1997 Federal Million Solar Roofs Program Acheives Goals!!!!!!!

[NNadir]

Even though the California Brazillion Solar Roofs program that is now covering California with silicon has made the 1997 Federal program obsolete, it is with great happiness that I forward this report reading as follows:

One in a Million
The Million Solar Roofs Initiative was launched in 1997. As the name suggests, the initiative seeks to install solar energy systems on one million homes by 2010. With more than 350,000 systems installed, Million Solar Roofs is succeeding beyond anyone's wildest dreams.

Um, beyond anyone's wildest dreams? If everyone's wildest dreams was 350,000 systems, why did they name it a million solar roofs.

Oh well, nitpicking.

YAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

A million solar roofs with another brazillion on the way through the courtesy of Governor Hydrogen Hummer!!!!!!!!

YAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Now let's look at a cool graph:



Um, un, ah...

Um...

Pool heaters?

People put millions of pool heaters on their roofs? (Why not put them near the pool?)

Is this a "what the fuck?" moment?

Oh wait a minute, I forgot. The solar energy is for rich people who have pools, trust fund brats and the like.

Join me in cheering the "Brazillion Solar Roofs" movement:

http://www1.eere.energy.gov/solar/deployment.html

But look, let me try to cheer you up: Here's one of our brazillion solar cars being followed by a big police SUV in case there are any clouds:

[Kolesar]

1. So, you are writing this on a treadle-operated PC, clothed in yarn you spun yourself?

[NNadir]

2. No, I'm writing this on a nuclear powered computer, as luck would have it.

More than 50% of my power is nuclear. I'm trying to get the other half nuclear, as luck would have it and recent indications are that I might get my way. There's talk of adding reactors here, and I'm for it big time.

The two nuclear power plants in New Jersey produce more energy than all the solar power PV cells in the United States.

Here is the output of all those cool solar cells for the entire US:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epm/epmxlfile1_1_a.xls

Here is the output of New Jersey's nuclear plants:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/nuclear/page/nuc_generation/usreactbystate.xls

The difference between nuclear power and solar power is that everyone can afford nuclear power.

[Kolesar]

3. You have to admit that your nuclear program has had subsidies that dwarf solar PV subsidies

So the "economy" of nuclear is hard to determine. Your framing of photovoltaics as a rich vs. poor issue is really not convincing.

Oh wait a minute, I forgot. The solar energy is for rich people who have pools, trust fund brats and the like.

None of the people I met on the Ohio solar tour last year were trust fund brats.

Are you telling us that you think America should add three times as many nuclear plants so that we could shut down all the coal plants? What would that cost? Have you considered that the solution might be something more like efficiency measures and natural lighting?

[Massacure]

4. And fossil fuel companies get subsidies that dwarf both nuclear and renewable subsidies.

I'm all in favor of getting rid of ALL subsidies, but it is such a shame that such a thing will never happen.

[NNadir]

5. No I "admit" no such thing.

The economy of the nuclear industry is well understood, which is why the industry is expanding on a massive scale internationally. It is reasonable to hope for 60 exajoules of primary nuclear energy within 15-20 years, up from 28 exajoules now. The 23 reactors now proposed in the United States alone amount to almost an exajoule per year, and the rate at which reactors are being proposed is growing. The costs of nuclear energy are known to be among the lowest in the world. The only comparable cost (counting internal costs only and not external costs) is coal and hydro. Hydro's tapped out and coal kills indiscriminately, and will begin to kill even more rapidly as climate change gets more serious.

Photovoltaics are for hobbyists. OK? The solar energy would drop dead tomorrow without subsidies, and if the solar industry dropped dead, no one would notice because the energy produced is insignificant.

On the other hand, if the nuclear industry dropped dead, everyone would notice, mostly in filthy skies, unavailable power, and deaths from air pollution.

The solar industry is highly subsidized and produces no noticeable result on an exajoule scale worldwide. In fact the entire renewable energy industry (non-hydro) produces just six exajoules, and that's counting burning trash as "renewable."

The so called "nuclear subsidy" is pretty much the figment of the foetid imaginations of people who don't understand economics, who don't understand energy and usually are ill equipped to understand science as well.

For instance, solar trust fund brats driving to meeting all over the world to say how wonderful solar power is (thus consuming more energy than the industry actually produces) love to lecture me on the Price-Anderson Act. Nuclear Subsidy! Nuclear Subsidy! Except for one thing. There has never been a nuclear claim, because unlike coal, gas and oil, nuclear hasn't killed or injured anyone in this country. In fact, Price-Anderson is an insurance industry subsidy, since nuclear companies are required to carry private insurance on which no claims have ever been paid.

This simple fact will not stop the anti-nuclear crowd from repeating their blather, since the anti-nuclear squad is most famous for making shit up, mostly because the anti-nuclear industry knows practically nothing.

I very much support the phase out of coal with nuclear power. Not one country anywhere on this planet has phased out coal with solar power, but France burns almost no coal. Why? Because France has a little cadre of hobbyists playing with solar toys? No. It's because France did what every responsible nation should do, go nuclear.

The solar pretend game is cute, and I'm very, very, very amused by the trust fund brats playing with their toys, but energy is a serious matter.

It would take 20 billion dollars in solar toys - if you could get the materials, which the solar industry can't do, to equal one nuclear plant costing 2 to 3 billion dollars. Now, maybe the Ohio trust fund brat school of energy is perfectly content paying ten times as much for energy as nuclear - while generating a shit load of toxic waste - but I'm not.

