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- GhostWithToast, on 10/10/2007, -1/+12I thought all plants were solar.
- 11Heather, on 10/10/2007, -1/+10Go Europe! C'mon California and Australia, play catchup - you've both got loadasunshine.
- jimmick, on 10/10/2007, -0/+55000 Spanish homes, what's that like, 2, maybe 3 American homes?
- fgsfds, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4Challenger meets Chernobyl.
Also, hauling stuff into space costs about $30k per kg IIRC, and radioactive isotopes are called heavy for a reason. - BigManOnCampus, on 10/10/2007, -3/+7"Large Scale Solar Plants are here" ??!?!?!??
You mean Sequoias? They've been around for eons.
/tongue-removed-from-cheek - Shorties, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3I thought wind was better then solar... anyone know? What generates more energy compared to the space it takes up?
- silverchrysalis, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3they have surgery available for that tongue problem, you know
- Shorties, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3As big of a fan I am of Nuclear plants over coal, they just arent the answer. The radioactive waste has to be buried where no one will find it, plus if you decommission a nuclear plant you can't touch it for hundreds of years.
- fgsfds, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Sadly, the El Dorado Valley plant provides only 64MW for it's 250acre footprint (A little over 1 square km), which works out to 3.9 acres per MW
Rounding down, that works out to 250,000km^2 for 16TW of production - the global energy consumption a few years ago, rounded down to the nearest TW.
Worse still, these plants won't work in the dark and will have greatly diminished power output on cloudy days and/or in winter. Those problems could be solved with a global energy grid, but such a system would be VERY complicated and expensive. Effectively, you're looking at more than quadrupling the power generation capacity in order to meet with the energy needs, and paving a million square KM of the planet is kind of an intimidating proposal.
If you want to move away from fossil fuel transportation, then you'll need to vastly exceed these numbers. Don't forget to keep in mind that not only is the population of the planet increasing, but the consumption per capita is going up as well - by the time you've completed these plants, expect to have more work waiting for you when you finish than when you started. - obxjdt, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Desert regions would be a great place for these. I'm all for it, and wind power too. I wish I could afford to buy solar panels and wind turbines for my house. Wouldn't it be great to be off of "the grid".
- noahhoward, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2What your teacher failed to tell you is batteries and distribution aren't even close. I think there was something on digg sometime though about the number of solar panels needed it actually put them on a map.
- subterfuge, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2well, the equipment required for wind power is a lot less complex, although it's a lot bigger. also, wind plants can be built offshore so they basically take up no space, although i guess you could do that with solar plants, too . . . overall it's a better alternative to solar right now, but we can't catch much solar energy at the moment
- Eccles, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2> Not true. The problem is the volume of waste, and you can thank President Carter for making that a problem.
Ford "sort of" started the policy in 1976, and Reagan rescinded the policy in 1982. I think 25 years is a bit long to be blaming a Carter-era policy.
Reprocessing has also been a messy business. Perhaps we'd be better at it now, but "past development and use of PUREX gave us the notorious underground tanks at Hanford, Washington, and Savannah River, South Carolina."
Nuke plants haven't been built mostly because the economics haven't worked relative to coal plants. I recommend a carbon tax (with the proceeds distributed evenly to every U.S. citizen) to even out the externalities, and then if nuclear plants are economically viable, build 'em! - fgsfds, on 10/10/2007, -2/+4Not true. The problem is the volume of waste, and you can thank President Carter for making that a problem.
Fuel reprocessing takes that REALLY radioactive waste and removes what we can use from it. We can then sort out what's left based on how bad it is. The really bad stuff we can just store for a few years and wait for it to calm down, the somewhat bad stuff we can bury because we don't want to have it kicking around above ground for 500 years or so, the usable fuel we use, and the mild stuff we dispose of however seems the most appropriate - probably sending the water-insoluble parts out barges to slowly let it out across the oceans, and burying what's left.
Now let me explain some things before you bury ME.
The most important thing is how radioisotopes work. Each isotope has a half-life, a decay energy, a decay particle, and a decay product.
The half-life tells you how long it will be until half of a given radioisotope has decayed. This means that isotopes with short half-lives decay rapidly. You can work the math out yourself, but the probability of any given atom decaying in a given second is is 1/(2 * isotope half-life in seconds). By way of example, for an isotope with a half-life of 10 seconds, there is a 1 in 20 chance that any given atom will decay in any given second. When you multiply this by the number of atoms, you can tell how many atoms will decay in a given second on average. If you have 100 atoms with a half-life of 10 seconds, you can expect an average of 100*(1/(2*10))=5 decays per second.
