५ फेब्रुवारी, २०१९

"Historically, the antinuclear movement didn’t emerge from environmental concerns, which is why arguments for nuclear’s environmental advantages often fall on deaf ears."

"The movement originated out of a panic among European and American intellectuals in the 1950s and ’60s about overpopulation, expressed most luridly in such popular books as the entomologist Paul Ehrlich’s 1969 'The Population Bomb.' They believed more power plants would exacerbate human density and urban growth. But nuclear power champions like Alvin Weinberg, the longtime director of America’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, countered that nuclear could supply energy enough to forestall the social collapse the neo-Malthusians feared. In the end, the green revolution and the demographic transition that followed third-world economic development met food needs and limited population growth, now predicted to level off at 10 billion by 2100. But by then nuclear power was anathema to the Democratic Party and American and European Greens, a tragic misalignment of liberal values. The tide may be turning. Politics may catch up with necessity. But the 'Green New Deal' recently championed in Congress includes even existing nuclear power production only grudgingly, and promotes the notion that 'A Bright Future' disputes — that 100 percent renewables can save the day."

From "A Sensible Climate Change Solution, Borrowed From Sweden" by Richard Rhodes, reviewing "A Bright Future/How Some Countries Have Solved Climate Change and the Rest Can Follow," Joshua S. Goldstein and Staffan A. Qvis.

८१ टिप्पण्या:

rhhardin म्हणाले...

Nuclear power can keep windmills turning even in still air. That's the argument to use.

stevew म्हणाले...

Folks that support decommissioning of fossil fuel based energy production and replacement with all renewable energy sources and that oppose nuclear power generation, are at least consistent in their ignorance of actual and practical science.

Kalli Davis म्हणाले...

Historical Revisionism.

Jersey Fled म्हणाले...

"Greens" and "sensible" should never be used in the same sentence.

Greg म्हणाले...

100% renewables is an environmental disaster. Wind and solar require an enormous amount of space compared to coal, gas or nuclear. Storage density for batteries is tiny and unlikely to improve any time soon. South Australia spent billions on back up batteries for when the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow - they got 120MW that will only cover 1 hour before the lights and everything else goes out. The main reason I'm skeptical of the alarmists regarding climate change is that the solutions they offer are so impractical they can be considered stupid. So why should I believe their 'science'.

David Begley म्हणाले...

And all of those predictions were massively wrong. Just like the CAGW predictions that, like, we have, like, only 12 years left.

Bill, Republic of Texas म्हणाले...

The movement originated out of a panic among European and American intellectuals

Well there's your problem, right there.

Gospace म्हणाले...

The European and American anti-nuclear movements had the same origin is correct.

Soviet agitprop.

Placing the origin elsewhere is historical revisionism.

tim maguire म्हणाले...
ही टिप्पणी लेखकाना हलविली आहे.
tim maguire म्हणाले...

Since we can't stop the climate from changing (even if you believe we can eliminate "human caused global warming"), a sensible climate change solution is to get as rich as we can so we have the resources to cope with whatever the earth throws at us.

Which means doing absolutely nothing to combat CAGW. It's the only sane rational choice no matter what you think of CO2 and the greenhouse effect.

jaydub म्हणाले...

The premise that one country, particularly one the size of Sweden, could "solve climate change" is absurd. Sweden may cut it's CO2 emissions by 40%, but the resulting practical effect on climate change will be nada, zero, zip-point-shit, and that's assuming CO2 has the worse case affect that the climate alarmists espouse. China, for example, is building a new coal fired power plant a week. Can one of the blog's resident leftists explain to me how Sweden's piddling potential cuts negate China's massive increases so as to solve climate change?

traditionalguy म्हणाले...
ही टिप्पणी लेखकाना हलविली आहे.
अनामित म्हणाले...

In the end, the green revolution and the demographic transition that followed third-world economic development met food needs and limited population growth, now predicted to level off at 10 billion by 2100.

But if Third World population levels off we won't have the non-stop population increase that we're told is necessary to Grow Teh Economy. Whatever will we do if Third Worlders by the millions aren't pouring into developed countries?