Nuclear energy is a wise investment. I have called for a ten trillion dollar investment in nuclear capacity around the world on an emergency basis, because it is an investment that is proved to have a return. With ten trillion dollars in nuclear plants, this planet could eliminate the use of coal, except in steel making. The loss of life would be trivial. I believe the world should embark on a program to construct four to five thousand nuclear reactors. This would create jobs, infrastructure and wealth.

In the meantime, I have no objection to people playing with their solar toys. It's been no skin off my back for the last thirty years, and it can go on for another thirty years. If the industry manages someday to produce an exajoule, Mazeltov. If not, who cares. It's been useless this far, so it's not like we will lose something.

If to address peak loads we want to play with solar toys, we can always run over to Toys R Us and get some solar cells. Or we can hope that the solar industry will stop peddling tripe and will actually prove itself as being on scale to eliminate natural gas.

But I've been hearing solar singing and solar dancing for decades, and still the technology is on a toy scale. So I'm not optimistic.

[Kolesar]

6. Those three nuclear plants that encircle Cleveland were of no use when the grid went down for 10 day

...back in 2003. The grid is at borderline "overcapacity" right now. The leaders in your state are advocating two new coal plants on the Ohio River and a new powerline across the Allegheny Mountains so that you can suck up more power. Even worse is that they are going to charge Ohioans for the new capacity although the energy use would be in eastern states.

Constrast that with a vision of flat lining electricity growth through efficiency and through ethical-conservation. Then, localized solar electricity could be generated at the point of use instead of the unsustainable and expensive solution of building more power plants and power lines for your centralized system.

Did you write to your government and tell them where you would like the new nuclear plants to be sited in New Jersey? Perhaps you could get a state roadmap and circle the beachfront locations that you think should have new nuclear generating plants. Then you could see just how courageous your leaders are in tackling this problem.

[Systematic Chaos]

7. Apples and Oranges

There are brownouts and blackouts because the infrastructure can't handle the demand, NOT because there is nuclear power involved. We need plenty of reworking of old parts of the grid regardless of how the power is generated, so why are you even bringing this into your anti-nuclear argument?

And as for suggesting what beachfront property should be used for the new nuclear capacity, NNadir has already stated that he is very pleased that the plants are being proposed and has no problems living within view of one. The uninformed public, with their gut reactions of fear and distrust, are the ones who will make the process more difficult.

And again, for the record, it has been a two-year process of reading this board religiously day after day to drag me, kicking and screaming, into the belief that nuclear power IS a major component of the solution to our energy needs. I used to work in view of a nuclear power plant near Red Wing, Minnesota (at the Treasure Island Casino and Resort) and was in constant fear of a meltdown which not only never happened, and even if it did it would almost certainly not have been a Chernobyl-type disaster! We can conserve, for sure, but when countries like China and Germany are proposing to spew countless billions of tons of additional CO2 into the air with their "clean" (or in the case of China, filthy) coal plants, how -- unless they just escaped Bizarro World -- can anybody keep arguing that any kind of renewable energy will stave off all that coal burning? The global corporations who are destroying the Asian continent aren't scrambling to adopt these renewables while the Chinese die by the thousands due to filthy air, water and soil. Can you say (while keeping a straight face) that China would be even a fraction as toxic and filthy if they generated even two-thirds of their power from nuclear energy? Um, no.

[Kolesar]

9. Local generation like roof top photovoltaics are better than nuclear power plants or any power plant

...because they don't need the electricity grid. Building more power line corridors is an unsustainable and unnecessary use of resources: copper, steel, and precious habitat.

My opinion is that nuclear electricity should be used incrementally to supplant some of the coal fired electricity. I think the biggest hurdle is insuring that the nuclear plants have ethical management. Last headline I saw was that First Energy is being sued by the men who they made scapegoats for their f-up at Davis Besse that brought the plant offline for years. Reports say that vessel was within 60 days of rupture--a period while FE management was lying and faking up inspection reports.

I also hate the idea of dumping the fuel rods from everywhere in the country at the Piketon, Ohio site while the government stalls for decades and never really starts a fuel-rod recycling program.

[NickB79]

13. Did you not read what NNadir wrote?

He stated "It would take 20 billion dollars in solar toys - if you could get the materials, which the solar industry can't do, to equal one nuclear plant costing 2 to 3 billion dollars. Now, maybe the Ohio trust fund brat school of energy is perfectly content paying ten times as much for energy as nuclear - while generating a shit load of toxic waste - but I'm not."

Roof top photovoltaics, huh?

"Building more power line corridors is an unsustainable and unnecessary use of resources: copper, steel, and precious habitat."

But building a million or more PV arrays doesn't use up resources?

[Kolesar]

16. Do you mean the flaming anxiety attack of the original post?

...or the self-delighted follow-up posts, so devoid of references?

[NNadir]

8. The people of Salem Creek, like most people living near nuclear facilities

are very happy to have the nuclear plants. I would certainly love on in my hometown.

In recent years, cities like Oswego New York, Calvert Cliffs, MD, and many other communities have been competing to get new nuclear power plants.

I note that there have been zero grid disasters where the solar industry has proved itself capable of meeting the disaster, no this is just one more instance where the solar industry is inadequate. I believe every solar facility in New Orleans was probably destroyed, and in much of Texas and Mississippi, during the Katrina, Rita, Dennis, hurricane season.

