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Japan Plans $21B Space Power Plant
Mike writes "Japan has announced plans to send a $21 billion solar power generator into space that will be capable of producing one gigawatt of energy, or enough to power 294,000 homes. The project recently received support from Mitsubishi Electric Corp. and IHI Corp, who are now teaming up in the race to develop new technology within four years that can beam electricity back to Earth without the use of cables. Japan hopes to test a small solar satellite decked out with solar panels by the year 2015."
... of a recession in June? They must be high on life now ... spend spend away!
I suggest using intelligent robots to manage the Space Power Plant.
Of course, you need to be careful that they don't develop their own religion...
No sig for the moment.
To avoid repeating myself...
http://matter2energy.wordpress.com/2009/06/12/space-power/
If you are about to post anything about any of the issues below, please at least read the Wiki page on SBSP first. Doing so will save a lot of electrons.
A basic understanding of the technology and physics will debunk all of these, and WikiPedia gives a good overview of these non-criticisms. Anyone continuing to parrot them below will be flogged.
Not a typewriter
I could be mistaken, but isn't the cost of this power plant versus a nuclear power plant (which many people argue is the cheapest form of electricity to produce) over 3 times more? Additionally, due to problems with this technology being in its infancy there will undoubtedly be additional costs that were not taken into consideration.
I'm sure everyone will talk about this new "green" for of energy and expect it to be cheap, but they would shit a brick if they found out the actual costs they will be paying for electricity generated in this fashion.
The DOD, as well as FEMA, should be pushing to have several built for the America. This would actually enable more private launches, but also give the DOD a means to bring energy into areas that they need. Transportation of fuel is EXPENSIVE. The ability to bring power into a hurricane hit area will enable quick power. More importantly, the ability to beam energy will have to be developed. That would enable many of our construction and open pit mining vehicles to move off diesel. Basically, that would help to drive new innovations.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
TFA, which is very short, says everything you just said. So I'm guessing the Japanese see this as a longer-term investment.
The amount of solar energy per m2 outside the Van Allen Belt is far more than what we get here on earth.
That's what I was thinking, but if maintenance is cheap enough it's not too bad. $70,000 per home supplied amortized over say a 50 year design life is $117/month which is on the low end of my monthly bill. Of course that ignores servicing debt and distribution so it's definitely more expensive then most current options but if you are a small island nation with lots of wealth spending 2x as much for electricity probably isn't a big deal compared to global warming wiping out half your landmass.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
You're thinking too short-term. All they need is another .21 Gigawatts and they can travel to the future and steal the plans for the perpetual motion machines that almost certainly will have been invented by then, and all our energy problems will be solved!
Japan is a small place with a high population density, and a good number of nuclear plants already. Perhaps they're simply running out of reasonable nuclear sites.
Either way, this opens the way for whole new sci-fi-like plots to do with hijacking power satellites for nefarious purposes, so I'm all for it ;)
If you are a small island nation with a large population land tends to be very scarce.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Japan is an island nation. You could someone minimize the risk of injury or loss of (human) life by directing the beat to a receiver on some micro-island, or maybe a floating platform like an oil rig, then have cables run from the island/platform to mainland Japan. That way, if the satellite goes a *little* off target, it's not as likely to people (although it still might harm aquatic life, I suppose, though I bet the potential damage and the risks are less than the damage from an oil platform/pipe/ship accident).
I may be wrong but I think the important thing to remember is that they are paying $21 billion for the development of this space power power plant. If history tells us anything about innovation it's that innovation is costly, but the rewards can be great. Once they get this off the ground, how much will the next one cost? And the one after that? That's the important issue.
But then I realized the cable was blue, so I only gave it one star. I hate blue.
Why is it that people on /. who live and breath new technology always have such a hard time with new technology economics? Why is it so hard to understand that new technology R & D is obscenely expensive relative to the commoditized versions that eventually follow. If everything was left to visionless people who focused solely on short term economics we'd still be living in the technological dark ages with a miserable quality of life.
Before one nay-says, consider the benefits to society should the technology under discussion becomes an inexpensive commoditization.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
...24 hours of sun...
Maybe my geography or astronomy are off - Feel free to correct/bitch-slap me if I'm confused.
How does a satellite in geosynchronous orbit get 24-hours/day of sunlight?