I guess we're doomed, doomed! any way you look at it.

traditionalguy म्हणाले...

Malthus intrigued the European and American intelectuals with the idea of an ultimate power they could weild: A need to exterminate most people to do a needed good. And added to that power trip of righteously starving masses of people to death was the idea that they could be put to a slow, horrible death. That really excited the intellectuals 200 years ago, and it still does today.

Larry J म्हणाले...

I live in a place where solar energy isn't very viable. Take away night (50%) and bad weather, you probably only get 30% of the year or less where solar panels can produce their rated output. Wind is even worse here. Wind turbines require a minimum wind speed (varies by design) before they produce a single watt of electricity. We seldom have steady winds above the minimum value. You could erect wind turbines in places where the winds are more steady, such as the plains states or coastal regions, and send the electricity here via power lines. However, there are substantial losses for long distance power transmission.

rhhardin said...
Nuclear power can keep windmills turning even in still air. That's the argument to use.


There's a very large windfarm in Kansas that I've driven past many times. Kansas can be a very windy place so that isn't a bad location*. Every time I've driven past them, almost all were turning. I drove past them last summer and noticed something interesting. There wasn't the slightest hint of a breeze (not even a leaf was moving) and the turbines were spinning. Their blades were in a minimum drag pitch, so I suspect they were being driven to present the illusion of functioning instead of being powered by the wind that day.

* I do wonder how they prevent ice buildup on the blades during winter. Do they heat the blades to prevent ice accumulation or use some deicing fluid. Since ice can be a problem on airplane wings and propellers, it certainly could be a problem on wind turbine blades.

iowan2 म्हणाले...

Refusing to switch to nuclear power plants, defined the lie about CAGCC. The easy cheap solution never got the greens approval. If you refuse the solution, the problem doesn't exist.

David Begley म्हणाले...

Why doesn’t the NYT or New Yorker do a piece on how wrong these doom predictions from the 60’s and 70’s were? They were all based on science!

Ralph L म्हणाले...

At one time, France was overwhelmingly nuclear-powered. Let's be more like the French, except for the smoking and not bathing.

iowan2 म्हणाले...

Larry J,

Not sure about the ice problem. I dont live in the center of the windmills, but a 5 minute walk gets me to an elevation I can see them to the north and south of me. I have never heard talk about icing being a problem. As far as them turning in no wind, those things are a lot taller than you think. The blades are at least 90 ft. that makes the diameter 180 ft, plus they are at least 100 ft clear of the ground. That puts the top end catching winds 200-300 feet above the ground. To get a reference point. Grain elevators top out at about 150 feet max. Most are less than that.

In Iowa, there is a subsidy to generate wind power, it all gets pushed to Illinois, where there is a subsidy to use wind power.
When the govt shuts down, the windmills stop, because the agency that does the monitoring isnt working, to calculate the subsidy isn't there. Weird.

Darrell म्हणाले...

The solution to a phony crisis is to do nothing.

Darrell म्हणाले...

The Green movement was started by and financed by the Soviets. There is plenty of evidence of that out there. The whole purpose was to get Western nations to make fatal mistakes in policy decisions. Like getting rid of fossil fuels, pursuing nuclear energy, and getting rid of nuclear weapons unilaterally.

buwaya म्हणाले...

The tide will never turn, wrt nuclear power, that is nuclear electric generation. The entire point of environmentalism is not about solving practical problems. It is a power-play, as in political and cultural power. Ayn Rand called it in 1971, in her essay "The Anti-Industrial Revolution", and there has been no reason since then to revise her analysis. Say what you like about Ayn Rand, her philosophy, her literary style, and etc., but she knew her enemies down to the sub-cellular level.

I read that essay in the 70's, and it has been a sound guide ever since.

There have been many such "the tide is turning" articles over the last thirty-odd years, maybe forty, and nothing has changed.

Yes, this is a sour and cynical attitude, but it is a true appreciation of the situation regardless. It won't change, as with most of these things, without a crisis.

Narayanan म्हणाले...

