The reality of cheap solar panels is that batteries are now the more expensive part of an off grid system. And for a grid-tie system the permits, inspection, and professional installation is a big burden in the US. All those regulations are annoying, but when you’re playing with thousands of watts it’s reasonable to ensure the safety of linesmen, firemen, and occupants.
Grid-tie ends up being cheaper than battery systems and maximizes solar production of the panels as power doesn’t go unused when there is no load and the batteries are full (or near full, as they can’t charge as fast then). You’re basically using the grid as a big battery; give it energy when you produce it but don’t need it and get it back when you actually need it. That won’t scale up forever, as the grid isn’t actually a battery (yet anyway).
I’m thinking about an electric car and a grid tie roof system. I’d rarely be using the actual electrons my roof generated in my car, but it’s nearly as good to say my house generated more power than my car used.
The directions are based on the spin of the Earth. The concepts were there before we discovered magnetism and named the poles of a magnet after the directions on our planet. The concept of the direction east as "toward the rising sun" is pretty basic and comes out of the mists of time from proto-languages before mankind invented writing.
Calling China and Japan the East is a more recent European centric terminology. Since the planet is a globe everything is east of some other place in a relative manner. However, if you look at the land masses of Earth the largest is Asia which still puts China and Japan in the east. Only if you consider the water covered portion as the most significant would you think of Japan as an island on the western side of the great Pacific Ocean. So considering Japan the East simply shows a land centric view.
There is enough extra generating capacity off peak overnight to charge quite a large initial wave of electric cars. Selling more electricity overnight might even increase electric company profits and pay for some necessary upgrades to the grid. Undoubtedly some changes will need to be made before the majority are driving electric cars. One thing missing from large scale renewable energy is storage. It doesn't help so much if solar and wind supply great amounts of energy some of the time if you still need enough capacity of traditional power to meet 100% of the load the rest of the time. However, developing better batteries for cars may mean a reasonable storage system for utility power too, making cheap solar more practical.
Really? The Volt concept car was shown in January 2007 and the production design model in September 2008. I suppose once Obama took office in 2009 he used the secret presidential time machine to go back and force GM to create the Volt.
Or are you suggesting GM was just wasting money on a project they never intended to market until Obama forced them to follow through?
There is a lot of capacity left for off peak charging over night. If people don't charge during peak hours there shouldn't be any problem. It's the people who want megawatt quick charges during the day that worry me. An infrastructure where people are charging away from home during the day is going to lead to more power problems.
Hopefully it will be a lot cheaper to charge at home over night. People who must charge during the day and contribute to the peak load should pay a big premium.
Some of your figures for the Volt are wrong. The Chevy Volt can recharge in 6 or 8 hours from a standard 120 volt receptacle. The 240 volt option is 16 amps and recharges the Volt in three hours. You are correct that the Volt battery is suppose to take a 8 kWhr charge. I agree that the 500 mile battery would probably need a 100 kWhr charge. So worst case for a fully discharged battery is 12.5 times longer than a Volt at the same rates. Probably take 4 days to recharge from a standard 120V outlet.
Just the other day I saw a figure of 1.4 traffic fatalities per 100 million miles driven. At that rate a 3000 mile trip would generate 0.000042 deaths, or 1 in 24,000 odds. Supposedly the odds of dying in an airliner are just under 1 in a million per flight hour. It comes out to 1 in 140,000 for an eight hour cross country flight by my calculations. So according to those figures a cross country flight is almost 6 times safer than a cross country car trip.
Yes you can rightly argue that interstate driving is safer per mile than the rush hour commuting that the traffic fatalities is undoubtedly biased toward. But I doubt it's enough safer to make up the difference. But I'd love to hear the figures if anyone has them.
My original point was to compare plane flights to long car trips, not average short car trips that probably have million to one odds of a fatality. Even on interstates, the further you drive the more likely something is going to happen. Haven't we learned anything from Clark Griswold in "Vacation"?
That feeling of control over the odds is probably why we put up with relatively high possibility of injury or fatality with cars. Airline travel seems to bother people much more because they're not in control of the situation. If we had much longer lifespans we might think twice about cars killing off 1% of us every century.
The length of a shuttle mission probably doesn't affect the odds of disaster much, because the main risk is during launch and re-enrty. Planes have increased risk during takeoff and landing, but the length of the flight must affect the risk also. As long as your flight is near average length the per mile statistics should work just fine. Car trip accident odds are likely strongly related to distance driven. So when you compare a plane flight to a car trip be sure to compare it with a long car trip. The odds of an accident are obviously much larger on a cross country car trip than a five mile local trip.
