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Land usage is a big factor. Most people are interested in solar because they care about the environment so taken up vast swathes of land for all the solar panel

Land usage is a big factor. Most people are interested in solar because they care about the environment so taken up vast swathes of land for all the solar panels, destroying habits, is counter productive. Another downside of solar or wind is that it is intermittent and thus will require massive battery systems or alternative conventional power plants to provide energy the rest of the time.

dangerface 6y ago
If you are short on space for your solar panels put them on your roof, problem solved. There are cheaper better ways of storing electricity like water stores, and this is what they use not batteries, they have never used batteries thats just a Tesla thing.
- evgen 6y ago
  > put them on your roof, problem solved. This is why solar kills more people every year than nuclear, and your hydro storage and batteries are not even a drop in the ocean compared to total load or daily capacity of even a small grid.
  - dangerface 6y ago
    Wha? Becuase stuff falls off your roof and kills them? How does that compare to tiles falling off your roof and killing people? This doesn't sound like a real thing. Hydro storage is quite literaly a drop in the ocean, get it.
    - evgen 6y ago
      No, because people installing solar routinely fall and die. Because of the low power density of renewables like wind and solar you need a lot of installation sites and constant maintenance of same, which means a lot of opportunities for people to have fatal accidents. Nuclear has the lowest death rate per joule of energy provided of any available power source.
      - socialdemocrat 6y ago
        That must be one of the most desperate arguments I’ve seen in favor of nuclear power. You might as well argue agains people having roofs because more people have accidents laying roof tiles. You got to have a roof and you might as well put in something like Tesla solar tiles which serve as both solar cells and roof tiles.
        dodobirdlord 6y ago
        It's kinda silly, but that's also the point. People who think nuclear power is dangerous are silly. Solar power is more dangerous simply from the number of people falling off of roofs!
        socialdemocrat 6y ago
        It is dangerous but in an entirely different way. Saying nuclear isn’t dangerous is like saying terrorism isn’t dangerous because more people die fitting roof tiles. Like a terrorist attack, a nuclear accident, especially a meltdown is a concentrated dramatic event with serious psychological trauma. One of the really profound effects of Chernobyl was the mental health problems it induced on a large portion on the population. You got areas in Ukraine such as Rivne where 1/3 of babies born have deformations. What does that psychological do to people living there you think? There was hundreds of thousands of cleanup workers and they have 3x the cancer rate of the rest of the population. Yet the UN claims Chernobyl caused no more cancer because they look at the whole Ukrainian population and its cancer numbers which is really hard to do for a country which went through an economic collapse. In short a lot of official statistics on the impact of nuclear power is highly misleading. Putting such statistics together with statistics of people falling of rooftops is utter nonsense.
  - bryanlarsen 6y ago
    Roofing is dangerous, but using a product such as Tesla or GB Sol solar tiles means that installing solar is no more dangerous than roofing without solar. Presuming you have to reroof anyways.
  - socialdemocrat 6y ago