Nice to know Petr Beckmans work is being continued.
https://www.accesstoenergy.com/about/

He was a valiant fighter

अनामित म्हणाले...

Nothing anti-nuclear emerged from environmental concerns; anti-nuclear views emerged from fear. Concern about overpopulation has nothing to do with resistance to radiation sterilization of food, having to rename nuclear magnetic resonance imaging to "magnetic resonance imaging" for appearances' sake and stopping construction of already approved electric generation plants lest we risk the "China Syndrome." The megalomaniacs and psychotic control freaks in the current iteration of environmentalism just used these fears to their advantage. Oh, wait, even earlier versions of environmentalism had megalomaniacs and psychotic control freaks in charge of things, who weren't disposed to solve problems but to destroy capitalist economies.

Narayanan म्हणाले...

Great gift to give your offsprings.

Quaestor म्हणाले...

Soviet agitprop.

Bingo. Witness the hysterical condemnation of the United States when Three-Mile Island vented some radioactive steam into the environment which affected nearby residents to such a degree that it was equivalent to living in Denver for a week instead of Dauphin County, PA. Contrast that with Chernobyl and the inattention paid by the CND and the Sierra Club until radioactive rain fell in Sweden.

buwaya म्हणाले...

France is still overwhelmingly nuclear-powered.

Fifty years of mostly nuke deployed on a massive scale. A rarely acknowledged fact.
But there is no power on earth that will drive such a point into the environmentalists armored skulls. They are impenetrable, because, as Ayn Rand pointed out, such arguments are beside the point. That is not the purpose of environmentalism.

Quaestor म्हणाले...

I'll believe in 100% renewables when AOC's shit-eating grin is literally shit-eating grin.

Drago म्हणाले...

Gospace: "The European and American anti-nuclear movements had the same origin is correct.

Soviet agitprop.
Placing the origin elsewhere is historical revisionism."

Absolutely correct.

The entirety of the west's "green" movement is really just a "red" movement dedicated to weakening the US because it is the US and all of its historical institutions and traditions and power that is the single relevanr barrier that keeps the left and their LLR lapdogs like LLR Chuck from realizing their leftist "paradise" vision.

Watermelons, green on the outside and red on the inside, everyone of these "environmentalists".

When Gorbachev hit the bricks after being thrown out, where did he go? Directly to the global environmental groups...because they are simply communists by another name.

Drago म्हणाले...

The same lefties/LLR's that said nothing when the Soviets moved intermediate nuke weapons into the Eastern European satellite nations in the early 80's were the ones who went ballistic in large scale protests and civil disobedience across W. Europe when Reagan responded in kind.

Protests funded by the soviets.

The same leftists in the 50's and 60's and 70's and 80's that wanted to "Ban The Bomb" and force the US to disarm......but only the US. Only the US. Not the Soviets or ChiComs.

"Ban the Bomb"-ers also funded by CPUSA and the Soviets.

The same leftists who wanted to keep the US out of WW2 when the Soviets and Nazi's were playing kissy-face (Molotov-Ribbentrop) and then radically changed overnight when Hitler decided it was time to "go big" for "lebensraum" and invaded Russia.

rcocean म्हणाले...

Its hilarious how everything in the 70s wasn't what it pretended to be.

I heard the Population bomb author say we shouldn't stop immigration, instead native Americans should decrease their birth rates even further to achieve zero population growth. That's when I knew he was shit-eating Leftist, posing as an environmentalist.

Mike (MJB Wolf) म्हणाले...

You aren't serious about carbon "pollution" unless you want nuclear to take the place of coal. We will always have natural gas as a fast ramp-up replacement for unreliable "renewables" and gas is plentiful and clean. Being anti-nuke power and pro-renewable is an ignorant position that has a real "underpants gnome" approach to the issue. You can't get there from here.

rcocean म्हणाले...

The Sierra Club used to believe in ZPG and low immigration. Then some Jewish Billionaire gave them $10 million, so they stopped talking about the issue. From what I can tell, no one cares about the Sierra Club anymore, but the directors sure got rich off that $10 million.

rcocean म्हणाले...