It does cost the state time and manpower to prosecute all those charges. The folks in the DA's office don't work for free, you know. I'm often amazed with how few charges actually go to trial. Probably because they don't have the resources to prosecute everything they'd like. Plea bargaining is an integral part of the process and often results in the charges just being dropped. My perspective comes second hand from my wife who's a Public Defender. Of course she works a low court with lots of minor charges where resources are likely stretched thinnest.
Since the state has limited resources, it must already think twice about prosecuting someone who can afford the best lawyers. Can you imagine what would happen if they had to pay the legal fees for a billionaires lawyers if the state lost? It would have to be a slam dunk case before anyone rich ever got prosecuted.
You're right, one pound more might double the cost because it would require a second launch. More likely it would mean lots of man hours reviewing the entire system to see where you could save a pound somewhere else.
One can definitely go to far in asserting their lawful rights. You've certainly come up with some outrageous examples of that behavior. I don't want to be the guy with the tombstone that reads "I was in the right!"
It sounds like you've judged all cycling on roads with cars to be too dangerous for you. That's your call to make, but be aware that many feel that cycling on sidewalks is even more dangerous due to drivers pulling in and out of entrances without ever checking the sidewalks. The more a cyclist behaves like a car the more likely they won't get overlooked and accidentally run over.
When I cycle I do avoid roads that are heavily trafficed, but I don't avoid all roads simply because dangerous cars use them too. Yes, I probably inconvenience a few motorists because they have to slow down momentarily to wait till it's clear to pass me, but no one is stuck for minutes behind me.
Don't forget that driving a car is probably the most dangerous thing people do regularly. You're not immune to crazy drivers in heavy metal boxes just because you're in your own metal box. One could argue we're borderline insane to accept that risk too.
I also don't want a tombstone that reads "He played it safe and stayed home experiencing life through the Internet". Cycling is currently one of the few things that gets me out into the real world.
"Because regardless of what you think the law is, or how the world should work, **YOU** are responsible for **YOUR** own behavior."
What you're really saying is that I'm responsible for predicting the bad behavior of others. The roads can easily be shared by reasonable cyclists and motorists. The trouble arises when either becomes reckless, impatient, or inattentive. If I do that then I am indeed at fault. But if you're saying that I'm responsible because bad drivers put me at risk, then you have an odd idea of where the blame truly lies.
Did you note that 2010 projection was made in 2003? Have we heard anything on Hy-wire in the past five years? The Volt is well beyond concept car stage and is slated for production late next year. It sounds like there will be actual electric cars in major dealer showrooms in just a year or two.
As you point out, an electric car won't be very useful to someone who parks on the street. But I don't see hydrogen available anywhere yet either. I just can't believe the hydrogen car is going to be workable.
More like a lucky few can lease one now. From the wikipedia article: "Honda planned to produce 200 vehicles within 3 years" and "Honda believes it could start mass producing vehicles based on the FCX concept by the year 2018". In other words they don't have a clue how to make an affordable hydrogen fuel cell yet.
GM plans to start mass producing the plug in Volt by the end of next year, assuming they don't go under before then. All the infrastucture a Volt requires is a 120V power outlet in your garage. I've already got my electric infrastructure right now, how many can say the same about hydrogen?
I do not think ultracaps like that exist. At least not yet. Which brings up a problem with battery swapping - technological change. Battery (and ultracap) technology is changing quite rapidly right now. Everyone keeps talking about amazing new formulations being experimented with in the labs. We've gotten to the point where lithium batteries are good enough to put into electric cars and we should start seeing a lot of these popping up in the next few years. It's becoming economically feasible to produce a reasonable electric car with current battery technology. But I don't expect they will be using the exact same battery chemistry five or ten years from now.
How is battery swapping going to cope with the quick changes in battery technology we're likely to see once elecric cars become a multi billion dollar industry? The race to develop a better cheaper battery is going to be intense.
I agree that hydrogen car development is more of a stunt or appeasement than anything else, theyâ(TM)re unlikely to be remotely affordable anytime soon. But I disagree about the Volt being just another stunt. GM seems dedicated to actually producing the car and is currently gearing up to do so. They should be rolling off the assembly line within 18 months. Assuming GM still exists in 18 months. Whether it will be the right car for the times remains to be seen.