/bitch-slap
The equator and the ecliptic are not on the same plane, which means the only times when a geosynchronous satellite is in eclipse is around the equinoxes. In the worst case it can last up to 80 minutes of shadow.
Here's a random thought: If we were to detect (with sufficient warning) an incoming comet on collision course for Earth, could this thing be reoriented so the microwave beam begins to ablate material off the comet and change the trajectory?
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
Do you know how much the technology rights will be worth if they get this thing working? 21 billion doubtlessly includes R&D. Their return will be fantastic if they get it right.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
They don't live and breathe new technology -- they live and breathe commodity technology, and think of it as new because they have no familiarity with actual R&D.
Maybe my geography or astronomy are off - Feel free to correct/bitch-slap me if I'm confused.
How does a satellite in geosynchronous orbit get 24-hours/day of sunlight?
Geosync is way out there. If the satellite's orbit were in the same plane as the Earth's, it would only get blocked for about an hour a day. But since geostationary orbit is inclined to Earth's orbit (as Earth's equator is inclined), it only gets blocked at all during two times of the year; the rest of the time, when it's "behind" Earth relative to the Sun, the Sun shines "over" or "under" the Earth and hits it unimpeded.
"The Agricultural Ministry is Not in Charge of Gundam"
If you don't find what you see on the picture you've linked impressive, something is wrong with you.
Of course, that's just a drawing, so it's still just vaporware.
Yes I'm very much impressed by a screenshot from a game: http://www.egosoft.com/games/x3tc/info_en.php
Unfortunately, nobody can win an election on the basis of "50 years from now my opponent's policies would cause half of our island to sink!". However, it's easy for someone to say "That guy wants to make you pay twice as much for electricity!". Cue outrage.
True or not, the consequences of global warming are inconceivable to most people. I think we'll need to see some more directly disastrous results before people really base day-to-day decisions on such considerations.
Alphanos
Current power stations being built with two Westinghouse AP1000 reactors are in the $10 billion range, have an estimated life span around 25 years (versus 15), and produce more than twice as much power. This is a very expensive boondoggle in comparison.
Over time maybe the costs can come down. I guess you have to build one to figure out the process in any case.
The Japanese have been known to take out 100 year mortgages, so electing a politician with a 50 year plan is not out of the question.
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
Agreed! It comes out to 71K per household!
I don't know what the average monthly bill is for electricity in Japan, but assuming a measly $200 per month, this thing would have to last 29 years just to break even! And that ignored maintenance costs and likely overruns!
If it works, it's a great proof of concept - and something you can sell to other nations once the costs come down.
Its because you're using Imperial and they are using Metric
this is an interesting point. How exactly would the energy ultimately be dissipated ? As heat loss to the environment.....
$ strings FTP.EXE | grep Copyright
@(#) Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the University of California.
The Earth's surface area is 510,072,000 km^2. Aproximately half of that is illuminated by the Sun at any given time, so 255,036,000 km^2. This array is 4 km^2. Sure it will be in the sun almost all the time but do you real think that getting an extra .0000008% of energy we already receive from the Sun is going to make any appreciable difference? That is at 100% efficiency by the way.
"I honestly don't know what the heck is going on in the US!"
If you just woke up from a coma, America went through 8 years of voodoo economics, record deficit spending by a runaway congress, a jobless recovery, and an economy propped up with record low interest rates that lead to a housing bubble. Combine that with a failure to monitor the largest financial institutions because of an ideological aversion to regulation, and you have a perfect financial storm.
Meanwhile, Americas's financial frenemies are exploiting an arbitrage on labor and environmental costs, along with currency manipulation and protectionism, to supercharge their economies.
Now that you're up to date, we have a new American President who is not beholden to special interests, especially energy interests, who has some vision for a clean energy future. Japan has just announced a bold new project to generate photovoltaic energy and some Americans are very curious.
All of that was sardonic. What do you not understand?
Best regards.
You failed high school physics didn't you?
Check out my lame java blog at www.javachopshop.com
Note that this only happens twice a year, not every day.
I've played with this technology before and thing's didn't go so well. I was the mayor a city and we had a few hundred thousand people in it. Let's call them "Sims" to protect their identity. They were all bitching about how coal polluted the atmosphere and such. So one day after I was lounging around in my mayor's office this guy called me up and said "hey you should try this microwave energy stuff, it doesn't pollute." So I dropped some coin on this new technology, and everyone loved me.
