Siemens To Exit Nuclear Power Business 400
jones_supa wrote in with a link about the future of nuclear power in Germany. The story reads: "German industrial giant Siemens is turning the page on nuclear energy, the group's CEO Peter Löscher told the weekly Der Spiegel in an interview published on Sunday. The group's decision to withdraw from the nuclear industry reflects 'the very clear stance taken by Germany's society and political leadership.' Along with abandoning nuclear power, Germany wants to boost the share of the country's power needs generated by renewable energies to 35% by 2020 from 17% at present."
Re:Lessor of two evils... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Lessor of two evils... (Score:2, Informative)
Move to New Zealand the. We're producing the vast majority of our electricity from hydro power.
I think its about 70% renewable
Re:Lessor of two evils... (Score:2, Informative)
Phrases like "there is really no other source" "The actual unblemished truth" "The truth is:" "nuclear technologies have never been safer" are essentially meaningless tautologies or outright lies, but are presented here to deflect real discussion, such as why it was economically sensible of Siemens to stop building power plants with huge lead times and doubtful value.
Re:Lessor of two evils... (Score:1, Informative)
Complaining that nuclear cannot be profitable without government subsidies is just a little ironic given that every "green" "renewable" source has the same fate.
But that you say things like the governments have no money since the corporations took over, and joining that with actually trying to reference the Guardian... well, you're just a kook anyway.
Re:Lessor of two evils... (Score:5, Informative)
Problem is that it takes more energy to produce a solar panel than the panel takes in over its lifetime.
BULLSHIT
http://www.ecogeek.org/content/view/794/ [ecogeek.org]
Re:This is Slashdot . . . (Score:5, Informative)
There has been two truly serious (someone gets hurt) accidents in the 60-year history of nuclear power: Chernobyl and Fukushima. Chernobyl killed 31 people; Fukushima has yet to kill anyone. Both were caused by a combination of corruption and exceptional circumstances. Contrast this with the 100,000 people who die yearly as a result of coal power working exactly as it's designed to: nuclear power wins hands down on pretty much every metric, even if we count the evacuees of Chernobyl and Fukushima as casualties.
So, while "first hand experience" of things going wrong makes for nice propaganda for Greenpeace, there simply aren't that many people with it. Decisions should be based on actual statistics, not on who can come up with the most moving sob story. Unless, of course, you don't actually care about making the best or even a good decision, but only on adhering to your ideology (Greenpeace) or getting re-elected (Germany).
Investment? (Score:3, Informative)
If you covered 2% of the uninhabited portions of the Sahara with solar PV,
How much would that cost?
You need how many panels? Let's take this one, for example [shopenergia.com]. $400 for 185W, 1.25 m2 surface. Those 2% of the Sahara will be covered by a total of 158 billion panels, costing a total of 63 trillion dollars..
That's the cost for the panels alone. Now you must install them, they are spread over a wide area of desert. You need to build access roads, you need to maintain them. You need to build special fences to avoid sandstorms. How will you keep those panels clean? Wash them? Where do you get the water in the desert to wash the panels? Who will do the maintenance on 158 billion panels?
And now, installation. Will they track the sun? I guess not, because then you would have the added cost of installation and maintenance of 158 billion tracking systems. How will you get power at night? You need batteries, plenty of them. How much will those batteries cost?
Let's face it, solar isn't scalable. Without some future technology that's still several decades away solar is not the answer that will replace nuclear power.