Swiss To End Use of Nuclear Power 470
mdsolar writes "Energy minister Doris Leuthard is set to propose Switzerland gradually exits nuclear power, two Swiss newspapers reported on Sunday, citing sources close to the government. The multi-party Swiss government was expected to make an announcement on nuclear policy on Wednesday and may recommend an exit. Switzerland's five nuclear reactors generate about 40 percent of the country's electricity."
What will they replace it with? (Score:2)
Avalanche power?
Re:What will they replace it with? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:What will they replace it with? (Score:5, Funny)
They'll put a paddle-wheel in the cash-flow going to the nation's banks.
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Re:What will they replace it with? (Score:5, Insightful)
If only there had been a very large man with very big hands to stop capitalists from fucking up sustainability.
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You must mean the flow leaving Swiss banks as their government guts customer privacy rules.
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Pacifism, obviously.
Switzerland's policy is neutrality not pacifism. They have compulsory military service. They're committed to fighting back if you attack them, they just don't take sides in other people's disputes.
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The only sovereign state which is not a member of UN is Vatican City. Being a member of organization of which every other country is hardly signifies non-neutrality.
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Let's see that strawman and raise a simple fact:
Option one: Help refugees, piss off big aggressor who has you surrounded. Take part in the war. Be forced to take sides, get bombed, and end up under one occupant or another.
Option two: Stay neutral, avoid any and all sources of confrontation with the aggressor who has you surrounded including any and all refugees that aggressor wants dead.
Clearly, option one is likely more ethical from point of view of victims of the big aggressor. It's also very much suicida
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While building a set of defences that made the Nazis think twice about invading ... like it or not the Swiss have been consistent in their policies over refugees too.
Also worth noting, for those who might mistake them for pacifists, they had an active nuclear weapons program in the early 1960s until the UN Non-Proliferation Treaty took hold. They are quite conservative, but very serious about their defence.
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The Nazi's took note that everyone over 14 most likely had great training in rifle shooting, a large percentage of men ( and boys) were hunters, and that sharp-shooting is a national past-time. That with the heightened fear of invasion, the odds were well against the nazi's for a quick bloodless victory. I read a long while back that the cost was going to be 4 to 5 nazi's for ever Swiss and a complete decimation of the officer ranks before a victory.
Re:What will they replace it with? (Score:5, Informative)
Not just that - the Swiss defense system also consists of the ability to use the mountains against an attacker. Set off rockslides, destroy passes and roadways, bury any armed force unfortunate enough to be downhill.
Mountaintop positions that make for incredible sniping posts and "we can hit you but good luck hitting us" mortar and cannon positions. Mountains themselves that make for treacherous flying for aircraft even for bombing runs, let alone foolhardy for any invading force to try to land forces.
And then there's the political situation. The Swiss were nominally germanic to start with, but they didn't have the direct ties that Austria did (remember, Hitler himself was Austrian-born) to the Nazi regime. The Nazis were, thereby, relatively content to let them sit and exist and be "neutral." They were essentially surrounded on all sides anyways, and the Nazi regime assumed that eventually, following the conquest of the rest of Europe, the Swiss would either decide to fold in or else become enough of an economic arm that it'd make little difference.
Re:What will they replace it with? (Score:5, Informative)
You could have read the TFA, it wasn't that long:
The two papers reported Leuthard backed continuing to use current nuclear plants until the end of their lifespans, not building any new ones, and expanding alternative energy sources such as water power.
Re:What will they replace it with? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ah. So in other words they don't have a plan yet. Unless you count "hoping really hard that something revolutionary will happen before our existing nuke plants wear out" to be a plan.
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It is a mountain kingdom, lots of hydro potential and very few people. Why would they want the infinite expense and risks involved with current nuclear? They can have free power without difficulty and hydro does not stop at night. It is easy for those here to say that anyone that does not want nuclear must be a crank or green but that is just stupid. I worked for BNFL and am not green (maybe a crank). I just happen to look at the whole picture without rose coloured glasses.
