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[mainiac]

You continue to loose efficiency. With a 3.5% loss per 1000 km, you're looking at a 80% efficiency for 5000 km. Resolving said efficiency loss will require upping voltage to silly levels, resulting in very spectacular failurs.

It will look attractive if the cost of electricity falls enough.  You dont need high efficiency if electricity is cheap enough.

Even if we lost 75% of it in transmission, that's still cheap, abundant electricity.  And probably there will be efforts to shift energy intensive processes to times and locations where these is excess power.

Seeing as you are assuming that I am saying what is the exact opposite of my thesis, I'm going to stop responding to you guys now.

[10ebbor10]

Yes, you're being very silly in your assumptions. You start of with the fact that solar energy essentially is free, and handwave everything else from there.

If we are talking about 20 or 30 years in the future then keep in mind that solar is going to be a lot cheaper at that point: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Price_history_of_silicon_PV_cells_since_1977.svg

If we hypothesize solar costs of under a dollar a kilowat of generation then far and away the best solution is just make a huge excess of solar electricity and then have the grid sort out the difficulties.  Even if we lost 75% of it in transmission, that's still cheap, abundant electricity.  And probably there will be efforts to shift energy intensive processes to times and locations where these is excess power.

In 1977: Solar panel cost was 76.67 USD/ Watt
In 2014: It was 0.36 USD/Watt
In 2044: You want it to be 0.001 USD/Watt

Between 1977 and 2014, solar panel prices were reduced to 1/212 of their original value. You want a reduction to 1/360 to happen within 20-30 years, whereas the previous reduction took 37, and the rate of decline has continuously been slowing down.

[Gentlefish]

I like nuclear energy. It's stable, breeder reactors actually make more fuel as they produce energy, and with today's systems ((water as a medium for neutron buffering is so cool - as it heats up it actually slows down the reactions, preventing catastrophic overheating)) it's pretty damn safe. Plus the 3 mile island basically exposed everyone to an extra chest x-ray for the year. There was just a lot of steam and it scared the hell out of people. Sure there was a good dose of radiation in the steam, but it was so sparse it wasn't worse than a few extra days in the sun unprotected.

It's solar, square kilometers and square kilometers of solar. If there's one thing this system doesn't have, it's a single point of failure.
((Provided there's enough transmission back-up, that is.))

That's what I mean, transmission-wise. You'd only have so many cables coming from the system, if one goes down somewhere nearby, a whole lot of people would lose power.

[LordBucket]

I like nuclear energy.

it's pretty damn safe.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Nuclear_Event_Scale

Level 7 event: Chernobyl

Level 7 event: Fukushima


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_Exclusion_Zone

"Established by the USSR military soon after the 1986 disaster, it initially existed as an area of 30 km radius from the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant designated for evacuation and placed under military control. Its borders have since been altered to cover a larger area of Ukraine. "

"Area   2,600 km2 (1,004 sq mi)"

That's a comma, not a period. Over one thousand square miles of exclusion zone, even now 28 years after the accident.

[Gentlefish]

I like nuclear energy.

it's pretty damn safe.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Nuclear_Event_Scale

Level 7 event: Chernobyl

Level 7 event: Fukushima


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_Exclusion_Zone

"Established by the USSR military soon after the 1986 disaster, it initially existed as an area of 30 km radius from the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant designated for evacuation and placed under military control. Its borders have since been altered to cover a larger area of Ukraine. "

Okay so two events.

Fairly large ones yes, but two events.

[img=http://www.the9billion.com/2011/03/24/death-rate-from-nuclear-power-vs-coal/]http://Coal still kills much, much more people per watt.[/img]

[LordBucket]

two events

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reactor_accidents_in_the_United_States
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_accidents_by_country

Meanwhile, google 'solar plant accidents' and get back to me.

Yes, people fall off roofs while installing solar plants. And that happens more often than nuclear meltdowns. But when somebody falls off a roof, it doesn't create decades-long environmental and health hazards for people miles away.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_effects_from_the_Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster

"A 2013 WHO report predicts that for populations living in the most affected areas there is a 70% higher risk of developing thyroid cancer"

"Ground, water and sewage contamination outside of 30 kilometers"

"radioactive caesium from the reactors at Fukushima ended up in Kanagawa more than 300 kilometers (190 mi) to the south"

"11 times the governmental limit of 8000 becquerels – were detected in a groundsheet at the Suginami Ward elementary school in Tokyo at a distance of 230 kilometers from Fukushima"

[Gentlefish]

Okay so solar panels.

Look at all this toxic waste produced through the process which china is dumping into farmer's fields.