Japan has plenty of nuclear power plants. They've had some problems.

Ron Winkleheimer म्हणाले...

The anti-nuclear propaganda in the 70s was that nuclear power plants were dangerous. They were going to blow up or melt down and release lots of toxic radioactive gases and radiation that would kill large number of people poison the environment.

Ralph L म्हणाले...

At one time, people were blaming the cluster of eye melanoma in Huntersville NC on the nuke plant to its west, but now they're confused and befuddled.

ga6 म्हणाले...

"when Reagan responded in kind." My son, the Colonel, is a Pershing missile vet as a young Lieutenant. Also Iraq, three trips to Afghanistan, and one quiet nine months in Kuwait.

Wince म्हणाले...

I'm still holding out for fusion power.

Jersey Fled म्हणाले...

I propose ZPM's

Gospace म्हणाले...

Blogger EDH said...
I'm still holding out for fusion power.


10 years away. Always has been, always will be. I'm 63 and it's been 10 years in the future as far back as I can remember.

Doesn't mean it can't be done. The scientific principle behind fusion is simple and easy. It's that engineering a working plant is a lot more difficult in practice than in theory.

Nonapod म्हणाले...

Realistically speaking Fusion is probably closer to 30 years away. The biggest project, ITER, isn't scheduled to begin full deuterium–tritium fusion experiments until 2035.

chuck म्हणाले...

I'm all in favor to climate change, the more CO2, the better. However, nuclear is a good solution for when the glaciers return and we need something good for tens of thousands of years.

Nonapod म्हणाले...

In the meantime though, I wish everyone would push for more nuclear, especially Generation IV style reactors. Apparently Gen IV will be much safer and efficient, especially with regards to cooling, meaing you'd be far less likely to have a Fukushima type disaster.

Char Char Binks, Esq. म्हणाले...

Here's a list of some of the great calamities environmentalists have been wishing and hoping for since 1970. www.aei.org/.../18-spectacularly-wrong-apocalyptic-predictions-made-around-the-tim...

Caligula म्हणाले...

"I drove past them last summer and noticed something interesting. There wasn't the slightest hint of a breeze (not even a leaf was moving) and the turbines were spinning. Their blades were in a minimum drag pitch, so I suspect they were being driven to present the illusion of functioning instead of being powered by the wind that day."

The turbines are being driven by grid power (negative net output), but, the reason is not to create an illusion. The reason is to prevent damage to the turbine's main bearings, which must be kept turning to avoid deformation. And depending on location, they may also need to use power to de-ice the blades, to prevent massive damage should the turbine become unbalanced.

Wind turbines also contain control systems, which include electronics and hydraulic systems that are used to rotate the turbine and keep the power output (if any) in-phase with the grid. And these these need power all the time, even if there's no wind. Of course, the wind turbine doesn't use the power it generates for that purpose because that power is not reliable: it uses relatively reliable grid power. Thus a wind turbine may be seen as a device that converts relatively reliable grid power into thoroughly unreliable, intermittent power.


And as long as we're on the subject, the nameplate rating of these turbines has little relationship to reality. The basic equation of wind-to-electricity is that the power output is proportional to the cube of wind speed; thus, half the wind speed gets you only one-eighth of the power output. Minus whatever power the turbine consumes for itself, of course.

Yet too much wind can damage the turbine. And when you combine that cube-power law with a minimum wind speed needed to produce any power at all plus a maximum wind speed that can be tolerated without auto-protection, plus the parasitic drain from the grid when there's little or no wind, well, what you get out of these is (at best) a tiny fraction of the turbine's nominal power rating. Yet, get which gets touted by promoters (and the mostly ignorant journalists who listen to them)?

tcrosse म्हणाले...

The wind turbine removes energy from the climate system and converts it to electricity. It is then transmitted elsewhere and some percentage converted to heat. How Environmentally Friendly is that?

RigelDog म्हणाले...