In Wales there are dams that
Re:What will they replace it with? (Score:4, Insightful)
It is a mountain kingdom, ...Why would they want the infinite expense and risks involved with current nuclear? They can have free power without difficulty and hydro does not stop at night.
The chance of Swizerland being hit by a 9.0 quake followed by a large tzunami is ... shall we say slim? :-)
And before anyone claims that hydroelectric plants are green, go have a look at one. Sure, the carbon footprint is small, but it completely destroys the local landscape and ecosystems.
So if they are really going away from working nuke plans, hope they don't plan to buy their electricity from germany or eastern europe instead.
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Hydro is only not green because of the wind and solar lobbyists. You don't see the former San Francisco major, and long-time Senator Feinstein calling for the dismantling of Hetch Hetchy - no, in fact she is still in strong favor of it - it's all a political game.
What California should have done was say all existing hydro is grandfathered in and counts a "green", but any new hydro would not be considered for the 33% mix.
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I don't think the word "infinite" means what you think it does... Maybe you mean "high" or "unknown"?
Rgds
Damon
Re:What will they replace it with? (Score:5, Informative)
eh.... NO....
I live here and we have some serious problems.
1) Global warming. We have less snow in the mountains with smaller runoffs.
2) Global warming. Did I say that? This year we don't have enough rain, nor water. It is resulting in the problem that the Rhein traffic has to be restrained.
Switzerland having infinite water is a myth and the last few years have been very hard. This is why they want to focus more on Wind, or Solar.
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The reactors I have worked with are not good but there is nothing you can do to stop a Magnox reactor. The British Magnox reactors are still running after their expected lifespan because no-one knows what to do with them. Trawsfynydd still consumes considerable amounts of electricity to keep it stable. The costs do not stop after the fifty years of lifespan.
According to the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority website [nda.gov.uk]:
All fuel has been removed from the reactors and decommissioning is well underway.
Do you know something they don't?
The costs go on and on for tens of thousands of years
Only if you choose to treat the residue as waste as opposed to a valuable fuel source. Even then, the cost is minimal once it is cool enough to go into dry cask storage.
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"Even then, the cost is minimal once it is cool enough to go into dry cask storage."
Yep, you just need to pay for security and armed guards for a couple of hundred thousand years, cheap enough.
Re:What will they replace it with? (Score:5, Informative)
All fuel has been removed from the reactors and decommissioning is well underway.
The fuel may have been removed, but apparently the waste won't be safe to remove until 2065 [bbc.co.uk], and the buildings themselves aren't scheduled to be demolished and the site finally closed down until 2098 [sitestakeh...ups.org.uk]. (Partly because it'll take that long for the widespread low-level contamination of the ground to reach safe levels, by the looks of it.)
Oh, and I'm not sure if we've managed to come up with a better way to dispose of nuclear waste than leaving them to rot in badly-maintained storage ponds at places like Sellafield yet...
Only if you choose to treat the residue as waste as opposed to a valuable fuel source.
The UK actually had one of the few nuclear reprocessing plants. They have a history of doing things like contaminating the sea and beaches nearby with large quantities of radioactive waste (in some cases deliberately and in others due to incompetence), not to mention stuff like falsifying testing data on the fuel they were selling to other governments. Fortunately they've since managed to get the UK government to offer them unlimited indemnity for any future accidents they might have, even ones caused by negligence.
Re:What will they replace it with? (Score:5, Interesting)
They could always just ask France to build extra plants and import the electricity, I doubt a national nuclear program with all the regulatory mess which comes with it is cheaper. With France's economy of scale and a waste management infrastructure within it's own borders it has comparative advantage for nuclear power generation.
Re:What will they replace it with? (Score:5, Interesting)
"With France's economy of scale and a waste management infrastructure within it's own borders it has comparative advantage for nuclear power generation."
France builds reactors 1 mile from the border (Chooz, Cattenom, Fessenheim...), so in case of an accident, half of the damage goes to a foreign country. Sneaky.