That is, until the beam got out of alignment and fried half of the town. Then a huge robot showed up and finished off the rest of the town. And just to add insult to injury, an 8.0 earth quake hit and swallowed up what was left of the city.
Let that be a lesson to anyone who might want to try this technology.
Run the time line a little further. Who says we have to launch pre-fabbed units from earth? As for a market why I'd suspect all earth would find it handy not to have to rely on current land based technologies, particularly fossil fuels, nuclear and hydro. I suspect that beaming power to mobile ground platforms in remote locations and/or disaster areas would be incredibly handy. I also believe it would be quite useful for scientific outposts and colonies off-world. As I see it the better question to ask would be "who wouldn't want it?".
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
Where I live (Vancouver, Canada) my monthly bill is about $22. I use electric baseboard heaters, too!
Yeah, but using hydro is cheating! :)
Wind is about $1B per gigawatt, and an installation is good for 150 years with generator replacements on average 35-50 years... It also creates thousands of jobs, is easy to repair, and is not a single point terorist threat target...
Direct comparisons aren't as easy as you think. Wind also doesn't scale as easily - you're not taking transmission costs into account, or the massive siting problems. Many of the large wind farms in the Western Interconnect have had - or are having - lots of opposition from the locals who don't want large turbines 'spoiling' (personal opinion) their view, or making noise 24/7. When you put them in out of the way places (which is where the best wind is anyway), then you're generally putting them where there aren't already heavy duty transmission lines. Then when you also add in heavy transmission line costs, you also get to deal with rights of way and environmental impact studies for that entire transmission line route, etc, etc. Wind is not a baseload power source - it varies, which adds costs to how you hook it up to the grid. Orbiting solar will be 24/7/365/forever, plus you can put as many up there as you can afford to, and the cost of these things will come down as our cost-to-orbit drops in the future.
You seem to think this *first* orbiting power station means *only* (hence your 'single point'). There's always gotta be a first. I'd plan on LOTS more of these if I were you.
re: terrorist target
Lots of terrorists targeting Japan? The Taliban has space capability now, too, eh?
I'm not saying this project doesn't have its problems, but you need to put it into perspective.
Because in 2050, you version 2.0 will say
"Hey, guys, if we continue at the current rate, sea levels will rise by about 11 centimeters in *2150*. Let's just work on the problem later".
What will Japan's power consumption be in 10 to 20 years? They're having so few kids the population should be plummeting soon.
We don't need more power, Mr. Scotty. We need FEWER PEOPLE. Pollution would be less of a problem if there were fewer people creating it. Cutting emissions, conserving and finding cleaner sources of energy while all very good... won't mean shit if our growth is still horrifically out of control. With a smaller population we'd have more resources per person and less waste generated.
Similarly, there are no food or water shortages... there ARE places of the world that that too many people for the available resources. If we have 1 gallon per person per day at a population of 100,000... we'd have 2 gallons per person per day if the population of 50,000.
i'm not talking about killing off people or even letting them die. i'm talking about getting the population to something that is sustainable. The quantity of life is going to start seriously farking with our quality of life... and THEN with the quantity. If we don't get it under control we're going to have more wars, more droughts, more everything that sucks.
"easier said than done"
Really? No kidding! Can i have your autograph before you win the Nobel Prize for Pointing out the Obvious?
"But that's mean"
Mean is kids dying of starvation because their parents had too many kids. Mean will be wars over water.
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
how much was spent researching, designing, testing and building the first nuclear power station? they are paying the R&D. americans forgot how to do that?
Bare in mind nuclear is heavily subsidised, expensive to run, and with additional hidden costs that are not accounted for. Factor in environmental impact and you have a strong case for space based solar power.
Oh and the cost of launching a given mass to space is falling, and will get much lower.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
TOKYO - Residents have reported that giant reptile, Godzilla, was just struck down and apparently killed by a misdirected microwave beam from Japan's orbiting power generation satellite. The giant lizard fell in a residential area and caused substantial damage. Hundreds of people are missing and presumed dead.
