Japan's Richest Man Outlines Renewable Energy Plan

itwbennett writes "Speaking at the launch of his Japan Renewable Energy Foundation, Masayoshi Son, founder and CEO of Softbank, outlined a plan to rebuild Japan's energy infrastructure. Son said the country could shift to renewable energy sources for 60 percent of its electricity requirements over the next two decades. He called for a 2 trillion yen (US$26 billion) 'super grid' across the country, and underwater off the coast, that would zip electricity around cheaply and efficiently to meet demand."

Comments

Re:What could possibly go wrong?

[Post-O-Matron]

It's still a step up from nuclear meltdown isn't it?

You have to see things in perspective...

Business plan a little sketchy

[Latent Heat]

So, which step is "Profit!"

Re:Business plan a little sketchy

[Idou]

The Fukushima plant's "question marks" step begins after the "blow up plant" step.

That grid, would it be...

[neBelcnU]

...50 or 60 cycles? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Japan

Re:That grid, would it be...

[Anonymous Coward]

55 cycles, obviously!

Re:That grid, would it be...

[Rei]

It'd be 0 cycles.

Re:That grid, would it be...

[Asic Eng]

...50 or 60 cycles?

DC

Re:What could possibly go wrong?

[h4rr4r]

They have this stuff called insulation now, you really should check it out.

Please

[CrackedButter]

Do it just to show up the lack of a coherent energy policy by the United States. They can't even install solar panels on the White House without some hoo-hah involved.

Re:Please

[CrackedButter]

Did you forget to post as AC for your racist comment? Might I point out solar panel already exist on the White House, they just need to install newer more modern ones so it already happened.

Re:Please

[mattack2]

Some hoo-hah involved?

I'm not even sure what you mean, but Carter had some solar *water* heating panels installed, that Reagan removed.

Re:Please

[icebraining]

Can you please point out the racist remark in parent's post?

Re:Please

[Unequivocal]

You don't really think that's the reason they don't have solar panels on the white house right? Carter put solar panels on the white house and Regan took them down. That's all you really need to know to understand the issues involved..

Re:Please

[SleazyRidr]

He saw the word African, followed by the word American and stopped thinking. Maybe it's racist because they weren't capitalized.

Re:Please

[CrackedButter]

I don't understand the quip about turning it into a 'black house' nor the last sentence.

Re:Please

[icebraining]

Solar panels are dark. If you put them on the White House, those surfaces will appear black instead of white to external observers, therefore becoming a 'black house' (black as in the color, not the human characteristic).

Parent is saying we must develop white solar panels so the surfaces of the White House can remain white.

He is also making a joke about how people concentrate in frivolous issues like this (the color of the WH), letting real problems like corruption undealt with.

Re:Please

[CrackedButter]

I couldn't see the joke since the panels are recessed on the roof, nobody on the ground can tell the difference. I'm not american btw so I don't know about the later issue.

Ruling out nuclear entirely may not be wise

[haruchai]

With so few traditional energy resources, Japan will a very difficult time reaching that goal. A few judiciously placed Gen-IV nuclear reactors would be a good idea unless they think they can reach their goal solely through wave energy and geothermal. Not sure what their solar and wind potential might be but they need a solid baseload option to replace nuclear.

Re:Ruling out nuclear entirely may not be wise

[bluemonq]

Well, at the very least he's on the right track about the grid itself. If it weren't for the 50-60 split, they wouldn't have had to worry about power outages.

Re:Ruling out nuclear entirely may not be wise

[MobyDisk]

Currently Gen IV plants are in the research stage. Since they take 20+ years to build, I don't think Japan can afford to risk building a theoretical device to meet today's demand. Since Japan is an island, offshore wind power is probably ideal.

Re:Ruling out nuclear entirely may not be wise

[gstrickler]

Japan is one of the few places that could possibly be powered completely by geothermal. There isn't nearly enough wave energy to supply the planet, nor is there sufficient wave energy near Japan to supply Japan. With a combination of geothermal, wind, hydro, and possibly some solar or wave, Japan might be able to go completely renewable. Most industrialized countries don't have access the the abundant geothermal resources Japan has (due to their location on the edge of the "ring of fire").

Of renewable sources, solar and wind are the ones that can supply enough power for the world, but both are intermittent sources that are not well suited to supplying either base-load or peak-load power without a significant amount of on-demand energy storage added to the grid. On demand energy storage can be in the form of batteries, super capacitors, gravity reservoirs (e.g. pump water uphill to a reservoir during periods of excess generation, release it through turbines when needed), etc. However, solar requires huge amounts of land. Solar and wind each need more than 4x average demand installed (even with on-demand storage, more still without on-demand storage) because they only average ~25% of installed capacity. Neither solar or wind is viable in all areas, and with it's intermittent nature, the grid must have significantly more capacity to route from locations with excess to locations with a shortage.

Bottom line, for most of the world, nuclear and/or fossil fuels are the only currently viable means to meet the difference between renewable capacity and peak demand. Fossil fuels will be exhausted in 50-250 years (~50 yrs oil, slightly longer for natural gas, 200+ years coal). Since plants have a 40-80yr life span, fossil fuel plant built today, could run out of fuel before the plant is used up. Nuclear is the only long term solution that is viable today, and even that needs to move to a thorium fuel model with breeder reactors and fuel reprocessing in order to last more than a few hundred years.

Re:Ruling out nuclear entirely may not be wise

[Anonymous Coward]

You're extremely wrong about coal, you're basing your 250 years on a report from the 70s that had 2 caveats:
1) At current extraction rates (they're way higher now, as in we're mining something like 16 or 32 times the amount per year that we did in 1970)
2) We could only get at half the coal in the first place (which might have been what you were referring to when you cut your 500 years number in half to 250).

The coal fields will be gone in 30 years max at current usage rates, but of course, what will really happen is as production goes down (and we peaked some time ago in the US) it will just get more expensive.

All fossil fuels will become exceedingly rare/expensive within 20 years.

Re:Ruling out nuclear entirely may not be wise

[haruchai]

Yes, he is. I left that out of my previous post but I fully support his plan to revamp the electrical infrastructure which is also long overdue for America.

Re:Ruling out nuclear entirely may not be wise

[mattack2]

solar requires huge amounts of land

Even beyond all of the roofs that are readily available for such use?

Re:Ruling out nuclear entirely may not be wise

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for your insightful remarks Mr Anonymous. I'm glad to see so many facts and predictions without a single piece of credible evidence presented to support it

Re:Ruling out nuclear entirely may not be wise

[haruchai]

You're right, I got the Generation classification wrong; I meant Gen III+ designs such as the Advanced CANDU or the AP1000.

Re:Ruling out nuclear entirely may not be wise

[gstrickler]

No, I'm not wrong. From BP, in its 2007 report, estimated at 2006 end that there were 909,064 million tons of proven coal reserves worldwide, or 147 years reserves-to-production ratio. This figure only includes reserves classified as "proven"; exploration drilling programs by mining companies, particularly in under-explored areas, are continually providing new reserves. In many cases, companies are aware of coal deposits that have not been sufficiently drilled to qualify as "proven".

Going from 143yrs proven reserves to the 200+ years I stated isn't a big stretch, especially as supplied get tighter, conservation becomes more prevalent, and the price and technologies develop to extract the yet unproven or unknown reserves.

The bottom line is that fossil fuels are running out, and at most we've got 250 years, but since we don't yet have a viable replacement for oil, we've really got maybe 50 years to make the transition to largely renewable sources.

Re:Ruling out nuclear entirely may not be wise

[gstrickler]

Seems I messed up including the wikipedia link for Coal in my post above.

Re:Ruling out nuclear entirely may not be wise

[Alex Belits]

Yes.

It's not done until it's done, and there is no way to estimate anything at this point.

Re:Ruling out nuclear entirely may not be wise

[Helpadingoatemybaby]

Japan should build nuclear reactors on top of geologically freely available and all-but infinite hot water? That's just crazy. Although I have to give kudos to the GE nuclear plant salesman who first sold that lemon to the Japanese.

Re:Ruling out nuclear entirely may not be wise

[gstrickler]

Yes. Peak solar radiation on the ground is ~ 1kW/m2 in the summer (may be higher in the tropics), and you get that on a cloudless day for a few hours in the middle of the day. It drops off pretty quickly as the sun drops out of the peak. Clouds also lower it dramatically, and you get less in spring, fall, and winter. And less at higher latitudes. And of course, there is none at night.

Assuming a 2000 sq ft, 3 level home (upstairs, downstairs, and basement), that's about 667 sq ft (~62 m2) of flat roof area. That's a peak of 62kW radiation reaching the roof for a few hours a day in the summer. The best commercial PV solar panels are ~20% efficient, so that's ~12.4kW peak, and if the weather is good an average of maybe 50% of that over 12-15hrs of sunlight, you might produce 70kWh-100kWh on a good summer day You'll be lucky to get half that in the winter. Of course that will be lower as you go to higher latitudes. So, in the summer, with some type of energy storage to give you power when you use it most (early morning, dinner time, evening), a house with it's entire roof covered with PV panels might produce enough power to sustain itself. But that's only 3 months of the year. The rest of the year, you're operating at an energy deficit. If you live where it's frequently cloudy, or north of about 40 degrees latitude, you're not even going to break even in the summer unless you have a very energy efficient home.

It's not that it's impossible, but most current houses aren't built to be energy efficient enough, nor do they have energy efficient water heaters, heating systems, air conditioning systems, appliances, lighting, or electronics. People have built houses that are powered entirely from solar (usually a combination of PV and thermal) and/or wind. It's just very expensive to do it, and it still requires lifestyle changes.

And that's not counting industrial energy uses, workplace usage, street lights, traffic signals, or charging electric vehicles (which will be necessary to get off fossil fuels)

Japanese energy consumption is lower per household, but a home with 62m2 of rooftop space there is very rare, they probably don't average 1/2 that.

Solar is the ultimate renewable energy source, as long the sun stays in it's main hydrogen burning phase and the earth remains ~ 93M mi (150M km) from the sun, so it's probably good for another 5B years. But until we figure out how to efficiently convert solar to usable power and integrate the collectors into most of our buildings, and build a grid with lots of energy storage and that can transport energy around the world (it's always day/night somewhere), and do it for a lot less than current cost, solar isn't the solution. Long term, it's the best option, but we're at least 100 years off from that just in building the infrastructure to make it possible, and we need several technology breakthroughs to build and utilize that infrastructure. And the politics of power sharing across nations is a big obstacle to any worldwide power grid.

Re:Ruling out nuclear entirely may not be wise

[Xtravar]

Your post is very informative. I think I see an obvious solution from what you've posted.

Most industrialized countries don't have access the the abundant geothermal resources Japan has (due to their location on the edge of the "ring of fire").

On demand energy storage can be in the form of batteries, super capacitors, gravity reservoirs (e.g. pump water uphill to a reservoir during periods of excess generation, release it through turbines when needed), etc.

Let's use the ground as a battery and then geothermal to recapture it!

Let's make our own "ring of fire"!!!! It worked for Johnny Cash.

Re:Ruling out nuclear entirely may not be wise

[gstrickler]

Perhaps if we built a large wooden badger.

Re:Ruling out nuclear entirely may not be wise

[haruchai]

Isn't there some risk to expansive use of geothermal in an earthquake-prone zone? I recall an earthquake in Switzerland that was blamed on geothermal drilling about 4-5 years ago which to concerns being raised in California and Germany.

Re:Ruling out nuclear entirely may not be wise

[wrook]

What I can't figure out is why nobody in Japan is talking about geothermal. There has been a lot of talk about increasing wind power (and it is noticeably expanding at a good rate already), and building big solar farms (some at sea, which seems like a completely daft idea). But I haven't heard a single word on expanding geothermal, which should be the key for this kind of undertaking. What I'd like to know is why not. The existing geothermal plants seem to be working acceptably, so it should be feasible. I'm a bit suspicious that these renewable initiatives are not as serious as the appear.

Re:Ruling out nuclear entirely may not be wise

[jrumney]

Sorry, we're closing down your onsen so we can turn it into a power plant.

Somehow I don't think that would go down too well in Japan.

Re:Ruling out nuclear entirely may not be wise

[Paul Fernhout]

Ignoring how there are lots of energy storage solutions that are improving from batteries to hydrogen stored in metal hydrides, what about simple thermal storage in molten salt?
http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-07-gemasolar-solar-thermal-power-hours.html
"The Gemasolar 19.9-MW Concentrated Solar Power system is a âoepower towerâ plant, consisting of an array of 2,650 heliostats (mirrors) that aim solar radiation at the top of a 140-m (450-ft) central tower. The radiation heats molten salts that circulate inside the tower to temperatures of more than 500 ÂC (932 ÂF). The hot molten salts are then stored in tanks that are specially designed to maintain the high temperatures. This cutting-edge heat storage system enables the power plant to run steam turbines and generate electricity for up to 15 hours without any incoming solar radiation."

Why not just have solar PV heat molten salt, too? So, there are solutions.