I always want to ask those who are concerned about environmental doomsday scenarios such as CAGW to be honest and answer this question: If there is a reversal of current scientific opinion, confirmed by people and institutions that you trust, that assures you there is no real danger from our burning of fossil fuels, what would be your immediate emotional reaction? ARE YOU DISAPPOINTED? I think they would be very disappointed, instead of being flooded with joy and relief. There's just a certain mindset or worldview that craves being obsessed with some sort of future apocalypse.

Christy म्हणाले...

Buwaya +1

This was a wall I bloodied my head against for 25 years. For the longest time I believed that if people just understood the science, they wouldn't be so anti-nuke. Then I realized it wasn't about truth at all. It was an anti-bourgeoisie movement. And I began to see the differences between the true believers and the environmental leaders. I never saw a leader who was a truthteller. Whatever whipped the believer up, no matter how provably wrong, was said. I came to believe that they took all the energy from the anti-war movement and redirected it.

Sebastian म्हणाले...

"But by then nuclear power was anathema to the Democratic Party and American and European Greens, a tragic misalignment of liberal values."

What misalignment?

Progs want 1. fewer people; 2. more governmental control; 3. a weaker and poorer U.S.; and 4. the "planet" "saved." Making nuclear power anathema fits perfectly.

RigelDog म्हणाले...

There have been some "environmentalists" caught admitting that the last thing in the world they really want is to have discovery of the means to renewable cheap energy, such as fusion--that's got to underlie much of the resistance to expansion of safe nuclear power. Their objection is that clean, safe, inexpensive energy available to all would lead to more "development." Guess they just don't want icky humanity to thrive and destroy their ideal of untouched nature.

PM म्हणाले...

While a 100%-safe nuclear power plant is impossible, the key environmentalists' opposition to nuke power is the safe storage of dangerous, spent rods for millennia. A fair complaint. Other than flying spent rods to the moon (hey Musk and Branson), a much smarter solution is pyroprocessing. Were a cost-effective solution developed, it could re-use 'spent' fuel rods to power reactors. Recycling! A difficult, but not insoluble, problem.

mandrewa म्हणाले...

It might make a difference if the various costs of the different options were accurately stated. I believe that the true cost of solar panels and wind mills is being radically understated. I'm mystified and disappointed that so many people, that know how to count, go along with this. But in all fairness it isn't easy to get the real numbers. I, despite being very interested in this subject, for instance, don't know where to go. But I can imagine a procedure for calculating the true costs.

The heart of that procedure is to require, whenever we assess any energy source, that it actually match the demand curve for electricity. That is easy to do when we are talking about a coal-powered power plant, or gas-powered, or the different kinds of nuclear, because they can match the demand curve all by themselves.

It's more difficult to assess solar panels or windmills because they have to be combined with something else. But you have to combine them with something else, and if you are not
combining then and evaluating the cost of the combination, then you are lying to yourself, and that is exactly what we as a society are doing.

There are many things a solar panel can be combined with. It can be combined with batteries. It can be combined with natural gas power plants. It can be combined with pumped water energy storage. It can be combined with coal power plants (plus it actually takes something more because you can't ramp the power up and down on a coal power plant fast enough to match the solar panels). And there are many other choices. And they differ somewhat on locality.

It would be invaluable to have those actual numbers. And we need that information to make good choices.

But oddly that information is hard to find. It's another weird thing about the world that doesn't make sense.

mandrewa म्हणाले...

PM said, "While a 100%-safe nuclear power plant is impossible, the key environmentalists' opposition to nuke power is the safe storage of dangerous, spent rods for millennia. A fair complaint."

Actually we do have a solution to this. It's a particular kind of molten salt reactor that burns spent nuclear fuel rods, and in fact does so very efficiently as it will extract far more energy from those rods than they originally ever delivered.

The end result is a much smaller amount of nuclear waste that instead of needing to be stored for 15,000 years before it's safe, only needs 300 years.

The name of the group proposing this design is Elysium Industries. In particular look for Ed Phiel on YouTube. See, for instance, here.

Jeff म्हणाले...
ही टिप्पणी लेखकाना हलविली आहे.
Jeff म्हणाले...