Reactivity Alerts

    Water-Reactive
    Air-Reactive

Air & Water Reactions
Fumes in air. Decomposed by water or moist air with much heat generated and forms silicic acid and hydrochloric acid [Merck 11th ed. 1989]. Silicon tetrachloride reacts vigorously with water to generate gaseous HCl. Based on a scenario where the chemical is spilled into an excess of water (at least 5 fold excess of water), half of the maximum theoretical yield of Hydrogen Chloride gas will be created in 0.38 minutes. Experimental details are in the following: "Development of the Table of Initial Isolation and Protective Distances for the 2008 Emergency Response Guidebook", ANL/DIS-09-2, D.F. Brown, H.M. Hartmann, W.A. Freeman, and W.D. Haney, Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, Illinois, June 2009.

That's not kosher.

[Lightningfalcon]

I will say ahead of time that I am heavily biased toward nuclear power. 

Chernobyl was the result of massive stupidity on the part of their operators.  Fukishima was the result of bad design and regulation.  The SL-1 accident was a result of horrible planning, as the people who died were manually moving a fuel rod, with no safety devices for making sure that you didn't move it too far. 

[redwallzyl]

More people have died more radiation released and more environmental damage has been done by coal then nuclear ever will. Not to mention the two old accidents happened with old first generation reacters, we are on the third gen I believe. Chernobyl was the USSR being shit at engendering quality and turning off the failsafes as a test.

[LordBucket]

Look at all this toxic waste produced through the process which china is dumping into farmer's fields.

Yes. China has lax safety enforcement. Knowing this, tell me honestly whether you would rather the Chinese build solar or nuclear plants.

Chernobyl was the result of massive stupidity on the part of their operators.
 Fukishima was the result of bad design and regulation

the two old accidents happened with old first generation reacters, we are on the third gen I believe.

Ok. Bad Russians and Japanese. Shame on them. And shame on those old designs. We know better. Surely nothing bad could happen here in the US using our spiffy neato-keen high tech current nuclear plants.

Oh, wait.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reactor_accidents_in_the_United_States

 * January 30, 2012 Byron, Illinois, US   Unusual Incident reported at Byron Nuclear Generating Station. Loss of off-site power caused unit 2 to run a shut down cycle and release tritium steam into the atmosphere

 * February 1, 2010   Vernon, Vermont, US   Deteriorating underground pipes from the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant leak radioactive tritium into groundwater supplies

 * March 6, 2006   Erwin, Tennessee, USA   Nuclear Fuel Services plant spills 35 litres of highly enriched uranium, necessitating 7-month shutdown

 * August 4, 2005   Buchanan, New York, USA   Entergy’s Indian Point Nuclear Plant leaks tritium and strontium into underground lakes from 1974 to 2005

 * June 16, 2005   Braidwood, Illinois, USA   Exelon’s Braidwood nuclear station leaks tritium and contaminates local water supplies

 * In 2012, the Union of Concerned Scientists, which tracks ongoing safety issues at operating nuclear plants, found that "leakage of radioactive materials is a pervasive problem at almost 90 percent of all reactors

More people have died more radiation released and more environmental damage has been done by coal then nuclear ever will.

ever

ever

"Ever." What a curious choice of word to use when defending nuclear power.

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

"High-level radioactive waste management concerns management and disposal of highly radioactive materials created during production of nuclear power and nuclear weapons. The technical issues in accomplishing this are daunting, due to the extremely long periods radioactive wastes remain dangerous to living organisms. Of particular concern are two long-lived fission products, technetium-99 (half-life 220,000 years) and iodine-129 (half-life 15.7 million years),[1] which dominate spent nuclear fuel radioactivity after a few thousand years. The most troublesome transuranic elements in spent fuel are neptunium-237 (half-life two million years) and plutonium-239 (half-life 24,000 years)."

We're talking periods of time that are orders of magnitude longer than our species has existed on this planet. And yet here you are casually dismissing the amount of damage it will cause ever.

So how much of this stuff are we talking about?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste#High-level_waste

"High-level waste (HLW) is produced by nuclear reactors. It contains fission products and transuranic elements generated in the reactor core. It is highly radioactive and often hot. HLW accounts for over 95 percent of the total radioactivity produced in the process of nuclear electricity generation. The amount of HLW worldwide is currently increasing by about 12,000 metric tons every year, which is the equivalent to about 100 double-decker buses or a two-story structure with a footprint the size of a basketball court. A 1000-MW nuclear power plant produces about 27 tonnes of spent nuclear fuel (unreprocessed) every year."


I'm not defending coal here, guys...but I think you're seriously underestimating the risks. This stuff is not "pretty damn safe" like Pufferfish is claiming. It's terribly, horribly, awfully dangerous...and it's only by being extremely careful that terrible tragedy is averted.