In short, the shorter the half-life the more radioactive it is.
The decay particle is what it emits when it decays.
Alpha emitters give-off what amounts to Helium atoms. This the most dangerous to live tissue, but it bounces harmlessly off of your dead skin cells. The only real risk that Alpha emitters pose is if you somehow get it into your system. This is why Radon is so dangerous - you breath it in, and it starts bashing on living cells.
Beta emitters are far less damaging in terms of live-cell exposure, but what they lack in raw harm they make up in penetration power. You need radiation shielding to protect yourself from beta radiation, as it will go right through your dead-skin alpha-blocker and damage living tissue there.
There are also Gamma rays and Neutron emission - the two most dangerous - but those you should read-up on yourself.
Decay energy is how much energy a an isotope gives it's decay particle when it decays. The more energy, the more damage the particle can do before it's stopped - for very high energies, this can mean inducing radiation into an atom. Isotopes with a short half-lives and high decay energies are the most radioactive, while isotopes with long half-lives and low decay energies are the least radioactive. When somebody says that nuclear waste "Will be no less deadly in ten million years!", that actually means that you could probably eat it right now, if it wouldn't cause heavy metal poisoning.
The decay product is what an isotope turns into when it decays. Generally, this isn't much of an issue. Isotopes with short half-lives that decay into short-lived isotopes pose no additional challenges, while isotopes with long half-lives won't build up enough of the short-lived decay products to pose any kind of threat.
When you reprocess fuel, you take what you can use (mostly Uranium and Plutonium, which form the bulk of both the mass and weight. However, some reactors can use other decay products), and sort the rest out by type. Useful fuel goes on to be reused, depleted fuel goes to either storage or breeder reactors, and the waste products can be disposed of as needed. Yes, fuel reprocessing presents a 'proliferation risk', but President Carter's decision to waste perfectly good fuel has done nothing to stop proliferation anyway, and if North Korea and China are going to build bombs no matter what the US does do then it might as well reduce, reuse, and recycle.
Fuel reprocessing reduces the need to mine more fuel, reduces the amount of waste to be disposed of, and reduces the length for which it must be stored.
As for oceanic dispersal: The problem isn't the radiation, it's the concentration. Everything is radioactive to some extent; Uranium exists pretty much everywhere (rocks, dirt, the ocean) at a concentration of around 1.5ppm, for example. Plants and animals wouldn't be able to survive without the ability to fix the damage caused by background radiation, and so you only really get problems when the local radiation is too much for your body to take. By dispersing radioactive waste over a wide area, the maximum dosage received by any one creature will be negligible next to background radiation. Completely aside from that, water is an excellent radiation shield. I completely oppose outright dumping, however, as that wouldn't decrease the concentration at all.
The short of it is that nuclear waste is only a problem because a failed socio-political policy made it a problem, and there are viable solutions that seem insane until they have been explained.
Keeping in mind that IANANP (and that Wikipedia is just a google search away), does anybody have any questions? - vsaint, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Am I the only one that laughed at the Israeli company being named "Juwi Solar"?
- Rentun, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Heh.
I think you've been reading a little bit too much sci-fi buddy.
Fusion power isn't even CLOSE to being a viable energy source yet. It requires far more output than the heat and power necessary to generate the reaction. If we could find a way to lower the heat needed to start the fusion, then we'd be on to something. Hence "Cold Fusion". - ConfirmedCynic, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3Nuclear fission plants are hugely expensive, take a long time to build, and can be very expensive to maintain once they get old. Plus the problems of waste storage have not been resolved.
Solar is good for more than small scale these days. Look at solar thermal, for example, or CIGS solar. - inactive, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2They sure as hell are the answer for NOW. Better to bury the harmful stuff deep in the earth with lots of protection around it than release it into the air. "The answer" that you seem to be looking for simply will not exist for decades. So why not go with hte best we have available right now?
- grumpyrain, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Wind power is caused by capturing the wind caused by low and high pressure systems. High and low pressure systems are largely caused by the difference in solar energy in one area to another. So in one sense, Wind power is ultimately just solar power. Wind power still works at night time and is available in many more places.
