New Low Cost Solar Panels Ready for Mass Production (CO)

[jpak]

http://www.industryweek.com/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=14932&SectionID=4

Colorado State University's method for manufacturing low-cost, high-efficiency solar panels is nearing mass production. AVA Solar Inc. will start production by the end of next year on the technology developed by mechanical engineering Professor W.S. Sampath at Colorado State. The new 200-megawatt factory is expected to employ up to 500 people. Based on the average household usage, 200 megawatts will power 40,000 U.S. homes.

Produced at less than $1 per watt, the panels will dramatically reduce the cost of generating solar electricity and could power homes and businesses around the globe with clean energy for roughly the same cost as traditionally generated electricity.

Sampath has developed a continuous, automated manufacturing process for solar panels using glass coating with a cadmium telluride thin film instead of the standard high-cost crystalline silicon. Because the process produces high efficiency devices (ranging from 11% to 13%) at a very high rate and yield, it can be done much more cheaply than with existing technologies. The cost to the consumer could be as low as $2 per watt, about half the current cost of solar panels. In addition, this solar technology need not be tied to a grid, so it can be affordably installed and operated in nearly any location.

The process is a low waste process with less than 2% of the materials used in production needing to be recycled. It also makes better use of raw materials since the process converts solar energy into electricity more efficiently. Cadmium telluride solar panels require 100 times less semiconductor material than high-cost crystalline silicon panels.

<more>

[InvisibleTouch]

1. Sounds good!

I'll be watching for the availability.

[HereSince1628]

2. I'm ready.

But I've been ready. Seems the technology that makes competitive solar power possible is always slated to be available 'next yeat.' As a long time Cubs watcher, I understand the wide time range that may invoke.

[AlecBGreen]

3. wow

"Demand has increased nearly 40% a year for each of the past five years..."

We can either lead the pack or play catchup with the rest of the world.

[losthills]

4. Americans will always be out there in front.

It's just too bad we have to drag our corporations and our government behind us like an anchor...

[AlecBGreen]

6. IIRC

America is the world leading producer of PV cells, followed by Germany, Japan & China. Its amazing to think what we could accomplish if we transferred the tax credits currently given to the fossil fuel industry and applied it to greener technology. Good ol' carrot & stick works like a charm but we have to get off our lazy asses first.

[FREEWILL56]

34. America's the leader is news to me.

Do you have stats I can see as I believe the last time I heard Japan produces more than we do and China is gaining fast. I do wholeheartedly agree that the government could and should do more to help us get renewable energies in place for all of us and not just the government and to do it with more speed as the electrical consumption in our country outpaces the renewable growth. This means that more power plants have to eventually be built as the present ones can't keep up with the demands. Our choices are the usual ones of nuclear, coal, and lng all amplifying pollution levels or health risks far in excess of what any renwable sources would, even in the including of the manufacturing processes of the renewables in that equation.

[AlecBGreen]

7. lol

"It's just too bad we have to drag our corporations and our government behind us like an anchor..."

remember a few years ago when we were trying to force Detroit & the big 3 to increase fuel efficiency? All the moaning and hand-wringing ? "It'll bankrupt us!" they wailed. Now here we are a few years later, SUV sales are in the toilet and the Prius is crushing the competition. In my city alone (20,000 ppl) there are 4 on my street and one right around the corner.

[losthills]

8. And there are cars on the road getting 100 miles per gallon

with no help from congress or detroit whatsoever....

[hunter]

5. Cadmium is extremely toxic and has a half life of forever.

Oh well.

:shrug:

Ooops, sorry...

Anyways, I do think this is interesting news. One of the huge benifits of solar power is that it can replace power lines in remote locations.

[phantom power]

9. Real environmentalists know that CdTe toxicity doesn't count if it's non-nuclear.

[NMDemDist2]

16. each panel has less CAd than a battery according to the website

Environment

Accordingly to researchers at NREL and the Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory, using cadmium in CdTe photovoltaic (PV) modules poses minimal exposure and environmental risks that can be easily managed.

Negligible exposure risks

* CdTe PV modules produce absolutely no emissions during operation.
* Each CdTe PV module contains less cadmium than a "C" size nickel cadmium battery (less than 0.1% cadmium by weight) and produces 2,500 times more electricity per gram of cadmium.
* When chemically bound to tellurium, cadmium is insoluble and in an environmentally stable form. In fact, CdTe possesses a stronger chemical bond than sodium chloride or table salt.
* Risk from fire is minimal as CdTe’s melting point is 1,041°C.
* Occupational health risks during production are manageable through standard safety practices.

