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Few will dispute any of that. I don't think there's a person here who wouldn't like ubiquitous solar power! But when the alternative is coal, nuclear power is

Few will dispute any of that. I don't think there's a person here who wouldn't like ubiquitous solar power! But when the alternative is coal, nuclear power is less polluting, less radioactive and less likely to kill you.

TeMPOraL 11y ago
And we can't have ubiquitous solar power out of energy density issues, and even if we managed to set aside enough land, we probably won't be able to do that in time to matter. That's why nuclear is a good option - its clean and energy-dense and good enough to cover not only our present needs but future as well. Also, solar and nuclear are not mutually exclusive.
- paulmd 11y ago
  Not just energy density, it's also a stability issue. A significant chunk of energy usage is constant (base load), and there's also a fraction that varies over time as everyone comes home after work and turns on their air conditioners and ovens (peak load). Base load is ideally handled by an energy-dense approach that produces a very stable level of power. Peak load can be handled with more variable sources of energy, but at the end of the day these are usually backed up by gas-fired plants that can be quickly spooled up to match demand. The problem with photovoltaic solar is that its capacity undergoes a significant level of variance on both an instantaneous and a medium-term scale (time of day). As such it's best treated as a peak source. Otherwise you need enormous, enormous batteries to try and smooth the load. Using electric car batteries and so on is a good idea from the perspective of the utility, but it's a raw deal for the consumer. The lifetime of a battery is limited by charge/discharge cycles as well as time, and they're stealing your cycles. A replacement battery is an enormous chunk of change, it's about the same cost as replacing an engine. Note that this is not true of all solar techniques. For example, there's a solar-concentration technique that stores heat in molten salt, which helps to smooth out short-to-medium variation. When you lose the sun, you get a smooth curve that deteriorates over a period of hours to days rather than an instant dropoff. This is suitable for use as a base source.
  - PhantomGremlin 11y ago
    This is suitable for use as a base source. Perhaps it eventually will be, but there are still some bugs. E.g. Ivanpah[1]: "15 months after starting up, the plant is producing just 40% of [its expected more than a million megawatt-hours of electricity each year], according to data from the U.S. Energy Department." To me, the attraction of PV solar is that there are no moving parts. Long term that just has to be the way to go. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivanpah_Solar_Power_Facility#Performance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivanpah_Solar_Power_Facility#P...
vidarh 11y ago
> I don't think there's a person here who wouldn't like ubiquitous solar power! I wouldn't say I don't want it, but it's a toss-up at the moment whether solar in the long term will be safer than nuclear. Rooftop solar kills far more than nuclear per unit of energy thanks to installation accidents (put lots of people on roofs => some proportion falls off and dies) Larger solar plants may turn out to be safe enough, but they too have accidents from everything like mining the sand and other components for the photovoltaics to installation accidents and accidents during maintenance. We'll see whether or not as volume ramps up that rate remains low enough to be "competitive" with nuclear.
Spooky23 11y ago
Muhahaha. Just wait! Typical arguments will be something like that nobody has ever died as a result of a nuclear energy accident. More people have died falling off of roofs installing solar panels, falling into the concrete during the construction of hydro dams, choking on chicken bones while operating natural gas plants, etc. The increased cancers and infant mortality after Three Mile Island are either waved away or "not directly caused by an accident". The shitshow regarding safe disposal of radioactive waste is conveniently ignored. Even in the case of coal, which is an awful fuel for a variety of reasons, at least you're dispersing a known quantity of radioactive material and we can plan around that or set long term expectations. It's a known high risk/known impact phenomenon. What happens if incompetence, natural disaster or malicious actor disrupts the cooling ponds where radioactive waste products are stored? You have a low risk/very high impact event that could produce a long term public health crisis.
- johncolanduoni 11y ago
  > Even in the case of coal, which is an awful fuel for a variety of reasons, at least you're dispersing a known quantity of radioactive material and we can plan around that or set long term expectations. The bigger health threat from coal is not radioactivity, but general degradation in air quality that is hazardous to human health. This is a not only high risk but guaranteed phenomenon with very high impact. Deaths due to nuclear accidents are generally estimated to be several orders of magnitude less than those due to coal in terms of deaths/KWH [1]. Even if we assume that these figures are off by 10000%, nuclear is still drastically safer than coal, even in the countries that have laws like the US's Clean Air Act which "plan around" the pollution of coal (let alone places like China with no such regulation). We have so much leeway here that we can add nuclear accidents becoming 5x more common per plant to the 10000% error and still be competitive with coal. [1]: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-price-always-paid/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-de...
  - Symmetry 11y ago
    And I keep posting this but even Fukushima, which actually exploded, didn't kill any more people per kwh over it's lifetime than a typical coal plant. http://hopefullyintersting.blogspot.com/2013/12/fukushima-vs-coal.html http://hopefullyintersting.blogspot.com/2013/12/fukushima-vs...