In terms of wind power capacity, each turbine produces a relatively small amount of power. The largest turbines can produce under ideal winds about 6MW, although 500KW to 2MW is far more common. The turbines themselves take up little space but do require a certain distance between turbines so that the air flow is not reduced by surrounding turbines. The 1.3MW turbines I saw on my last holiday were about 60m tall with a blade length of about 60m. There is also other overhead, such as the DC-AC conversion and service roads. If you were to buy land specifically to place wind turbines, they would be incredibly expensive compared to the space taken up.
99% of the space around the turbines is still used for farming, with the power companies paying the farmers an agreed amount to use their land. The farmers don't mind because it allows them to diversify their income a little in case of a bad farming season, floods, droughts etc. - grumpyrain, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Actually, building materials are only a small part of the waste produced by the typical coal power plant.
A large coal plant can require 10,000 tons of coal PER DAY. This coal contains trace amounts of mercury, cadmium, uranium and thorium. In fact a 1GW coal plant can release over 30KG of uranium 235 into the atmosphere (as well as 5 ton and 12 ton respectively of uranium 238 and thorium).
Although photovoltaic cells have some nasty things like cadmium, less than 1 microgram per square metre is emitted over the lifecycle of the cell. For reference, a coal plant emits 3 times this amount PER KWHr! - 80hd, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Solution:
1.Cover the moon in high efficiency solar panels
2.move oodles of energy via resonant coupled transmission
3.leave the AC and Heat on at the same time and feel quite alright about it - ConfirmedCynic, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2It's pretty obvious that conventional coal fired plants have an unacceptably great environmental impact. Even if you put aside the impurities in coal that cause all kinds of problems with emissions, there's still CO2.
- Dbeneath, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1i thought it said "large scale polar bears are here" at first glance and was about to start crying.
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1This article pretty much answers the question. An that answer is no. Something that huge powering 5000 Spanish homes, which would be far fewer US homes. So, you'd only need about 100,000+ of these things to take care of the US. Just homes.
- Renton, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1And how do you expect to extract energy from a plant and convert it into electricity? Hey, we can burn them. Oh wait...
- obxjdt, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1haha, first I thought it said "planets", and thought WTF??? Then I thought the same as you 8-D
- 03FightOn, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Isn't that about 2200w/household, which at a 220v service is 10A/household? They should lead with the Nevada project, that's at a utility plant scale. California is building 29,500MW of conventional power currently......this plant doesn't begin to touch the scale needed..
- noahhoward, on 10/10/2007, -2/+3Instead of harnessing the little bit or radiation we can get out of the sun why aren't we building nuclear plants? Any good reasons?
Solar is good for small scale stuff but we are going to need some massive plants to get the energy we need until they figure out a way to get more power out of them. - bromac, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Move this comment system to /dev/null.
- slippy4twenty, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1further he probably wasn't thinking about the horrible waste created CREATING the solar cells.
- fgsfds, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1First: Nuclear power plants are construction-comparable to coal plants. They're more expensive, but they also produce far more power.
Second: Nuclear power plants are carbon-neutral, which is one of the key points of alternative energy.
Third: The extra build time comes from extra litigation and intense review. The first can't be solved, and the second is a damn good thing.
Fourth: The waste problem isn't that much of a problem if you don't try to *store* all of it. I wrote a mini-essay for digg about that as a response to the comment two up from you.
I would build a solar array for my house, but sadly I don't have the money for it. They'll need to come down in price before I'll be able to make my home a greener place. - bromac, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Hmm....never heard of that biofuel thing. Some plants are really good at storing energy. You eat some of them.
- bromac, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1You're right. They've been around for eons. And they have one of the best solar panels in the world.
Chlorophyll. - noahhoward, on 10/10/2007, -2/+3What's the problem with casting the waste off into space until we figure out what to do with it permanently? It'd be a drop in the bucket.
- fgsfds, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Political inertia. Carter said it would stop nuclear proliferation, so even though it did absolutely nothing to stop the spread of nukes people would STILL accuse anybody who started it back up of being pro-proliferation.
Yes, reprocessing is messy, no arguments there. I also agree that we should be much better at it now - for one thing, we have 30 more years of materials research, a VERY good idea of what reprocessing plants look like 30-years out, and all kinds of other factors that provide us with a lot more, a lot better, and a lot more accurate information.
