear Proponent's waste management:
1. Reduction: Newer plant designs are simpler, safer, and more fuel efficient.
2. Reuse: There are plant designs that can use current nuclear waste as fuel with minimal #3
3. Reprocess: Something like only 5% of the potential fuel is used in convential US reactors. After the waste has cooled down a bit, it's possible to reprocess the waste into more fuel. Waiting 40 or so years makes it substantially easier on the equipment.
4. Disposal: If you follow the first 3 steps, the remaining waste (reduced by a factor of 20-100!)is much more highly radioactive than what is currently being held in pools at power stations. This is actually a good thing, because the average halflife is months-years, not centuries. This means that if you keep 20 years of fuel (1 railcar is the average per year per power station right now, so it'd be 1 railcar's worth per 20 years) onsite, by the time you're looking to bury it in a yucca mountain it's down to something like 1% or less of it's original radioactivity. Also, it degrades much faster, so you only need a shelter that'll last centuries rather than eons.

Sure the waste needs to be addressed. But we can handle it now. We just need to work through some of the politics, as only for nuclear power is reprocessing, recycling, and reuse BAD.