Minimal environmental risks

* CdTe PV modules effectively sequester cadmium through encapsulation between glass sheets with a 20+ year lifespan.
* Spent modules can be effectively recycled, minimizing the amount of cadmium that would otherwise end up in landfills (via zinc mining waste or unrecycled NiCd batteries).
* The use of CdTe PV modules actually reduces emissions of cadmium (as well as other pollutants) into the environment by reducing the need for fossil fuel use.


http://www.avasolar.com/technology/enviroment.php

[phantom power]

19. stability is a good property. However, the compound CdTe is itself toxic:

http://www.sttic.com.ru/lpcbc/DANDP/cdtemsds.html

I gather from what web research I did that there isn't a wealth of toxicity studies on this compound. The general drift seems to be "requires more study," although the safety data sheet above lists the known toxicity information.

This, by the way, is not to bash CdTe PV. However, when they brag "look! it binds the cadmium!" that strikes me as marketing spin. They know that everybody is aware of cadmium toxicity, so pointing out how well it binds up the cadmium makes for great press release copy. But cadmium in isolation isn't the whole story.

It would not be a good thing for these panels to end up in landfills, or otherwise dumped without proper recycling.

[Kolesar]

11. What do you mean?

Maybe a cadmium story has been posted here but I missed it. Can you give me more?

[phantom power]

12. Cadmium is a toxic metal, as is CdTe, which is what these panels are made of.

So, that figures into the environmental impact of manufacturing them and eventually disposing of them. If you imagine making millions of them, that's a bunch of toxic metal out there. Since this stuff is some kind of thin-film process, it will be less than it might be otherwise. Maybe they've published figures somewhere about how much they use per panel.

[Kolesar]

14. Ok, this could create stream pollution akin to how gold mining waste ...

... found its way into the wetlands of San Francisco Bay.

So, any cadmium manufacturing process should be compelled to manage that waste. Except in China, of course.

edit:there may be some sarcasm in this post

[Dead_Parrot]

42. It's the waste stream that worries me

There seems to be scant information on what is planned for the end of thier lives, beyond "They could probably be recycled" and "It should be OK to stick them in a landfill".

[Kolesar]

57. Acknowledged...eom

[Dead_Parrot]

13. I think there were some chinese spills that made it here

but since I'm starless at the moment I can't dig out the threads. Googling "cadmium spill river" chucks up a few articles, like this one from the BBC. There's also Itai-itai.

Edit: Actually, I might be thinking of threads on benzene pollution in Chinese rivers. So much pollution, so little search ability... :(

[NMDemDist2]

17. see my post #16 n/t

[jpak]

18. Reality check....

http://www.nrel.gov/pv/cdte/

Here are some interesting facts about cadmium and cadmium telluride (CdTe) PV modules:

CdTe is an excellent choice for use as a semiconductor in solar panels because it is perfectly matched to the solar spectrum. Cadmium sulfide provides semiconductor properties, and its transparency allows the sunlight to pass through to the CdTe layer. These characteristics provide the potential for high-efficiency modules with low-cost manufacturing processes.

A CdTe PV module contains very little cadmium. In fact, it has less than 0.1% cadmium by weight. One 8-square-foot module contains less cadmium than one size-C NiCd flashlight battery, and the cadmium in the module is in a much more environmentally stable form (i.e., a compound rather than a metal).

Because cadmium is encapsulated in the PV module, PV technology provides an effective solution for sequestering cadmium. A by-product of the zinc mining industry, cadmium usually ends up in a slag heap or in NiCd batteries, half of which eventually end up in landfills. PV modules seal the cadmium for the life of the module (20-30 years), at which time the cadmium can be easily recycled.
PV modules use natural elements and compounds to generate clean, emissions-free energy. Consumers face much greater hazards from the use of conventional energy, which can produce acid rain, particulates, noxious fumes, carbon dioxide, and small amounts of heavy metals. PV modules produce no pollutants during operation, making them the perfect solution for offsetting emissions (including cadmium) that result from fossil fuel use. The potential for cadmium use in the solar energy industry to ameliorate global climate change cannot be ignored.

In the future, using a relatively small amount of cadmium for PV (say, about 2,000 metric tons per year) could change the world's electricity infrastructure; in comparison, the much larger, existing use of cadmium for other applications (about 20,000 metric tons per year) provides trivial value.

sorry to burst this bubble...