As far as cost, the primary reason for the high cost is the red tape. A plant can be tied up in red tape and lawsuits for decades with no real progress, and if the company loses then the money spent so far on that site just goes away.
My goal was mostly to inform people about how radiation works (So many people say "It's so radioactive! It's not going to go away for billions of years!", for instance) and that there are more options besides just burying it. There's so much fear and misinformation about nuclear power that people refuse to even consider it an option, when the simple fact of the matter is that there is no way to rapidly decrease CO2 production without building alternative energy plants, and that there are no currently existing technologies which provide the stability, consistency, and capacity of output required of baseload plants besides fossil fuel and nuclear power.
Stability is how prone the system is to sudden changes in output.
Consistency is how well it can maintain it's power output.
Capacity is how much energy it can generate.
Solar can provide unstable, semi-consistent output, and only at a low to mid level capacity.
Wind can provide semi-consistent power in a decent capacity, but is not stable.
Hydro can provide very consistent and very stable power with high-capacity, but the number of plants that *could* be constructed is too low to provide the aggregate capacity needed.
Etc...
The problem with the popular alternative energy sources is that they're really only good as supplementary power, and there's no real way to store power without drastic losses. The power grid needs baseload plants, and that's something that people try to ignore out of a hope that it will go away. - fgsfds, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Chlorophyll is only about 2% efficient. Photovoltaic cells are getting close to 20%.
First-gen photovoltaic cells were about 2% efficient, but I wouldn't call them the best in the world. :D - Stevethegreat, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1What about a dynamic blend of wind and solar farms. I mean most of the times with the most sunshine wind is kinda low but solar plants can harness a lot more energy than the other days, while when the weather is moody (raining/clouds) you can be sure as hell that wind farms will work overtime. I think the more the cost of solar plants fall the more viable the solution I proposed would be.
- bromac, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1http://www.jgp.org/cgi/content/abstract/41/6/1113
Check out these algae that change pigments to absorb different wavelengths. I'm guessing that their increased efficiency is due to their being able to absorb a wider spectrum. Although the normal green wavelengths tend to diminish it. - fgsfds, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1More like 500km by 500km - assuming you neither want nor need power when the sun isn't shining.
I hate to defend the oil companies, but I don't think they need to squelch new energy technologies - look at the 'free energy' devices that the conspiracy theorists talk about some time, and see if they violate the laws of thermodynamics. I've seen devices that are supposedly able to take a fuel source, get energy from it, and have MORE fuel left over than before without any kind of 'source' material. I've seen items along the lines of that "burning-salt-water free energy" setup that was on digg the other day. I've seen NOTHING that seems even remotely plausible, and NOTHING that has stood up to testing.
What most likely happens is that somebody announces this great new free-energy system to the media, the media talks about how great it is, then it vanishes because it's a load of bull. When people wonder about where it went, they can't find any information on it and pin the blame on the people with the most to lose had it been real. - JQP123, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Large scale solar power plants consume lots of land. Then there are additional losses in efficiency needed for distribution. It's possible to avoid all this by covering existing surfaces, such as the sides and roofs of buildings or the tops of cars, with solar cells. Perhaps the biggest problem that remains is storage. We need an efficient way to store electricity for times when it can't be conveniently generated, such as at night or on cloudy days. Whoever can solve this problem will become enormously wealthy.
- arpad, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Trouble is, you don't need W, you need W/hr. Figure out the areal size necessary to generate an equivalent to global power consumption and things get a little nuts.
- fgsfds, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Global energy consumption averaged over 16TW a few years back. Not TWhr, but TW. If that common technology installation could provide all it's power over the year in one chunk, it would sate the world's power needs for less than two hours.
Checking your units kills all kinds of easy solutions. :/
Also, transmission losses are actually in the ballpark of 1%, which isn't all that bad if you factor in that some areas have a difference in solar radiation of FAR more than even 10%. - grumpyrain, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1> Global energy consumption averaged over 16TW a few years back. Not TWhr, but TW.
Yes, I had not realised Wikipedia was quoting in KW/hr not W/hr. I read 14,280,000,000,000 but this is in fact 14,280,000,000,000,000 W/hr
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electricity_consumption
> Also, transmission losses are actually in the ballpark of 1%, which isn't all that bad if you factor in that some areas have a difference in solar radiation of
> FAR more than even 10%.