The Volt is a different answer to electric car range anxiety. Instead of battery swapping the Volt carries its own gas powered generator for when the batteries run low. That makes it seem like just another hybrid, but itâ(TM)s a much more powerful electric vehicle than standard hybrids. Itâ(TM)s capable of good acceleration, and highway speeds solely on electric power without any need for the gas engine for the first 40 miles on a charge. With a car like that Iâ(TM)d rarely need to use any gas at all, it would be an electric car for 99% of my use.
Which bring us something I'm wondering about a battery swapping system. Surely Iâ(TM)d be able to charge the battery at home and wouldnâ(TM)t be required to swap whenever I ran low on juice. In that case Iâ(TM)d only need to hit the battery swap station if Iâ(TM)m taking a long trip, and that means only a couple times a year. So is this business model built solely around vacationing people? I suppose battery swapping could be a solution for apartment dwellers that donâ(TM)t have access to overnight charging.
The smaller and denser an object is the worse the heat load is on re-entry. Using a ballute to increase the surface area means there is less need for high tech fragile ceramic tiles. Another way to look at it is that the greater area means there is more force to slow down the spacecraft before it gets into denser levels of the atmosphere.
Apparently some plants do grow faster with increased CO2 and some don't. It varies by crop. It would probably work better to use the CO2 to grow masses of algae in tanks. You can supposedly get huge amounts of biomass per acre that way.
It's a lot easier to sequester the carbon in biomass by burying it than by trying to hide the gaseous CO2 somewhere. I don't trust these schemes that have huge reservoirs of CO2 somewhere. If it blows out somehow and escapes all it once things get real nasty for anyone addicted to breathing oxygen in the neighborhood.
but for a lot of people the 40 mile limit will be kind of a barrier
That's 40 miles on stored electricity and then the gasoline engine kicks in and it acts pretty much like a regular hybrid. That's the beauty of the plug in hybrid concept: pure electric for short trips and no range limitations if you want to go across country using gasoline. I'd probably only need the gas engine 10 to 20 percent of the time, myself.
Well, technically going from 25 to 100 is a 300% increase, since the increase is 75. But I realize that whenever the ratio between numbers is four to one it's going to be commonly referenced as 400%, regardless of whether it should actually be a 300% increase or 75% decrease. The mind fixates on the factor of four and wants to use 400 as the percentage. The correct numbers just feel wrong.
Interestingly this mistake doesn't happen with small changes like 10 or 20 percent. But as soon as something doubles its a 200% increase rather than the mathematically correct 100% increase.
you're thinking pure energy output by direct action
Are you suggesting there is some sort of less direct method that would get more energy? That's wishful thinking. No matter how you cut it an exercising human is going to be able to produce only a fraction of a kilowatt hour with even a strenuous exercise session. Most houses use dozens of kilowatt hours each day.
Interestingly the judges in this competition recognized this limitation and criticized another entry involving a hand crack powered lamp. They said the amount of power a human could crank into a lamp wouldn't supply many lumens for long. But they didn't say a thing about the weight powered lamp. They may have had a blindspot on the subject, having more experience with pedal power. But lifting a fifty pound weigh isn't somehow more efficient a way to power a lamp. At least, not by the orders of magnitude required to make the Gravia work.
Obviously this was competition of design and not engineering. Great design and concept, if it worked. But the engineering is impossible unless you accept that you have to get up every 60 seconds to re-energize the lamp. The contest itself looks to have been all about concept. It only required submission of a 500 word description and some drawings.
Interestingly in a video on the site the judging panel criticized a crank lamp because it wouldn't run long on the energy a human could put into a crank, actually citing watt figures required. But they didn't make a peep about how much power would be required to run this lamp for four hours. Possibly the green community has a lot of experience with the difficulty of getting much energy from hand cranks and pedals. However, the limited power in a dropping weight seems to have escaped their notice. Lifting a fifty pound weight isn't magically easier and more efficient than pedaling a generator.
I believe the actual argument is that under normal operation coal burning plants put more radioactive elements in the air than nuclear plants do. This is because the fly ash they produce is very slightly radioactive and some of it gets into the air. In any case, it's very small amounts for either type plant.
Claiming that coal plants put more radioactivity in the air than the total amount of all waste from a nuclear plant (implying air release and solid waste) seems like a complete misrepresentation. I'd like to see on that too.
