Solar cheaper than nuclear

It would be nice to ride a bike fom east to west US. But I do really understand that it's not possible to go shopping on a bike if the store is far away, or uphill. BTW: you also need a car for moving big furniture.

Not as bad as burning wood in a big power-plant. It depends on how much wood you burn. BTW: Burning coal or oil has a much bigger impact.

Probably true, but this topic is about solar cells. In a way you tell me with the words above, nuclear energy cost about the same or less damage to our environment.

I can tell you, I can't live from solar energy, I need a combination of generators. I can't build a Nuclear power-plant for my own use. Wind and solar-energy is easier for setting up an off=grid system. As long as I can't get all my energy out of the sun and wind, I need other options. Burning wood is not only cheaper for me as burning oil. It's in my situation better for the environment. If not, I would have chosen an other option. I believe in better solar-systems in the near future, but there are other alternatives.

Is quite nicely good enough for a longer period, let's say 150 years? Any ideas about the costs?

You won't be satisfied. ;-)

I don't destroy a forest, you just don't see there is more to get wood from. You can burn waste from anywhere. For example: broken pallets, waste from furnitures, waste from vegetables, papers/newspapers, waste from gardens and regular wood, which comes from plantations who are very busy with planting new trees. (FSCE) For me burning is still a suplement, no choice.

If we want to have the same standard of living and that standard is the North-American way, We need four times The Earth. China and India are just running up, you won't stop them. They hopefully learned from the western world.

thx, you too.

Yep, guilty of a little hyperbole...

more like 1000 year halflife is mildly radioactive... ;-)

Charlie

Cheers! Rich

Taxed to death. That's what politicians do to any popular thing.

How about some descriptive data, like size, supply requirements, typical usage, etc.,?

Koning Betweter wrote in news:2010081417240086260-Koning@Stumpernl:

actually, a "big power plant" will burn fuel more efficiently,and likely has scrubbers to clean the exhaust.

don't feel bad,nobody can. but your community -can-,and everyone benefits from the efficiency,cleanliness,and plentiful power. I just read of a US company that is making a small nuclear powerplant that gets buried,no maintenance,runs for 20 years,is designed to supply small communities. when it needs refueling,the company digs it up and installed an entire new plant,takes the old one back for recycling.

Only if you ignore it's environmental effects.

also,it sounds like you don't have the space available for enough solar panels to supply your needs.

all of which don't supply *practical* amounts of energy,and have negative effects of their own.

Yes.

Nope. but storage in old salt mines or Yucca Mountain doesn't cost much after the construction costs.It's not going anywhere,and guarding it is fairly easy,particularly compared to the present on-site storage that is very vulnerable to terrorism.

I doubt ANYONE would be,unless they are not rational.

which ALL come from TREES.

it takes a long time to grow a tree. There aren't enough trees to supply power to large populations. you end up with stripped forestlands,erosion,runoff,loss of animal habitat,and lots of other environmental problems.

Nonsense. you just need compact,efficient sources of energy,like what comes from the Atom.

yeah,keep on thinking that.... if you say it often enough,maybe it will come true....

Yes it does. The half-life is the interval in which an atom has a 50% probability of spontaneous decay. It is an inherent property of an isotope, unrelated to its environment.

OTOH, the rate of conversion (and thus the amount of radioactivity) can be very much affected by the environment.

I think that what you're trying to say is that it will not be emit significant radiation for 700 million years. Which is true. E.g. it might emit a lot of radiation for a much shorter period, or it might emit neglible radiation for 100 million years then, once the conditions are more favourable to fission, start emitting far more radiation.

The problem is that you have a dilemma: you can either put up with a lot of radiation for a relatively short period of time (which might still be centuries), or you can try and prevent fission (by dilution), but then you have to hope this holds up for a very, very long time.

And the problem with the latter is that the system is chaotic. You start out with e.g. U-235, U-238, whatever it's mixed with and whatever is surrounding it. Unstable isotopes are subject to decay, fissionable isotopes are subject to fission, and all isotopes (even stable ones) are subject to neutron absorption.