Re:What will they replace it with? (Score:5, Informative)
Nuclear reactors have to be built near rivers so they can use the water for the cooling. Sometimes these rivers just happen to constitute a border. In fact, most French reactors are fairly far away from any border. [wikimedia.org]
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So they are basically trying to create another Japan like incident, on purpose this time.
Come 40 years from now when these plants are past their life expectancy, and desperately need updates to newer technology, instead they will remain falling apart and not replaced, since they clearly have no plan to move away to another form of power generation that can match their usage needs. (No water will not cut it)
Then the unmaintained and failing hardware will do as all unmaintained hardware does and fail catastr
Re:What will they replace it with? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Because damming up a river doesn't have any environmental impact, right?
http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&q=maps.google.com+lake+mead&rlz=1B7GGHP_enUS428US428&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wl [google.com]
Nothing like flooding an area the size of modern Las Vegas with water to be green!
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Hydroelectric power has killed far more people than nuclear ever has:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam [wikipedia.org]
This was a worse disaster than Chernobyl but hydroelectric power is "green" so people forget about it.
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Most people also forget that even if you don't count Banqiao Dam, hydro still has had more victims per power generated then nuclear.
In fact all major power sources have, including wind and solar. http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html [nextbigfuture.com] (quotes WHO sources peer reviewed study).
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Wait what? I recall seeing them being sold all over Estonia's markets. Locals really liked eating them too.
Or is this another case of hysterical "they are a few percent more radioactive then mushrooms in [another country], HORROR!".
By the same school of thought, no one should live above sea level. Too radioactive. Not talking about percentages, several TIMES more radioactive. HORROR.
Seriously, I had a flatmate in university who was from Mexico City. He really didn't glow in the dark. Or have two heads.
To sp
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Don't forget about http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vajont_Dam [wikipedia.org] , or even the safety issues of necessary-for-renewables pumped storage plants: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taum_Sauk_Hydroelectric_Power_Station [wikipedia.org] (which was fortunately limited to a few injuries and no fatalities).
Generating electricity is dangerous, and will be for the foreseeable future.
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Between me and you, rather lame. Avalanche isn't the same thing as water, and your prognostication did not include a list of the other alternative sources that Switzerland could develop. Therefore, not good enough to even use as an investor guideline.
Re:What will they replace it with? (Score:5, Insightful)
French nuclear power.
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Exactly!
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Or Moroccan Solar power bought through France, which they are putting money and effort into.
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They will do just what the anti-nuclear Germans have done: buy electricity from countries like France. Just don't ask how they generated it.
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I used to do this in Sim City 4. Put the nasty stuff in the neighboring cities and buy from them so that my prized city wouldn't be tarnished.
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Captain Planet.
Just put him on a hamster wheel and tell him to start running. And the best part. The cleaner the world gets, the stronger and faster he becomes.
Although the one liners could get pretty old.
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Little windmills at both ends of flatulent bureucrats
Headline Misleading (Score:5, Informative)
So what's it going to be? Continue with fossil fuels, or continue developing safer cleaner nuclear? Switzerland's five nuclear reactors generate about 40 percent of the country's electricity, and the needs will only grow. What can realistically replace that?
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What can realistically replace that?
This is the question the anti-nuke people never seem to answer, it's always just "something else".
You can't expect to shut the country down on calm/cloudy days. Something has to take up the slack.
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Ever hear of energy storage?
You can pump water uphill, you can use molten salt to hold heat for days, there are quite efficient large scale batteries, or even pumping air into caves. The reality is nuclear is probably cheaper than all that, and is far better than the next most likely solution which is coal.
Making up Glen Beck-like bullshit like "You can't expect to shut the country down on calm/cloudy days." is as annoying and pointless as when he does it. There are great arguments for nuclear, adding talki
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What can realistically replace that?
This is the question the anti-nuke people never seem to answer, it's always just "something else".
You can't expect to shut the country down on calm/cloudy days. Something has to take up the slack.