The premise that one country, particularly one the size of Sweden, could "solve climate change" is absurd. Sweden may cut it's CO2 emissions by 40%, but the resulting practical effect on climate change will be nada, zero, zip-point-shit, and that's assuming CO2 has the worse case affect that the climate alarmists espouse.

It's worse than that. If Sweden and some others greatly reduce their demand for fossil fuels, that will bring the prices of those fuels down a bit. In the short run, China and other sane countries will then buy even more of them.

In the long run, none of the various efforts at lessening the demand for fossil fuels actually matters anyway. What will determine, finally, how much carbon dioxide gets produced is how much economically-recoverable fossil fuel there is. I find it passing strange that the same people who breathlessly warned us that we were running out of oil also pushed hardest to reduce it's usage because they were concerned about warming. If we run out of fossil fuels, the warming problem is over.

The economist Herb Stein had a great saying: If something can't go on forever, it won't.

Buwaya is right. The global warming alarmists, the anti-nuclear activists, and many others of their ilk (Alar, anyone?) have always been motivated by envy and the sense that they should be in charge, rather than any actual concern about the rest of us.

Sam L. म्हणाले...

"..."A Bright Future/How Some Countries Have Solved Climate Change and the Rest Can Follow,"... Climate Change SOLVED?????????? Wouldn't we have seen and heard this trumpeted to the skies? Which I haven't.

Earnest Prole म्हणाले...

I’ll know climate change is real when progressive elites enthusiastically endorse nuclear power (along with curtailing their own travel and giving up their second homes). Until then I know climate change is just virtue signaling.

अनामित म्हणाले...

Ah,

A unitary solution to AGW AND population growth.

what we need is a good, old fashioned nuclear war.

Yancey Ward म्हणाले...

"I drove past them last summer and noticed something interesting. There wasn't the slightest hint of a breeze (not even a leaf was moving) and the turbines were spinning. Their blades were in a minimum drag pitch, so I suspect they were being driven to present the illusion of functioning instead of being powered by the wind that day."

I would imagine this isn't done to create an illusion, but to prevent the bearings in the housing from deforming under static weight.

Yancey Ward म्हणाले...

The thing about solar panels and windmills that I would be interested in is length of operational life and replacement costs. We have a long history of data for power plants of other types, but not for these yet. They can surely be estimated pretty accurately, though, and yet such data is hard to find.

Fritz म्हणाले...

EDH said...

I'm still holding out for fusion power.


The fuel of the future, forever.

Meanwhile, I'm pretty content living 2 miles from a nearly 2 gigawatt nuke. Pretty good neighbors.

buwaya म्हणाले...

"A Bright Future/How Some Countries Have Solved Climate Change and the Rest Can Follow"

France "solved" this in 1974. California "solved" this in the 1960's.

Its a truly stupid situation, looked at objectively. The only way any of this is even debatable is for one party to have malicious motives.

John henry म्हणाले...

Larry,

It's worse than you say. Even a cloudless area on the equator gets about 6.5 hours of usable sunlight. Where the solar panels can generate. Averaged over the year.

Then start derating as you move north. Derate more for clouds, snow etc and in most of the US you are down to 20% or less of the nominal or nameplate output.

Wind is similar. A 1mw windmill, 500 feet high is about equal in actual capacity to 0.25 mw.

Less than a typical freight truck.

John Henry

Drago म्हणाले...

dda6ga dda6ga: "when Reagan responded in kind." My son, the Colonel, is a Pershing missile vet as a young Lieutenant. Also Iraq, three trips to Afghanistan, and one quiet nine months in Kuwait."

We thank him for his service..

John henry म्हणाले...

I think Caligula mentioned energy density of solar.

AES has a456 mw coal plant in guayama pr.

On the same site they have 27mw (nominal) of solar panels. About 5mw actual.

Both sites occupy about the same amount of land. The coal plant proper boilerhouse and generators probably don't even take up 2acres.

I have a satellite photo of the site and more details at www.darkislandpr.blogspot.com

John Henry

John henry म्हणाले...

Richard Fagin,

Thanks for mentioning China Syndrome.

For all its cartoonishness it it probably the most powerful PRO-nuclear propaganda piece ever made.