Thorium power would be cool, true. But we'll probably have hot or cold fusion soon enough, rendering it obsolete.

Re:Ruling out nuclear entirely may not be wise

[gstrickler]

Converting electricity to heat and vice-versa is not very efficient. Converting solar PV to heat is a terrible idea for that reason. You'll lose energy converting electricity to heat, then even more converting back. Much better to just use solar thermal in the first place. Carnot's theorem says the efficiency of heat to work conversion is limited by the ratio of absolute temperatures of the heat source and heat sink (e.g. ambient temperature). With a cooling source at 300K (27C), you need at least 600K heat source to achieve 50% efficiency.

Thorium reactors are known to work. We've never demonstrated a self sustaining fusion reaction outside of the massive gravity well of a star. If/when we do, then maybe fusion will make thorium reactors obsolete, but right now, fusion is still a pipe dream.

Re:Ruling out nuclear entirely may not be wise

[dbIII]

Sadly there isn't one of the 1980s style AP1000s running yet. We'll know if they are good enough in a couple of years or so when the first AP1000 reactor is at the testing stage, and even more a year or two after that when it's hooked up to turbines.

Re:Ruling out nuclear entirely may not be wise

[dbIII]

At the time Japan was facing the possibility of a future blockade by the Chinese navy or problems with North Korea making it difficult to import sources of energy. In that context nuclear power makes a lot more sense than in many other locations.
Of course the GE, Westinghouse etc reactors were crap so the Japanese put a lot of money into development. The more recent design from Westinghouse is really from Toshiba since the US nuclear industry puts less money into R&D than manufacturers of cheming gum.

Re:Ruling out nuclear entirely may not be wise

[tftp]

we've really got maybe 50 years to make the transition to largely renewable sources

In the beginning of 20th century large cities had a huge problem of removal of horse-generated waste from streets. It was considered to be nearly a disaster, since cities grew fast. Needless to say, the problem disappeared on its own.

You are worrying too much about what will happen in 200 years from now. We may be able to tap into dark energy within 50 years, for example. Also don't forget that fusion power is only 20 years away (as always.)

The lesson here is that attempting things before you are ready is not productive. You could build an airplane in 1700's but without an engine it would be very useless. Designs of space rockets were proposed around 1900, decades before technology advanced enough to make them happen. You could invest all your money (and all world's money) into a powder-filled rocket and you'd still not reach the Moon in 1900.

Re:Ruling out nuclear entirely may not be wise

[gstrickler]

Horse manure was an oversupply and waste disposal problem. Running out of oil is a resource availability problem.At the current rate of consumption, we've got around 30 years of proven reserves. Allowing for finding new sources and reduced consumption, we've got about 50 years to get off oil, not much longer for natural gas. The lesson here is that your examples have nothing to do with the reality of the situation, they're completely irrelevant to the problem.

Power plants are 40-80 year life cycle, and demand continues to increase. That means we have to build new plants now, and those plant need to be fueled using coal, nuclear, or renewables or the plants will outlast the available fuel supply. Fossil fuels are running out. This is not a problem that can wait 20-50 years to be addressed, we have to start addressing it now. Hydro is almost fully tapped now. Coal and nuclear are the most viable right now, and that's what we should be building now. Geothermal, solar thermal, and wind are viable (although slightly more expensive) now, and we should be using those as well. We also need to continue to develop wind, solar, geothermal, and thorium fueled nuclear breeder reactors with fuel reprocessing to bring their costs down and/or efficiencies up. And we need to continue researching fusion to see if we can ever create a self-sustaining reaction on earth. Wave power can't supply a significant portion of the worldwide energy demand, pursuing it is a waste of resources.

Re:Ruling out nuclear entirely may not be wise

[edalytical]

In Japan a 20 MW geothermal plant would cost $50 million. Let's say 4,000 MWs is a typical nuclear plant and that its cost is $6 billion. Japan would have to build 200 geothermal plants at a cost of $10 billion just to replace a single Fukushima Dai-ichi plant. That's $4 billion more than necessary. And it'd be even worse figuring in the cost of infrastructure to connect 200 power plants to the grid. Perhaps that's why nobody is talking about geothermal in Japan.

Re:Ruling out nuclear entirely may not be wise

[Paul Fernhout]

Efficient in what sense? Who cares if half the heat is lost? Car engines lose like 90% of the energy value of fuel and we still use them (although electric cars are better and we will be seeing them -- and electric car batteries could help level the grid load from renewables in various ways).

By the way, just to make gasoline from oil it may take more energy from electricity and natural gas than the gasoline holds:
http://www.evnut.com/gasoline_oil.htm

Add on 90% conversion losses on top of that, and how is that for "inefficiency"? But look around you and there are probably gas powered cars everywhere (mostly for political reasons at this point):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brittle_Power

I'd generally agree with you that if you want heat energy, you are best off collecting solar as heat. However, you stated essentially there are no storage solutions, and I pointed out one that is obviously working and could be used further.

Also, solar electric can be a lot more convenient in a lot of places than solar thermal (like for air conditioning loads that peak with the sun, or charging electric cars during the day, or when you have limited space on your site, or when you want electricity, and so on), so efficiency is relative to what you want to optimize and other constraints.

Another storage medium is creating synthetic carbon-based fuels using solar power and some feedstock.

What does "efficiency" matter in that sense, if the alternative is more Fukushimas or Chernobyls or some Peak Oil Dark age? So, we produce twice as much solar panels to deal with 50% thermal losses. Big deal. PV Solar panels will be dirt cheap (or really, as cheap as leaves) in twenty years. Who cares about 50% efficiency loss in that sense? Even if more storage conversion efficiency would be nice, don't get me wrong, and I'm all for energy efficiency in use as well.

Yes, I know newer nuclear plants (Hyperion?) are supposed to be safer (although they may still have unsafe chokepoints with reprocessing plants), but the point is, there are lots of factors to consider. You said no storage solutions exist, but they do exist. That is a fact, like that solar thermal plant shows, and that has been knows for decades.

Which is more likely to be workable in the short term, using molten salt to store excess wind and PV energy (to smooth the grid) or inventing a whole new nuclear cycle (and even thorium reactors and the related bigger processing cycle are vulnerable to big risks).

Compressed air stored in salt caverns is another solution that has been in use for decades in one location.
http://web.ead.anl.gov/saltcaverns/uses/compair/index.htm

If we invested any significant amount of money in refining these ideas, on the order of the scale of the energy problem, so trillions of dollars of investment, we would have amazing solutions. That we have the solutions we do is a tribute to the human spirit of continued innovation despite most energy-related financial resources going to prop up the oil, gas, and mainstream nuclear industries as well as the wars and mining that support them -- either directly or by ignoring externalities like health issues from mercury pollution or defense taxes or nuclear meltdown risk assumed by the government and so on.

There has also been a lot of progress on both hot and cold fusion, even on relatively small budgets, so it may be a lot closer than you think, as may other innovations (many may be BS but it only takes on success -- Hydrogen doing something interesting in Nickel matrix looks interesting, for example):
http://newenergytimes.com/
http://peswiki.com/index.php/Main_Page

With that said, it is a shame that we did not develop thorium reactors in the 1940s. Peo

Re:Ruling out nuclear entirely may not be wise

[An dochasac]

Japan is one of the few places that could possibly be powered completely by geothermal. There isn't nearly enough wave energy to supply the planet, nor is there sufficient wave energy near Japan to supply Japan.

I think you overestimate the geothermal potential near Japanese cities and underestimate wave energy potential. Here are some advantages of wave/tidal energy:

• With wave energy, you take advantage of the world's largest pre-existing energy collecting surface-- the Pacific ocean. With wind and solar, you have to build your own comparatively small energy collecting surfaces.
• The infrastructure required for a wave energy collection system can diminish the energy of tsunamis and destructive typhoon waves.
• The optimal location for energy-harnessing wave barriers coincides with the location of cities with demand for energy.
• The infrastructure for wave energy can also be designed to collect a predictable amount of tidal energy.

Re:Ruling out nuclear entirely may not be wise

[An dochasac]

Wave power can't supply a significant portion of the worldwide energy demand, pursuing it is a waste of resources.

So, nearly 80% of the world's population live near the world's largest solar->wind->wave & tidal energy collecting system and we should ignore it? So, efforts to collect this energy might accidentally protect cities from rising sea levels, hurricanes, typhoons and tsunamis and we should ignore it? If this is a "waste of resources", is drilling for oil miles below the surface of the ocean (endangering a sizable fraction of our food supply), considered a wise use of resources?

Re:Ruling out nuclear entirely may not be wise

[gstrickler]

You start off by saying who cares if it's efficient, then write an entire diatribe based upon inefficiency. ICE do not waste 90% of the energy in gasoline, nor anywhere close to it, they're 30%-36% efficient.

The evnut.com page you linked contradicts itself multiple times, near the top it claims the electricity used by refineries is 2.73kWh/gal, below that says 1.55kWh/gal, and at the bottom says 0.218kWh/gal. There are numerous other inconsistencies and inaccuracies that I'm not going waste my time documenting. It's not a reliable source of information.

I never said storage solutions don't exist, in fact I cited several possible solutions. Storage needs to be added to the grid, as that infrastructure doesn't currently exist. And efficiency of storage solutions is always important as it effects how much power you have to generate in the first place. That's why converting electricity to heat for storage is a terrible idea.

They've been claiming PV solar panels would be "dirt cheap" in 15-20 for 30 years now, and you're still claiming they'll be dirt cheap in 20 years. While there are some recent discoveries that suggest it might finally happen, they're all university laboratory research projects, nothing has been commercialized. When they're being produced in quantity at "dirt cheap" prices, then we can talk about it.

Fusion "has been close 50 years away" for 50 years. Even with the latest developments, there still isn't a single, reproducible fusion experiment that shows a way we can build a plant that produces more energy than it consumes. When we get to that point, we'll talk. Until then, it's still a pipe dream and you can't plan infrastructure on a pipe dream. It's still just a research project. Right now, the only viable fusion is solar power.

Re:Ruling out nuclear entirely may not be wise

[gstrickler]

I think you need to check some facts before making such assertions:

Several countries are already at 25%-30% geothermal power.

Worldwide energy In 2008, total worldwide energy consumption was 474 exajoules (474×1018 J=132,000 TWh). This is equivalent to an average energy consumption rate of 15 terawatts (1.504×1013 W)[1] The potential for renewable energy is: solar energy 1600 EJ (444,000 TWh), wind power 600 EJ (167,000 TWh), geothermal energy 500 EJ (139,000 TWh), biomass 250 EJ (70,000 TWh), hydropower 50 EJ (14,000 TWh) and ocean energy 1 EJ (280 TWh).. Potential here is not the total energy in the system, but an estimate of how much energy can actually be extracted/captured.

Japan alone produced 1,031TWh of electricity in 2008. That's 4 times the estimated total ocean energy potential worldwide. However, Since Japan is sitting on the edge of a tectonic plate, in fact one of the most active plates right on the "ring of fire", they have access to a tremendous amount of the potential geothermal energy, more than enough to replace all their current electricity production.

Re:Ruling out nuclear entirely may not be wise

[gstrickler]

Yes. Worldwide energy In 2008, total worldwide energy consumption was 474 exajoules (474×1018 J=132,000 TWh). This is equivalent to an average energy consumption rate of 15 terawatts (1.504×1013 W)[1] The potential for renewable energy is: solar energy 1600 EJ (444,000 TWh), wind power 600 EJ (167,000 TWh), geothermal energy 500 EJ (139,000 TWh), biomass 250 EJ (70,000 TWh), hydropower 50 EJ (14,000 TWh) and ocean energy 1 EJ (280 TWh).

Potential here is not the total energy in the system, but an estimate of how much energy can actually be extracted/captured. Ocean (wave, tidal, etc.) is only 1/4 the electricity that Japan used in 2008. Not enough for one country, much less the world. So yes, we should just ignore it.

Re:Ruling out nuclear entirely may not be wise

[Paul Fernhout]

This is probably what I was thinking of on efficiency:
http://truecostblog.com/2009/01/04/electric-vs-gasoline/
"On a full life cycle basis including power plants and oil wells, electric vehicles manage about 34% efficiency versus only 14% for gasoline vehicles [1]"

OK, so you want to create a big industry (thorium power) over the next twenty years effectively from scratch, and then when solar panels are dirt cheap, we'll say? :-)

How can it be more trouble to add storage to the grid, including by molten salt, than to build thorium or whatever power plants?

Or perhaps we can have solar thermal mainly for night-time and PV mainly for day time?

Another related item on molten salt:
http://gigaom.com/cleantech/brightsource-energy-to-offer-solar-salt-storage-too/

You can look at the trends for yourself on things like PV. They are reaching grid parity. There is non conceivable reason why, once they do, there won't be tons more research on them to further drop their prices. People are talking about solar paints already, and there will be huge profit motives to make that work eventually as fossil fuels and mainstream nuclear go away for cost reasons.