(not)

:evilgrin:

[FREEWILL56]

33. Yes it is toxic, but it's not radioactive.

You should also know that silicon is also toxic to breath so do you remember all of that sand down on the beach?

[phantom power]

40. Is it better to die from heavy metals than radiation?

[FREEWILL56]

61. Curious afterthought.

Are you going to eat the pv because that's how you'd get it into your system?

[Dead_Parrot]

41. Nobody ever died from kidney failure...

...because some sand got in the river they drink from. And whilst Cadmium generally isn't radioactive, it's still carcenogenic.

[jpak]

44. Name one person that's been killed by a CdTe panel

:evilgrin:

[Dead_Parrot]

47. There's several thousand for each coal plant they haven't shut down

Of course, if you can name a few coal plants that have been put out out business by the awesome energy produced by PV, that would be a start.

[jpak]

50. Ummm...they haven't started production yet.

But when they do....

[Dead_Parrot]

51. When they do...

...They'll work at night?

I know, I know. When they do, we'll sit around burning coal watching the icecaps melt while we wait for TWh storage to be invented.

But hey, if they can get them to the coast by hydrogen-powered truck, they can sell them to Europe via the Northwest passage. That'll make them even cheaper! Yay!

[Javaman]

63. I'm working on m y luna panels as we speak!!!

:rofl:

[FREEWILL56]

55. I am not disputing all of that, but

the sand has to be breathed, and yes it can be breathed as consuming it won't do harm that I'm aware of. The point is there isn't anything that doesn't have some degree of risk involved somewhere along the line. Even car batteries with the sulphuric acid and lead isn't good. There isn't any easy answers that have 0 risk involved and that includes many renewables too. How it gets handled and the degree of risk involved determines much of the consequences if any. For the record I have some pvs charging a battery that powers some dc operating items I have and for 120vac power backup for power outages.

[One_Life_To_Give]

10. But what will they sell them for? $4/w, $3.5/w?

It's interesting and encouraging that they could afford to sell these for only $2/W. But in a market that is already paying $5/W. I expect they coul easily move all of their production at retail prices of $4/W. Which is really good if you own stock in this company. But don't expect to see a price drop until the manufacturers have satisfied the demand of everyone willing to pay $4+/W.

[tinrobot]

20. Why not charge $2.50/w and dominate the market.

When your product is 20% the price of a competitor, they can create objections about your technology and still compete.

When it's half the price, those objections evaporate and you own the market.

[NMDemDist2]

15. website link to the company

http://www.avasolar.com/

Environment

Accordingly to researchers at NREL and the Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory, using cadmium in CdTe photovoltaic (PV) modules poses minimal exposure and environmental risks that can be easily managed.

Negligible exposure risks

* CdTe PV modules produce absolutely no emissions during operation.
* Each CdTe PV module contains less cadmium than a "C" size nickel cadmium battery (less than 0.1% cadmium by weight) and produces 2,500 times more electricity per gram of cadmium.
* When chemically bound to tellurium, cadmium is insoluble and in an environmentally stable form. In fact, CdTe possesses a stronger chemical bond than sodium chloride or table salt.
* Risk from fire is minimal as CdTe’s melting point is 1,041°C.
* Occupational health risks during production are manageable through standard safety practices.

Minimal environmental risks

* CdTe PV modules effectively sequester cadmium through encapsulation between glass sheets with a 20+ year lifespan.
* Spent modules can be effectively recycled, minimizing the amount of cadmium that would otherwise end up in landfills (via zinc mining waste or unrecycled NiCd batteries).
* The use of CdTe PV modules actually reduces emissions of cadmium (as well as other pollutants) into the environment by reducing the need for fossil fuel use.

[NNadir]

21. Again?

Wow.

This is only about the 10,946th time that low cost solar panels have been ready for distribution.

Meanwhile, back in a place called reality:

http://www.solarbuzz.com/

Since it's Colorado, one sort of wonders if this another joing venture between Jeff Skilling and Amory Lovins.

I don't know if Lovins can get away from his day job at that world renewable energy power, Walmart.

[losthills]

22. Amory Lovins is cool...

and his ideas are worth checking out.
......
"The Stone Age didn’t end because we ran out of stones. It ended because there were better ideas about how to meet society’s needs. Similarly, the end of our current “oil age” won’t end because we run out of oil – even though that is quite possible in the next 30 years. It will end because we have better ways to meet our energy needs. Those better ways exist now, are proven, cost-effective and have multiple benefits to individuals and society."
– Amory Lovins,
One of the world’s foremost energy experts,
Rocky Mountain Institute

[Dead_Parrot]

23. NickB was right...

...you do have a good sense of humour.
:rofl:

[losthills]

24. How're you comin'...

with your Granite Bomb?