We should make viewing mandatory in all schools. We should encourage all greens, politicians, anti-nukers to watch.

I have a suspicion that no more tha than 10% or so of people who bring it up have seen it.

It's a great answer to the anti-nukers.

John Henry

Larry J म्हणाले...

EDH said...
I'm still holding out for fusion power.


Don't hold your breath. I've been hearing that commercial fusion energy was 20 years away since the 1960s.

"Fusion is the energy of the future and always will be."

John henry म्हणाले...

Drill sgt

Now that is what I call being pro-nuke!

John Henry

NoBorg म्हणाले...

The earth's surface receives about 6 kilowatt hours of solar power per square meter per day, which is about 2190 kilowatt hours per year. This accounts for nighttime and seasonal variation in day length, but ignores clouds and snow cover. US energy consumption from all sources is approximately 2.87 x 10^13 kilowatt hours per year. So with perfect 100% efficient solar panels, and perfect lossless (and unlimited) battery storage, and perfect lossless power transmission - in other words, all technological limitations solved completely - you still need more than *5000 square miles* of solar panels, just for the US. Factoring in the real technological limits, the number easily exceeds 100,000 square miles, which is about the size of Colorado. It's absurd. The numbers for wind turbines are even worse. The engineering challenge of building the necessary amount of nuclear plants, guaranteeing their safety, and then disposing of the waste is vastly easier.

Jim at म्हणाले...

The cleanest, most-renewable energy we have is hydroelectric power. And the enviro-zealots hate that, too.

They won't be happy until we're all living in yurts.

tcrosse म्हणाले...

When somebody speaks about nuclear power, I switch off the moment they pronounce it "nucular". Jimmy Carter, who should have known better, pronounced it "nucear".

RigelDog म्हणाले...

Yancey Ward said: The thing about solar panels and windmills that I would be interested in is length of operational life and replacement costs."

The novel "Cold Wind" by C.J. Box (great book from the fantastic Joe Pickett series) goes into the windmill energy boondoggle quite a bit...there are significant hidden costs, for starters. Thomas Sowell points out that perhaps the most important missing component in our national dialogue on issues is the routine absence of exploration of trade-offs. Somehow I can't get my left-ish friends to acknowledge that problem.

Howard म्हणाले...

Blogger johnhenry100 said...

I think Caligula mentioned energy density of solar.

AES has a456 mw coal plant in guayama pr.

On the same site they have 27mw (nominal) of solar panels. About 5mw actual.

Both sites occupy about the same amount of land. The coal plant proper boilerhouse and generators probably don't even take up 2acres.

I have a satellite photo of the site and more details at www.darkislandpr.blogspot.com

John Henry


What's the footprint of the coal mine, the footprint of the mine pollution, the footprint of the coal fired air pollution? All socialized.

tcrosse म्हणाले...

What's the footprint of the coal mine, the footprint of the mine pollution, the footprint of the coal fired air pollution? All socialized.

To be fair, let's include the footprint of the manufacture of solar panels and the extraction of minerals required for it.

Howard म्हणाले...

It's footprints all the way down. They told us to only leave footprints and take smiles from our Natural Forests.

Gahrie म्हणाले...

What's the footprint of the coal mine, the footprint of the mine pollution, the footprint of the coal fired air pollution? All socialized.

And all also used to produce solar panels.

Howard म्हणाले...

peeing in the ocean compared to shitting the bed

buwaya म्हणाले...

"When somebody speaks about nuclear power, I switch off the moment they pronounce it "nucular"."

You don't like their dialect?
Maybe you don't like mine also?
I pronounce some other things my way.

English people their way.
South Africans yet another way.
Canadians,,,etc.
Maybe all these guys don't like your dialect either, and would you like being "switched off?"

tcrosse म्हणाले...

I pronounce some other things my way.

Ridiclious. Lucidrous.

Howard म्हणाले...

buwaya a little touchy? perhaps the news of the day is too positive?

tcrosse म्हणाले...

buwaya a little touchy?

Don't pick on buyawa. Yawuba does thing his own way.