One can see the results for the reactors in Louisiana and every other state for 2005 right here:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/nuclear/page/nuc_generation/usreact05.xls

The idea that solar is immune to disaster or suited for diaster is about as silly as the rest of the trust fund brat make believe attached to the solar industry. There is not one city anywhere on earth with a population of more than 50,000 that is lit solely by solar energy. There is not one such city where 10% of the power is provided by solar energy. I note that a brazillion solar roofs program in New Orleans would have been a disaster to the owners of those expensive systems, not that there were very many.

When Bush flew into New Orleans to make his Disneyland speech backlit by blue flood lights, he brought diesel generators, not a bunch of solar cells and wind mills hooked to batteries.

The first powerplants available after these hurricanes were all nuclear, by the way. The gas infrastructure was all fucked up and only the reactors were available to provide energy. I don't know what the lead time was for the recovery of off the grid hobbyists for their electrical systems, nor do I really care.

I wish you well in your game of producing point source electronic waste to play with your hobby. Twenty or thirty years from now, when your toys are being sent to landfills, it probably won't be your problem, but it will probably not be significant since the industry will probably always remain tiny. I don't imagine I'll live a day when solar electricity has shut even one gas plant, but if I do - if even 100 such plants are shut - well, I have no objection. Basically I don't give a fuck what "off the grid" hobbyists do. I've been hearing this crap for decades now and I no longer take the matter seriously. They are irrevelant to the serious issue of climate change. Still nobody has ever tried to stop the solar industry, so it's really, really, really, really, really difficult to explain why decades of such talk has produced so little energy.

[Kolesar]

10. I notice that you are talking around my point that we should not expand the grid

Which is the Dick Cheney vision of how to manage America's energy supply. It's unsustainable. We are now at the limits of what we can do by pulling more resources out of the ground and destroying habitat.

Since this is *your* antagonistic thread that *you* started, it behooves you to address that point that I made. Verbal excursions into the discontents of trust fund brats and bush's blue lighting don't take this thread where it needs to go.

[NNadir]

11. Oh, now we're doing the "guilt by association" trip. That's not thinking.

At some point in these conversations, when you are bereft ideas, it is always useful to fall back on logical fallacies and start yelling "Dick Cheney!"

I have no idea what your point is, but I guess you're trying to say "grid bad, me and my friend in the solar club, good."

The fact is that anyone who wants to live off grid can do so. Nothing but access to money is preventing them from doing so. All hobbyists have the opportunity to do this with their excess cash.

I forgot, by the way, to note in one of your earlier posts, since I glanced over them to see whether you made a point, and if you did (not that I could discern it), it's not supported by anything but your "say so."

Among other things about which you are misinformed, is that my state does not border the Ohio river. Coal plants that do border the Ohio river, fling metric ton quantities of dangerous fossil fuel wastes high into the atmosphere and it settles on my state, but my state relies mostly on nuclear energy. Eighteen percent of our energy comes from coal, however, and of course I am trying to stop that by calling for the construction of new nuclear plants here. I would like at least two more, but preliminary plans call for only one more. I hope this will change and New Jersey will lead the nation in percentage of power generated by nuclear means. We need two more reactors to accomplish this.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/nuclear/page/at_a_glance/states/statesnj.html

I very much doubt that solar hobbyists will have anything to do with solving climate change problems related to my state's electricity. We have one of the most generous "brazillion solar roofs" bill in the country and it hasn't done shit. Not one gas plant has been shut, not one coal plant.

[Kolesar]

12. Power line sought in Western Md.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/business/bal-bz.power19apr19,0,3426.story?coll=bal-pe-business

Power line sought in Western Md.

...

In general, Wilson said, there is power available west of the Allegheny Mountains, but not enough power plants to the east, and not enough transmission capacity to get it from west to east.

"This is effectively a thruway to get power from that side to this side," Wilson explained. Once the power gets to the east, it could potentially be shared among utilities, including BGE and other companies from Virginia to New Jersey, where the capacity to generate energy is "constrained."

The line would allow "more west-to-east transfer of power," likely moderating costs in the east, agreed Allen Staggers, a spokesman for Allegheny. Staggers noted a January study by the Maryland Public Service Commission that showed that utilities in the east, including BGE and Pepco, currently pay more for power because of "significant transmission congestion" in getting power from its source to the customers.

[NNadir]

14. Yeah so?

This has something to do with me or are you just confused?

I am on record as calling for the banning of coal everywhere. I oppose coal filth in West Virginia; I oppose it in Oregon; I oppose it in Germany. In the last case, I note with great bitterness and contempt and moral disgust that all this "solar will save us" posturing - coupled with a nuclear phase out that was a paen to the pernicious power of ignorance - has lead to the construction of 26 new coal German plants that will poison everyone who lives on this planet.

I am also on record as calling for more nuclear plants in New Jersey, which is my backyard. I would be proud to have my state lead the way in the production of clean energy.

I would be perfectly happy to have five nuclear power plants built here and ship power the other direction to shut the filthy coal plants in Ohio that poison my air, destroy my land, and poision my lakes and streams, while you drive around showing off your solar toys. Thus I would support the transmission lines if they allow for the shipping of more nuclear electricity. If, by some miracle, the solar and other renewable energies substitute energy production for interminable big talk, I would be happy for these types of energy to be added to the grid, but I'm not optimistic. My default position is that I want fossil fuels banned: All of them, including natural gas.