[Dead_Parrot]

25. No so good

Every time the sun sets, my solar powered smelter packs up. Be damned if I can figure out why... :shrug:

[losthills]

26. Pparrot's plan to rule the world...

[Dead_Parrot]

27. Let's see...

...natural materials, fossil fuel free, and no emissions (apart from the rock). Looks good.

I assume, as a Lovins devotee, you'd go for something costing several million dollars that hasn't been invented yet. A flying hydrogen supercar with solar powered lasers, maybe?

Funnily enough, I can't find any photos of a non-flying supercar to add. Strange, because Lovins said they'd be in production by 2000.

[NNadir]

28. Amory Lovins is a gas shill and an apologist for the Walmart car culture.

He has never been anything more than that really, even though he started selling snake oil in the mid 1970's.

This gem, which could be written by any generic "solar will save us" anti-nuke this morning was actually written in 1976, or 500 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide ago:

Ingenious ways of backfitting existing urban and rural buildings (even large commercial ones) or their neighborhoods with efficient and exceedingly reliable solar collectors are being rapidly developed in both the private and public sectors. In some recent projects, the lead time from ordering to operation has been only a few months. Good solar hardware, often modular, is going into pilot or full-scale production over the next few years, and will increasingly be integrated into buildings as a multipurpose structural element, thereby sharing costs.

Such firms as Philips, Honeywell, Revere, Pittsburgh Plate Glass, and Owens-Illinois, plus many dozens of smaller firms, are applying their talents, with rapid and accelerating effect, to reducing unit costs and improving performance. Some novel types of very simple collectors with far lower costs also show promise in current experiments. Indeed, solar hardware per se is necessary only for backfitting existing buildings. If we build new buildings properly in the first place, they can use "passive" solar collectors—large south windows or glasscovered black south walls^rather than special collectors. If we did this to all new houses in the next 12 years, we would save about as
much energy as we expect to recover from the Alaskan North Slope...-

Foreign Affairs, Summer 1976, pp 81-82

So what's Mr. "Solar Will Save Us" doing now thirty years later, after making the world safe for his natural gas friends?

http://www.triplepundit.com/pages/wal-mart-hires-rocky-mountain--002118.php

Imagine if I went to work for Walmart, the big bad nukes guy...

The mindless antinuke people would be pissing up poles with outrage.

Amory Lovins, gas shill, takes big bucks from Walmart, he's a hero.

Basically the antinuke industry has no level of shame. They couldn't care less about climate change, which is why they continuously blab dark fantasies of running the car culture on ethanol, solar hybrids, what have you.

I'll tell you something. A lot of people smoked dope in the 1970's and were as high as kites. Few were having hallucinations quite so elaborate as Lovins though. What's really, really, really, really odd is that he is still surrounded by a cult of credulous believers.

Then one has to consider that the Moonies are more or less still around too.

[losthills]

29. Gas shil? Not even true.

If you don't believe that homes can be built that require little or no heating and cooling, then you should do more research on the subject.

It's been going on since the seventies, and if we are ever going to advance and seriously address global warming, then every county's building codes should require passive solar designs for every home built in this country....

Just one thing that Avory knows that you, apparently do not...

[diane in sf]

31. Yes, they've been building them in the Chicago suburbs since the 80's.

The winter heat comes from a very normal hot water heater and is kept in the home through good insulation, windows and weather stripping.

[diane in sf]

30. So NN, when are you giving your next lecture at MIT? Oh sorry, that's Amory Lovins who gets

invited to lecture there.

Maybe you two can be in a debate together sometime. It would be interesting...

[NNadir]

35. I'm not in line for an MIT talk. I would love to spend ten minutes with this fraud

in front of an audience though. It would be like shooting ducks in a barrel.

One thing I predict for this decades is that this revivalist tent preacher will lose his congregation.

Is he going to speak at the Federal Pen where is old Enron buddy Jeff Skilling is serving 24 years for fraud?