Slashdot Mirror
The reality of cheap solar panels is that batteries are now the more expensive part of an off grid system. And for a grid-tie system the permits, inspection, and professional installation is a big burden in the US. All those regulations are annoying, but when you’re playing with thousands of watts it’s reasonable to ensure the safety of linesmen, firemen, and occupants.
Grid-tie ends up being cheaper than battery systems and maximizes solar production of the panels as power doesn’t go unused when there is no load and the batteries are full (or near full, as they can’t charge as fast then). You’re basically using the grid as a big battery; give it energy when you produce it but don’t need it and get it back when you actually need it. That won’t scale up forever, as the grid isn’t actually a battery (yet anyway).
I’m thinking about an electric car and a grid tie roof system. I’d rarely be using the actual electrons my roof generated in my car, but it’s nearly as good to say my house generated more power than my car used.
The directions are based on the spin of the Earth. The concepts were there before we discovered magnetism and named the poles of a magnet after the directions on our planet. The concept of the direction east as "toward the rising sun" is pretty basic and comes out of the mists of time from proto-languages before mankind invented writing.
Calling China and Japan the East is a more recent European centric terminology. Since the planet is a globe everything is east of some other place in a relative manner. However, if you look at the land masses of Earth the largest is Asia which still puts China and Japan in the east. Only if you consider the water covered portion as the most significant would you think of Japan as an island on the western side of the great Pacific Ocean. So considering Japan the East simply shows a land centric view.
There is enough extra generating capacity off peak overnight to charge quite a large initial wave of electric cars. Selling more electricity overnight might even increase electric company profits and pay for some necessary upgrades to the grid. Undoubtedly some changes will need to be made before the majority are driving electric cars. One thing missing from large scale renewable energy is storage. It doesn't help so much if solar and wind supply great amounts of energy some of the time if you still need enough capacity of traditional power to meet 100% of the load the rest of the time. However, developing better batteries for cars may mean a reasonable storage system for utility power too, making cheap solar more practical.
Really? The Volt concept car was shown in January 2007 and the production design model in September 2008. I suppose once Obama took office in 2009 he used the secret presidential time machine to go back and force GM to create the Volt.
Or are you suggesting GM was just wasting money on a project they never intended to market until Obama forced them to follow through?
There is a lot of capacity left for off peak charging over night. If people don't charge during peak hours there shouldn't be any problem. It's the people who want megawatt quick charges during the day that worry me. An infrastructure where people are charging away from home during the day is going to lead to more power problems.
Hopefully it will be a lot cheaper to charge at home over night. People who must charge during the day and contribute to the peak load should pay a big premium.
Some of your figures for the Volt are wrong. The Chevy Volt can recharge in 6 or 8 hours from a standard 120 volt receptacle. The 240 volt option is 16 amps and recharges the Volt in three hours. You are correct that the Volt battery is suppose to take a 8 kWhr charge. I agree that the 500 mile battery would probably need a 100 kWhr charge. So worst case for a fully discharged battery is 12.5 times longer than a Volt at the same rates. Probably take 4 days to recharge from a standard 120V outlet.
Just the other day I saw a figure of 1.4 traffic fatalities per 100 million miles driven. At that rate a 3000 mile trip would generate 0.000042 deaths, or 1 in 24,000 odds. Supposedly the odds of dying in an airliner are just under 1 in a million per flight hour. It comes out to 1 in 140,000 for an eight hour cross country flight by my calculations. So according to those figures a cross country flight is almost 6 times safer than a cross country car trip.
Yes you can rightly argue that interstate driving is safer per mile than the rush hour commuting that the traffic fatalities is undoubtedly biased toward. But I doubt it's enough safer to make up the difference. But I'd love to hear the figures if anyone has them.
My original point was to compare plane flights to long car trips, not average short car trips that probably have million to one odds of a fatality. Even on interstates, the further you drive the more likely something is going to happen. Haven't we learned anything from Clark Griswold in "Vacation"?
That feeling of control over the odds is probably why we put up with relatively high possibility of injury or fatality with cars. Airline travel seems to bother people much more because they're not in control of the situation. If we had much longer lifespans we might think twice about cars killing off 1% of us every century.
The length of a shuttle mission probably doesn't affect the odds of disaster much, because the main risk is during launch and re-enrty. Planes have increased risk during takeoff and landing, but the length of the flight must affect the risk also. As long as your flight is near average length the per mile statistics should work just fine. Car trip accident odds are likely strongly related to distance driven. So when you compare a plane flight to a car trip be sure to compare it with a long car trip. The odds of an accident are obviously much larger on a cross country car trip than a five mile local trip.