And who could realistically try to replace oil (someone had this idea about hybrid cars, which is a transition stage), DDT (somebody did...), horse-trained carriages (I had this idea about a thing named "car")... do you really need the water at your throat to start changing your conservative views, right? Sheesh, fortunately there are people who try to make the world better, not just accept the status quo.
They are proposing to stop building new plants, so they will have to find an alternative for an increas
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The problem is wind can't ensure baseload power. You can say "it never stops blowing" - but how low does it dip? Because that's the minimum you have to assume *will* happen. Which means you have to make up the loss with something else. It's practical for generators with a short startup time like coal and gas, but if you want to go no carbon then you pretty much can't even bother with wind at the moment. There's no practical, grid-scale load-levelling technology.
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Re:Have you noticed the Swiss have mountains? (Score:4, Informative)
Mankind didn't have to support billions of lives at that point.
We absolutely need power to drive the world as we know it - if we decide to abolish nuclear power we also need to go back to old way of life which means a couple of billion of lives will need to be sacrificed.
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Wind is usually able to claim ~10--15% capacity factor for firm baseload purposes.
And demand control (and dynamic demand) hasn't really been tried thoroughly yet.
Rgds
Damon
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Have you noticed that the Swiss mountains are kind of a signature thing for them - are you willing to account for tourism losses in your cost-per-kWh calculations? Viewshed from the top of the Swiss alps is pretty broad. Plus, it means isntalling and servicing them from those physically remote, but visually omnipresent locations.
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Sounds like how we're "gradually phasing out" nuclear power here in the states.
Only instead of decommissioning we're just letting the old ones keep running...go figure.
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...instead of doing what we need to do for advancing technologies that are or can be much cleaner, more efficient, and safer, like micro [wikipedia.org]
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Hmm, US population growth is almost entirely a result of immigration (illegal and otherwise). We have almost the lowest population density of any industria
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+1
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There are so many people already that the world population is estimated to grow, despite what relatively low percentage points you might find
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How is that not "ending". Only a moron would think they could stop using nuclear power overnight, so obviously deciding "to end use of nuclear power" can't mean anything but deciding to not use it at some point in the future, likely bu not building new plants so that when the existing ones reach their EOL you have "ended".
And you do realise there is more than just fossil fuels and nuclear power generation, right? Right?
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The current technologies of renewable energy simply cannot support the world's energy needs.
Yeah, and even the feeblest attempts to develop new ones is obviously pointless and futile.. Maybe they can tap the power of hysteria. There's more than enough of that. Sake nukes are not beyond our reach. But mitigating the corruption in most big things just might be...
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How's that, if you covered 2% of the uninhabitable portions of the Sahara with photovoltaic cells, it would supply 100% of the world's needs. Of course renewables are up to the challenge. And no I'm not saying that the Sahara should be caked in PV, although a company called DESERTEC are giving it a go.
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And construct magical superconducting lines to the rest of the world? I mean, yes you should develop renewables as much as you can, but seriously, until we can have solar stations on a solar orbit, nuclear is a pretty good option for the heavy duty needs.
Better than coal or gas, at least.
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Re:Headline Misleading (Score:5, Informative)
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That was my thought, I thought that a significant portion of their power came from dams. More likely they'd be looking to supplement with solar and probably something else for the remainder.
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I thought that a significant portion of their power came from dams.
This does not mean that building more dams is an option.
More likely they'd be looking to supplement with solar and probably something else for the remainder.
This is exactly my point: It simply *IS NOT* realistic to think that renewable sources (you mention solar) can replace 40% of the CURRENT energy needs (not to mention future needs).
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And you get that number by what? Anal extraction?
Dear Mr. Troll, unlike you, I read the article.
That's where I got that number.
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How old are you?
Re:Headline Misleading (Score:4, Interesting)
For Japan to replace the 6 fukishima reactors, japan will need to build something like 12,000 2 MW wind turbines. If you put it on the coast your going to use something along the lines of 1,000 miles of shoreline.