Maybe they could have lunch and eat a nuclear plant together?

http://units.aps.org/units/fps/newsletters/2001/october/a3oct01.cfm

[diane in sf]

32. A 1999 article on Amory Lovin's very accurate energy use forecasts from the 70s:

So NN, do you have any articles published anywhere on just why Amory Lovins is a dope addled, Moonie, gas shill?
I thought not...


http://rmi.org/sitepages/pid258.php

This essay was originally published in the Journal of International Affairs, Fall 1999, 53, no. 1.

Energy Surprises for the 21st Century
By Amory Lovins and Chris Lotspeich
©Rocky Mountain Institute, 1739 Snowmass Creek Rd, Snowmass, CO 81654

Twenty-three years ago, Amory Lovins was heavily criticized as wildly
optimistic for predicting that energy efficiency would play a major role in shifting United
States energy use patterns, thus reducing overall consumption far below official
forecasts.1 He argued that energy would shift in more economically and environmentally
benign directions, while energy intensity (primary energy consumed per real dollar of
gross domestic product ) would markedly decrease without threatening continued
economic growth. Today, total U.S. energy use is slightly below the level suggested in
that 1976 “soft energy path”2 graph (see figure below), and in all but five of the
intervening years the amount of energy consumed per dollar of GDP has fallen—for a
total drop of more than 35 percent since 1973. Renewable energy sources were delayed a
decade by federal hostility—exemplified by reductions of more than 90 percent in
research and development budgets and suppression of public information—and are only
now slowly regaining momentum.3 Improvements in technology and integrated wholesystems
design techniques, and greater attention focused by competitive pressures, are
increasing the potential for a “third wave”4 of energy efficiency, reversing the period of
stagnation from 1986 to 1996.

...

(sorry no chart here--but it is readable on the acrobat file I'm quoting from--freely downloadable at the url above)


Energy Efficiency and Electricity Restructuring

Historically, energy resource discussions have focused on supply. But people
don’t want barrels of oil or kilowatt-hours of electricity per se; they want the services
that energy ultimately provides, such as hot showers, cold beer, comfortable buildings,
light, torque and mobility. Focusing on these desired services, delivered by the end-use
application of energy, allows consideration of a broader range of options than simply the
energy supplied by the local grid or pipeline. Considered from the demand as well as the
supply side of the equation, what is the cheapest, cleanest way to deliver each of these
services? Often the better, more cost-effective way is using less energy more
productively, with smarter technologies. Efficient end-use can thus compete with new
supply as an energy resource.

Today, harnessing market forces and using widely demonstrated synergistic
design, technology and management techniques can deliver the high quality of life available
in Western economies at much lower financial and environmental cost. Industry surveys
of utility-directed “demand side management” efforts to save electricity show saved
watts—or “negawatts”—typically costing society in the range of 0.5 to 2.5 cents per
saved kilowatt-hour, with well-run industrial and commercial programs usually falling
toward the low end of that range.5 While scores of specific market and regulatory barriers
prevent fuller realization of efficiency’s potential, clever firms are finding ways to turn
these obstacles into business opportunities.6 They could do so far faster and more
thoroughly if simple, high-leverage reforms in public policy rewarded least-cost
results—e.g., rewarding electric distribution utilities for minimizing the cost of energy
services rather than the price of kilowatt-hours.7

...


1 See Amory Lovins, “Energy Strategy: The Road Not Taken?” Foreign Affairs, 55, no. 1 (Fall 1976)
pp. 65–96.
2 Ibid. This article critiqued the then-conventional “hard energy path” for entailing the ever faster and more
centralized conversion of depletable fuels into superfluously premium forms, mainly inefficiently used. In
contrast, a “soft energy path” would provide the same growing volume of energy services with stabilizing
and eventually decreasing consumption by wringing out losses, switching to appropriate renewable sources
matched in scale and quality to their tasks, and bridging with efficient, transitional fossil-fuel technologies.
The hard path—which was not taken because it was too slow, costly, and disagreeable—assumed the
problem was to supply more energy, of any kind, from any source, at any price, while the soft path sought
to provide just the amount, quality, scale, and source of energy that would do each desired task in the
cheapest way.
3 For example, in the United States during the Reagan years, the main federal clearinghouses on efficiency
and renewables were at times forbidden to publish their phone numbers, and many ideologically incorrect
U.S. Government Publishing Office publications on these topics were pulped, such as a USDA Yearbook
featuring methods of saving farm energy.
4 The “first wave” refers to the moderate energy savings after the 1973 first oil shock; the “second wave”
refers to the rapid savings after the larger 1979 second oil shock (from 1979 to 1986, GDP rose 19 percent
while primary energy consumption fell 6 percent); and there are preliminary indications of a “third wave” of
comparably rapid (roughly 3.1 percent per year) savings during 1997 and 1998 despite record-low and
falling energy prices.
5 See Amory Lovins, “Apples, Oranges, and Horned Toads: Is The Joskow & Marron Critique of Electric
Efficiency Costs Valid?” Electricity Journal, 7, no. 4 (May 1994) pp. 29–49. Available as Rocky
Mountain Institute (RMI) Publication #U94-16 (Snowmass, CO: RMI, 1994).