It does cost the state time and manpower to prosecute all those charges. The folks in the DA's office don't work for free, you know. I'm often amazed with how few charges actually go to trial. Probably because they don't have the resources to prosecute everything they'd like. Plea bargaining is an integral part of the process and often results in the charges just being dropped. My perspective comes second hand from my wife who's a Public Defender. Of course she works a low court with lots of minor charges where resources are likely stretched thinnest.
Since the state has limited resources, it must already think twice about prosecuting someone who can afford the best lawyers. Can you imagine what would happen if they had to pay the legal fees for a billionaires lawyers if the state lost? It would have to be a slam dunk case before anyone rich ever got prosecuted.
You're right, one pound more might double the cost because it would require a second launch. More likely it would mean lots of man hours reviewing the entire system to see where you could save a pound somewhere else.
One can definitely go to far in asserting their lawful rights. You've certainly come up with some outrageous examples of that behavior. I don't want to be the guy with the tombstone that reads "I was in the right!"
It sounds like you've judged all cycling on roads with cars to be too dangerous for you. That's your call to make, but be aware that many feel that cycling on sidewalks is even more dangerous due to drivers pulling in and out of entrances without ever checking the sidewalks. The more a cyclist behaves like a car the more likely they won't get overlooked and accidentally run over.
When I cycle I do avoid roads that are heavily trafficed, but I don't avoid all roads simply because dangerous cars use them too. Yes, I probably inconvenience a few motorists because they have to slow down momentarily to wait till it's clear to pass me, but no one is stuck for minutes behind me.
Don't forget that driving a car is probably the most dangerous thing people do regularly. You're not immune to crazy drivers in heavy metal boxes just because you're in your own metal box. One could argue we're borderline insane to accept that risk too.
I also don't want a tombstone that reads "He played it safe and stayed home experiencing life through the Internet". Cycling is currently one of the few things that gets me out into the real world.
"Because regardless of what you think the law is, or how the world should work, **YOU** are responsible for **YOUR** own behavior."
What you're really saying is that I'm responsible for predicting the bad behavior of others. The roads can easily be shared by reasonable cyclists and motorists. The trouble arises when either becomes reckless, impatient, or inattentive. If I do that then I am indeed at fault. But if you're saying that I'm responsible because bad drivers put me at risk, then you have an odd idea of where the blame truly lies.
Did you note that 2010 projection was made in 2003? Have we heard anything on Hy-wire in the past five years? The Volt is well beyond concept car stage and is slated for production late next year. It sounds like there will be actual electric cars in major dealer showrooms in just a year or two.
As you point out, an electric car won't be very useful to someone who parks on the street. But I don't see hydrogen available anywhere yet either. I just can't believe the hydrogen car is going to be workable.
More like a lucky few can lease one now. From the wikipedia article: "Honda planned to produce 200 vehicles within 3 years" and "Honda believes it could start mass producing vehicles based on the FCX concept by the year 2018". In other words they don't have a clue how to make an affordable hydrogen fuel cell yet.
GM plans to start mass producing the plug in Volt by the end of next year, assuming they don't go under before then. All the infrastucture a Volt requires is a 120V power outlet in your garage. I've already got my electric infrastructure right now, how many can say the same about hydrogen?
I do not think ultracaps like that exist. At least not yet. Which brings up a problem with battery swapping - technological change. Battery (and ultracap) technology is changing quite rapidly right now. Everyone keeps talking about amazing new formulations being experimented with in the labs. We've gotten to the point where lithium batteries are good enough to put into electric cars and we should start seeing a lot of these popping up in the next few years. It's becoming economically feasible to produce a reasonable electric car with current battery technology. But I don't expect they will be using the exact same battery chemistry five or ten years from now.
How is battery swapping going to cope with the quick changes in battery technology we're likely to see once elecric cars become a multi billion dollar industry? The race to develop a better cheaper battery is going to be intense.
I agree that hydrogen car development is more of a stunt or appeasement than anything else, theyâ(TM)re unlikely to be remotely affordable anytime soon. But I disagree about the Volt being just another stunt. GM seems dedicated to actually producing the car and is currently gearing up to do so. They should be rolling off the assembly line within 18 months. Assuming GM still exists in 18 months. Whether it will be the right car for the times remains to be seen.
