Beam me to Planet Gore !
Posted on 06/10/2011 7:42:19 AM PDT by bananaman22
As the dire news continues to leach out of Fukishima, the silver lining in its nuclear cloud is that renewable energy technologies, despite their daunting start-up costs, are receiving renewed scrutiny.
Make no mistake - given the trillions of dollars invested over the last five decades in nuclear energy, the industry and its lobbyists will not go down without a fight, promoting new, “safe” reactor designs, etc. etc. etc.
But the Fukushima debacle has finally bared the industry’s darkest secret, it inability to manage its nuclear waste. The six reactor TEPCO Daichi Fukushima stored all its waste onsite, and the spent fuel rods and their lack of cooling have been a major contributor to the high radiation levels observed around the facility. Worse for nuclear power proponents has been the reluctant admission by TECPO that three of the complex’s six reactors apparently did in fact suffer a meltdown.
So, what’s next?
Hydroelectric facilities are a proven technology, but expensive and take years to construct.
Wind power also has substantial start-up costs, is erratic, and faces environmental opposition.
With the notable exception of bioethanol, little real money has gone into biofuel renewable, particularly in the U.S., where bioethanol produced from corn has a hammerlock on both subsidies and crop insurance, despite rising concerns about shifting land from food to energy production is driving up costs of foodstuffs. The leading contenders for bio-renewables, camelina, algae and jatropha, all are starved for investment as a result. Full article at: Why Japan will turn to Solar Energy
Bad move IMO. It took an earthquake and Tsunami to bring down Fukishima. With solar, it will take.....night time.
If anything demonstrated the overall safety of nuclear power, the accidents in Japan did.
The answer is to solve the problems with nuclear, such as going to Thorium reactors and actually building waste repositories - and also taking continengy planning seriously. In the post 9-11 U.S., I don't see a Fukishima happening - disaster planning is done in depth.
Japan Needs Molten Thorium Salt reactors, heck all 1st world countries need them...
Either that or orbital solar.
Of course in the interim we need more oil and gas exploration.
There is a place for solar - namely as a widely distributed resource on rooftops to supplement large-scale power sources. But not as a primary source of power.
After government takes every strategy for waste management off the table, it's the industry's fault that they can't manage their waste. Brilliant. /s
Solar’s a liberal fantasy... Japan couldn’t run a village on it...
Solar watts instead of nuclear megawatts. That’s a plan.
No they won’t. Solar won’t cut it.
If E-Cat (look up LENR, Rossi) turns out to be the real deal, they will turn to it for their power generation.
BTW, so will everyone else. It’s a game changer.
Mass solar power is a stupid idea. The Japanese are not a stupid people.
Will the Greens scream as forest is cut down because shade doesn't power anything, and gets in the way of panels that do?
How many square miles of solar panels will it take to replace the power from one nucleur reactor?
Will the Greens scream as forest is cut down because shade doesn’t power anything, and gets in the way of panels that do?
Because the Japanese don’t need electricity at night?
Because they have sites to dump all the toxic waste from making solar panel, not to mention the toxic worn-out solar panels themselves?
Because they have lots and lots of empty space to use for solar farms?
Because they lots of excess cash to invest in inefficient power generation schemes?
Boy those Japanese are lucky!
Well, there's your problem right there. And every other nuke site in the world has the same problem. When are we finally going to do something to fix it?
We're not. We can write tomes about how stupid the reaction might be, but facts are facts, and nuclear is dead. Propaganda and unfounded fears killed it, but it's still dead.
“There is a place for solar - namely as a widely distributed resource on rooftops to supplement large-scale power sources. But not as a primary source of power.”
You are misinformed about rooftop solar. In most cases, it is a very inefficient way to generate electricity. Absent huge subsidies (federal and state tax credits, forced utility subsidy (utility earns interest on this investment), forced offsets of excess solar power generation, and other solar industry subsidies), rooftop solar has payback periods from 50 to 100 years. Without subsidies, rooftop solar would be limited to offgrid usage and rich, deluded leftists.
I see solar on rooftops mainly for solar heating/hot water until efficiencies improve.
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