I don't give a flying fuck about what solar fly swatters do in the meantime - I'm hunting a bigger, badder, more vicious and violent enemy.

[Kolesar]

15. Among other things about which you are misinformed, is that my state does not border the Ohio river.

NNadir:Among other things about which you are misinformed, is that my state does not border the Ohio river. Coal plants that do border the Ohio river, fling metric ton quantities of dangerous fossil fuel wastes high into the atmosphere and it settles on my state, but...

[NickB79]

43. NNadir lives in New Jersey

Last time I checked, the Ohio river doesn't border New Jersey. What did I miss? :shrug:

[Pawel K]

17. This thread educated me quite a bit. Thanks. nt

[Kolesar]

28. Glad to be a ... help

?

[Greyskye]

18. sigh

Um, beyond anyone's wildest dreams? If everyone's wildest dreams was 350,000 systems, why did they name it a million solar roofs.

My interpretation is that they are on-track to have 1 million rooftop solar systems installed by 2010. My numbers show that if they keep on the same linear slope that they have so far, they will have 1.75 million installed by 2010.

Pool heaters?

People put millions of pool heaters on their roofs? (Why not put them near the pool?)

Is this a "what the fuck?" moment?

Oh wait a minute, I forgot. The solar energy is for rich people who have pools, trust fund brats and the like.

Are you really so busy being snarky that you don't get this? Solar pool heaters operate by simply heating the water of the swimming pool. Usually NOT by creating electricity which is then used to run an electric heater, but by physically heating the water. The spot on most peoples properties that gets the most sunlight, (as well as being out of the way), is ON THE ROOF. Doesn't seem too difficult. This is also why the graph is broken out into 3 sections: photovoltaics, pool heating, and water heating.

Why don't you ask the residents of Chernobyl how they feel about your beloved nuclear power? Oh, right. They don't live there anymore. :sarcasm:

[Systematic Chaos]

20. Yes, there's always THAT to fall back on.

A reactor design that was known to be utter crap and ultimately caused the only major catastrophe due to nuclear power, ever. Sorry, TMI was NOT major compared to Chernobyl -- and is the only other nuclear accident in a 50 year history -- so don't even go there

Why don't you go spend some time in China and just sit there and breathe for a few days. Then come back and tell us how great coal is compared to nuclear energy. Add up the total number of deaths in coal mines during even the past 25 years, and compare that to the deaths due to nuclear power, including Chernobyl. Then tell us that it's worth continuing to pursue that option. How many feet of sea level rise will it take before you decide the cost of fossil fuel burning just isn't worth it? Two? Ten? Sixty? How many people in Latin American countries need to riot or starve to death before we figure out it's not worth growing corn to feed our cars? Will this take you a while? Shall I pack a sandwich?

Oh, and can't the sun "heat the water of the swimming pool" just by shining upon said water? But I'm so glad that people are putting these solar systems, which are toxic when mass produced, up on their roofs to heat their freaking pools, so they can feel all environmentalist-like.... :rofl:


On edit: Let's go ask all the wild creatures who now populate the area around Chernobyl and seem to be thriving. It's not as though the area extending 50 miles from the epicenter has magically turned into a simulation of the surface of Mars.

[Greyskye]

23. LOL

Oh come on, I wanted the OP to come out and play!

I like how you put the major emphasis of your rebuttal on my last (and least important) 2 dozen words - where I put an admittedly snarky reference to Chernobyl. Why aren't you defending the OP's lack of basic math and reading comprehension skills?

As far as that goes, you obviously have zero experience with pool heating systems. Why don't you go and educate yourself a little bit before coming out to play? And please point out where I have ever posted anything in favor of coal power. Feel free to search the site, as well as the entire Internet for anything I've ever posted that would support that. I'll go get a mug of coffee while I'm waiting...

The OP jumped in with a rant against solar power, that was filled with disinformation. His DU bio shows his hobby as "nuclear physics", so I'm guessing that there's just a *wee* bit of bias there. Do you, like the OP, desire to have a nuclear power plant in your backyard?

Oh, and I'm quite familiar with the pollution in China. I've even posted on DU about that, with pictures of downtown Shanghai included. I'm sure you'll run across that when you're searching my postings for pro-coal screeds. :eyes:

[Greyskye]

25. on toxicity

And I am highly amused by the hypocracy of comments like this:

But I'm so glad that people are putting these solar systems, which are toxic when mass produced, up on their roofs to heat their freaking pools, so they can feel all environmentalist-like....

So you've come up with a way of dealing with the byproducts of nuclear power now? What exactly do we do with the spent fuel rods that nuclear plants produce?

Let's go ask all the wild creatures who now populate the area around Chernobyl and seem to be thriving.

Umm, if you think you can talk to the animals, feel free. (backing away slowly)

From http://www.nea.fr/html/rp/chernobyl/c06.html (NEA = The French Nuclear Energy Agency)

In summary
Many countermeasures to control the contamination of agricultural products were applied with varying levels of efficiency. Nevertheless, within the former Soviet Union large areas of agricultural land are still excluded from use, and are expected to continue to be so for a long time. In a much larger area, although agricultural and farm animal activities are carried out, the food produced is subject to strict controls and restrictions on distribution and use.

Similar problems, although of a much lower severity, were experienced in some countries of Europe outside the former Soviet Union, where agricultural and farm animal production were subjected to controls and limitations for variable durations after the accident. Most of these restrictions were lifted several years ago. However, there are still some areas in Europe where restrictions on slaughter and distribution of animals are applied. This concerns, for example, several hundreds of thousands of sheep in the United Kingdom and large numbers of sheep and reindeer in some Nordic countries.

