solar energy kills about 110x more people than nuclear?

Except that there is not one known fatality involving a wind farm (last time the question came up). I think there has been some serious relativity involved in creating these "figures". A fatal construction accident while erecting some solar panels on a roof for instance can only be spuriously interpreted as a death caused by solar energy.

Nuclear energy is very tricky too. It's a "buy now, pay later" scheme. It is relatively safe and clean (nowadays) but the real repayments will not become obvious until a large stockpile of nuclear waste has been managed for a few millennia.

 

The same semiconductors that are present in your processor, gpu, mobile phone, car, etc? Those things that are made of silicon, one of the most abundant elements in earth's crust and also not radioactive?

There is also the fact that you no longer need wafers of pure silicon to produce solar panels, just paint the solar panel on a conductive film and off you go.

It depends on what wind farm you are thinking about, you don't always need land to put them on, there are offshore sites, you can also put vertical ones on top of tall buildings or houses that exist in wind corridors or near the ocean (like ports and marinas), wind generators can also co-exist with people that grow cattle and food around them.

There is also one interesting thing, nuclear reactors, coal fired plants, diesel plants, etc... suffer from the NIMBY effect, solar panels and small wind generators do not.
This means that you can use the same space were people live without to much trouble.


OR we can do like the other guy on the other thread wants to do and destroy every single solar panel and wind generator and give everyone in the planet the chance to make nuclear reactors and access to nuclear fuel.

edit: the movement for soy and corn based biofuels is above stupid if it was for you, especially if you consider that this is much less efficient than solar panels, as in, you would need much more terrain to produce the same amount of energy, by some people there is a difference of 100x times the efficiency.

 

Come on, Nexxo, you're slipping.

 

Must have been that blade that embedded itself in my memory cortex.

 

No, very different semiconductors actually. Yes, they're often based on silicon, but they're doped with metals that certainly aren't abundant, and are extremely expensive to mine and refine. Without spending significant money on research and development/subsidies, photovoltaics don't make sense anyway - you might as well use the land for wind power. Were you aware that if you buy a PV array today, it takes 4 years to pay back the amount of energy used to produce it?

My point was that nuclear power is more sustainable than PV cells, and I've yet to see anyone prove me wrong.

It's really not that simple. I used to work in the department where they were researching that, and it's an extremely expensive process that's limited to the lab at the moment. With enough funding and time it would be viable, but you could say the same thing of nuclear power.

Yes, you could put them in all those places, but you'll need a hell of a lot of space. Regardless of where you put them, there were three whole days last year in the UK when there wasn't enough wind to generate any power. Wind power is a nice idea, but it needs something to back it up. As people have said, nuclear power is a very useful way of complementing other renewables and easing the transition.

To nexxo/cpemma: yes, maybe that 100 figure is completely made up. I can't see where they would have got it from.

Maybe where you live, but here in England there is a lot of opposition to wind farms. They're noisy and ugly in a very NIMBY way as far as most people are concerned.

 

IIRC they are doped with aluminium for the P type or phosphorous for the N type....

Yes i was aware, but did you know that generation 3 solar panels take about 1 month to pay back the amount of energy used to produce it? that happens with Nanosolar's (the guys that tried to sell that solar panel on ebay) technology, or so they say.

why put solar panels on land? why not cover roof tiles with the stuff and make a huge distributed solar panel of your town's roofs? (i have even seen them put normal bulky ones on the side of a building, and it looks quite nice)

if you were researching that then you will find the next video very nice

i am talking about silent vertical wind turbines:

http://www.pacwind.net/
http://www.quietrevolution.co.uk/
http://www.mariahpower.com/
http://www.helixwind.com/en/

they are relatively silent, don't need to be pointed to the wind, work in turbulent wind, are compact'ish and the motor parts are low on the device so maintenance is cheaper, they do have less efficiency compared to the horizontal ones.

some of them look quite nice

I completely agree, nuclear power has its place, but, nuclear power is not a silver bullet that everyone talks about, what we need is a mixed system of power sources and places to store the excess energy (think reversible hydro and V2G system like project better place or acpropulsion), thus using what is more abundant where you are installing your systems.

Another interesting system is the Gorlov helical turbine: http://www.gcktechnology.com/GCK/pg2.html that is the base for some of the above wind turbine systems.