TeMPOraL 11y ago

And we can't have ubiquitous solar power out of energy density issues, and even if we managed to set aside enough land, we probably won't be able to do that in time to matter. That's why nuclear is a good option - its clean and energy-dense and good enough to cover not only our present needs but future as well. Also, solar and nuclear are not mutually exclusive.

paulmd 11y ago
Not just energy density, it's also a stability issue. A significant chunk of energy usage is constant (base load), and there's also a fraction that varies over time as everyone comes home after work and turns on their air conditioners and ovens (peak load). Base load is ideally handled by an energy-dense approach that produces a very stable level of power. Peak load can be handled with more variable sources of energy, but at the end of the day these are usually backed up by gas-fired plants that can be quickly spooled up to match demand. The problem with photovoltaic solar is that its capacity undergoes a significant level of variance on both an instantaneous and a medium-term scale (time of day). As such it's best treated as a peak source. Otherwise you need enormous, enormous batteries to try and smooth the load. Using electric car batteries and so on is a good idea from the perspective of the utility, but it's a raw deal for the consumer. The lifetime of a battery is limited by charge/discharge cycles as well as time, and they're stealing your cycles. A replacement battery is an enormous chunk of change, it's about the same cost as replacing an engine. Note that this is not true of all solar techniques. For example, there's a solar-concentration technique that stores heat in molten salt, which helps to smooth out short-to-medium variation. When you lose the sun, you get a smooth curve that deteriorates over a period of hours to days rather than an instant dropoff. This is suitable for use as a base source.
- PhantomGremlin 11y ago
  This is suitable for use as a base source. Perhaps it eventually will be, but there are still some bugs. E.g. Ivanpah[1]: "15 months after starting up, the plant is producing just 40% of [its expected more than a million megawatt-hours of electricity each year], according to data from the U.S. Energy Department." To me, the attraction of PV solar is that there are no moving parts. Long term that just has to be the way to go. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivanpah_Solar_Power_Facility#Performance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivanpah_Solar_Power_Facility#P...

vidarh 11y ago

> I don't think there's a person here who wouldn't like ubiquitous solar power! I wouldn't say I don't want it, but it's a toss-up at the moment whether solar in the long term will be safer than nuclear. Rooftop solar kills far more than nuclear per unit of energy thanks to installation accidents (put lots of people on roofs => some proportion falls off and dies) Larger solar plants may turn out to be safe enough, but they too have accidents from everything like mining the sand and other components for the photovoltaics to installation accidents and accidents during maintenance. We'll see whether or not as volume ramps up that rate remains low enough to be "competitive" with nuclear.

Spooky23 11y ago

Muhahaha. Just wait! Typical arguments will be something like that nobody has ever died as a result of a nuclear energy accident. More people have died falling off of roofs installing solar panels, falling into the concrete during the construction of hydro dams, choking on chicken bones while operating natural gas plants, etc. The increased cancers and infant mortality after Three Mile Island are either waved away or "not directly caused by an accident". The shitshow regarding safe disposal of radioactive waste is conveniently ignored. Even in the case of coal, which is an awful fuel for a variety of reasons, at least you're dispersing a known quantity of radioactive material and we can plan around that or set long term expectations. It's a known high risk/known impact phenomenon. What happens if incompetence, natural disaster or malicious actor disrupts the cooling ponds where radioactive waste products are stored? You have a low risk/very high impact event that could produce a long term public health crisis.

johncolanduoni 11y ago
> Even in the case of coal, which is an awful fuel for a variety of reasons, at least you're dispersing a known quantity of radioactive material and we can plan around that or set long term expectations. The bigger health threat from coal is not radioactivity, but general degradation in air quality that is hazardous to human health. This is a not only high risk but guaranteed phenomenon with very high impact. Deaths due to nuclear accidents are generally estimated to be several orders of magnitude less than those due to coal in terms of deaths/KWH [1]. Even if we assume that these figures are off by 10000%, nuclear is still drastically safer than coal, even in the countries that have laws like the US's Clean Air Act which "plan around" the pollution of coal (let alone places like China with no such regulation). We have so much leeway here that we can add nuclear accidents becoming 5x more common per plant to the 10000% error and still be competitive with coal. [1]: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-price-always-paid/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-de...
- Symmetry 11y ago
  And I keep posting this but even Fukushima, which actually exploded, didn't kill any more people per kwh over it's lifetime than a typical coal plant. http://hopefullyintersting.blogspot.com/2013/12/fukushima-vs-coal.html http://hopefullyintersting.blogspot.com/2013/12/fukushima-vs...