Nobody would say that highwire tightrope walking is pretty damn safe...."if you're careful." No, of course not. We're talking about stuff that is so dangerous, and so long lasting...that hundreds of years from now, one single earthquake in a bad place...one single terrorist act...one single mistake...could result in the release of tens of thousands of tons of stuff that's so dangerous that even minimal exposure for mere minutes could kill you.

http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/radwaste.html

"ten years after removal from a reactor, the surface dose rate for a typical spent fuel assembly exceeds 10,000 rem/hour, whereas a fatal whole-body dose for humans is about 500 rem"

And even if it doesn't kill you immediately, it might still kill you later:

http://www.epa.gov/radiation/understand/health_effects.html

"400 rems   possible death   within 2 months"

And it's not just death:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acute_radiation_syndrome
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronic_radiation_syndrome
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyshtym_disaster
http://www.birthdefects.org/prevention/healthybaby/radiation.html

Even brief exposure can result in long term DNA damage, cancer, reduced organ function, birth defects...lots of unpleasant stuff.

If you look at "an" accident and count only the number of people at the facility who immediately died...you're really not seeing the whole picture here.

[Lightningfalcon]

The biggest problem about long term storage is the possibility of it being forgotten about by humanity, and then having evacuations unearth it and spread it unknowingly. 
I can't speak about what can be done about the rest of that waste, but Plutonium-239 can be easily reprocessed back into usable fuel for nuclear plants, cutting down on the waste, and proving a large fuel supply.  This is also helpful in disposing of plutonium used in nuclear weapons.
Waste is also not something that we would permanently have to deal with.  As technology develops, less waste will be produces, and possibility of sending waste into space becomes a more viable option. 

[penguinofhonor]

Shooting it into the sun couldn't possibly hurt, right?

[GavJ]

No, it's pretty damn safe.

After decades and decades and old-ass technology that would never fly anymore, the deaths have still been on par with other energy generation methods. Citing numbers of accidents that weren't that bad, or amounts of double decker buses full of waste that aren't free in the environment is just yellow journalism.

You offer no better alternatives, either. You want to build a solar power world network that beams electricity from one half of the world to the other along A SINGLE DAMN CABLE (since you already scoffed at me when I tried to explain multiple cables, so you must have been thinking of one).

What, good sir, happens exactly when your single stupid world cable goes on the fritz and a whole hemisphere blacks out? Possibly every night for days or weeks before they can fix it? A helluva lot more people die than have ever died from nuclear power, by orders of magnitude. That's what happens.




Solar's not terrible, but it's not a magic silver bullet, either. It's just a highly situational, super expensive option amongst a whole array of power choices we need to be using. In very very sunny, equatorial places? Use solar. In places with high drop rivers? Use hydro. In places without convenient environmental renewables staring them in the face? Nuclear simply makes the most sense.

[LordBucket]

Shooting it into the sun couldn't possibly hurt, right?

I suppose it probably wouldn't induce the sun to go nova and permanently end all life in the solar system. I mean, there's not really any reason to think it would.

But remember you'd need to get it off-planet first. Were you alive when Challenger exploded? Imagine if she'd been carrying 12,000 tons per year worth of nuclear waste. That sounds like a potential planetary genocide sort of event to me. Sure, you could reduce the "end all life on planet earth" risk by making a bunch of trips with smaller payloads. Say...only 500 tons at a time? 500 tons of high level radioactive waste dumped into the atmosphere probably wouldn't end all life on the planet, right? There's a lot of atmosphere for it to spread around in. Probably nothing more than worldwide birth defects, cancer and reduced lifespans. Of course, then you'd be doing 24 trips per year, so the risk of having an accident eventually would increase. And you'd be doing this every year for decades.

...come on guys...is solar really so expensive that it's better to take these kinds of chances?

[GavJ]

...come on guys...is solar really so expensive that it's better to take these kinds of chances?

Yes, your ridiculous world cable system is thousands of times more expensive than other alternatives, and has high risks of death and property damage by putting too many eggs in a single basket.

So absolutely it's better to take the known, small, local chances for far less money. It's not even a trade-off, it's better in both ways!


edit:

Imagine if she'd been carrying 12,000 tons per year worth of nuclear waste. That sounds like a potential planetary genocide sort of event to me.

Yes I was there, and it sounds like an east Texas wildlife genocide event to me. The debris field was 250 miles by 40 miles in the middle tapering to 0 = 5,000 square miles, or about .0025% of the earth's surface, and people would likely have had plenty of time to escape, since the majority of reactor waste is usually alpha particle emitting, which means as long as you don't ingest it you're pretty much fine short term.

Although of course even then, you're operating under the huge and silly assumption that we would launch an entire year's worth of radioactive waste into orbit, lol? That's never been the actual plan.