    That is such a ridiculous and disingenuous argument. The numbers are minuscule compared to fossil fuels it is replacing. You make it sound like solar power is dangerous. That is total BS. And nuclear numbers are totally unreliable so this is just an apples to orange comparison anyway.
    - evgen 6y ago
      You have made a lot of claims about solar power that have been completely unsourced and are easily shown to be false. For all of the scary noises made by anti-nuclear activists it is actually a power source with an extremely good safety record. Solar and wind power kill more people every year, but the deaths are spread out and appear to be routine so no one really notices. This is why ignorant people are afraid to fly but have no problem driving hundreds of miles -- the incredibly rare airplane crashes kill hundreds and make headlines around the world while driving kills thousands every day and no one notices.
      - socialdemocrat 6y ago
        You haven't backed up a single claim, so get off your high horse. > actually a power source with an extremely good safety record. Sure... there are lies, damn lies as statistics. Read this e.g. https://www.euronews.com/2019/06/07/hit-series-chernobyl-has-people-sharing-their-memories-of-the-disaster https://www.euronews.com/2019/06/07/hit-series-chernobyl-has... It captures part of the story hidden by your "statistics" about nuclear power. Chernobyl was so full of lies and coverups that it is hard to know the full truth. What we know is that this accident has enormous cost and psychological impact all over the world. In my home country Norway 37 municipalities still struggle with radioactive fallout from Chernobyl 33 years later. It is affecting the agricultural sector. That is just my home country. This kind of issues exist all over Europe. I remember what this was like in the aftermath because I lived through it. But there is always some young punk who thinks he is a smart ass and knows everything, but never actually lived through it. You read some statistics years later, which doesn't capture of fraction of what it was like. Fukushima is the same lie. People are like, nobody died so it was all cool... yeah.... except the cleanup is a crazy complicated an massive job which by some estimates could cost up to 660 billion dollars. A smaller country experiencing such a disaster would have their whole economy destroyed by such an expense. I am a reasonable guy. I say we can keep the safest reactors. The rest we close down. Perhaps we build new reactors if they can prove the design sufficiently safe. This guys might be okay: https://usnc.com https://usnc.com But really I don't see the point. It is a risky power source, we don't really need more of given that we have excellent alternatives.
rtx 6y ago
Thanks for bringing up these two points. I have heard people saying lets put solar plats in deserts. They don't realize the deserts also have an Ecosystem.
- socialdemocrat 6y ago
  The analysis I have seen suggest the dessert would be better off with solar cells. It will cool the ground improving life conditions.
socialdemocrat 6y ago
Land usage is not as big problem as it seems. E.g. wind turbines must be spaced out far from each other but most of the land between them is perfectly usable for farming and animals. As for solar. For an average western country 50m2 of solar panels on top of each household covers all electricity needs of a country. Obviously this power is not delivered exactly when you want it but it is to give some perspective on the space required. And you don’t need massive batteries. Many countries are building pumped hydro to store power. You can use biomass, geothermal power. MMR and SMR reactors with molten salt thermal storage as a way of storing energy.
pfdietz 6y ago
The cost of land for PV is a small fraction of the cost of the PV put on that land. Land is very cheap in most of the world.