[NNadir]

37. I have the full text of Lovins 1976 fantasy article in front of me right now.

The only accurate statment it this dubious, dreamy diatribe is this one:

Many analysts now regard modest, zero or negative growth in our rate of energy use as a realistic long-term goal. Present annual U.S. primary energy demand is about 75 quadrillion BTU ("quads"), and most official projections for 2000 envisage growth to 130-170 quads.
However, recent work at the Institute for Energy Analysis, Oak Ridge, under the direction of Dr. Alvin Weinberg, suggests that standard projections of energy demand are far too high because they do not take account of changes in demographic and economic trends. In June 1976 the Institute considered that with a conservation program far more modest than that contemplated in this article, the likely range of U.S. primary energy demand in the year 2000 would be about roi-126 quads, with the lower end of the range more probable and end-use energy being about 60-65 quads

Note that Lovins is not engaging in a shred of original thought here, although he is quoting someone who, unlike him, actually knew something about energy. That would be Alvin Weinberg, the engineering scientific founder of the American nuclear industry, more or less, an industry that the useless mystic Lovins despised for religious reasons, mostly involved in his "visions," and not a shred of observed scientific data.

[jpak]

38. The real fantasy was early '70's nuclear industry predictions of 1000 US nuclear reactors by 2000

http://arjournals.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.eg.08.110183.002035

(note: this article is not "free")

Unlike Lovin's predictions - which were far more accurate - the nuclear industry fantasy/fraud predictions did not bear fruit.

[phantom power]

39. You're right. What we got was 1000 coal plants. Lucky us.

[jpak]

43. If we had followed Lovin's "soft path" policies rather than the GOP's "hard path"

We would not have 1000 coal or nuclear plants.

[Dead_Parrot]

48. The GOP wrote the Clinton/Gore energy policy?

Ye gads, no wonder we're screwn. :tinfoilhat:

I guess it's the GOP building new coal plants in Germany as well, is it? And screwing up all R&D in Japan?

The buggers must be omnipotent...

[jpak]

49. Yes, my pommy friend. We in the States refer to this period as "The Gingrich Impeachment Congress"

and Japan's solar R&D in the late '70's and early '80's was focused on the US solar market - a market that the Reagan administration and the Asshole '80's GOP Congress destroyed.

...and if we continue to give credence to the solar naysayers, we will indeed be screwn....

[Dead_Parrot]

52. That's odd...

I thought Gingrich was speaker for 4 years, and Clinton was president for 8.

Mind you, I thought scientific research was generally done for the sake of scientific research, not to satisfy the possible marketing opportunities on a different continent. I guess all the researchers I've known have just been mad, because I've never heard any of them say "Gosh, I'm not sure what subsidies will available for this invention 5,000 miles away in ten years time. Fuck it, I'll flush all the papers and go for a better mousetrap".

Shows what I know.

[jpak]

53. Ummm - in our system of gov't, Congress - not the President - appropriates money

and jiggers the tax codes.

The Gingrich/Lott Impeachment Congress were no fans of renewable energy, energy efficiency, or the environment in general - they were, however, BIG fans of Big Oil, Big Coal and Big Nuclear...

[Dead_Parrot]

54. I see...

...so you're saying the Democrats who controlled both houses during the 100th, 101st, 102nd & 103rd congress were all paid shills of big coal, big oil and big nuke? And that Reagan taking the solar panels off the whitehouse actually meant nothing?

OK, I think I've got it.

Still doesn't explain the research, though.

:shrug:

[NNadir]

45. Well, even if we talk in magical percent talk, nuclear produces 11,600% as much energy

as solar energy in the United States.

This may come as a surprise, but the unit of energy is not the "number of generating units" but something called - on industrial terms - the exhale.

Still don't know what an exajoule is?

Oh well, I won't say "What a surprise!" but rather, "No surprise."