The Greenpeace and the International Humane Society have issued a joint statement criticizing the Japanese government for allowing their satellite to destroy the last specimen of this endangered species.
Godzilla had a long history of appearing in Japanese cities, and often caused much damage with each visit. Typically, the creature appeared when some other monstrous threat appeared. Apart from the Windows 7 launch in Tokyo, no one is aware of any significant events that would have drawn the creature to the city.
Because of his history as a destructive source, many people are glad to see the death of the giant lizard. A representative of the Japanese tourism ministry, however, is reported to have said that, "Godzilla's passing will have a profound affect on the people of Japan, and upon the Japanese tourist economy."
Japanese street vendor, Aido Hawishinna, witnessed the event and reported, "It hit the buildings as it fell, and crashed just beyond my stand. It smells like baked fish. I wanted to be the first merchant in the city to sell Godzilla-burgers, but the police and army will not let me harvest the meat before it spoils."
The Japanese government, in an official statement issued hours after the incident, announced that it plans to conduct an autopsy on the remains, to determine if Godzilla's death was related to problems on the orbital microwave power platform.
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
Nuclear power has those problems only because we throw out 99% of nuclear fuel before we use it combined with the fact that all our nuclear facilities are aging (because we stopped building nuclear power plants) and using 30 to 50 year old technology.
A modern feeder/breeder reactor would be much cheaper and is more "green" than this (remember all that rocket fuel you have burn to launch the orbital platform and a feeder/breeder can use up the "nuclear waste" of obsolete reactors as fuel with minimal waste).
There are only two advantages of the orbital solar/microwave plant.
1: The NIMBY sheep won't be upset.
2: You can use it as an orbital death ray.
we have a new American President who is not beholden to special interests, especially energy interests,
Maybe not energy interests, but if he wasn't on the take from media interests he would have cut the US out of ACTA negotiations by now, especially since he was talking all about transparency and making himself out to be a technophile during his campaign (so much for that). He's also made a habit of appointing RIAA lawyers to his administration.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
No, but having a gigawatt orbital death ray gives puts you in a better position to negotiate emissions reduction treaties
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
Japan doesn't need an orbital laser cannon for world domination; they control the production and supply of manga.
No good deed goes unpunished. - Avon, Blake's 7
There aren't very many (or any that I know of) terrorist organizations that could hit a LEO object, and if they're talking geo-sync then you're really safe. I mean, governments have a hard time with that. Your only potential threat maybe would be North Korea (for LEO, geo-sync would be out of their range too). Terrorist groups thrive on cheap, easily deployed destructive devices. There's no concealing something capable of going 300+ miles straight up.
If only Japan could somehow magically create more open, unfarmable, and uninhabited land where the turbines could be placed without taking away already scarce farm land or slowly deafen anyone within a kilometer!
Unlike nuclear power land for wind turbines can be used for food farming as well. Here in Minnesota many corn farmers site wind turbines on their farms. Platforms for towers don't take much space. And wind turbines aren't as loud as some make them out to be. All those who say they take too much land or are too loud are doing is spreading FUD and lies. And saying they kill a of birds is also FUD. Buildings, cars, and cats kill many birds. If you're worries about birds being killed by wind turbines then complain about birds being killed at airports. Here is a list of "9 Human Activities That Threaten Birds".
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
My stuff speaks for itself. My point was and is that anybody who accuses me of being a crackpot in public should publically identify himself or herself. And yes, it is all about gonads and the lacks thereof. It takes guts to be accountable to one's words.
Ad hominems are personal opinions. They smack of cowardice, especially when they are anonymous. It's a chicken shit way of trying to destroy a message without taking the time and the effort to address it. Opinions are a dime a dozen. A well-formed argument, on the other hand, is priceless.
The article says "Transportation of the solar panels into space is too expensive at the moment to be commercially viable, so Japan has to figure out a way to lower costs," so the transportation costs cannot be included in the stated $21B figure, making it seem of little value. At first I was really impressed since $21 a watt is within striking distance of being economically competitive. (Fossil fuel powered plants cost in the vicinity of $5 per watt to build PLUS fuel costs. And any new technology tends to come down in price with experience.) Another possible problem: The article says the satellite "produces" one gigawatt, which may not be the same as receiving one gigawatt on the ground. Anyone know the answer to that question?