Google-Backed Solar Plant Catches on Fire (pv-tech.org) 196
An anonymous reader writes:"The world's largest solar plant just torched itself," read the headline at Gizmodo, reporting on a fire Thursday at the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System. Built on 4,000 acres of public land in the Mojave Desert, the $2.2 billion plant "has nearly 350,000 computer controlled mirrors -- each roughly the size of a garage door," according to the Associated Press, which reports that misaligned mirrors focused the sunlight on electrical cables, causing them to burst into flames, according to the local fire department. The facility was temporarily shut down, and the fire damaged one of the facility's three towers, according to the Associated Press, while another tower is closed for maintenance, "leaving the sprawling facility on the California-Nevada border operating at only a third of its capacity."
The New York Times reported that by 2011 Google had invested $168 in the facility.
The New York Times reported that by 2011 Google had invested $168 in the facility.
If they need some money... (Score:5, Funny)
...I'll throw another $168 their way.
Re: If they need some money... (Score:2)
FIX THE FUCKING URL, SLASHDOT EDITORS! (Score:5, Informative)
HOLY FUCK!
The "invested $168 in the facility" link's URL is fucked up.
It is currently:
https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/16/05/21/236254/green.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/28/google-pulls-the-plug-on-a-renewable-energy-effort
When it should obviously be:
http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/28/google-pulls-the-plug-on-a-renewable-energy-effort [nytimes.com]
And it's not "$168", for crying out loud. The article clearly states (emphasis added),
Google still has invested $168 million in the venture
I don't expect a lot from the editors here, but holy fucking moley, this is just inexcusably bad! Fix the goddamn link URL! Fix the goddamn amount of money!
Re:FIX THE FUCKING URL, SLASHDOT EDITORS! (Score:5, Funny)
Come back timothy, all is forgiven!
Re: (Score:3)
Come back timothy, all is forgiven!
Oh my, now lets not be so hasty...yes, this is "editing" at a 2nd-grade level, but timothy pushed the boundaries of bad administration until the Guinness Book of World Records was knocking on his door.
Re:FIX THE FUCKING URL, SLASHDOT EDITORS! (Score:4, Funny)
I don't expect a lot from the editors here,
We have standards and expect you not to exceed them!
Re:If they need some money... (Score:5, Informative)
You may wish to rethink your offer — you and I have already sunk much more into this failed enterprise [dailycaller.com]. The submitter's write-up and TFA both concentrate on Google's puny $168 (million), for which Google would've gotten a solid return, had the project worked, while strangely omitting the $1,600 million, which Obama's DOE gave them in loan-guarantees without any hope of earning a profit.
Think of what useful things could've been funded with the money, had it been done the fair — Capitalist — way. You know, when the people making investments a) dispense their own monies, rather than those of captive taxpayers; b) face personal losses from failures and rewards from successes...
Re:If they need some money... (Score:4, Informative)
The three idiots replying to you didn't bother to read what you linked to...
The California regulators may end up forcing the plant to shut down, thus triggering the loan guarantee...
Worse, even if it keeps running, it is producing power for 6 times the cost of a natural gas fired plant.
No, wait, it gets better!
"Interestingly enough, Ivanpah uses natural gas to supplement its solar production."
You just can't make this stuff up...
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You forgot that they'll have to sign-up for Cap and Trade under California law, so they can buy carbon offsets, to make their "renewable" energy.
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Except via the increased tax revenue that would have resulted. A lot of the stuff a government does is just to make society better, so it shouldn't even need a profit motive.
Those DOE loans have a much, much higher success rate than VC or private equity backed ventures.
Like, a VC firm succeeds 10% of
Re:If they need some money... (Score:5, Insightful)
Government is uniquely positioned to take longer term bets that the corporate world will not take. They can take the longer term view as the US will still be around in decades, while the average corporation will look at things quarter by quarter, and where the max horizon is 3 years out.
And yes, by taking a longer term view they will quite regularly waste money. But, if you think R&D is expensive, try ignorance. We now know much better how to (not) run a solar plant. Live and Learn. Directly harvesting solar energy is a long-term inevitability, and arguing that the big bad gubmint has no reason to involve itself in the development of the capability is quite short-sighted.
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Next election/Next quarter. Both government and publicly traded companies work in too short a time horizon.
Privately held companies on the other hand, don't have the built in short term view inherent in both government and stock peddling.
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Exactly the same thing could be said of theoretical stockholders. But we're in the real world and next earnings statement/election it is.
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So is anybody when they make the bets with other people's money. Investment banks come to mind.
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Bullshit. Absolute stinking cow manure.