dangerface 6y ago

If you are short on space for your solar panels put them on your roof, problem solved. There are cheaper better ways of storing electricity like water stores, and this is what they use not batteries, they have never used batteries thats just a Tesla thing.

evgen 6y ago
> put them on your roof, problem solved. This is why solar kills more people every year than nuclear, and your hydro storage and batteries are not even a drop in the ocean compared to total load or daily capacity of even a small grid.
- dangerface 6y ago
  Wha? Becuase stuff falls off your roof and kills them? How does that compare to tiles falling off your roof and killing people? This doesn't sound like a real thing. Hydro storage is quite literaly a drop in the ocean, get it.
  - evgen 6y ago
    No, because people installing solar routinely fall and die. Because of the low power density of renewables like wind and solar you need a lot of installation sites and constant maintenance of same, which means a lot of opportunities for people to have fatal accidents. Nuclear has the lowest death rate per joule of energy provided of any available power source.
    - socialdemocrat 6y ago
      That must be one of the most desperate arguments I’ve seen in favor of nuclear power. You might as well argue agains people having roofs because more people have accidents laying roof tiles. You got to have a roof and you might as well put in something like Tesla solar tiles which serve as both solar cells and roof tiles.
      - dodobirdlord 6y ago
        It's kinda silly, but that's also the point. People who think nuclear power is dangerous are silly. Solar power is more dangerous simply from the number of people falling off of roofs!
        socialdemocrat 6y ago
        It is dangerous but in an entirely different way. Saying nuclear isn’t dangerous is like saying terrorism isn’t dangerous because more people die fitting roof tiles. Like a terrorist attack, a nuclear accident, especially a meltdown is a concentrated dramatic event with serious psychological trauma. One of the really profound effects of Chernobyl was the mental health problems it induced on a large portion on the population. You got areas in Ukraine such as Rivne where 1/3 of babies born have deformations. What does that psychological do to people living there you think? There was hundreds of thousands of cleanup workers and they have 3x the cancer rate of the rest of the population. Yet the UN claims Chernobyl caused no more cancer because they look at the whole Ukrainian population and its cancer numbers which is really hard to do for a country which went through an economic collapse. In short a lot of official statistics on the impact of nuclear power is highly misleading. Putting such statistics together with statistics of people falling of rooftops is utter nonsense.
- bryanlarsen 6y ago
  Roofing is dangerous, but using a product such as Tesla or GB Sol solar tiles means that installing solar is no more dangerous than roofing without solar. Presuming you have to reroof anyways.
- socialdemocrat 6y ago
  That is such a ridiculous and disingenuous argument. The numbers are minuscule compared to fossil fuels it is replacing. You make it sound like solar power is dangerous. That is total BS. And nuclear numbers are totally unreliable so this is just an apples to orange comparison anyway.
  - evgen 6y ago
    You have made a lot of claims about solar power that have been completely unsourced and are easily shown to be false. For all of the scary noises made by anti-nuclear activists it is actually a power source with an extremely good safety record. Solar and wind power kill more people every year, but the deaths are spread out and appear to be routine so no one really notices. This is why ignorant people are afraid to fly but have no problem driving hundreds of miles -- the incredibly rare airplane crashes kill hundreds and make headlines around the world while driving kills thousands every day and no one notices.
    - socialdemocrat 6y ago
      You haven't backed up a single claim, so get off your high horse. > actually a power source with an extremely good safety record. Sure... there are lies, damn lies as statistics. Read this e.g. https://www.euronews.com/2019/06/07/hit-series-chernobyl-has-people-sharing-their-memories-of-the-disaster https://www.euronews.com/2019/06/07/hit-series-chernobyl-has... It captures part of the story hidden by your "statistics" about nuclear power. Chernobyl was so full of lies and coverups that it is hard to know the full truth. What we know is that this accident has enormous cost and psychological impact all over the world. In my home country Norway 37 municipalities still struggle with radioactive fallout from Chernobyl 33 years later. It is affecting the agricultural sector. That is just my home country. This kind of issues exist all over Europe. I remember what this was like in the aftermath because I lived through it. But there is always some young punk who thinks he is a smart ass and knows everything, but never actually lived through it. You read some statistics years later, which doesn't capture of fraction of what it was like. Fukushima is the same lie. People are like, nobody died so it was all cool... yeah.... except the cleanup is a crazy complicated an massive job which by some estimates could cost up to 660 billion dollars. A smaller country experiencing such a disaster would have their whole economy destroyed by such an expense. I am a reasonable guy. I say we can keep the safest reactors. The rest we close down. Perhaps we build new reactors if they can prove the design sufficiently safe. This guys might be okay: https://usnc.com https://usnc.com But really I don't see the point. It is a risky power source, we don't really need more of given that we have excellent alternatives.

rtx 6y ago

Thanks for bringing up these two points. I have heard people saying lets put solar plats in deserts. They don't realize the deserts also have an Ecosystem.

socialdemocrat 6y ago
The analysis I have seen suggest the dessert would be better off with solar cells. It will cool the ground improving life conditions.

socialdemocrat 6y ago

Land usage is not as big problem as it seems. E.g. wind turbines must be spaced out far from each other but most of the land between them is perfectly usable for farming and animals. As for solar. For an average western country 50m2 of solar panels on top of each household covers all electricity needs of a country. Obviously this power is not delivered exactly when you want it but it is to give some perspective on the space required. And you don’t need massive batteries. Many countries are building pumped hydro to store power. You can use biomass, geothermal power. MMR and SMR reactors with molten salt thermal storage as a way of storing energy.

pfdietz 6y ago

The cost of land for PV is a small fraction of the cost of the PV put on that land. Land is very cheap in most of the world.