You're right; you did list some storage options, but then you went on to say there was no viable option to fossil fuels and nuclear for baseline loads. Which is it? Here I've pointed to currently (or near currently) cost-effective PV and solar thermal, with a currently commercially viable energy storage solution for nighttime in use in a real location. Why is that mix not as viable as fossil fuels for handling the load for the grid? You said it takes a lot of land, but so does fossil fuel mining and roads and so on.

We could even make solar roadways if we wanted:
http://www.solarroadways.com/

That evnut page collects a bunch of different calculations and figures, and you are right they do not all agree.

Re:Ruling out nuclear entirely may not be wise

[gstrickler]

They're already doing tons of research on PV, research which is being augmented by the advance in silicon wafer fabrication from the computer industry and the similar technology used in manufacturing LCD panels. And yet, PV still hasn't reached parity after 40 years of research. They're already producing panels in mass quantities. There is no reason to expect the price to magically drop or the efficiency to magically improve in the foreseeable future. There could be a breakthrough that causes one of both to improve significantly, but there is no reason to expect either, only hope that it will happen. Setting energy policy on hopes is just bad policy. When the breakthroughs happen, then reevaluate the policy, but you don't set policies based upon the hope that you'll someday have the breakthrough.

The current energy storage options are not sufficient to make intermittent sources like PV and wind viable base-load or peak-load supplies. They cost too much for a sufficient amount of storage to make those sources practical. Wind in particular has a major drawback, it's average output is lowest at the hottest part of the day when power draw is highest due to AC use. That means you need more capacity, more storage, and/or a higher capacity grid spread over a much wider area, all of which significantly increase costs.

Solar thermal has a much more predictable and stable output, so it's far more useful. It still requires massive amounts of land, but there are places like the southwestern US that have lots of land, lots of sunshine, and lots of solar heat, so solar thermal is very practical in some locations. It's not yet sufficient to replace the fossil fuel or nuclear plants already on the grid, but it shows the most promise for being able to do so eventually.

So, all hopes and pipe dreams aside, right now, what works is to use our existing hydro power, geothermal, fossil fuel plants, nuclear plants, while building geothermal, nuclear, coal, solar thermal, and wind generator plants. At the same time, keep improving geothermal, nuclear fission, solar thermal, solar PV, wind power, and the grid so we can minimize fossil fuel usage. Also, keep researching better ways of implementing grid storage and improving usage efficiency. And continue researching fusion as a potential source (it's not yet a source, as still uses more energy than it produces).

You can subsidize research into technologies for producing power and improving efficiency. You can subsidize development of technology to make that research commercially viable. You can even subsidize upgrades to the distribution grid. But don't ever subsidize the actual commercialization or production of any form of energy, that's simply bad policy. If the technology isn't mature enough to be commercially produced without subsidies, it still needs more R&D, not subsidies or laws forcing it's use. As technologies mature, start building plants using those new technologies, and stop building those which are no longer viable. The one thing that is absolutely clear is that fossil fuels are running out, and that nuclear and renewable sources are the only long term sustainable sources, and we need to move toward using whichever sustainable energy sources are viable now. That's the only policy that makes sense. Any other policy is insane and almost certain to fail.

Re:Ruling out nuclear entirely may not be wise

[Paul Fernhout]

"There could be a breakthrough that causes one of both to improve significantly, but there is no reason to expect either, only hope that it will happen."

Have you actually looked at the chart here?
http://www.solarbuzz.com/facts-and-figures/retail-price-environment/module-prices

How do you explain the price of PV/watt dropping in half over the last couple of years?

Also, when you account for externalities like pollution, risk, health, and defense, renewables (plus energy efficiency like passive solar) have been cheaper since the 1970s, so the current mix is what is "insane" from a capitalist perspective, but is profitable for some who can privatize gains but socialize costs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brittle_Power
"Brittle Power: Energy Strategy for National Security is a 1982 book by Amory B. Lovins and L. Hunter Lovins, prepared originally as a Pentagon study, and re-released in 2001 following the September 11 attacks. The book argues that U.S. domestic energy infrastructure is very vulnerable to disruption, by accident or malice, often even more so than imported oil. According to the authors, a resilient energy system is feasible, costs less, works better, is favoured in the market, but is rejected by U.S. policy.[1] In the preface to the 2001 edition, Lovins explains that these themes are still very current. [2]"

You are making broad sweeping generalizations, but not providing details. For example, you say solar takes a lot of land but you don't cite how much land coal mining takes,

Why can't we just make hydrogen from wind farms and burn it in turbines when the wind is not blowing to even the load? Or store it in metal hydrides and use it in fuel cells? How much more expensive is it really in current dollars? And how much cheaper is it given you don't have all the health costs of coal burning? Example:
http://cleantechnica.com/2011/02/17/cost-of-coal-500-billion-year-in-u-s-harvard-study-finds/
"This study lays out in detail the costs the coal industry is NOT PAYING and what everyone else IS PAYING! The paper details all the factors that are not quantifiable, like lost work time when a mother has to take her child to the doctor for an asthma attack or the cost to a family for the loss of a loved one or wage earner. ... Each stage in the life cycle of coalâ"extraction, transport, processing, and combustionâ"generates a waste stream and carries multiple hazards for health and the environment. These costs are external to the coal industry and thus are often considered as âoeexternalities.â We estimate that the life cycle effects of coal and the waste stream generated are costing the U.S. public a third to over one-half of a trillion dollars annually. Many of these so-called externalities are, moreover, cumulative. Accounting for the damages conservatively doubles to triples the price of electricity from coal per kWh generated, making wind, solar, and other forms of non fossil fuel power generation, along with investments in efficiency and electricity conservation methods, economically competitive. We focus on Appalachia, though coal is mined in other regions of the United States and is burned throughout the world."

The amount of land needed to go all solar in the USA is less than 1% -- compare it to, say, animal product production which is what about half the land area in the USA is used for (mostly for animal fodder) where eating too many animal products is overall shortening US life expectancies.
http://www.westernwatersheds.org/watmess/watmess_2002/2002html_summer/article6.ht

Re:Ruling out nuclear entirely may not be wise

[gstrickler]

You really have no idea what you're talking about or you're just pulling numbers out of the air.

The USA receives an annual average of ~6-7kWh/m2 per day, let's call it 6.5GWh/km2 per day, or ~2.37TWh/km2/yr. In 2008, the USA consumed ~ 4156TWh of electricity. 4156/2.37 = ~ 1754km2 will on average will receive enough total solar radiation to supply our electricity demand. Assuming a very generous 50% conversion efficiency (for a very high temperature concentrated solar thermal plant), you need 2x that much space, so we're at 3500km2. But that doesn't allow for access roads, the tower itself, etc, so let's add another 10%, and we're at 3850km2.

But wait, that's the annual average, we need to to produce that much all the time, so we need to use the average in the month with the least sunlight (Dec or Jan), and that's not 6.5kWh/m2/day, it's about 3kWh/m2/day. So it's now we're at ~8340km2. But we're not there yet, We need at least 20% excess capacity to allow for extended periods of low production and emergency maintenance, so now we're at ~10,000km2. Let's assume all scheduled maintenance will occur during spring/fall when solar radiation is higher and demand is more moderate.

The United States has about 9.8M km2 total area (including Alaska). 6.76% of that is water. That leaves ~9.14Mkm2 of land. But Alaska doesn't receive enough solar radiation to make plants there sufficient, we have to remove it's 1.72Mkm2, leaving 7.42Mkm2. So, 10,000km2 is about 0.133% of that land.

But we're not done yet, electricity is only 4156 of 19,841TWh total energy consumed in the USA, so we have to multiple that ~ 10,000km2 by 4.77 so now we're at ~48,000km2. ~ 0.6% of the land in the continental US. Looking pretty good, right? We're not done. 50% efficiency is only the efficiency of the turbine, it doesn't count the losses in the mirrors, heat loss, inefficiency in capturing the solar radiation, etc.

So, lets look at an actual CSP tower. The eSolar 46MW tower, assuming it manages the full 46MW 24hr a day (which is unlikely, but we'll ignore that for now), produces 1.1GWh/day, approx 73% the 1.5GWh/day (3GWh/day @ 50% efficiency) assumed above, however, that tower uses 8.1km2 to produce that electricity, so it's not 73%, its 9% of the efficiency estimated above. So now, that 48,000km2 needs to be about 10x as large, and now we're at 480,000km2 of ~6.5% of the land in the continental US. That's more area than California, and about 2/3 the size of Texas.

And that's assuming you can build all your energy storage capacity into the same space. It also doesn't account for growth in energy usage. Efficiency of conversion is critical to making solar (either CSP or PV) viable.

Re:Ruling out nuclear entirely may not be wise

[Paul Fernhout]

Nice try, and an impressive bit of calculation, but a few issues:
* The energy used beyond electricity is mostly process heat or home heating, and so the 50% conversion losses you implicitly assumed in your scale up don't necessarily apply, so by your worst case figures we are back to 3% (I said about 1%).
* Energy efficiency can reduce the demand for power, and in fact US electric power use is predicted to decline in the near future for reasons including energy efficiency. For example, the current state of the art in home design requires no furnace because of good insulation and layout (google on houses without furnaces).
* PV uses less land than solar thermal towers you cited, and can easily be put on roofs and possibly roads, and can store power in electric vehicles and other places, so your worst case choice (all solar thermal and that one particular sprawling plant) is not reasonable.
* You don't have to size the system for the worst month, because there are other complementary systems like wind, hydro, and even synthetic biofuels or hydrogen that could be produced and stored to cover that 10% extra demand in winter months, and also some energy intensive processes could be run seasonally (like grinding rock to make fertilizer or running some smelters). Also, we could have somewhat more energy capture in the south and send the power up north via electric power lines or fuel pipelines or energy embodies in products like steel or liquid nitrogen. So, your overall base calculations are probably off by a factor of two to four based on those sorts of factors about sizing for the worst part of the year since you are assuming no buffering capacity (which goes with your attempt to argue there is no good energy storage for renewables).

Put these all together, and we are much closer to the 1% figure I suggested (maybe even lower), which could even potentially be handled to a large extent by solar roadways (and right of ways) and rooftops so that nobody even noticed that much. So, this picture is probably accurate:
http://www.landartgenerator.org/blagi/archives/127

But even if it was 3% or so to split the difference, so what? 50% of US land goes to raising animals that are, essentially, killing us early (google on "rave diet movie"). So, we should get upset that 6% of current agricultural land (which looks like a moonscape much of the year anyway) is solar thermal collectors instead of soybeans intended for factory farms?

That said, if we have a responsible system of governance in the USA, stuff like thorium power, which requires a higher level of oversight than renewables, might be appealing. One reason I tend to support renewables over nuclear stuff is issues about dysfunctional politics and dysfunctional corporate oversight, as renewables in general require less centralized control requiring high levels of trust. Of course, if we had abundant cheap energy, then our politicians might have an easier time of things, too, as a chicken and egg problem? No doubt we will get thorium power eventually for whatever reasons as it is a neat concept -- it's what we should have had instead of TMI, Chernobyl, and Fukushima.

Re:Ruling out nuclear entirely may not be wise

[Paul Fernhout]

By the way, more on this topic: http://www.newscientist.com/blog/environment/2007/07/renewable-energy-bad-nuclear-power-good.html

Re:Ruling out nuclear entirely may not be wise

[gstrickler]

There is no efficient way to get distribute heat over a widespread area other than fossil fuels or electricity, therefore, if you want to convert off of fossil fuels, you either have to have direct solar thermal heat in every building, which is less efficient due to scale, or convert it to electricity, so my figures stand.

One of the links you provided elsewhere has them promising new PV panels at 18% efficiency, which while better, is still very low. And I did pick a bad example of solar thermal, one of the other towers on that page is about 2x as efficient. But, even if the better solar thermal and PV can cut that land use to 3%, that's still a whole lot of land, 3/4 the size of Arizona. And that still doesn't address the intermittent nature of solar during the day, the lack of any light/heat at night, and the storage and/or excess capacity you have to build to use it to replace base/peak load, nor does it address increased energy demand.

Solar roadways might reduce that somewhat, however, there are notable issues with those, lower efficiencies due to traffic, dirt, snow, rain, leaves, building/tree shadows, oil, and road film limiting the light reaching the cells, and even the lexan/plexiglass surface blocking 10% or more of the light. Then there is the cost of repairing or replacing the panels damaged by heavy traffic loads, tires, accidents, etc. Neat idea, but questionable if it'll ever be viable, and even if it is, it won't be as efficient so it won't reduce land requirements by very much.

Solar alone (or even solar and wind) will not work without massive building massive amounts of excess capacity and/or massive amounts of energy storage into the grid. Nothing you say will change that, no matter how many times say it or try to get around it.