There are 8 forms of climate change gas free energy available in the United States according to the Energy Information Agency. They are in order of prominence the following:

Nuclear: 54.5% (8.2%)

Conventional Hydro: 19.2% (2.9%)

Wood: 14.0% (2.1%)

Biofuels like and including ethanol: 5% (0.7%)

Garbage burning (waste): 2.7% (0.4%)

Geothermal: 2.3% (0.3%)

Wind: 1.7% (0.3%)

Solar: 0.4% (0.07%)

The first percentage figure represents what part of the climate change free gas component of US primary energy the form represents and the figure in parentheses is the percentage of US energy is represented by the form if one includes dangerous fossil fuels, that part of the equation about which the highly paid and highly corrupt anti-nuke industry - mostly funded by dangerous fossil fuel companies - couldn't care less.

I don't oppose any of the forms of climate change gas free energy in general, but you oppose the form that is, by far, the largest.

In general one cannot work for the anti-nuke industry if one has a shred of respect for something called "data," but the data for all forms of energy used in the United States is found here:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/solar.renewables/page/prelim_trends/table1.xls

The unit of energy here is a Quad. Now, you can't get into the anti-nuke industry if you actually understand units of energy, but a quad is converted to the SI unit, the exhale, by multiplying quads by 1.055. Thus as of 2006, the US used 105.4 exajoules, nuclear energy produced 8.54 exajoules, and solar, big bad, tremendous, outstanding incredible world's largest biggest greatest superduperous, we-have-to-talk-about-it-all-the-time solar produced 0.074 exajoules.

I'm sure to hear all sorts of hallucinatory talk about how solar is a success and nuclear is a failure - and as usual the particular set of hallucinations I am about to hear will be oblivious to data.

In 1980, the anti-nuke industry gas shill Amory Lovins, who, now that Jeff Skilling is serving 24 years for fraud is probably the highest paid anti-nuke in the world - probably even edging out the Gazprom director Gerhard Schroeder at 300,000 Euros per year - "predicted" the demise of the nuclear industry. Lovins wrote another shit for brains paper, droning on for nearly 40 turgid pages with a series of anecdotes, almost no references to refereed scientific journals and ZERO (count 'em, zero) equations referring to original research as performed in a laboratory under his direction, in Foreign Affairs (which he apparently confuses with an energy journal) in 1980 predicting the demise of nuclear energy in the near future.

He wrote:

Nuclear power elsewhere is in grave difficulties. Only in centrally planned economies, notably France and the U.S.S.R., is bureaucratic power sufficient to override, if not overcome, economic facts. The high nuclear growth forecasts that drove INFCE'S endorsement of fast breeder reactors are thus mere wishful thinking. For fundamental reasons which we shall describe, nuclear power is not commercially viable, and questions of how to regulate an inexorably expanding world nuclear regime are moot.

Again, this shit for brains "analysis" (bold mine) was written in 1980. Lovins must have been on acid or eating magic mushrooms when he wrote this crap (who knows what accounts for his repetition of this crapola over the last 27 years).

Here's what happened with the "geniuses" prediction:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/international/iealf/table27.xls

The production of nuclear energy increased from 7.5 exajoules in 1980 (primary energy at 33% thermal efficiency) to 28.6 exajoules in 2004.

As for Lovins, his hydrogen hypercar SUV car culture business was such a success that he took a job marketing for Walmart.

Lovins is a highly paid anti-nuclear industry shill, not only devoid of intellectual integrity, but of moral integrity as well. Regrettably, his car culture shilling is wearing thin. I'm particularly enjoying little Jimmy Kunstler eating him alive. I don't buy, necessarily, into Jimmy Kunstler's outlook, but he's right on when he kicks the rotten portals of the McMansion of the pathetic snake oil oracle in Snowmass.

[jpak]

46. Reality check - there is no anti-nuclear industry - and Amory Lovins is not a "gas shill"

There are, however, well paid shills for the nuclear industry and they blog here...

http://neinuclearnotes.blogspot.com/

http://neinuclearnotes.blogspot.com/search?q=nnadir

and rant here...

http://www.cleansafeenergy.org/

Patrick Moore believes that global warming is "a good thing".

Christie Todd Whitman fought any and all EPA efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions on behalf of the Cheney administration.

...and "exhale" is not a SI unit, but all shills for the NEI "inhale" the bullshit of the nuclear industry...

FYI

[hunter]

59. There are lots of people who have made careers out of their anti-nuclear activism.

It's not on the scale of the nuclear industry, in most cases it's more of a cottage industry.