Produce from forests, such as mushrooms, berries and game meat, may continue to be a radiological protection problem for a long time. The decrease of radioactivity will be now slow through radioactivity decay.

At present drinking water is not a problem. Contamination of groundwater, especially with 90Sr, could be a problem for the future in the catchment basins downstream of the Chernobyl area.

Contaminated fish from lakes may be a long-term problem in some countries.

<...>

[hunter]

26. You are talking about people, not animals.

Chernobyl created a very favorable environment for wildlife by excluding people.

From the perspective of wildlife the Chernobyl accident was a very good thing because PEOPLE are much more hazardous than nuclear waste.

From a wild animal's perspective it is much better to be a little bit radioactive than to have the natural environment that supports you destroyed by people. From a wild plant's perspective it is much better to be a little bit radioactive than it is to be plowed under the ground by people growing food.

Furthermore, there are many things people do that are far more destructive to people and the environment than nuclear power. A coal strip mine has got to be one of the most destructive human activities there is. It destroys the land, it pollutes the water and air with very toxic waste, and it changes the climate in ways that are killing both people and wildlife.

Anything associated with a nuclear power plant, even a failed nuclear power plant like Three Mile Island, pales in comparison to the non-nuclear devastation people cause every day. A simple corn field is a biological wasteland in comparison to an ongoing nuclear disaster like the Hanford nuclear reservation.

From a non-anthropocentric biological perspective, the farmland surrounding the Hanford nuclear reservation is in worse shape than the reservation itself.

Nature really doesn't care about the radioactive isotopes in the river. But the worldwide mass extinctions caused by non-nuclear human activities will take a very long time to heal. The animals of Chernobyl are not only talking, they are SCREAMING OUT that nuclear power is among the least of our environmental problems. All we have to do is listen.

When you back away slowly it is because you wish to remain ignorant.

It's the worst sort of environmental sin, and yes I'll call it that -- a sin -- to oppose nuclear power in such a way to allow for the expansion of fossil fuel utilization or AGRICULTURE.

We have to get past this idea that large scale agriculture is a good thing. It is a very sad but necessary evil much exacerbated by human overpopulation.

[Greyskye]

27. And your solution...

...to the disposal of spent fuel rods is what exactly?

And I don't disagree with you in the least regarding large scale agriculture as well as the problems with large scale livestock production.

I think that the solution to the energy crisis that we are facing GLOBALLY is not with nuclear, coal, or any other solutions which depend on centralized energy production and distribution over the power grid. We need a paradigm shift to micro-power (of whatever form) which is generated at the end-user level, is sufficient for the households energy consumption, and provides extra power which is fed into the grid from the back-end. Think Internet-like connectivity to the power grid. This way local disruptions won't bring down entire regions as is the case now. Less than 10 years ago (IIRC) a rodent chewed through a cable in a power station in Oregon. That took out most of the west coast in a ripple effect. More recently were the blackouts on the East coast.

Our current power grid is a disaster waiting to happen. Our current power generation capabilities have multiple problems including environmental and sustainability. We need to fix the entire system, not put on a band-aid like adding more nuclear plants.

[hunter]

29. We need high density power sources to support modern society.

I happen to know a lot about smart power networks. We don't have them. Most of our power distribution system would be very familiar to someone from the 1930's. New technology such as solid state HVDC and other switching systems have not replaced older ways of doing things. It's still mostly wires and transformers.

But the diffuse system you propose doesn't recognize the needs of heavy industry. On a household level we don't even need electricity to survive, it is only a convenience. A small solar panel, a small battery, and a few white LEDs is enough to find the toilet at night and run a laptop computer. Nobody needs washing machines or dryers or dishwashers or refrigerators or big screen televisions or air conditioners. You can walk outside your home, throw the main circuit breaker, and there you are living off the grid, and you can save a lot of money doing it. You don't need a state subsidy or anything fancy at all.

The real problem is running something like this:



A steel mill is not something that's going to be powered by a bunch of solar or wind power enthusiasts who are watching their electric meters run backwards. So you need something big to build and power your industry, your public transportation systems, your streetcars and your high speed trains. And if you already have something big in place to do that, there's no reason not to have it on the same power network that households, farms, and small businesses use.

Which means that small solar and wind installations will be directly competing with things like nuclear power plants and very large scale wind, solar, and geothermal plants.

Rooftop solar installations will end up competing with solar installations like this:



The simple fact is that there is a lot less labor involved in maintaining a single desert solar installation than the solar installations on a "million rooftops." The only real economic niche that exists for rooftop solar is heating and remote off-grid installations. Solar electric rooftop installations in other places will necessarily be installed for reasons unrelated to the economic and environmental costs or the reliability of the electric supply.

Nuclear waste is a fairly innocuous and containable thing compared to something like coal:



I don't worry about the disposal of spent fuel rods much at all. For the most part they just sit there. We are probably making a lot more fuss about it than we need to with projects like Yucca Mountain.

And it seems a bit odd to worry about a very small volume of nuclear waste while the coal industry spews out so much more toxic wastes, some of it radioactive, but most of it having a half life of FOREVER.

Nuclear power is almost certainly less dangerous than solar rooftops. In a thousand years, for a given amount of power, I'd wager more people would be killed or maimed falling off of the solar rooftops they are installing and maintaining, or dying of sun-induced skin cancer, than would be killed by nuclear power plants.