Nuclear does have risks, and it does require oversight. But the same applies to fossil fuels, hydro, and geothermal. Fossil fuel (mining and plant explosions, not even counting pollution) and hydro (dam failures) have killed more people per TWh produced than nuclear. In fact, by that measure, nuclear is the least deadly power source. Of course, our current uranium fueled model uses too little of the fuel capacity and produces far too much waste. As noted earlier, it was chosen for it's ability to produce weapons. Thorium breeders produce far less waste, and there is far more thorium on earth, so more fuel, more power, less waste. And if you use fuel reprocessing, you can split the wastes into short term and long term isotopes, with the short term stuff essentially inert in 400 years, and a whole lot less long term stuff having relatively low levels of radioactivity. It's a very manageable amount of waste if you do it properly.

The US has terrible energy policy. And if you read my posts, I clearly want to see us move to sustainable energy using renewables. However, misinformation and overly optimistic predictions from renewable energy proponents and vendors aren't any more valid than the artificially low "cost" of using fossil fuels. Lies and misrepresentations from either side are still lies and misrepresentations.

Most importantly, renewable energy sources can't yet sustain us without nuclear and fossil fuels. Of those two, fossil fuels (especially oil and natural gas) will run out much sooner, leaving cleaner nuclear as part of the near to mid term solution, and potentially part of the long term solution if we can't resolve the energy storage issues presented by solar & wind. There are some promising developments suggesting energy storage may improve significantly in the next 20 years, but until those are demonstrated to be scalable and commercially viable, they too are just pipe dreams.

You may also note that I've made no reference to ethanol as a replacement for gasoline/oil. My blog has my thoughts on that.

Re:Ruling out nuclear entirely may not be wise

[An dochasac]

The wikipedia link you cite is a mess and makes no mention of your 1EJ estimate for (global?) wave wave energy. I think you might be mixing units, EJ->TWh?

In any case, this link and this link provide much clearer estimates of wave and thermal ocean energy potential for Japan as about 30-50 Gigawatts. As far as this being "insignificant", top it up with a few GW of Hokaido wind or conservation (even in ultra-efficient Japan, conservation remains the most cost effective energy "source.") and you could shut down all of the nuclear power plants in Japan. Ocean energy could could certainly produce more than all existing wind (2.1Gw) and solar (3.6GW) facilities in Japan.

We don't exclude drilling in arctic wilderness areas and at the bottom of the ocean as impractical. We don't exclude energy-negative corn ethanol even with the political and economic food supply disturbances U.S. corn-ethanol subsidies have caused. We don't shutdown the hundreds of archaic nuclear power plants of the same design as the Fukushima Daiichi plant which failed in Japan. So we don't have the luxury of excluding viable alternatives such as ocean power.

Re:Ruling out nuclear entirely may not be wise

[gstrickler]

Let's assume for a moment that those numbers are accurate, even taking the high end 50GW, and assuming that's average power (not peak installed capacity), 50GW * 24h * 365d/yr = 438TWh, less than 44% of Japan's 2008 electricity consumption, and less than 10% of Japan's total energy consumption. But let's take a closer look at those numbers.

Total worldwide wave power potential is ~ 2700GW, of which 500GW can actually be tapped. 500GW * 24h * 365d/yr = 3180TWh/yr. Assuming 100% of that is electricity (an unlikely assumption), that's approximately 11x the amount given in the estimate I cited in my previous post, but it's still less than 16% of worldwide electricity consumption in 2009. If we tapped 100% of available wave power worldwide, it can supply somewhere between 1.5%-16% of worldwide electricity demand, depending upon which estimates you use.

How are those links you provided flawed? Let me count some ways:

From link:

Japan has a total coastline of 32,000 km, with estimated wave energy of 1.4 billion kW at peak times. A conservative view indicates that the usable portions of the coastline add up to only about 160 km. Even in this case, an annual average wave energy of 3.9 million kW would be available, generating an annual average of 1.3 million kW electricity.

32,000 / 160 = 0.005 (0.5%). 1.4BkW * .005 = 7MkW (7GW) peak. So, let's assume for a minute that 3.9MkW (3.9GW) average. With a 33% efficiency converting it to electricity, that's 1.3GW average. 1.3GW * 24h *365 days/yr = 11.4TWh/yr. That's ~1.1% of Japan's 2008 energy consumption of 1031 TWh, even less than the 1.5% low end estimate above.

Ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) is a technology that converts solar radiation to electric power by using the ocean's thermal gradient between cold deep water and warm surface water. In tropical and subtropical regions, ocean temperatures are 27-30 and 7-8 degrees Celsius in the surface and at the depth of 500 meters, respectively. A temperature gradient of this magnitude is sufficient for power generation.

The major problem with OTEC is its heavy consumption of power for pumping water, resulting in a net electrical power output at only about 15 percent of the generated power after subtracting the power needed to run the system. This gives an estimated cost of 19-23 yen (15.8-19.2 U.S. cents) per kilowatt hour.

It is estimated that at least 30 million kW of electricity could be generated by OTEC within Japan's exclusive economic zones, 200 nautical miles from the coast.

30MkW= 30GW. Now, since that should be pretty consistent production (less downtime for maintenance), theoretically that could produce a significant portion (~25% max) of Japan's electricity consumption. However, that's saturating Japan's oceans to tap all the ocean thermal energy available. The ecological and environmental effects of performing heat exchange of that magnitude in the top 500m of the ocean are frankly, pretty terrifying. Cooling the ocean surface and warming it's depths over an area within 200nmi (-365km) of Japan could have huge effects on the marine environment, atmosphere, and possibly even bigger climatic impact than burning fossil fuels. Tapping more than about 10% of ocean thermal energy is a high risk. And ocean based energy production is always expensive and high maintenance. So, realistically, Japan might be able to supply 2.5% of their electricity consumption from ocean thermal.

From link:

Offshore wind is an obvious choice for Japan. One early study suggested that up to 12 GW of offshore wind capacity c

Re:Ruling out nuclear entirely may not be wise

[Paul Fernhout]

A video you may like on India and thorium power:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nl5DiTPw3dk

And I'm not going to disagree that in theory nuclear energy can be done as safely as most other big industrial processes (as long as the industry is focused more on safety and less on short-term profit maximization and the corruption of regulators). But even when that is true, the systems still tend to be more centralized than renewables, which has political implications.

"The Nuclear Energy Option" by Bernard L. Cohen is a great book you'd like relate to advocating for the safety of nuclear power with many good points; from one chapter (on improved designs):
http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter10.html
"By the early 1980s it became apparent that a new conceptual design of nuclear reactors was called for. The cost of electricity from coal- and oil-burning plants had escalated to the point where their competition did not require maximum efficiency from nuclear plants. Furthermore, the added efficiency achieved by pushing temperatures, pressures, and power densities to their limits was overshadowed by the efficiency lost due to shutdowns when these limits were exceeded. But above all it would be much easier to satisfy the public's demand for super-super safety by starting over with a new conceptual design than by using myriads of add-ons to a design originally targeted on rather different goals. In the mid-1980s, several reactor vendors undertook these new designs. Let us consider some of the thinking that served as their basis. ..."

But, back to the analysis on renewables. Thanks for agreeing that 3% works with your figures. But you have not addressed the point that you are sizing for the worst case month in a northern location. Remove your 4X worst-case assumption in sizing and you will get around the 1% figure I cited and you suggested showed I did not know what I was talking about. :-)

Solar levels are more constant near the equator, so clearly there you don't have to size at 4X there.

You say there is not "efficient" way to move heat, but as I said, you can store energy from the summer months or move it by embodying it in energy-intensive things like aluminum, liquid nitrogen, ground up rock, or you can make hydrogen -- so you can shift industrial demand from winter to summer. And most of energy use in the USA is for process heat and other similar things is by industry, not residential.

As I pointed out elsewhere, the state of the art in residential construction is not to require a furnace (with good well-insulated passive solar construction with air-to-air heat exchangers). So, energy efficiency at home is a better investment. Just passing new building codes would take care of most of that problem in thirty years with home construction turnover.

On solar PV efficency which links to land use:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cell_efficiency
"Solar cell efficiencies vary from 6% for amorphous silicon-based solar cells to 40.7% with multiple-junction research lab cells and 42.8% with multiple dies assembled into a hybrid package.[7]"

Again though, we use 50% of the land in the USA to make animal products that are mostly killing us (cancer, heart disease, etc.) and also polluting half our water supply while using up the other half (see "The Rave Diet"). So devoting 1% of our land to clean renewable energy, by contrast, does not seem impossible. It would even probably be a more profitable use of the land than agriculture.

What about energy storage via, say, compressed air in salt caverns is not "scalable" or proven?
http://www.smartgridnews.com/artman/publish/Technologi
"Paul Denholm, lead analyst for DOE's National Renewable Energy Lab in Boulder, Colorado,

Re:Ruling out nuclear entirely may not be wise

[gstrickler]

The figures I gave aren't multiplied 4x. They are multiplied ~ 2.2x for worst case month (Dec/Jan). There is no known way to store enough excess energy from the summer months to carry us through the winter months. Oct/March would be close to break-even, but probably still require some stored energy. Gravity, hydrogen, batteries, etc. we simply use too much energy to make storage of 30%-50% of the energy used from Nov-Feb practical. Therefore, you have to build capacity for the worst months.

You're correct that the the solar radiation is more consistent at the equator. But the US (and most countries) don't have any property at the equator, nor even in the tropics. Much of Africa and South America are in the tropics, but other than that, it's just bits of the Indian subcontinent, northern Australia, and a bit of North America. While that's a lot of land, Most of South America is out because you would destroy the rainforest (not exactly "green" energy policy), which leaves the bulk of Africa and part of northern Australia. Still a lot of land, but then distributing power from there to the rest of the world is a big problem. And that's just addressing the technical issues. The political issues and national security concerns of getting any significant portion of your energy from other countries is an issue now, even though most of our energy is from domestic sources (mostly coal). It's completely unrealistic to talk about solar energy from the tropics for the US and Canada. Mexico and the Central American countries could, but it's such a narrow strip of land that they would need lots of energy storage to get through the night, or through extended cloud cover, or a hurricane.

Putting all your energy production capacity into a small region creates huge issues with reliability and distribution. Energy production must be distributed around the world, for technical, reliability, and political reasons. And with that in mind, all of your comments about solar at the equator are completely useless.

Yes, building energy efficient homes and buildings is great. However, the fact is that you can't rebuild or retrofit most existing structures to make them energy efficient. It's too costly and too time consuming. The best you can do is increase the efficiency of new development. The energy production capacity and grid must adapt to what's already exists. Any plan that ignores that is yet another pipe dream doomed to fail.

As for storing energy using compressed air "lots of megawatt hours" is a joke. We're talking about needing thousands of TWh just in the US. That's billions of MWh. "Lots" isn't sufficient. Only 3% of US energy production is from hydro, so even if we could completely restock all our hydro reservoirs (a logical impossibility itself) and ignoring the energy losses involved, that would sustain us for perhaps 3-4 weeks in Nov-Dec. The same goes all other forms of storage, they don't scale to the the levels needed for what you've suggested. You're not actually looking at the scale of consumption.

If you go back and re-read my posts, I know a lot about energy in general, not just nuclear (which I've only mentioned a few times), most of my comments have been about solar and wind. Pick any significant energy source and you'll find I've done my research. Having done that research is the reason I can keep poking holes in all your suggestions. I know the scale of the problem, and I know what works.

And I keep ignoring your comments about land use for meat production because they're completely irrelevant. You have an anti-meat agenda, fine. It has nothing to do with energy production.

If his network is any example

[antifoidulus]

I don't want this guy anywhere near any real important infrastructure, his network is a fucking joke. Massive amounts of dead spots, slow as shit(esp. when compared to his competitors) internet speed etc. The guy obviously either doesn't know anything about building cell networks or doesn't give a shit. However he DOES spend I would estimate at least 2-3x as much as his competitors do on advertising. So maybe that is what he is planning, a massive ad campaign for renewable energy without anything concrete to show for it.

Softbank sucks.

Re:If his network is any example

[lalleglad]

So, if there is any competition in Japan, like DoCoMo and whoelse, why not change to those? And why doesn't everyone else? So, what is the catch?

Re:If his network is any example

[antifoidulus]

I will as soon as my contract is up, but I was dumb enough to want an iPhone and that was the only provider. While I like the iPhone better than Android, being relegated to such a shitty network isn't worth it, and if future iPhone revisions are only compatible with Softbank, I will be dumping the iPhone as well.

Re:If his network is any example

[Mindflux0]

So you're saying that his business plan, which netted him billions of dollars, shows that his ideas are terrible?

Does Softbank suck? Well, yeah kind of. If you compare their service to Docomo's or AU's service it's basically terrible. It was never Softbank's goal to provide better service than them though.

Meanwhile, if you see how effective Softbank was at accomplish what they were actually trying to do (i.e. sell lots of phones/service) they've done pretty damn well.

The whole point of softbank is that it's cheap. They have reasonable coverage in all the reasonably sized cities. That covers a huge percentage of the population and allows them to charge a lot less than the other companies (since they have that spotty service in all the mountains in between). It was a smart idea, that was implemented effectively (partially due to all that advertising you seem to have vilified).