The Volt is a different answer to electric car range anxiety. Instead of battery swapping the Volt carries its own gas powered generator for when the batteries run low. That makes it seem like just another hybrid, but itâ(TM)s a much more powerful electric vehicle than standard hybrids. Itâ(TM)s capable of good acceleration, and highway speeds solely on electric power without any need for the gas engine for the first 40 miles on a charge. With a car like that Iâ(TM)d rarely need to use any gas at all, it would be an electric car for 99% of my use.
Which bring us something I'm wondering about a battery swapping system. Surely Iâ(TM)d be able to charge the battery at home and wouldnâ(TM)t be required to swap whenever I ran low on juice. In that case Iâ(TM)d only need to hit the battery swap station if Iâ(TM)m taking a long trip, and that means only a couple times a year. So is this business model built solely around vacationing people? I suppose battery swapping could be a solution for apartment dwellers that donâ(TM)t have access to overnight charging.
The smaller and denser an object is the worse the heat load is on re-entry. Using a ballute to increase the surface area means there is less need for high tech fragile ceramic tiles. Another way to look at it is that the greater area means there is more force to slow down the spacecraft before it gets into denser levels of the atmosphere.
Apparently some plants do grow faster with increased CO2 and some don't. It varies by crop. It would probably work better to use the CO2 to grow masses of algae in tanks. You can supposedly get huge amounts of biomass per acre that way. It's a lot easier to sequester the carbon in biomass by burying it than by trying to hide the gaseous CO2 somewhere. I don't trust these schemes that have huge reservoirs of CO2 somewhere. If it blows out somehow and escapes all it once things get real nasty for anyone addicted to breathing oxygen in the neighborhood.
but for a lot of people the 40 mile limit will be kind of a barrier
That's 40 miles on stored electricity and then the gasoline engine kicks in and it acts pretty much like a regular hybrid. That's the beauty of the plug in hybrid concept: pure electric for short trips and no range limitations if you want to go across country using gasoline. I'd probably only need the gas engine 10 to 20 percent of the time, myself.
Well, technically going from 25 to 100 is a 300% increase, since the increase is 75. But I realize that whenever the ratio between numbers is four to one it's going to be commonly referenced as 400%, regardless of whether it should actually be a 300% increase or 75% decrease. The mind fixates on the factor of four and wants to use 400 as the percentage. The correct numbers just feel wrong.
Interestingly this mistake doesn't happen with small changes like 10 or 20 percent. But as soon as something doubles its a 200% increase rather than the mathematically correct 100% increase.
Are you suggesting there is some sort of less direct method that would get more energy? That's wishful thinking. No matter how you cut it an exercising human is going to be able to produce only a fraction of a kilowatt hour with even a strenuous exercise session. Most houses use dozens of kilowatt hours each day.
Interestingly the judges in this competition recognized this limitation and criticized another entry involving a hand crack powered lamp. They said the amount of power a human could crank into a lamp wouldn't supply many lumens for long. But they didn't say a thing about the weight powered lamp. They may have had a blindspot on the subject, having more experience with pedal power. But lifting a fifty pound weigh isn't somehow more efficient a way to power a lamp. At least, not by the orders of magnitude required to make the Gravia work.
Obviously this was competition of design and not engineering. Great design and concept, if it worked. But the engineering is impossible unless you accept that you have to get up every 60 seconds to re-energize the lamp. The contest itself looks to have been all about concept. It only required submission of a 500 word description and some drawings.
Interestingly in a video on the site the judging panel criticized a crank lamp because it wouldn't run long on the energy a human could put into a crank, actually citing watt figures required. But they didn't make a peep about how much power would be required to run this lamp for four hours. Possibly the green community has a lot of experience with the difficulty of getting much energy from hand cranks and pedals. However, the limited power in a dropping weight seems to have escaped their notice. Lifting a fifty pound weight isn't magically easier and more efficient than pedaling a generator.
I believe the actual argument is that under normal operation coal burning plants put more radioactive elements in the air than nuclear plants do. This is because the fly ash they produce is very slightly radioactive and some of it gets into the air. In any case, it's very small amounts for either type plant.
Here's a link: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste
Claiming that coal plants put more radioactivity in the air than the total amount of all waste from a nuclear plant (implying air release and solid waste) seems like a complete misrepresentation. I'd like to see on that too.