[Greyskye]

34. I agree to a point

I never claimed that a micro-power distributed network would be sufficient for industry. And I disagree with your contention that "Which means that small solar and wind installations will be directly competing with things like nuclear power plants and very large scale wind, solar, and geothermal plants." I envision the large scale plants powering our industry and a limited amount of infrastructure. Micro-power at the consumer and small business level handles everything else. This doesn't mean that they are in direct competition - there should be a happy medium out there in which the two different paradigms can work synergistically.

Perhaps a few isolated, regional nuclear facilities in appropriate areas (ie, NOT on top of a fault line!), could handle the industrial usage. Renewable sources such as solar, geothermal, hydroelectric, tidal, "Mr. Fusion" etc., would be able to deal with the rest.

We have GOT to change the way we think about energy production and distribution, or else face a very nasty wake-up call. Whether that wake-up call will be in the form of a peak-oil catastrophe, terrorist attack on our energy infrastructure, death-by-pollution, or some other form has yet to be seen.

The other factor that most people seem to be ignoring, is what happens to industry when oil inevitably collapses. Petrochemicals are THE basis for plastics, and pretty much every manufactured item in existence. It won't matter that much that the factories can't run due to lack of energy, if they have nothing to make due to a lack in raw materials.

[Dogmudgeon]

35. Micropower and band-aids and nukes etc.

Although I am a strong proponent of nuclear power, I agree with your overall idea, but there are a few things to consider.

First, the idea that nuclear power is a "band-aid", or more commonly denigrated as a "tech fix", is rhetorical. Nuclear energy supplies about 20% of our electricity; nearly all of France's. It isn't a "fix", it's a reliable form of power generation. And what small damage does it bandage over? So the "tech fix" or "band-aid" argument is meaningless. Nuclear power is more reliable than any of the "green" methods at this point, and given the average <1% use and 30% per year growth rate for both PV and wind power, it will be that way for at least a couple of decades.

Perhaps the reason for your opposition is that you find the risks of nuclear power to be unacceptable. I'll address that below.

Second, your point about micro-power -- or grid and generation decentralization -- is well-taken, but I think we all badly underestimate the amount of energy we actually use -- not personally, but collectively. Time and time again, I see power discussed in terms of light bulbs and individual homes. But residential power demand is around 10-12% of the total energy demand in the USA, and even less in boom economies like India and China. The rest of that goes to transportation, agriculture, industry, and the power required to run a complex technically sophisticated society.

In other words, if we have a minor shortfall of energy, we may have to pay more for our home electric, but the systemic effect could cascade the way it did in California in 2001 and 2002 when Enron was shaking the state down. Only, in an energy crisis, it would be spontaneous and not amenable to corporate ransom or state command.

This is why a large-scale program of nuclear power plant building isn't a band-aid but a practical way to prevent environmental and economic destruction and human suffering. We are quickly reaching the point where we won't have any time to plan -- we will just have to deal with the damage as it is wrought. Wind and solar and tidal power still require work, but nuclear is ready to go NOW.

I am NOT anti-wind, anti-solar, anti-tidal, or anti-biofuel. The first three have passed the proof-of-concept phase, but that's about all. Biofuel has recently "broken out" but the way it's being handled is an absolute boondoggle. And as I said, nuclear is ready to go NOW.

Back to your concerns over the risks of nuclear material. They are valid, and we pro-nuclearists have posted about them many times. But the actual risks have been exaggerated, and the USA has pursued a stupid policy of forbidding breeding, "waste" recycling and transmutation, and other risk-reducing technologies. Nuclear "waste" can and should be recycled, but even leaving it as-is, it loses its high-risk potency in about 500 years. I've seen anti-nuclearists here cite 2,000 and 250,000 year figures -- 2000 years is plausible for some used reactor materials, but a quarter of a million years is certainly not. Any way you look at it, though, it's a long time.

The by-products of semiconductor (PV) manufacture -- arsenic, mercury (which is in CFLs), lead, cadmium, and rarer and more exotic metals -- are poisonous forever.

Not 500 years, not 2000, not 250,000 years, but forever.

If and when we scale up PV solar electricity, the semiconductor industry will expand by a factor of 100, perhaps 1000. Unlike microchip manufacture, the whole idea of photovoltaic semiconductor manufacture is the increase the active surface area. That will mean more exotic chemistry. The waste from the electronics industry is already grave, and the RoHS directive is on a par with Kyoto -- a weak start. Multiply those eternal poisons by a hundred, a thousand -- and compare the result to (recyclable and decayable) nuclear waste.

And how much damage has nuclear "waste" actually caused? How much has coal fly-ash caused? Can coal fly-ash be recycled like "nuclear waste"? Can it be transmuted into completely inert substances? Yet the common view is that nuclear material is worse than anything. In reality, it has risks which can be determined, and which turn out to be far less than many other pollutants we promiscuously dump -- and breathe.

I do not expect to "convert" you or any other opponent of nuclear power. It took me years of reading and thinking about it to change my mind, and I don't demand quick action of anyone, especially those trying to grapple with the huge and terrifying onslaught of problems we are facing. You came to oppose (and perhaps loathe) nuclear power for what you found to be good reasons. But now the picture has changed. We have all learned more, not all of it is pleasant, and none of it is easy to accept. If the world seems upside-down to any of us, it means that we are well-grounded in reality.

