[TKDietz]

"Er, silicon cells are a lousy 10%."

What do you mean by that?

"It would take a month for a 1 meter silicon cell to produce the energy in 1 gallon of gasoline."

Once that gallon of gasoline produces it's energy the gasoline is gone. I don't know if it takes "1 meter" of silicon cell to produce the energy of gasoline or not, but those solar panels are going to continue working for years and years and even after a couple of decades they'll still be working even if they will be converting less sunshine into electricity than they were when they were first made. That gallon of gasoline will be long gone.

[AdamSelene235]

Once that gallon of gasoline produces it's energy the gasoline is gone. I don't know if it takes "1 meter" of silicon cell to produce the energy of gasoline or not, but those solar panels are going to continue working for years and years and even after a couple of decades they'll still be working even if they will be converting less sunshine into electricity than they were when they were first made. That gallon of gasoline will be long gone.

One could also argue that a system driven by the background radiation of the universe would provide power far longer than solar energy but like solar the stuff is rather diffuse and difficult to harness.

Folks start looking at the energy content of a kilo of uranium vs. a train full of coal. We have centuries worth of uranium if not hydrocarbons. If we could find a way to store fission energy conveniently such as nuke powered coal gassification or a nuke driven ethanol production process we could break free of the ay-rabs.