 

Photovoltaics: Nanosolar looks like complete snakeoil to me. They're claiming almost 20% efficiency, while the people I met were pleased with ~10% and had submitted their work to a peer-reviewed scientific journal. Nanosolar haven't had any involvement with the scientific community, or delivered a demonstration open to scrutiny, which are both standard signs of a scam. Even if it's not a scam, they claim that one of their primary ingredients is indium, which is (as I've already said a few times) a rare metal that's going to run out in less than a couple of decades.

Wind farms: Vertical ones are no better because looks are subjective, you need even more of them, and they're still not reliable if there's no wind. Reversible hydro would help, but again, there's not enough lakes/rivers/valleys to dam in England that would provide any meaningful amount of power.

And yes, a compromise is best. However, what we need is a group of professional people (without a conflict of interest) who know a lot about the subject to research and deliver a report explaining what is feasible and what is not. We don't need biased climate change campaigners and irresponsible MPs removing science from the equation. All of the reports commissioned by the UK government have concluded that we need a lot of nuclear power if we're going to get rid of coal. All of these reports have been slammed as 'irresponsible' or 'wrong' by the idiots at greenpeace, who are now just wasting everyone's time. Nuclear is clearly the way main route forward, but that's not to say wind doesn't have a role.

 

Exactly, it's not the ideal way forward but it's the only way forward. Hopefully, even within 100 years we will have a completely, reliable, renewable, safe and cheap power scource with potential for expansion however until then we are going to have to rely on nuclear fuel sources.

 

The only thing i wish is to avoid nuclear proliferation and the act of giving certain irresponsible countries access to said technology.

In my case standard solar panels, wind generators and hydro would be enough to feed the entire island, no need for nuclear, chuck in efficient house hold devices like LED lighting and you need less power.

Nanosolar is using something called CIGS, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copper_indium_gallium_selenide,

 

Tidal power!
As long as we don't blow up the moon we should be good.

 

Only good if there's any usuable land left, look at the Hoover dam.

I wouldn't Mind Nuclear Power, if only because:

1. Solar Power toady(note: today not tommorow) needs quite a bit of maintenance(providing the area is clear(most clear areas are desert now), and also quite a chunk of money.

2. Wind is horridly inefficient, at least conventional ones, they're also dangers, wasteful(space and materials), and produce barely enough energy to compensate.

3. Nuclear Power is much safer today than it is of yesteryear, hell even the Nuclear Waste can be used as energy now.

4. Hydro Powered Dams destroy the enviorment, the rest use up tons of space.

Those 4 are pretty much the only reasons I can think of as of now.

 

unless you consider those floating sausages that produce energy with the ondulation from the sea.

 

Umm... not Hydroelectric but tidal. As in oceans, High tide, Low tide.

 

You know what I mean.!

 

I like nuclear power not just because of those "death rates" but it's an amazing source of power


and it makes your pee glow in the dark

 

Hiroshima says "I bed to differ".

In other news did you hear about the guy who survived both atom bombs? (that sounds like the start to a joke doesn't it)

 

^^^

I think that a major rethink is required. People think of power in terms of big, centralised plants. What about smaller, decentralised self-sufficiency solutions? Solar panels cost a lot, but solar collectors are fairly cheap: run an array of pipes under your average supermarket parking lot (or on its roof) is enough to significantly cut its heating bills... There are ground heat pumps which can be sunk in your own back garden, and solar collectors which can be mounted on your roof. Every rural property can have its own small wind turbine. Stuff like that.

 

Heating uses about 50% of power in the UK, and almost 100% of that comes from fossil fuels. The other energy use is divided between transport and power generation. We know cars are about 10% efficient (most of the energy goes into moving air and destroying your brake pads, even if the engine itself is 40% efficient), and thermal power stations are 40-50% efficient. If you could get everyone an electric car (hydrogen, not batteries as there isn't enough lithium to give everyone an electric car), and power those off localised power stations that do combined heat and power, you could cut CO₂ emissions hugely, even if you stuck with coal. Building all that would be extremely expensive though.

Solar water heating (combined with an electric booster for when there's no sun) is a great idea, and works pretty well. Windmill powered heat pumps aren't great though, because digging the pipes is a major effort compared to what you get back, and you need several windmills to power a big enough heat pump, even if you're on a windy island in scotland.

 

ch424
From where will you get the hydrogen?
And don't fuel cells contain rare metals?