(Solyndra) Solar flap misses point on energy and nuclear subsidies

[kristopher]

This is a comprehensive article that has information critical to understand the role of solar subsidies. It can't be summarized at all in a couple of paragraphs, it requires a full reading. If you're interested in energy and/or climate change you'll be doing yourself a favor by reading it.

Solar flap misses point on energy and nuclear subsidies
By Mark Cooper
Published 12:03 a.m., Thursday, October 20, 2011

The combination of the debt-ceiling debate and the recent bankruptcy of a solar firm with a $535 million loan guarantee is certain to give energy subsidies a leading part in the Washington budget drama this fall.

If, however, the goal is good energy policy — not just deficit reduction — the fact that solar companies are going broke could turn out to be a positive development, if it puts the spotlight on nuclear reactors rather than just solar panels.

Although the solar industry receives significant subsidies — loan guarantees among them — it still is a market-driven industry. It must raise capital in financial markets. It must purchase liability insurance. It must make its sales in competitive markets.

On the other hand, for more than 50 years the construction of nuclear reactors in the United States has been the recipient of an array of massive subsidies and other special arrangements that go way beyond loan guarantees and insulate it from market forces.

For example, the Price-Anderson Act shields firms ...

http://www.mysanantonio.com/community/northeast/news/article/Solar-flap-misses-point-on-energy-and-nuclear-2225015.php

See also Cooper's 2009 (preFukushima) analysis of the economics of nuclear power
http://www.olino.org/us/articles/2009/11/26/the-economics-of-nuclear-reactors-renaissance-or-relapse

[truedelphi]

1. It's a deliberate "miss." The entire

Solynadra news meme is just that - yet another sound byte that folks on Fox news can use again and again to point to how inefficient the solar technology realm is.

And they deliberate blur the line - two minutes of the Channel Faux Talking Heads, and you' re convinced that the main reason why this proejct and this company failed is because either the sun doesn't work the way people thought it did. or solar technology is still in the Dark Ages.

All of which is good for the nuclear energy industry.

I mean JEEZ! An entire nation is in peril right now, what with one nuke reactor after the other emitting cesium, with much of the food in that nation high in radioactivity, an entire area quarantined off, children sick, and yet our news media is focused on Solyandra!

[kristopher]

2. Yep, it is...

..and there are several related myths - negatives about renewables and positive about nuclear - that are constantly promoted by dark interests on the anonymous internet.

Cooper does an excellent job of debunking a whole passel of them.

[Demeter]

4. This would explain why my condo board refuses to put in solar street lights

they must be brainwashed by Fox. They have a "sample" streetlight, and they want to "observe it all winter" to see if it fails....

Meanwhile, we put up siding with a 50 year warranty without "sampling" it for 50 years, and shingles, without sampling for 40...

Our old-fashioned streetlights have failed because the underground wiring has rotted, but we can't replace it, oh no, not with lights that don't need any underground wiring, that's for sure.

And the fact that we'd save 10=20 THOUSAND dollars in repairs and electricity every year is of no consequences--what if it should fail?

Doesn't matter that the lights we have are failed, and whole streets left in darkness, with winter coming on...

[truedelphi]

5. That sounds dreadful. And it always seems like so much work to try & deal with

These associations. Almost easier to Occupy the whole world rather than deal with the condo board or the Housing Association.

[Demeter]

6. Well, it's an education, to be sure

Not the kind I got in Engineering school, for certain.

[certainot]

3. can't sell the energy/global warming disconnect with tv and internet

you have to have 1000 loud coordinated and repetitive radio stations and they have to be ignored