To replace with PV solar you need a similar land area devoted to cells.
With Solar salt you get a higher density, so maybe only 20 solar salt plants.
To replace with tidal means you have to destroy your fishing grounds.
Geo thermal might be possible but with the number of earthquakes you will run into problems.
Take a good look at actual power output of the worlds largest turbine, and solar fields and then compare it to a single nuclear reactor. What you will find is that Nuclear aircraft carriers have larger power plants.
Posted by 'mdsolar' (Score:5, Informative)
So an anti-nuclear story posted by a user named 'mdsolar' with a blog running very anti-nuclear posts. He also is involved in a business that rents solar systems to homes (http://www.blogger.com/profile/14124764472206647347).
Christ, Slashdot. Can you be a bit more opaque in posting biased stories?
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You miss one important detail - people like this WANT the worst to happen. They're hoping every night when they go to bed that it'll happen before morning, and looking forward to it every day when they wake up.
Beca
On behalf . . . (Score:2)
FUCK YOU.
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Thanks for the apology. (Score:3)
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Funny thing, this guy is in Maryland - ever notice how all the solar power evangelists live really far south?
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It is below the Mason-Dixon line. That means it is in the South.
Re:Posted by 'mdsolar' (Score:4, Insightful)
The link goes to Reuters. Who cares about the bias of the submitter? Doesn't pretty much every submitter only submit stories they feel should see wider exposure, and hence are biased about? It does work for me like that at least.
Re:Posted by 'mdsolar' (Score:4, Insightful)
You know, I'd be willing to bet that stories about Apple are mostly submitted by fans or people who hate the company, stories about games are mostly submitted by gamers, and stories about new versions of the Linux kernel mostly come from Linux users.
In other words, people submit stores about subjects they care about, and are almost certainly biased in one way or another.
So what's the big deal here?
Re:Posted by 'mdsolar' (Score:5, Funny)
He also is involved in a business that rents solar systems
I recently heard about an entire country you can rent for $70,000/day, but now you can rent an entire solar system? How much does that cost?!
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Ostensibly, "editing" is why Slashdot has "editors."
Because tsunamis are a huge risk in Switzerland. (Score:2)
n/t
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No, but I do hear that they have ogres.
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You must have missed a lot of news -- the Japanese disaster happened not because "the worst happened", but because of a failure to do a proper design. There was an article on the BBC last week about the fact that practically all German reactors will not withstand a direct hit from an airplane, despite the nuclear industry telling us they would. In Eastern Europe, multiple NPPs have been operating with fuel not intended for their reactors for nearly a decade, apparently resulting in trouble that wasn't publi
What will they replace it with? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why, an intricate and precise clock-work driven by a wind-up spring.
Power (Score:4, Insightful)
The big thing with energy is the externalization of costs to the general public, both real and opportunity. It is not really a conservative of liberal thing. When the BP oil well exploded in the Gulf or Mexico, conservatives all along the conservative Gulf Coast raised hell about the externalization of costs. Conservative Florida threw a fit even though conservative support approving drilling in the Gulf with minimal regulations. The coal industry is allowed to destroy public owned resources the could be better monetized by future generation with no recompense to future generations. And the nuclear industry is allowed to irradiate resources and create waste without a management plan. The Swiss reprocesses and stores the larger quantity, but less radioactive waste. Whether this faustian bargain will be acceptable in the long term is yet to be seen. What is true is that unlike out previous energy experiments in the industrial revolution will not be so easy to reverse. The benefit of nuclear energy is that most of the externalization is limited to the nation-state that benefits from the energy, unlike other sources in which the externalization is wolrd wide.
On a total cost basis other energy sources are viable. Switzerland has good solar irradiation potential. It also has mountains. During the day excess solar energy can be used to pump water up the mountain into a reservoir, and then run through a hydroelectric generator when needed. The same is true for wind. All without externalazing costs to future generations.
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Switzerland has good solar irradiation potential.
Er, no.