I fail to see how this shows his electrical grid idea is bad.

Re:Go!

[SilverHatHacker]

Netcraft confirms Fox is dying. Slashdotters everywhere rejoice.

Son-san being Son-san

[lseltzer]

I worked for ZD when he bought the company (97 maybe, from Forstmann-Little). The man is an infamous bullshitter. If he's actually giving serious thought to doing something along these lines then it has to be a scam that he'll make money on.

One word

[ptr2004]

Inception

The punchline

[Scareduck]

At bottom, this is a demand for public subsidy. The fact that he does not plan to make money with his initiative is a huge tell, and why this won't succeed. Energy production has been responsible for some of the world's biggest fortunes, yet here Son is saying he's not interested in making money? I smell a rat.

Re:The punchline

[elrous0]

Reminds me of T. Boone Pickens. He was all for wind power when he was asking the government for a right-of-way which would also have the convenient side-effect of allowing him to build a huge pipleline infrastructure for his large water holdings (making him a fortune). When he didn't get this right-of-way, suddenly he stopped being a big fan of wind power for some reason. Today you'll hear not a peep from him about it.

Re:The punchline

[newcastlejon]

Maybe he's gunning for political office? Being the man who put the lights back on - figuratively speaking - would probably buy a lot of popularity points.

Re:The punchline

[lucm]

This is textbook Clinton. Take position for something that seems to solve a lot of problems but that does not seem likely to happen - so you get the good PR without risking a backlash if the thing is actually done and it fails miserably.

Obama is not my hero but at least he did more than talk about health care.

Re:The punchline

[Hillgiant]

Show me a energy industry that does not receive public subsidy.

Re:The punchline

[Nadaka]

Oh? Clinton balanced the god damn budget.

Obama created a mandate that people carry insurance, this subsidies the insurance companies and allows them to raise prices. If he had implemented a single payer public option that covered all Americans, then Obama could be said to have done something good for health care. But even that isn't as powerful as Clinton's balanced budget. The bad news is that neither achievement will have survived the next person to take office.

Re:The punchline

[jon3k]

When you have that much money you start considering your legacy. Look at what Bill Gates and Warren Buffet are doing these days. Ego can be one HELL of a motivator.

Re:The punchline

[Rayonic]

Implementing Pickens Plan would give him rights to build electric transmission lines, and by getting a wider right of way it would allow Pickens to build water pipelines.[53]

Holy shit, transmission lines? Water pipelines?! Thank god this madman was stopped! Sure, some cities in the area might need both of those things, but the important point is this guy wanted to make money off of it. The nerve!

Re:The punchline

[khallow]

The thing is, if people have to pay public respect to a belief system, such as environmentalism, in order to get what they really want, then you should expect to see a lot of hypocrisy. I'm all for it since I think it'll help weaken some of the riskier belief systems (again, such as environmentalism) that currently hold sway in the developed world.

Re:The punchline

[lucm]

> Clinton balanced the god damn budget

In the big picture, it does not matter much, as Obama's budget has such a big deficit that it makes bush's wars look cheap.

Re:The punchline

[HonIsCool]

This guy already donated 10 billion yen (~120 million dollars) of his personal money to quake relief as well as all of his earnings until retirement [1]. Perhaps making money is not all that he cares about?

[1] http://guyjin.me/2011/04/04/softbank-ceo-masayoshi-son-donates-usd120-million-to-earthquake-and-tsunami-relief-efforts

Re:The punchline

[elrous0]

the important point is this guy wanted to make money off of it

A real free-market capitalist would BUY the land, not ask Uncle Sucker to give it to him as a hand-out under false pretenses.

Re:The punchline

[jafac]

Jonas Salk, discoverer of the Polio vaccine, gave his discovery away, did not make any money. A failure?
Then there's Linux. Another fail?

Must be a profit motive to succeed?

Basic logic fail.

Re:The punchline

[jafac]

yeah, well, not to shoot-down Clinton. . . but he didn't actually balance the budget. He accomplished a political capitulation, that had disastrous long-term financial results, and gave the short-term appearance of balancing the budget. The approach, was correct, but the trade-offs, in implementation, (market deregulation), brought us the dot-com bubble, Worldcom, Enron, a whole host of horribly destructive fake IPO's, HP's Carly Fiorina (and subsequent downfall of HP), probably the destruction of DEC. The entire thriving silicon valley innovation industry was pumped-and-dumped, on these deregulation policies. Oh - the free-soda was good, while it lasted. The stock options, of course, are toilet-paper now.

. . . at least the budget/tax balance approach was the most responsible and fiscally-sane approach in the two decades prior, and far saner than anything seen since. But it was based on revenues from the massive stock-price inflation . . . which was fake. (ie. short-term, and unsustainable).

What Clinton SHOULD have done, was to fight back on the deregulation, kicked-up capital gains tax rates, NOT signed-off on the DMCA, and fought the repeal of Glass-Steagall. Unfortunately, by that time, thanks to the Lewinsky scandal, he was so politically weak - he no longer had the political capital to pull that off, and his own party had stabbed him (and voters) in the back. Had he been able to pull off that progressive agenda, the stock market gains would not have happened, the budget would NOT have been balanced, but we would have been in much better shape, going into 2001, and probably would NOT have had a crash. Though, 9/11 was a big wild-card - and you have to venture into conspiracy-theory land and speculation as to who would have won the 2000 election, and whether VP Lieberman would have done the same (Iraq war) as VP Cheney. (I think we were going to invade Iraq, one way or another, whether Bush or Gore won in 2000, with or without 9/11 - it was set-in-stone in 1997. - - and given that - - our budget, surplus or not, was going to get FUCKED anyway.)

Re:What could possibly go wrong?

[Riceballsan]

You neglected to mention the high seismic activity.

Relatively Speaking...

[Nom du Keyboard]

Compared to the first Stimulus Plan that cost us $866 (Carl Sagan's favorite word) Billions of Dollars, and now the (now that Stimulus is a bad word) proposed $447 Billion Jobs Plan that is really a Wealth Redistribution Plan by any other name, a mere $26 Billion infrastructure upgrade that actually does something useful sounds like a real bargain.

Re:Relatively Speaking...

[newcastlejon]

At the risk of burning karma in pointless, off-topic pedantry I will simply point out that our beloved Carl was known for saying "billions and billions", which is four billion at the least.

Still, when we're talking about nearly a trillion dollars what's a factor of two or four between friends, eh?

Re:Relatively Speaking...

[bussdriver]

Hey, now while I'm no fan of either stimulus plan I object to the "wealth redistribution" class warfare rhetoric. We can't discuss class unless it is to defend the wealthy!

To be more serious, the wealthy have been waging a PR driven class war against everybody else for decades; both of Obama's plans give in heavily to the ruling class and still had/have a big uphill battle for the tiny portion that is ok. This current one will not pass for multiple reasons; one of the big ones being that tax loopholes the wealthy use to CHEAT are being closed to help fund tax cuts for the rest who've been picking up the bill for the wealthy --- the wealth HAS been redistributed upwards at increasing amounts for decades; their pay goes up while the rest are lucky to keep up with inflation (and most do not; including myself... I've never had a job that kept up with inflation.)

Tax derivatives less than 1% and you pretty much fix our budget issues. "Business" which does not benefit the real economy should be taxed like the gambling it is. Instead, we continue to let them expand their addiction to our retirement funds and soon our social security funds.

Rob a bank and its a despicable crime; rob nations and its just a statistic.
With enough money anybody can buy all the praise they desire.

Re:Relatively Speaking...

[ShakaUVM]

>>Compared to the first Stimulus Plan that cost us $866 (Carl Sagan's favorite word) Billions of Dollars, and now the (now that Stimulus is a bad word) proposed $447 Billion Jobs Plan that is really a Wealth Redistribution Plan by any other name, a mere $26 Billion infrastructure upgrade that actually does something useful sounds like a real bargain.

But, uh, just think about all the stuff the trillion dollars has got us!

Hell, the ARRA repainted road markings on a street not 200 feet from me. That's worth a cool trill, right?

Sigh... we could have replaced all of our coal power plants for that price, or expanded all of our overloaded interstates by a lane, or, hell, built a smart grid of our own.

Re:Relatively Speaking...

[Rei]

At risk of doubling down on the burning of karma, Carl only said "billions and billions" as a reference to people who erroneously claimed he did.

Re:Relatively Speaking...

[h4rr4r]

Honestly what is wrong with a little wealth redistribution?
I realize it is not popular on slashdot, but if that is what our economy needs so be it. When the rich have all the money they don't spend it. If we give that to the poor, they will spend it right away.

Re:Relatively Speaking...

[Delarth799]

You seem to have missed the part where this isn't the United States but Japan. A country wide system overhaul in the US would cost much much more

Re:Relatively Speaking...

[newcastlejon]

I doff my cap.

...damn memory.

Re:Relatively Speaking...

[gstrickler]

Well, technically speaking, he was famous for saying "billions and billions" even though that was only a caricature of what he said.

Re:Relatively Speaking...

[MikeBabcock]

As opposed to the "oh crap we gambled your money on bad debts and lost it all" system?

Non-redistribution hasn't worked either (cf. Monarchy)

Re:Relatively Speaking...

[h4rr4r]

Let's see some evidence for that fact.

A single mother making 60k has a lot more money than a single mother making minimum wage even after the latter gets her foodstamps.

Get the grid going

[WindBourne]

That is the important item. In addition, add storage. Once you have that, you can move in and out with energy generation.

My Grid Haiku

[Tumbleweed]

Electricity
Fifty, sixty, whatever
Gojira stomps all

The Richest Japan in the World

[kakyoin01]

"I don't always plunk down dough, but when I do it's to help rebuild the foundations of my manse"

Really?

[Idou]

Let me get this straight. The most successful Japanese business man is going balls to the wall for renewable energy after his country has just experienced what still could become the worst nuclear accident ever. You:

- Probably have significantly less money that can be invested in ANY project (not that you would bother investing in Japan if you did).
- Probably do not even HAVE any assets in Japan at risk.
- Did not even take the time to look up what Japans real alternative energy profile looks like.


You know, I am assuming you are a fellow American because that seems to be what Americans do all the time, tell the rest of the world what is best for them without even bothering to learn anything about their situation (Hell, it is how Japan first got into the nuke business, to begin with). However, do you think the nuke industry really needs posts like yours? It is really sad to see little people like yourself cheer on the giants who wouldn't lose any sleep if they smeared your little life all over the pavement. Even more pathetic from the eyes of those who have been direct victims of such industry giants.

Re:Really?

[loufoque]

his country has just experienced what still could become the worst nuclear accident ever.

Ever heard of Chernobyl, which nearly made the whole of Europe inhabitable, required 600,000 "liquidators" to be mobilised to build a cover on top of the reactor (most of which died of severe radiation poisoning less than 20 years later), bankrupted the USSR (it cost hundred of billions of modern dollars), and removed 10 million of acres of land from Belarus and Ukraine?

The Fukushima disaster is not close to being the worst nuclear accident at all.

Re:Really?

[CrackedButter]

Inhabitable Sir? So therefore Fukishima should reverse the ongoing decline in the Japanese population instead then?

Re:Really?

[loufoque]

Uninhabitable, sorry.

For my defense, this word is kinda tricky.

Re:Really?

[haruchai]

I've always been a staunch support of renewables but they have to be appropriate to the demand and the location. As one of the world's largest consumers of energy as well as a very developed society, they really can't afford to react out of fear. While this was a great disaster, how many of the 50-odd nuke plants were affected? The biggest problem is that divided grid with only 3 frequency converter stations in the whole country.

Re:Really?

[Alex Belits]

Ever heard of Chernobyl, which nearly made the whole of Europe inhabitable, required 600,000 "liquidators" to be mobilised to build a cover on top of the reactor (most of which died of severe radiation poisoning less than 20 years later),

I lived in less than 100km to the North from Chernobyl power plant, and my health is better than one of most people posting here.

The scale of Chernobyl disaster was massively inflated for political reasons, and to promote the policy of replacing nuclear power plants with less efficient coal-burning ones, that you see now in Europe.

bankrupted the USSR (it cost hundred of billions of modern dollars),

It didn't, because government was on both sides of all contracts related to the cleanup. It's not US, where contractor companies gorge on money thrown at them by the government every time there is any excuse for doing so.

and removed 10 million of acres of land from Belarus and Ukraine?

Swamp land. The power plant was build in the midst of swamps.

Re:Really?

[Alex Belits]

My point is:

1. Chernobyl did not have massive regional consequences that were attributed to it by politicians and their propaganda.
2. "Liquidators" actually accomplished their goal of protecting the population against much more serious contamination that would happen without them. Considering the amount of available resources and knowledge about such disasters, it was a reasonable and responsible reaction then, and now we know much better ways to prepare and recover from such events.
3. Not to mention, disaster itself was caused by a chain of serious mistakes that could have been stopped at multiple points if power plant's engineers bothered to get the reactor designers' approval for what they were doing.