None of us will ever again live in an era in which we can be satisfyingly correct. My own ambition is that I may be able to play a role in building a new, better world and outwitting the blind and destructive force of progress and regress. If I am found to be wrong time and time again, so be it. Measured against the world, nature, humankind, and our common culture, my ego is last on the list. But I am confident that I am at least generally correct about nuclear energy, after having been so ignorant for so long. There have been no million-death meltdowns. Nukes have not reduced the average lifespan to 55. They have not resulted in a generation of genetically damaged children. All these things I once believed -- and feared.

When I say "building a new, better world", I mean literally that: a multi-generational effort to make Humankind a beneficial force on this planet and then in the expansion into space. Nuclear power, I believe, will be essential to that change, but whether it is or not, our choice is to either grow into the Big Picture or be crushed by it.

Within that paradigm, I have made my choice.

--p!

[Greyskye]

36. Thank you for your thoughtful, well written reply

I jumped into this thread because the OP was throwing disinformation and rhetoric around randomly, and I felt a need to address some of his points. I very much appreciate your reasoned discourse on this subject. :thumbsup:

My biggest objections to nuclear power are mostly situational. Building a nuclear plant directly over a fault-line? As far as I'm concerned, that's a criminal act. Placing it directly upwind of a concentrated urban population? Ditto.

I appreciate that you yourself are not 'anti' non-nuclear technologies. Within reason, I myself am not totally anti-nuke. My strongest drive is not for any one type of energy production. It is a re-tooling of our energy distribution system. It is just too damn vulnerable right now. Vulnerable to energy shortfalls, natural disasters, terrorist strikes, human error, manipulation (Enron), etc.

I have a feeling that we aren't that far apart in the grand scheme of things. :toast:

[Kolesar]

40. There is no anti-nuclear thesis in this thread, but a baited anti-solar thesis

And by "baited", I mean flame-baited.

The story so far: the original poster shared with us an "anxiety attack" of a hit piece attacking a lame PR piece on the federal government's website. After some dry banter, it is revealed that any defense of solar is countered with an aggressive counter surge to promote nuclear energy.

Apparently, because I can see a consumer application of solar pool heaters and photovoltaics, then I am a promoter of coal development in the US and China. (note that this is a sarcastic simplification)

There’s one guy who should not get the job of “framing the message” for a public relations campaign.

Animals think
They’re pretty smart
But they don’t even know what a joke is.
-David Byrne, “Fear of Music”, 1980

[hunter]

42. I find it all a refreshing change from anti-nuclear flame-baiting!

And quite honestly I get impatient with affluent hobbyists who think they are going to change the world by purchasing a Prius and putting solar cells on their rooftops.

Yeah, it's better than driving around an H2 genital enhancement device, and burning coal so you can run your air conditioner with your windows open, but still... There's a little kid in the city somewhere who eats mostly rice and beans, whose mom takes the bus to the various houses she cleans, and he doesn't have much because his mom has no money, and that kid has every right to a good life as the guy with the Prius and solar rooftop and European vacations and a 3000 square foot house full of newer manufactured goods from all over the world.

But hands down, the little kid in the city has less impact upon the earth's environment than all the self righteous consumers and energy hogs who think they are something special because they got a big subsidy from the state to buy even more crap that's going to end up in a landfill someday.

You are right about that, like NNadir, I'm one of the guys who is never gonna get a job "framing the message" for a public relations campaign. All I can really do is watch in horror as Nature prepares her big smackdown of so-called U.S. civilization.

There's really no way to sugar coat this and make it palatable to someone who thinks they are "green" but is really just another sort of consumer, one with only slightly differing tastes than Fox News, Britney Spears, and Huge Sports Utility Vehicles with big shiny chrome wheels.

I know where I stand, I have strong opinions, and I don't see any reason to be placating the people who brought this disaster upon us, myself included, just because they express some green platitudes that they themselves can't even bring themselves to live by.

[NNadir]

44. You have failed to comprehend a shred of what I'm doing here.

I don't oppose solar energy. What I oppose is magical thinking about solar energy.

Don't be so fucking disingenous. More than half of the people around here who thrill at every solar installation do so with an anti-nuclear bias. They think solar energy will replace everything but the first thing these people want is to displace the safest form of energy which is known, which is nuclear.

In my view, opposing nuclear energy is a form of violence against humanity. It does not follow however that being for solar energy is a bad thing. I would love to see solar energy provide an exajoule, even ten exajoules, even 50. The problem is that solar energy does not provide one exajoule. Every day I more and more suspect that all of the energy produced by solar means is consumed by computers being used for promoting solar energy.

If solar energy worked on a significant scale, it would displace natural gas, since natural gas is mostly used to generate peak electricity. I oppose natural gas because it is unacceptably dangerous and because there is no permanaent repository planned for dangerous natural gas waste, chiefly carbon dioxide. Thus whatever solar energy beyond promotional campaigns can produce is welcome for me.

But solar toys for rich kids is not consistent with my political values, which includes decent life styles for the poor and disadvantaged. Solar toys do not address this portion of humanity.

You have never seen a single call from me on this website calling for banning solar energy. I don't care what solar energy produces. It is not unacceptably dangerous when compared to natural gas. That said, solar energy is a trivial form of energy, and the endless discussion of it is rather silly. I have no problem mocking this silliness. I think it is a needed antidote to magical thinking.

[krkaufman]

19. Ummm..... is it just me or is anyone else curious as to what has happened ...

... in the 4+ years since 2002?