It also has mountains.
Yes. About half of Switzerland's power comes from hydroelectric plants. But the good sites are already developed. [swissworld.org] This is a general problem with hydroelectric power. For large power dams, "all the good sites were gone by 1940". The ideal hydroelectric site was Hoover Dam - narrow gorge to dam, big level drop, large unpopulated desert basin area. Almost every other location is worse.
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>safe
"You keep using this word...I do not think it means what you think it means..."
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While I want solar to win, the cost to produce a panel in energy is more than the panel will generate (dollars for dollars over a typical/reasonable 25 year return period).
That's only true if you put the panel on your roof yourself, and further it is only true in places without net metering. I guarantee you that implementing net metering will fix this problem entirely. Solar panels could pay back the energy cost of their construction in seven years in the 1970s and thin film panels are under three years today.
Right now, in my area, solar companies are financing their own installations, and selling the power to the business on whose roof they've placed the panels. The cost? $0.30/kWh on a 30 year contract. That may be a bargain 15 years from now, but commercial rates are still just under $0.10/kWh right now.
Either commercial rates are too low or residential rates are too high.
Nuclear power requires honest governments (Score:4, Insightful)
I believe nukes can be safe, but most governments are not trustworthy enough to make that happen.
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Better untrustworthy governments than irresponsible and rapacious corporations.
Shortsighted (Score:2)
Bundesrätin Doris Leuthard (Score:3)
Hydroelectric, geothermal and new nuclear (Thorium) are in the mix.
The Swiss, unlike the Germans are not known for emotionalism, lack of planning or economic suicide.
The unofficial national motto is "Do it right the first time".
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yes because there's no such thing as an off grid PV solar battery array
nope.
http://hardysolar.com/solar-battery/solar-battery-bank-26300-watt.html [hardysolar.com]
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Re:Obviously... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a very very valid point about solar 45 degrees+ from the equator.
Trying to run anything serious off batteries, flywheels or even pumped storage is barely sane overnight in places on the equator.
Trying to do the same during winter far from the equator is even less sane.
-Hydro is lovely but very limited unless you're in Brazil, the best sources are already being tapped already and it screws with the river ecosystem and makes vast tracts of land unusable.
-Wind is nice but is very unreliable, 20% of your grid is somewhat of an upper limit if you want to keep the grid any way stable.
-Solar is still a toy unless you talk to a solar panel salesman.
-Geothermal is glorious if you happen to be in iceland.
-Tidal is sorta ok until you get serious and then the greens hate it because it totally destroys coastal ecosystems.
And then there's fossil fuels which are terrible on almost every front.
finally there's nuclear which simply kills less people than getting your electricity from fossil fuels but the way it kills people- cancer happens to be how 25% of everyone dies anyway so if an accident happens which raises that to 25.001% then you get the blame for the other 25.000% and everyone will always have lots of people they knew who died of cancer and in their minds every single one of those deaths will be the fault of nuclear.
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Do you have any direct experience with solar? I do. I run my boat off of it. I live at a rather balmy 35N latitude, and even here my solar panels electric producing ability take a big hit when the daylight hours shorten by a large factor (in the winter), *and* the sun is at a more oblique angle in the sky, making it's rays weaker (also, in the
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Where nuclear power is concerned, governments seem to be remarkably reluctant to commission reactors in the first place.
Commissioning reactors that don't exist anywhere else on the planet outside of a few test environments that were last operated in 1969 is never going to happen.
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You get more energy out of being positive!
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Long negotiating cycles. . . (Score:3)
One of the huge advantages of nuclear fuel, is that, if you are using it *efficiently* (e.g. recycling it in something like an Integral Fast Reactor), one ton of fuel is the equivalent of millions of tons of coal or oil.
What this means is that a country can buy a *relatively* small quantity of Uranium or Thorium, and it might represent 100 years supply of energy. You couldn't easily store 100 years worth of coal - it would be the size of 10 large mountains or something, and would be crazy expensive to buy a