Of course, but transmission loss is largely a function of distance. Most of the plants that power Sydney for example are on the Central Coast or just west of the mountains. This means that it is an effective transmission distance of approximately 100km. To build a large scale solar plant in northern Australia as the poster of this thread proposed was possible, you need to transport it at least 30 probably 40 times this distance. Again, if you look at the BOM radiation graph, you probably can build a solar plant within 100 - 300 km of Brisbane, but the bulk of Australia's population in Sydney and Melbourne are geographically too far away to be practical. - dancurranjr, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1If you want solar in the United States you should check out Free Solar Gear which is a very interesting program:
Citizenrē REnU program packages solar power for you in a simple and smart way. Plainly put, the Citizenrē Corporation pays for, installs, owns and operates the solar installation. You don’t have to worry about maintaining the equipment or any of the other concerns that come with making an investment into solar power. All you are required to do is pay for the electricity generated from these panels, at a fixed rate that is at or below your current electricity price, for up to twenty-five years.
Free Info at: www.FreeSolarGear.com - arpad, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1 And let us not forget that the simple areal calculation is misleading. You need access, which increases the required area. You'll need power conditioning equipment and installations, i.e. transformers in transformer yards. More land area.
Then there's electrical storage which is a whole 'nother issue since getting electricity 24/7 requires A) two or three times the area (or more) of solar cells as you'd need at high noon on a cloudless day and B) lots of additional money since power storage isn't, like sunlight and wind, free. Oh, and that power storage will require some land area dependent on the storage technology that's chosen.
The cost of transporting the electricity has to be added. Line losses, as grumpyrain point out, mean more electricity in to get the necessary amount, out. Since this is giga- or tera-watts of electricity it'll cost quite a bit to move from the middle of the desert, which is where everyone puts this stuff, to where people live.
Trouble is, sticking 'em in a desert will be tougher then anyone lets on. As soon as you've got a surveying crew checking out a location you'll have some enviro-wackos who would simply die if their particular bit of God-forsaken desert was besmirched by hundreds of square miles of artificial solar cells.
Oh why can't everyone live simply, close to nature and leave a light footprint on the planet? And get that f-ing solar power array out of my pristine, beautiful-in-its-starkness landscape.
Any of you who are love-smitten by the idea of a solar-powered future care to contend with the folks who want not a blade of grass crushed under the heavy foot of industrial civilization? Probably you'd end up ranting into a mirror seeing as how the people who're enraptured by a solar-powered humanity are the same folks who'd like to see 90% of the human race vanish. - vertinox, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Because I can't put a nuclear reactor in my back yard.
Trust me... I'd love one but there is that little thing of federal regulation and homeland security.
So the only way for an individual free himself of the grid would be cheap solar power and if it takes these large solar plants to drive research and bring venture capitalism into solar I'm all for it. That way in 5-10 years it will be cheep enough and efficient enough for me to buy my own and not rely on centralized services. The key for a successful economy is decentralization and currently the nuclear program is completely centralized and regulated by the federal government. - mountainsurfer, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0I'm so tired of going to look at articles and having to scroll DOWN because I can't see the start of the article due to Google ads. There's nothing wrong with monetizing your website and I don't mind ads. But when I have to scroll down to even see the damn article because you think the ads are more important than the content you get... BURIED.
- denver1976, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0California has operated large scale solar plants since the 1980s!!! Surprised??? One example in southern california are the SEGS (solar electric generating stations) plants operated by FPL (Florida Power and Light) - see link below. There is a total of over 300 MW from 7 plants (SEGS III - SEGS IX), far bigger than the 11 MW one sited in Spain. http://www.fplenergy.com/portfolio/contents/segs_viii.shtml
- denver1976, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0California has operated large scale solar plants since at least the 1980s!!! Surprised??? One example in southern california are the SEGS (solar electric generating stations) plants operated by FPL (Florida Power and Light) - see link below. There is a total of over 300 MW from 7 plants (SEGS III - SEGS IX), far bigger than the 11 MW one sited in Spain. http://www.fplenergy.com/portfolio/contents/segs_viii.shtml
- subterfuge, on 10/10/2007, -2/+2noahhoward didnt just say "fission" - he said "nuclear". china's already built an experimental fusion reactor. fusion is a great source of energy because you CANT RUN OUT OF FUEL, there is no chance of a meltdown, and it provides enormous amounts of energy. a tomahawk reactor is being built in europe as part of an international project, too. america has not commissioned any fusion reactors.
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