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[Frumple]

... in all seriousness, though, does this discussion even matter in relation to the US? Nuclear is a non-starter for reasons economic (initial investment, mostly) and not, green investment is increasing, coal is dying for multiple reasons, natural gas et al is there, oil is being oil. Comparing efficiencies between something that's not going to be used regardless of its cost and a bunch of other stuff is pretty close to irrelevant, y'know?

[Neonivek]

... in all seriousness, though, does this discussion even matter in relation to the US? Nuclear is a non-starter for reasons economic (initial investment, mostly) and not, green investment is increasing, coal is dying for multiple reasons, natural gas et al is there, oil is being oil. Comparing efficiencies between something that's not going to be used regardless of its cost and a bunch of other stuff is pretty close to irrelevant, y'know?

It would be but people kind of use the "Solar is so cheap!" as an excuse to decommission Nuclear.

And there IS an active community of people who want to decommission nuclear... and it has started to become a global movement with a few countries managing to do it.

[Reelya]

http://www.solarcellcentral.com/cost_page.html

30 cents per kwh is for home installation roof-top cells. it's not the same price as industrial-scale solar plants. It's fundamentally wrong to quote those sorts of prices then compare them to a nuclear plant.

OHH MY GAWD I do not want to fish for my old article.

Anyhow the prices it lists... are $3 kWh... if you exclude subsidies, discounts, and all that... For household solar. (then again once again... includes subsidies in its costs)

Which is a ridiculous price. So now I am going to have to find that article... and that sucks.

Learn some numbers comprehension. $3 isn't the cost of the electricity, it's the cost of the panel to have X amount of generation capacity, per W. If a $3 panel that had one W of capacity runs at capacity for 1000 hours it generates 1kWh for that $3.

If we used that logic for nuclear plants, you take the construction costs and say "that's a 3MW plant and it costs $3 billion so therefore it costs $3000 per kwh!" which is of course false, because it assumes the plant is only going to operate for a single hour. Yeah, your complaint is that meaningless.

[PTTG??]

Apparently nobody read it the first time:

https://www.lazard.com/media/438038/levelized-cost-of-energy-v100.pdf

Solar thermal is bullshit on par with solar roadways. It's way, way more expensive than thin-film PV. 2-3 times the cost. It's cheaper to add pumped hydro storage to a PV solar, and then you can charge the pumped hydro with anything. Wind, for instance.

Lazard has both subsidized and unsubsidized numbers; I've been using the unsubsidized ones.

Honestly, I'd be happy with 90% solar/wind power and storage, with the remaining 10% being practically anything. Probably natural gas. At this point we're going to need to have an atmospheric engineering project of some kind anyway. Eventually it'll just be a new part of the ecology, using solar powered scrubbers to pull CO2 from the air and then using natural gas at night to get electricity...

Oh, I looked this up before, one second.... Household solar is like $2-$4 per watt installed. Grid-scale solar is $1.5/watt, but that's declining rapidly and might be below $1/watt by years' end.

My point is that nuclear will be decommissioned anyway because it's so expensive. Hopefully fusion will be cheaper.

[redwallzyl]

don't worry guys we will have fusion in 20 years! /s

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Thermal towers are uneconomical, but "solar thermal" in those words is generally referring to residential water systems and are highly cost effective. There are parts of China where they're the main form of water heating, makes great savings on electricity or gas.

[Neonivek]

My point is that nuclear will be decommissioned anyway because it's so expensive

It really isn't that expensive and is getting cheaper along with being able to continuously use its fuel (Where we used to generate waste, we can now use that waste).

The initial costs are ridiculous mind you. Decommissioning is... who freeken knows where (The costs are rather random... they are going down SORT OF... it depends why a plant is decommissioned and how well it is built)

Then again in terms of space... Assuming this is correct... the smallest nuclear is 500 megawatts a hour

While Solar in general... is 25 acres to 5 megawatts... So about 12,500 acres... Though I think they mean household solar panels....

I dunno that is so much space... That what I looked up probably isn't right.

[Playergamer]

Well it was nice to see that the rallies today were nice and peaceful.

Or not.

God damn it people. I know you hate each other, but can you at least keep the fisticuffs off camera? We're meant to be the best democracy in the world, not Weimerica.

[Neonivek]

Weimerica.

Hey! I live in Shunada.

Also be careful careful because Wuxico is below you.

[Neonivek]

Ok lets do this! lets see exactly how much land we would need to replace ALL power with solar! (using the 5 Megawatt per hour... for every 25 acres)

25,451,000 is the hourly of the entire USA.

127,255,000 is the amount of Acres of solar we would need (well acres of land dedicated to solar)

167,624,960 is the amount of Acres of Texas.

2,300,000,000 is the amount of Acres in the USA

138,000,000 is the amount of USED Acres in the USA

[PTTG??]

You've got a math error somehow. The actual area is a tenth of that.

[Neonivek]

It is hard because Electricity measurements are evil.

Approximately 25 acres of land is required for every 5 megawatts (MW) of installation

So... megawatt of what?

This reminds me of Square Kilometers all over again...

[PTTG??]

So, what are the means of which someone like myself can protect myself against my ISP selling my personal information and other such things to advertisers? Now that our government is most assuredly going to repeal any amount of protection we have.

Uninstall your network cards, mainly. I for one am switching to hand-encrypted letters to my friends.

[Strife26]

So, what are the means of which someone like myself can protect myself against my ISP selling my personal information and other such things to advertisers? Now that our government is most assuredly going to repeal any amount of protection we have.

Uninstall your network cards, mainly. I for one am switching to hand-encrypted letters to my friends.

Pretty much. If you want to save time on the encryption, I wrote a program to do it that I'll totally license copies of.

[Neonivek]

What I hate is whenever the US creates a stupid backwards law... Canada has to follow suit.

We actually have propaganda videos on how this new border patrol thing is a good thing (Thanks USA!)

A HUGE factor as to why we haven't legalized weed is because of the USA.