If anything, many aspects of Fukushima disaster (both safety measures taken at the power plant before the earthquake/thunami and handling of its consequences) are examples of downright irresponsible behavior that would be prevented by proper study of Chernobyl disaster. But nooooo, Chernobyl was supposed to be some kind of a punishment from God that happens to bad people, and therefore only relevant when it's time to refuse modernization of power plants in good old US, Germany or Japan.

Re:Really?

[Alex Belits]

I meant amount of energy produced per total amount of human effort necessary to produce it (counting consequences, their prevention and mitigation), but "environmentalists" can also use this:

(amount of energy produced by the plant as electricity)
--------
(amount of energy in ionizing radiation produced by the pollutants dumped by the plant into the environment)

Burning coal produces, among other things, radioactive ash. And no one seems to be busy making any plans to capture and somehow store that kind of radioactive waste.

Re:Really?

[Alex Belits]

actually, coal power plants are (much) more efficient than nuclear plants, in terms of wasted heat. compare the thermal efficiency of nuclear plants to coal, gas, oil, etc. and learn something new.

How is that relevant to anything? Of course, gas turbine is more efficient than steam when it comes to heat to electricity conversion -- it runs at higher temperature. But heat produced by coal or gas requires fuel from much more limited supply, and produces more pollution.

by that logic, the government could never go bankrupt no matter what it did. so why did it eventually collapse?

Politicians being stupid. USSR dissolution by itself had zero economic impact and zero economic causes -- all it accomplished was removing one level of government at the top and making 15 USSR members' government feel like they are somehow more powerful. What followed, was a massive economic crisis caused by incompetence and Libertarians at the helm.

why were they desperate for funds from germany?

Corruption.

Re:Really?

[Maxo-Texas]

Not so much...It's a bit in between both of your extremes...

However deaths appear to be limited to about 1,000 or less (quite possibly under 100) except children getting thyroid cancer.

Large areas of the land are livable again with basically double normal background radiation (comparable to living in a city with a lot of stone buildings like New York).

Substantial areas are still (and will be for about 600 years) uninhabitable.

From here...

http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Booklets/Chernobyl/chernobyl.pdf

Quotes:
This report, covering environmental radiation, human health and socio-economic
aspects, is the most comprehensive evaluation of the accidentâ(TM)s consequences to date.
About 100 recognized experts from many countries, including Belarus, Russia and
Ukraine, have contributed. It represents a consensus view of the eight organizations of
the UN family according to their competences and of the three affected countries.

By 2002, more than 4000 thyroid cancer cases among people who were children at the time. (most likely that a large fraction of these thyroid cancers is attributable to radioiodine intake.)

the majority of the âcontaminatedâ(TM) territories are now safe for settlement and economic activity. However, in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone and in certain limited areas some restrictions on land-use will need to be retained for decades to come.

With the exception of the on-site reactor personnel and the emergency workers who were present near the destroyed reactor during the time of the accident and
shortly afterwards, most of recovery operation workers and people living in the contaminated territories received relatively low whole-body radiation doses, comparable to background radiation levels accumulated over the 20 year period since the accident.

The high dose population was about 1000 people who recieved 2Gy to 20Gy- some died. (paraphrased)

More exhaustive details within.

Re:Really?

[Alex Belits]

Averaged over all power plants and over their total energy production? Yes, definitely so.

Re:Really?

[hobbit]

And the sum total of energy in bumps and scrapes you receive over your childhood presumably exceeds that of a bullet to the head. Radiation is not something you have to worry about if administered gradually enough.

Re:Really?

[Alex Belits]

you said they were less efficient. they're not. just clearing that up.

Efficient method of energy production. Not efficient thermal to electricity conversion.

what are you talking about? although a communist nation in name, it very much relied on basic economics - enormous trade imbalances,

Oh, really? You probably forgot to notice that USSR could not issue internationally accepted currency like US or EU do, and would have to take loans for any trade imbalances that it accumulated. The amount of such loans was microscopic compared to production inside the country.

dwindling reserves of foreign currencies

Why would it even have any foreign currency if it was as bad as you are claiming? USSR existed for almost 70 years, and oil trade provided any noticeable advantage only in 70's when the rest of the world had a massive oil crisis.

needed to buy food to feed itself (caused by a dearth of capital to fuel innovation and build out modern farming practices)

I lived there. The country was running as a giant nonprofit, with no significant dependence on import or export except for few areas such as grain -- mostly because of the climate. After conversion to oh-so-superior capitalism, all areas of economy, without exception, suffered a massive drop in production, and even after recovery, agriculture is now not in any way better than in 80's, so that was not a problem. And sure as Hell, nothing related to nuclear power or infrastructure development was dependent on anything other than locally available natural resources and labor -- both quite abundant.

and a drop in oil prices all proceeded to bankrupt the country.

That's idiotic revisionism of history, performed by American propaganda workers to promote destruction and looting of ex-USSR countries economy in 90's. From the end of WWII until the dissolution of USSR production growth was ahead of population growth, therefore economy was stable. The rest is bullshit, not unlike the same lackey-economists claiming that dotcom and real estate bubbles were signs of American economy's strength and stability.

Re:Really?

[Alex Belits]

I can assure you, total amount of lives/health lost to pollution is proportional to amount of ionizing radiation produced by pollutants, not to the number of news articles and editorials about major accidents.

Re:Really?

[dkleinsc]

Swamp land. The power plant was build in the midst of swamps.

When I first came here, this was all swamp. Everyone said I was daft to build a power plant on a swamp, but I built it all the same, just to show them. It sank into the swamp. So I built a second one. That sank into the swamp. So I built a third. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp. But the fourth one stayed up. And that's what you're going to get, Lad, the strongest power plant in all of Russia!

Re:Really?

[CrimsonAvenger]

equired 600,000 "liquidators" to be mobilised to build a cover on top of the reactor (most of which died of severe radiation poisoning less than 20 years later)

No, Chernobyl didn't kill "most of...600,000 liquidators". So far, Chernobyl seems to have done in less than 1% of the "liquidators", rather than "most of them".

Note that even the 1% number is, at best, a guess. ~1% of them have died of some form of cancer. In a normal population, about 20% die from cancer of one form or another, so the ~1% is basically noise in the system.

and removed 10 million of acres of land from Belarus and Ukraine?

The Chernobyl Exclusion Zone is less than one million acres.

Re:Really?

[Yamioni]

Swamp land. The power plant was build in the midst of swamps.

So that's why all those people on Swamp People are missing so many teeth! It's the radiation!

I had a different experience

[Idou]

Of course, I was in Tokyo most of the time, and it was the only company providing the first "non-dumb" smartphones (iphone) at the time. When the 3/11 earthquake hit, of course, the service was non-existent, but I do not know any other services that really survived (though, my emobile mobile wifi dongle worked well enough).

Say what you want, but Softbank really brought the iphone revolution (now the iphone and android revolution) to Japan. Also, I am sure the smartgrid will not be wireless . . .

Re:I had a different experience

[JanneM]

"Say what you want, but Softbank really brought the iphone revolution"

No, not really. They were a newly started/aqcuired network (softbank bought a failing network wholesale) with few customers and a reputation for lousy infrastructure. They were the only network willing to accede to Apple's conditions for selling the iPhone (rumour has it Apple was holding out for NTT Docomo to the end but the negotiations fell through). Apple got a compliant network and Softbank got a cash cow to drive subscribers.

But Softbank only "brought the iPhone revolution" because they were the only network willing to bend to Apples conditions.

Re:I had a different experience

[Idou]

Exactly, Softbank were the only ones flexible enough in Japan to do business with Apple. However, you seem intent on disagreeing, so yes . . . I am wrong, you are right . . .

Re:I had a different experience

[wrook]

If you lived in Tokyo, then virtually any company will have reasonably good coverage. But Japan is a lot bigger than Tokyo. When I first came to Japan I was with Softbank mainly because they supposedly have an English help line (although every time I called it, it was out of service). Living in a small town in Shizuoka prefecture, I could not conduct telephone calls in my apartment because the signal was poor. I had to go out doors. Wherever I went, I had about a 50% chance of receiving telephone calls. Well, I don't phone a lot, so I put up with it, and 3G coverage was OK, so I could get email. But over time, the 3G coverage got worse. It got to a point where I couldn't connect to the network most of the time, and I couldn't get emails. Softbank was cheap, but last year I changed to Docomo since "cheap and not working" is not as good as "expensive and working".

Similarly, I have been using Yahoo! Softbank ADSL (Hikari is only being rolled out in my town this month). I had good internet connection initially for about 6 months, and then it slowed down to dialup speeds. I phoned them up (in Japanese since their English help line didn't pick up) and got a new modem. That one lasted another 6 months. Rinse and repeat. After going through 6 modems, they decided that there must be something wrong with my line (you think...). So they scheduled NTT to come and look at the line. No change. So they remotely tuned the receiver on my modem and that fixed it for 3 weeks. At that point they didn't know what else to do, so I was left with dialup speed (or less) for a good year. I'm 50 meters from the end office, and while it's hard to fault Softbank for a crappy phone line (they don't own the phone lines), given the fact that new modems fix the problem for a while, I have to think that the modem is not as robust as it could be. As I said, Hikari is being rolled out this month and I'm already scheduled to be switched over to NTT.

As far as the iPhone goes, it is true that Softbank was the first to roll out a smart phone. All the other carriers refused to carry the iPhone as the other poster noted. But it wasn't long before Docomo came out with the Xperia (Android). In fact you will notice now that Android phones absolutely bury the iPhone in numbers and popularity. The iPhone is still popular with foreigners, but I barely see any Japanese people carrying one.

I also think you are wrong to say that Softbank brought the "iPhone revolution". Whether or not the other carriers realised the importance of smart phones at that time, or whether they were waiting for Android phones I don't know. Au was especially slow, but has certainly jumped in with both feet as you can know choose from something like 6 different Android models. Even Softbank carries Android phones now. When the revolution came, it was Android, not Apple.

Like I said. I don't doubt that your experience with Softbank was good. Friends of mine in big cities use Softbank and are happy. But with respect to the OP's point that Softbank has a horrible network compared to Docomo and Au, he's right on. Softbank is virtually unusable in a lot of places in Japan, which is why it isn't popular. And while we can give credit where it's due for taking a chance on smart phones, the bigger companies did a much better job following through and dominate the market in that area too.

I'm not as hard on Softbank as the OP. I'm happy there is some competition. I just wish it were stronger.

Re:I had a different experience

[Tsian]

Well, both AU and Docomo reliably delivered consistent data reception throughout the earthquake period, for what it's worth.

Re:I had a different experience

[gullevek]

Actually the Softbank data network on the iphone worked wheres the docomo phone service was 100% down for the whole day.

Re:I had a different experience

[gullevek]

In Tokyo Softbank has the same connection problem. I with my super old Docomo dumb-phone am often the only one that gets a signal. The Softbank network is really very crap.

Re:I had a different experience

[Ramin_HAL9001]

Even in north-eastern Yokohama near Kawasaki, right next to Tokyo (not exactly a suburban place) the Softbank service sucked. For 2 freaking years I had a habit of running outside with my cell phone to a spot I knew had better reception as soon as I received a call. I was the worlds largest Apple fan-boy at the time and was dying to buy the iPhone, but had to wait a year for them to release it in Japan, but they went with Softbank. As soon as my Softbank contract ended, I went to AU, and it gets reception EVERYWHERE which is so nice I won't even think about buying an iPhone, no matter how much I wanted one.

Fortunately, I have switched to Linux, and don't even look at Apple's stuff anymore. If this is any indication of how Apple is going to do business, I would hold out on buying any stock in that company. Apple is at the top, it can only go down from there.

As for TFA, I like the idea of a DC meta-grid, I just hope they get someone more competent to construct it than anyone who set-up the Softbank network or anyone from Tepoco. But Since Tepco is basically a government sanctioned illegal monopoly, they will get the government contract, and cut costs, and pocket the savings, and taxes will be raised for a sub-par power grid that is no benefit to anyone but to line corporate coffers once again -- that's what always happens in this country.

Re:I had a different experience

[Ramin_HAL9001]

My AU phone was useless for about 12 hours after the quake, but I am right in the middle of the city with millions of people trying to make calls -- that or they deliberately cut civilian bands to make room for emergency response. I can only speculate.

Re:I had a different experience

[Tsian]

I know my AU phone stopped automatically receiving push e-mail, but would still respond to manual queries no problem. Were you unable to send/receive mail at all?

Re:I had a different experience

[hitmark]

So this is how one claim the iphone as a "smartphone" these days, by defining the others as dumb? ye deities...

stay with software

[drwho]

....hardware isn't your area of expertise, Mr. Son. Japan needs nuclear power, it is even less suited to wind & solar than other places, and has practically no fossil fuels. However, nuclear energy can be cleaner, safer, and more efficient than it is, by the use of molten salts for cooling and fuel delivery. The best example of this are Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors...see http://www.EnergyFromThorium.com

Re:stay with software

[tp1024]

When will you guys finally understand, that doing everything just one way is the surest way to fail. There is no reason not to use wind, solar, geothermal or biomass where it is available and where it can be used sustainably with minimal (additional) damage to the environment. Of course, it's not necessarily cheap and I don't believe there is enough of them to provide for all the energy we need.