These processes create new elements and isotopes which weren't there to start with. Each of those is subject to (some subset of) the above processes, creating more elements and isotopes, and so on. Each new isotope creates new possibilities for emission, absorption and moderation.

Oh, and also chemistry, which can affect the physical properties of the mix (e.g. a uniform solution of uranium might be quite stable, but reactions with other products could cause precipitation, resulting in concentration of the uranium).

"Spontaneous" decay happens for no (known) reason; it just happens. The rate at which it happens (i.e. the half-life) depends solely on the isotope.

Fission occurs when the nucleus is struck by a neutron with sufficient energy, i.e. it happens for a reason. The rate at which it happens depends upon the proximity to other atoms which might emit neutrons (hence the concept of critical mass) and the moderation of those neutrons.

Not of U-235; RTGs use isotopes with half-lives measured in decades, not aeons.

And how much of that is Gov't subsidies and other market distortions?

Sure:

Tim

This applies for medium size plants, for large (over 100 MWth) the logistics becomes the problem.

Burning low energy density biomass (such as wood) in a large unit will require large convoys of lorries each day and night to transport it.

Assuming the trees take 10-40 years before they can be harvested, the total tree growing area for a specific power plant must be 10-40 times larger than the area of forest the plant is burning each year. The transport distances will be large (over 100 km), requiring a large number of lorries and a lot of fuel to power them and producing a lot of exhausts during the transport.

Taking repeatedly and aggressively (including small branches and roots etc.) biomass from an area, will reduce the amount of biomass that can be produced in that area in the future, unless some fertilizers are used. Returning the ash from the power plant into the forests will help, but lorries designed for wood transport are not well suited for ash transport, so a new set of lorries would be required to carry the ash out.

It makes much more sense to build several medium power plants distributed into the forests and transport the produced electricity by wires, with only a few percent losses. Compare this with the low efficiency of the lorry fleet.

I think the Manhattan project qualifies as a massive subsidy to the nuclear industry. What I find amazing is that solar could now be cheaper than nuclear even with very little research ever have being put into it compared to the money spent on fossil fuel related infrastructure and technology. I guess the $0.50 per watt and decreasing production cost of thin film solar is what finally did it, not to mention the panic of $150/barrel oil a couple years ago. Lithium iron phosphate batteries are really dropping in price as well, and have low production costs with relatively cheap raw materials. Better late than never for these technologies, but the sooner the better, we waited way too long for cheap solar and good batteries.

cheers, Jamie

Bah, those amounts are easily dwarfed by tobacco subsidies. Not to mention the free research provided for big Pharmaceutical companies, the Gov't funds all the work and then grants a patent to the Pharma' company. Hell, just look at milk price supports and then compare. Naw, you are too willfully ignorant to check aren't you?

No wonder you are so damn crazy.

Hello, weather variation is decades, climate change is _thousands_ of years. That you have been lied to about this does not make anthropogenic climate change real.

Well gosh, 20% for PV; meanwhile solar concentrators might reach 40% agianst the 47% Carnot limit. Guess where i would put my money for now.

Please point out what you perceive to be lies and what makes AGW false.

Rui Maciel

Bawgs teeth, has nobody taught you about basic chemical energy transformations issues. Pushing molecules up the stored energy capacity costs more than you can ever possibly get back. Worse than Sysiphus' task, it is proper thermo' you cannot break even.

It is a negitive sum proposition.

Jamie Morken wrote in news:gwM9o.16227$ snipped-for-privacy@newsfe09.iad:

you'd be wrong. the Manhattan Project was a DEFENSE project. a BOMB project,not applicable to civilian uses.

If solar was PRACTICAL,companies would be jumping to develop solar plants,even without subsidies.

But they are not. the MARKET says that solar is not practical.

you also forget that solar panels wear out after 20-30 years,and need to be cleaned regularly(uses water),and the land underneath cannot be used for other purposes.