[phantom power]

30. A lot of coal plants have been built. In China, one every 10 days.

[Kolesar]

31. I think he is talking about extrapolating the chart past 2002 to see how many...

...solar roofs have been built.

But we do have to do something about those Chinese coal-fired pool heaters that I have been hearing about.

[NNadir]

33. Really, you care about coal?

Do tell.

The issue of energy and poverty is very serious. The decision to burn coal in India and China affects all humanity.

China has planned 54 new nuclear plants. These plants should produce almost 2 exajoules of electricity and about 6 exajoules of primary energy.

Maybe you would like to update us on how much energy you expect China to produce from solar PV cells in the next ten to fifteen years?

[krkaufman]

37. Correct. They're claiming progress based on numbers that are 5 years old.

Kinda like trumpeting the capture of an al Qaeda operative 3 years after the fact. Not really relevant to the state of things today, one way or the other, objectively.

[Kolesar]

41. The Feds should collect new data and update the website...eom

[NNadir]

32. Well here's a graphic from solar buzz for 2006.

According to the figure on the top, in 2006, the world installation of solar roofs amounted to 1744 Mega"watts."

This of course is what the solar PV cells peak power is at noon on a perfectly bright sunny day. The capacity utilization of solar is between 20% and 25% at best. Thus the world capacity represents something like a 500 MWe gas plant that runs at baseload.

In 2006 the world was building 10,657 MWe of new natural gas fired electricity plants.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/epat2p4.html

[krkaufman]

38. Thanks, but it doesn't shed any light on the OP's program in question.

[NNadir]

39. That depends. I suppose if you put a solar calculator on the roof,

you have one of a brazillion solar roofs.

Actually I have always thought that the idea of the roofs was to produce energy, but I could be wrong about that. I think I'll go through a calculator on my roof to help the program along.

The EIA gives up to date (including rolling averages) quantities of solar <em>energy</em> (not solar power) on its website:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epm/epmxlfile1_1_a.xls

Looking at the rolling 12 month production figures, it would seem that the production of solar electricity is falling, not rising. In any case it is trivial. Maybe though some people have loaned part of their solar systems to friends and neighbors. In this way one could convert one solar roof into two solar roofs.

We can also integrate the curve here, assuming that none of the brazillion solar roofs have been destroyed by hurricanes, high winds, tornadoes, or home owner's associations:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/solar.renewables/page/solarreport/solar.html

[Dogmudgeon]

21. How many private homes is that?

My very rough guesstimate is that there are 50 million private homes in the USA (2/3rds of the population who live in private dwellings, four to a home, in a country with 300 million people). One million solar roofs is 2%. Even assuming that only 10% of the people live in their own homes, that only brings the percentage to 7.5%. (I may be wrong about the exact numbers, but I know that they are in the ballpark.)

Most of the energy from the solar roofs is for swimming pool heaters. I'm glad that the pool owners are using solar energy instead of drawing down primary energy, but the fact that well over half of that 2% (or 7.5%) is non-essential reinforces the idea that solar energy is trivial, a hobby for the technically inclined, and mainly for the affluent.

While all the attention is going to solar PV, solar thermal is well-studied and relatively easy for even adept individuals to implement. And with condensing optics (mainly mirrors), it could run a small generator more efficiently than most roof-mounted wind units of which I am aware.

The Solar Roof initiatives will become giveaways to the semiconductor industry. You can bet that plumbers, the professionals best trained to install solar thermal systems, won't be getting most of the green green.

An interesting personal note: my family had a pool when I was growing up. My father considered a multi-thousand-dollar gas-fired heating unit, but then decided to experiment. We painted the pool black, and the water warmed up quite well, and we were even able to swim in October a few times. But the black color was ugly, so we switched to deep Navy Blue the next year and thereafter with maybe the loss of one degree of heat.

But the pool was not a necessity. In the 1970s, although we all complained about the price of energy, it was still relatively cheap. Heating a pool by painting it a heat-absorbing color was just "Mr. Pigwidgeon's Father" being clever. But my father wasn't anti-nuclear, either -- he had been an engineer and technical trainer in the Nike-Ajax and Nike-Zeus programs. Like many of his colleagues up and down the military food chain, he came to oppose nuclear proliferation, and once told me that nuclear war would be a terrible waste of perfectly good energy.

Solar roofs aren't primary energy. Steel mills, heavy equipment factories, and large office buildings can not yet be run on solar power. And for the corporatophobes, solar PV is 100% "corporate".

Although I can and do encourage people who are so inclined to install solar thermal water heating, this really is a drop in the bucket. Residential power demands for heating are in the range of about 5% of the USA's total energy budget. 2%-7.5% of that means it's proof-of-concept mainly for for swimming pools.

I am quite dismayed that there is so little concern being paid to developing primary energy -- other than the demonic, satanic nuclear industry.

Solar roofs, switching from incandescents to CFLs, painting the pool black, etc., are all worthy activities, but energy is an enormous problem. We are facing a whole set of problems that may take much of the work and wealth of the next two or three generations. Nukes or no nukes, THAT is the scale we have to think in.

--p!

[GliderGuider]

22. Excellent summary. Thanks!

It's all about issues of scale. Truly comprehending the bind we're in requires a level of numeracy that seems to be less common than my career in high tech led me to assume.

[wtmusic]

24. The conclusion is obvious: we must subsidize construction of pools

(Bravo. :thumbsup:)