But again, no reason not to use them, provided that the public isn't being mislead about costs and usefulness of the results. Otherwise, it's going to end just like NASA.

Re:stay with software

[jafac]

IMO - Japan (like Iceland) is likely PERFECTLY suited for geothermal.

NO

BRAINER!

Re:What could possibly go wrong?

[Rei]

AC under seawater is difficult. DC under seawater is simple. Both AC and DC suffer from resistive losses in the cable, but AC also suffers from reactive losses, which are far higher underwater. You can even do earth return, either a monopolar transmission or an uninsulated (and thus cheaper) return wire. And no, it's not dangerous; it's already used in quite a few places.

What is being proposed here is a nationwide HVDC grid, which is an especially important thing in Japan where they have basically two separate AC grids operating on different frequencies. This prevented the southwest from sharing power with the northeast after the tsunami, causing the northeast (including Tokyo) to suffer rolling blackouts for a long period of time. DC can allow power sharing between the two grids.

Basically, it's a proposal to allow power generated in any part of the country to be consumed in any other part, with minimal losses. And seeing as the country is the size of California, the weather in one part of the country can be very different than the weather in another part of the country, so it's a boon to not just stability and efficiency, but renewables capacity as well. Peaking plants and energy storage systems anywhere in the country can likewise support the entire nation.

I certainly hope Japan leads the way on this. Europe has been moving in this direction at a moderate pace, but the US only at a snail's pace. It needs a big push.

Anybody catch that this is a banker proposing this

[Synerg1y]

I had to re read it, CEO bankers in the states buy submariner rollex and fly on private jets and don't acknowledge that poor people exist. And this guy is actually thinking about something besides money and sex? As I said I had to re read it. If rich people in the states showed 1/2 as much responsibility as what this man is even thinking about, we'd probably have a settlement on Mars by now. Oh well, such is life, kudos to you sir.

Maybe he just wants subsidies transferred . . .

[Idou]

from the Japanese nuke industry.

A few obvious questions

[tp1024]

A few obvious questions about those renewable energy sources he wants to use:

Which ones? Are they used in a sustainable way? Where will it be placed? Who will finance it how? What are the limits to environmental damage and destruction caused by them? How will energy from wind and solar be stored? Who will pay for use and installation of storage? What will be the energy source for the other 40% of electricity? What will they do about the other 60% or so of energy that are not electricity and are currently provided mostly by gas and oil, being used for heating, industrial processes and powering vehicles?

Re:Intercontinental power grid?

[Rei]

Power sharing goes both ways. It's like trade ties. The more integrated you are with another nation, the more difficult it becomes to go to war with them -- e.g., China bombs a power plant in Japan and Beijing goes dark, too.

Re:What could possibly go wrong?

[spazdor]

Mod parent up. Shark safety is perhaps the most neglected aspect of power grid design.

One industry supports another

[phorm]

Maybe he doesn't plan on making money from the power industry, but rather from industry that depends on having consistently available and reliable power...

Re:One industry supports another

[Idou]

Yeah, Professor Koide of Kyodai even said that the GOJ could not possibly fully compensate the victims of Fukushima (assuming it did so at fair value). Maybe hotshots like Son realize their fortunes might become worthless if Japan does not fix its energy problem, and quick.

Re:What could possibly go wrong?

[Sir_Sri]

We run thousands of cables that support electricity across the ocean including to the coast of japan now. They are lower energy, but the principle is the same. Sure, an earthquake could wreck a cable, but it's a lot cheaper (and faster) to replace a cable than a power generator. Build the generators in safe (by japanese standards) places, and put the risky stuff on wires that can be replaced and turned off.

Where are you?

[Idou]

Softbank worked great for me in Kanto. You really have to be specific, as the quality of mobile services seems to depend on the region you are in.

Re:Where are you?

[antifoidulus]

I am in Ibaraki and it sucks balls. Even in Tokyo I never get nearly the speed I got in the middle of cow town Germany, although I would at least get signal.

Re:Where are you?

[Idou]

Fair enough. The furthest North I used their service was Tsukuba-shi (but close to the TX station).

Re:Where are you?

[antifoidulus]

Thats where I live, and it actually works alright near the station(so of course the one time I went in to the softbank store there to complain I had full strength), but go even a km or 2 north and you lose strength real quick. Go any further north and it gets even worse.

Re:Where are you?

[Idou]

Duly noted. That is a very beautiful place to live. Hope to return, one day . . .

Re:What could possibly go wrong?

[newcastlejon]

What could possibly go wrong and why am I reminded of the old proposal for liquid sodium cooled nuclear reactors in submarines?

It's working out pretty well in Europe, and the Japanese have the advantage of learning from others' mistakes.

As for the submarines I'm not sure; why does underwater cable that's chemically and radiologically benign and miles away from anyone sound as dangerous as a can of irradiated liquid metal that's bad enough before it touches water?

Let's fix this shall we?

[ch33zm0ng3r]

Japan's richest and, therefore, most trustworthy man outlines renewable energy program.

Re:Just wait . . .

[loufoque]

Clearly you don't understand the scale of the Chernobyl incident.
Fukushima was nothing like it.

Re:Just wait . . .

[Idou]

Clearly you do not understand the nature of Fukushima nor Chernobyl, or you would not be making such statements about Fukushima so early on.

So does this plan also fix the 2 grids Japan has?

[Fallen Kell]

Just wondering if his plan fixes and replaces the 2 different power grids Japan has. They have a 50Hz grid and a 60Hz grid, with several power converts between the grids, but they can only handle about 1GW of power transferred between the two grids (which is why when the earthquake/tsunami caused many of the nuclear plants to shutdown, even though they had the capacity on the other grid to handle the losses, they didn't have the ability to transfer the power to the other grid, and had to have rolling blackouts in Tokyo since it was located in the same grid affected by the shutdowns).

Re:So does this plan also fix the 2 grids Japan ha

[jackbird]

Yes, he's proposing DC transmission lines.

Re:Intercontinental power grid?

[Osgeld]

that is sort of how I read it, as per the piss por summary title his "renewable energy plan" seems to be A) build a grid and B) buy it from china, which just sounds like a peachy plan

Re:What could possibly go wrong?

[MichaelJE2]

You neglected to mention the high seismic activity.

Too soon?

Re:What could possibly go wrong?

[rossjudson]

All I know is that they could prick some holes in those big electric pipes, let the 'lectricity out and create a ton of steam bubbles. This will turn the entire coast of Japan into a giant steam bath, achieving all goals simultaneously: Eliminate winter, increase tourism from Scandinavian countries, pirate ships coming out of cool misty effects, and the Japanese can relax for a change.

Re:Just wait . . .

[TheInternetGuy]

I have lived to close for comfort to both of these accidents when they happened. Both where bad, We did not have the graphite fire/explosion here in Japan. But the amounts of radioactive materials released is approaching Chernobyl levels. In Japan we have three reactors (at least) to worry about. The area is more densely populated. The only saving grace being that the winds were blowing a lot of the stuff out to sea. Time will tell what the effects are, but it wont be pretty.

Re:What could possibly go wrong?

[putaro]

There was a time when converting from DC to AC meant motor-generator sets (meaning exactly what it sounds like - a DC powered motor turning an AC generator) but today we have the technology to convert high voltage DC to AC. High Voltage DC is more efficient over long distances and, as noted, is better for undersea cables. Typically, you use DC for the long haul and then do a conversion, once, to AC and feed it into the high power AC distribution grid for relatively local distribution.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current

GE says PV solar cheaper than coal by 2015

[Paul Fernhout]

Is GE greenwashing too? http://cleantechnica.com/2011/05/29/ge-solar-power-cheaper-than-fossil-fuels-in-5-years/
http://www.solarbuzz.com/facts-and-figures/retail-price-environment/module-prices
http://www.cleantechblog.com/2011/06/will-crystalline-solar-kill-thin-film-a-conversation-with-applied-materials-solar-head-charlie-gay.html

Anyway, that's why this article is silly. Solar will displace fossil fuels and nuclear through market forces alone at this point over the next decade. We are passing the tipping point, even though, if you account for externalities like pollution, risk management, and defense costs, renewables have been cheaper than fossil fuels since the 1970s or earlier.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brittle_Power
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/09/surface-area-required-to-power-the-whole-world-with-solar-power-wind.php

Re:GE says PV solar cheaper than coal by 2015

[Joey Vegetables]

I'd love it if that were the case. It may well be in Arizona. I doubt that it is in my part of the country (Rust Belt). At least not until we have politically and economically acceptable ways for efficiently converting electricity into liquid fuels. Honestly, I think that was always the harder problem to begin with. Given the political will, nuclear could be done far more cheaply and safely than it is now, and that has been true for 20-25 years at least. And solar could gradually have supplanted that as costs continued to come down. But there was never a point if there wasn't a cheap way to get that power from where it's generated to where it's needed (e.g., cars). And deeply entrenched political interests have fought it pretty successfully, even for powering the grid; those same interests fight and will continue to fight against adoption of solar power, and probably in much the same ways. Ironically, because it is now clear to everyone that government works for them, not us, it should be equally obvious that getting government OUT of the way is the best way to ensure that sustainable and renewable energy will gain enough of a foothold to ensure eventual dominance.

Re:GE says PV solar cheaper than coal by 2015

[delt0r]

http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2011-03-29/

Re:GE says PV solar cheaper than coal by 2015

[Paul Fernhout]

Funny comic on fake press releases for imaginary new green energy technologies, but you can look for yourself at the continually falling cost for PV solar energy like at solar buzz and draw your own conclusions.

Or see this:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_parity
"First Solar has indicated that its manufacturing cost has fallen in 2009 to 93 cents per watt, down 5% in three months and down 28% in a year. By 2014, it expects to drive down cost per watt to make solar modules to fall to between 52 and 63 cents. The biggest driver of the lower costs is better efficiency.[13]"

Why do people continue to deny the obvious? It is like if I said computer hard drives will probably cost about half as much for the same storage in three years, and people were all over me saying "prove it" or "that's impossible". Look at the industry trends for yourself. And there are some similarities to some degree between Moore's law for chips and what is happening with solar (not quite as pronounced, but both some supporting technology in common).

Re:GE says PV solar cheaper than coal by 2015

[Paul Fernhout]

Good points overall, and renewable energy advocates have long asked just for a "level playing field". Although I still feel that accountable government is better than government too small to regulate giant wealth concentrations that tend to privatize gains but socialize costs. But how to get there from here is a difficult question. Our market system needs to better price in "externalities":
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality

Still, if you look at those links, you'll find a bit more cause for optimism, even in the "rust belt" pretty soon. The thing is, ignoring externalities, if solar is halving in price every few years, it is still "too expensive" until it suddenly is not. That "suddenly" is about to happen (and is happening in sunnier remoter places like Hawaii).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_parity

Meanwhile everyone just goes on about the "too expensive" bit.

Re:GE says PV solar cheaper than coal by 2015

[delt0r]

price per watt on roof is not price per watt at the plug.

Re:GE says PV solar cheaper than coal by 2015

[gstrickler]

Manufacturing cost per watt, and even installation cost per watt aren't particularly useful measures, except to the manufacturers and salesmen. Watt is a measure of power, but we don't by power, we buy energy, and we buy it in kWh, not Watts. We need watts for peak demand, but we use and pay for for kWh. That means we either need enough installed capacity to meet peak demand, or we need enough (real word 24hr x 365 days) kWh generation to exceed average demand, and some form of energy storage that can store the excess when overproducing and supply the peak wattage when underproducing.

"Grid parity" is a great start, but it's not a real measure of the cost. Intermittent sources are only useful when connected into a grid that can supply minimum and peak demand using other sources. The real cost of PV, wind, and other intermittent sources is far greater than "grid parity" would suggest. Another way to say it is that the real cost of wind and PV needs to account for installing at least 4x average demand, and have a way to store energy to meet minimum and peak demand. So, while it's great that some alternative sources are achieving grid parity in some parts of the world, and that more may achieve it in the next few years, that doesn't mean they're anywhere near ready to replace nuclear or fossil fuel for base/peak load sources.

So, before posting the "Brittle Power" link and other "green" misinformation again, go gather some real information with verifiable and accurate information. Then we can talk about "real cost".

Jimmy Carter warned about the wrong path...

[Paul Fernhout]

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/primary-resources/carter-crisis/
"We are at a turning point in our history. There are two paths to choose. One is a path I've warned about tonight, the path that leads to fragmentation and self-interest. Down that road lies a mistaken idea of freedom, the right to grasp for ourselves some advantage over others. That path would be one of constant conflict between narrow interests ending in chaos and immobility. It is a certain route to failure. All the traditions of our past, all the lessons of our heritage, all the promises of our future point to another path, the path of common purpose and the restoration of American values. That path leads to true freedom for our nation and ourselves. We can take the first steps down that path as we begin to solve our energy problem."