You go out and scare up the locals with visions of radioactive fire and brimstone, and you describe a heaven brightly lit by solar panels and wind turbines, and they give you money. It's sorta like Billy Graham and his tent revivals.

[NNadir]

62. Reality. Gerhard Schroeder is paid 300,000 euros a year by Gazprom.

There is not one anti-nuke, not one, who apparently can count when they read the news:

http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/12/09/business/pipe.php

As for gas shill Amory Lovins, he's a Walmart whore, and Walmart is very proud of being his John:

http://www.krcc.org/krccnews/2006/11/amory_lovins_steps_down_as_hea.php

Helen Caldicott certainly doesn't get paid expenses, but you can call her lecture bureau to find out the price of an appearance: http://www.thelecturebureau.com/speakers/helen_caldicott.html

There anti-nuke industry is awash in dollars and always has been. In fact, it is little known but the anti-nuke industry's birth was on Long Island when LILCO announced an intention to build a (gasp) power plant on one of the wealthiest enclaves on the Island, Lloyd's Neck.

Let's face it, nobody who is honest can now be against the world's largest source of climate change gas free energy, by far. It's such an obviously fraudulent scam now, that hearing its apologists whine is rather like hearing George W. Bush whine about progress in Iraq.

[Kolesar]

64. So, in your opinion do Long Islanders have no right to question a development in their communities?

There anti-nuke industry is awash in dollars and always has been. In fact, it is little known but the anti-nuke industry's birth was on Long Island when LILCO announced an intention to build a (gasp) power plant on one of the wealthiest enclaves on the Island, Lloyd's Neck.

Your post has unreferenced subjects (who in Long Island?) in addition to the off-topic material (Wal*Mart) that is in your post for no apparent reason (when you are trying to make a case about natural gas).

[hunter]

56. Lovins is a marketing wonk.

His number one product is Amory Lovins, energy expert!. His number two product is corporate greenwash.

In my mind he's sort of like Kermit the Frog selling a "green" SUV.

Personally, I don't care if it's a hybrid, Kermit. It's still a fossil fueled frog crusher.

[jpak]

36. Hooray for the RMI - unlike the shills/assholes at the Nuclear Energy Institute...

http://neinuclearnotes.blogspot.com/

...who are busily shoveling millions of RW anti-global warming bucks at RW anti-global warming pro-nuke GOP candidates and giving Dick Cheney standing O's (and kneeling BJ's), the RMI is actually doing something to reduce energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions.

Good on them....

[hunter]

58. Lead Acid batteries and NiCad batteries are not nice.

A NiCad "C" cell, a cadmium telluride solar panel, or a Lead Acid gell cell of similar capacities, ground up into small particles and ingested would be very bad for you.

"Abundance by Design" of an RMI sort only prolongs the social misery and the profits of big industry, depending upon your point of view.

The most hellish aspect of human ecology is that if we practice "Abundance by Design" we usually end up fueling consumerism or increasing is the human population. Whatever abundance we've designed results in some new sort of shortage or environmental degredation. There's no such thing as "green" consumerism.

I think the greatest problem with U.S. society is our "productivity" and "efficiency." We should scrap most of these archaic nineteenth century economic theories and measure our national productivity by entirely renewable and low environmental impact activities such as walking, talking, reading, or poking around in our organic parklands or gardens.

You want to save energy? Mandate a twenty hour work week, raise the minimum wage high enough to support that, and encourage people not to have more than one or two children.

We got into this mess by making too much stuff -- including cars and highways, airports and airplanes, and houses in the suburbs. We probably won't get out of this mess by making more stuff, no matter how efficient it is. If you are digging yourself into a hole you don't get out by slowing your rate of shoveling.

You want to save the environment? Preserving the Wal-Mart-car-culture-suburban lifestyle probably isn't the way to go about it. When RMI abandons Snowmass for a densely populated urban area and starts opposing rather than celebrating the U.S. culture of consumerism, then I might be be impressed.

But for now I notice this from their web pages:

RMI Headquarter Tours Cancelled

Due to heavy construction in and around the building...

There are no tours of RMI's Headquarter building.
Tours resume October 1, 2007.

http://www.rmi.org/sitepages/pid23.php

I don't imagine they are packing those heavy construction materials into Snowmass on foot.

[jpak]

60. and nuclear power will eliminate ""Abundance by Design", consumerism and increased population?

and the "Wal-Mart-car-culture-suburban lifestyle"???

don't think so...