Too bad we have spend the last thirty years going down that wrong path, and in more ways than energy.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/04/opinion/sunday/jobs-will-follow-a-strengthening-of-the-middle-class.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

But it is not too late to go back... And it is even easier now:
http://cleantechnica.com/2011/05/29/ge-solar-power-cheaper-than-fossil-fuels-in-5-years/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income
http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/4818

Re:Jimmy Carter warned about the wrong path...

[Unequivocal]

Well said. If you haven't read Hunter's essay on a pre-presidential Carter speech, it's worth it. I can't find an online copy, but I believe it's in The Great Shark Hunt. I was able to find this nice video summary which is pretty well produced: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SLeFZFTIco

Having spent the last two years as a political appointee in DC, I have to say that while it's not too late to go back, I am not seeing much in the political character (either of the nation or the politicians) that suggests the willingness to try. The circus feeds itself and as bubbles continue to collapse I think we'll see an increase in bickering and squabble not a decrease.. Sigh.

Re:Jimmy Carter warned about the wrong path...

[Paul Fernhout]

Thanks for the link and other suggestion:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Shark_Hunt

I knew Carter was a farmer and a bit of a nuclear engineer, but I did not know he was a Bob Dylan fan. :-) Although it is an interesting song Carter mentions, a protest song about protest songs, or maybe something more? :-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maggie's_Farm

That is a great video on Carter. He really was, morally, the best we could have hoped for as a president. If Carter had gotten four more years, I wonder what our world would be like, as he made mistakes, but might have learned from them?

Don't know if this is true?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_surprise_conspiracy_theory

But in any case, it is sad that such a morel person, Jimmy Carter, lost his bid for re-election in part for blowback for immoral things done by earlier administrations (the original destruction of a democratic government in Iran).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d'%C3%A9tat

I had renewable energy newspapers from around 1980-1984 and you could see the change from optimism to despair as Reagan came in and made changes. Otherwise, we might have had this sort of 24 hours a day solar-thermal power plant twenty years ago in the USA:
http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-07-gemasolar-solar-thermal-power-hours.html

I fear you may be right about gridlock etc., but I can hope you will be wrong. Maybe we will at least see action at a local level?
http://www.amazon.com/Neighborhood-Power-Localism-David-Morris/dp/0807008753

See, for optimism:
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1108-21.htm
"In this awful world where the efforts of caring people often pale in comparison to what is done by those who have power, how do I manage to stay involved and seemingly happy? I am totally confident not that the world will get better, but that we should not give up the game before all the cards have been played. The metaphor is deliberate; life is a gamble. Not to play is to foreclose any chance of winning.
To play, to act, is to create at least a possibility of changing the world. There is a tendency to think that what we see in the present moment will continue. We forget how often we have been astonished by the sudden crumbling of institutions, by extraordinary changes in people's thoughts, by unexpected eruptions of rebellion against tyrannies, by the quick collapse of systems of power that seemed invincible. What leaps out from the history of the past hundred years is its utter unpredictability. This confounds us, because we are talking about exactly the period when human beings became so ingenious technologically that they could plan and predict the exact time of someone landing on the moon, or walk down the street talking to someone halfway around the earth."

In any case, we will see solutions in other countries (including China which is led by a lot of engineers).
http://www.economist.com/node/13496638
"The presence of so many engineer-politicians in China goes hand in hand with a certain way of thinking. An engineerâ(TM)s job, at least in theory, is to ensure things work, that the bridge stays up or the dam holds. The process by which projects get built is usually secondary. That also seems true of Chinese politics, in which government often rides roughshod over critics. Engineers are supposed to focus on the long term; buildings have no merit if they will col

Re:Jimmy Carter warned about the wrong path...

[Unequivocal]

Great post - thanks. I'll review this stuff.. One thought on the 100x overpop comment -- you might be interested to read the book 1491 which discusses some reasonably mainstream archaeology theories that suggest north america may have supported populations approaching 100M prior to contact. And that very early contact spread disease through the Americas as a plague worse than the black death in Europe (33% population loss during that). So when Europeans first start actually walking around and looking for civilizations they see ragtag remnants of societies broken apart by an earlier pandemic disease (smallpox maybe). So everything we "know" about pre-contact native american societies that is not dug out of the ground (all the first hand reports from early contact -- cf "Conquest of New Spain" which is a great read and first hand journalism from a solider who was there with Cortez) may be wrong..

Anyway - just a minor addendum to your work and I'll look forward to reading more. By far the most informative post on slashdot I've ever been able to read..

Re:Jimmy Carter warned about the wrong path...

[Paul Fernhout]

Thanks for your comments. Glad you liked the post and I hope you look at some of the links.

On the theme you raise, I've also been wondering if many people in the past might have lived longer than we give them credit for, as well (in other words, maybe the infant mortality rates may be off?).

I've seen different estimates of how many people were in North America, so you are right, it might have been higher, although I would think 2 million to 20 million for North American (above Mexico) would be more likely, but I don't know for sure. One source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_Americans_in_the_United_States
"Estimating the number of Native Americans living in what is today the United States of America before the arrival of the European explorers and settlers has been the subject of much debate. A low estimate of around 1 million was first posited by the anthropologist James Mooney in the 1890s, by calculating population density of each culture area based on its carrying capacity. In 1965, the American anthropologist Henry Dobyns published studies estimating the original population to have been 10 to 12 million. By 1983, he increased his estimates to 18 million.[42] He took into account the mortality rates caused by infectious diseases of European explorers and settlers, against which Native Americans had no immunity. Dobyns combined the known mortality rates of these diseases among native people with reliable population records of the 19th century, to calculate the probable size of the original populations.[4][5]"

The general issue is that the further you go from the equator, the more land per person you need for subsistence for various climate and sunlight reasons. So, one acre might support a person by the equator, but you might need 1000 or more up around Northern Canada.

So, yes, I was going with the low end. Of course, our wilderness is more degraded now, as well. Also, if you add in Mexico and below, I think the total for both continents could have been 100 million or so.

Anyway, thanks for the suggestions:
http://www.amazon.com/1491-Revelations-Americas-Before-Columbus/dp/140004006X
http://www.amazon.com/Conquest-New-Spain-Penguin-Classics/dp/0140441239

Although another aspect of that is that the natural diversity seen in North America of animals during the 1700s and 1800s was also partially a recovery from previously heavy exploitation by natives, who, as you say, often died from introduced disease.

Another angle on that general theme of affluence in the stone age:
http://www.primitivism.com/original-affluent.htm

Another related book on the pandemic:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel

And more on what really happened during the invasion of North America, in the own words of the profit-driven invaders (as well as some accompanying missionaries) who saw the value of the land but not of the alternative society:
http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/zinncol1.html

A related theme from Native Americans:
http://www.marcinequenzer.com/creation.htm#The%20Field%20of%20Plenty
"The Field of Plenty is always full of abundance. The gratitude we show as Children of Earth allows the ideas within the Field of Plenty to manifest on the Good Red Road so we may enjoy these fruits in a physical manner. When the cornucopia was brought to the Pilgrims, the Iroquois People sought to assist these Boat People in destroying their fear of scarcity. The Native understanding is that there is always en

Re:Jimmy Carter warned about the wrong path...

[Paul Fernhout]

By the way, on what Carter is up to now: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/sep/11/president-jimmy-carter-interview
"The young Jimmy studied engineering at the US naval academy in Annapolis, and even now he's drawn to practical problems he believes he can solve. The Carter Center, the foundation he and Rosalynn set up to promote and champion human rights, has been quietly working towards eradicating some of the world's nastier diseases. Guinea worm, a debilitating parasite, affected 3.5 million people worldwide when the Carter Center decided to try to eradicate it. Last year there were just 1,797 cases, mostly in South Sudan, and it looks set to be only the second (after smallpox) disease ever eliminated. Also on their hit list is river blindness, trachoma and lymphatic filariasis, otherwise known as elephantiasis. As part of their human-rights efforts, they monitor elections in some of the most troubled corners of the world. "Our basic principle that has shaped us ever since we were founded is that we don't duplicate what other people do," says Carter. "If the World Bank or Harvard University or whoever is adequately taking care of a problem, we don't get involved. We only try to fill vacuums where people don't want to do anything." ...
    Jimmy Carter approached his career with all the pragmatism of a practical man, and the deep-rooted morality of a religious one. American politics is increasingly dominated by what's called the religious right; conservatives who share an anti-scientific world view, who treat evolution as a heretical theory, and universal healthcare as dangerous socialism. But Carter was of the religious left, a very different beast. He has a profound faith, rooted in his Baptist upbringing. He and Rosalynn read the Bible to each other every night and have done so for "30-something years". (They read in Spanish, so that they can practise their language skills at the same time; they're relentless self-improvers.) "I read a chapter one night," says Rosalynn. "And he reads a chapter the next night."
    Politics wasn't so much a life choice he made, as the culmination of a sequence of events. "I was the chairman of the school board, and I was concerned about the public school system," he tells me. "I served as governor for as long as the constitution would permit me, and after that I ran for president in 1975. As you probably know, I was elected."
    I heard, I say. Was there really never a master plan?
    "Not at all. It was always just the next step. When I told my mother I was running for president, she said, president of what?" ...
    What he's most proud of, though, is that he didn't fire a single shot. Didn't kill a single person. Didn't lead his country into a war -- legal or illegal. "We kept our country at peace. We never went to war. We never dropped a bomb. We never fired a bullet. But still we achieved our international goals. We brought peace to other people, including Egypt and Israel. We normalised relations with China, which had been non-existent for 30-something years. We brought peace between US and most of the countries in Latin America because of the Panama Canal Treaty. We formed a working relationship with the Soviet Union." ..."

Re:What could possibly go wrong?

[BlueParrot]

>What could possibly go wrong and why am I reminded of the old proposal for liquid sodium cooled nuclear reactors in submarines?

Probably because you don't know that the reason such submarines were never built had fuck all to do with the sodium-water interaction, and was rather due to the navy's desire to standardise on one type of reactor, the PWR. Seriously, you're talking about a military that mixes RDX and HMX into the Nuclear Missile rocket fuel. They are unlikely to be deterred by sodium's flammability.

Re:Just wait . . .

[gullevek]

No, clearly you do not understand the scale of the accident or you wouldn't make such comments.

Dymaxion Grid

[Mr Bubble]

a massive grid that would run 36,000 kilometers and link Japan with countries including India, China, and Russia.

It's only a matter of time until we have Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion power grid.

Re:What could possibly go wrong?

[Rei]

Reactive losses *are* losses. They heat the wires. Reactive reserves for phase stabilization can help get that back under control, but they don't undo the losses already in the wires. Reactive losses are a well known issue with submarine AC cables and limit their length.

DC not only is viable, as the person below you notes, it's already *in use*. The majority of new long-distance high power links being strung up in Europe (red=existing, green=under construction, blue=proposed), and a number in North America as well, are HVDC. Learn about it. Conversion is now efficient and no longer nearly as expensive using modern thyristor-based digital converters. Long-distance HVDC links are much more efficient than long-distance AC links.

Enough of this "I'm pontificating about a subject I've never read about" nonsense.

Re:What could possibly go wrong?

[Rei]

Good for you. Not for everyone else. 2. Unless the reporting was lying. Wherein "do more research" should be directed at the news media, not me.

Where did you get your numbers?

[Quila]

Up to 600,000 liquidators were used around the entire area, not just building the sarcophagus. It is estimated by the WHO that 4,000-5,000 died as a result of exposure to radiation.

You do not die of severe radiation poisoning up to 20 years later. Nobody lasts that long. Of the 237 people who were initially there unprotected, 28 died of acute radiation sickness within three months.

Ten million acres? The uninhabited exclusion zone is a 30 km radius. That's about 700,000 acres.

Hundreds of billions of dollars? It cost 18 billion rubles. A dollar was worth less than a ruble then, but it's hard to get a real number since the ruble wasn't floated internationally, and inflation would not be the same for the USSR years (not to mention the 1998 collapse and revaluation of the ruble). In any case, even at 2:1 back then it's still only $74 billion in today's dollars.

Re:Where did you get your numbers?

[loufoque]

I suggest you read the wikipedia articles, from which I gathered that information.

I just did

[Quila]

They back up my numbers. In no way did "most" of 600,000 liquidators die, and certainly not of acute radiation poisoning. Not hundreds of billions of dollars, only 700,000 acres.

Re:What could possibly go wrong?

[hcs_$reboot]

I confirm what said AC about AC cuts.
There were some power cuts for a short period time from March after the big(gest) earthquake.
"Power cuts" should not be confused with "Power saving" that Tokyo (and most of Northern Japan) was doing and is still doing as of today.
Tepco provides a graph (in English, please) that shows where stands the power consumption, compared to previous year and previous day.