You would not offer citations for your claim, but here are counter-examples:
Re:If they need some money... (Score:5, Informative)
I keep forgetitng, you're not from here, so you've missed out on many of the biggest projects the fed has accomplished, because rather than learn history, you've latched on to some comckamamey ideology that you've confused with libertarianism. too much rand, not enough reality.
3 billion?
thats cute.
the WPA and CCC building the nation's first national highways, parks, dams, and other infrastructure.
the interstate system.
the water distribution and irrigation system of california
the entire space program
as well as most of the advances in aeronautics from the 1920 through the 1990s
medical breakthroughs at universities funded by federal grants...or did you forget that fully 90% of all research money spent in this country comes from the fed?
computers, robotics and ai?
seriously solyndra?
actually son the typical venture capitalist firm does just fine with a solyndra or two. after all, the typical investment success rate to be a successful firm is only ~33%. 2 out of 3 projects can fail, and they still regain enough to cover losses and make a profit.
as for the DOE bureaucrats you disdain so much...so far their loan program is rocking a 97% success rate. so point to solyndra all you want, cause the DOE is outperforming the typical market by over 300%. lose their jobs? hah. the private investors wish they could be that successful with their money.
proving once again that you dont have a single fucking clue what you're talking about.
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Why wouldn't it have happened if the same monies were left in taxpayers' pockets — to invest as they see fit?
That's pretty awful and entirely depressing. What makes you think, this (unsubstantiated) figure being so high is a good thing?
Citations missing.
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Sometimes someone writes something so moronic, you just have to point and laugh...HaHa...Points at rahvin112.
I hope you co-sign car loans for all you no-job having associates and drinking buddies. See how that works out for you.
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The DOE "money" was a loan guarantee and you'd have to be a fucking moron to think a Loan guarantee involves the expenditure of a single dollar.
It most certainly can. If you gaurantee someone elses loan, and they don't pay, it involves the expenditure of a lot of your dollars.
Why is the DOE gauranteeing these loans? If there is no risk of default, and the companies fronting the money are good for it... they wouldn't need a loan gaurantee. Typically loan gaurantors are only necessary when the lender feels there is a significant likelihood that the loans won't get paid, and it wants someone else with money on the hook to go after if/when that happens
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FFS you people are absolutely dense. Like I try to give you patience but you free market losers clearly have never read "The Wealth of Nations". You've never actually done anything in the real world, and are mired in what you can't do. So the world's largest solar plant had a major malfunction and it's still 2/3 capable(maintenance aside) and there was no pollution, the area is still habitable(as much as it was beforehand) and there isn't an environmental disaster in the trillions of dollars to clean up. If
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Now if the fucking morons could stop equating a loan guarantee with money out of the pocket we'd be able to have a reasonable discussion.
Your right, A loan guarantee only costs us if it "Crashes and Burns", the apparent the computer or hardware glitch that misaligned the mirrors counts as a Crash and the fire counts as a Burn so the Magic Eight Ball says "Outlook not good".
For a "Renewable" energy project that uses so much Natural gas that they are now require to sign-up for Cap-and-Trade under California law to offset their CO2 emissions!
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Erm. A loan guarantee does have a cost. There's a chance of default (or no guarantee would be required) and at its simplest the cost of the guarantee is the chance of default times the size of the loan.
Things do get impressively more complicated than that, particularly when you're a government and able to heavily influence the factors that may cause a default, but the cost is not zero.
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With 168 comments when I arrived.
Broke that for you.
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You say this like it's a bad thing.
It's all done with smoke and mirrors (Score:5, Funny)
It's all done with smoke and mirrors.
He was right! (Score:4, Funny)
I think I saw that movie (Score:3)
Isn't that the one where Johnny Depp is assassinated and uploads himself?
The future's so bright, (Score:2)
Why mention Google? (Score:5, Interesting)
Google is a minority investor in the project. Why not mention the main investor????
From Ivanpah Solar Power Facility [wikipedia.org] NRG has invested $300 million, Google $168 million and the US government has provided a $1.6 Billion load guarantee.
In fact why mention the investors at all? Did they have something to do with the day to day running? Did someone from Google sneak out one night and mis-align the mirrors?
Re:Why mention Google? (Score:5, Informative)
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If it costs nothing, then why is it needed?
You might want to learn about the future prospects of this plant, it is at risk of being totally shut down.
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You ignorant fuck, loan guarantees have a very real cost attached to them.
Add up the loan guarantees across the government estate and there's a massive liability sat there. That costs money.
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Guaranteeing a $1.6 Billion loan actually costs the taxpayer somewhere between zero and $1.6 Billion, since the govt will assume the debt if the original debtor defaults.
I'm generally in favor of the Federal Government stimulating new and exploratory commercial energy developments with loan guarantees, but it is NOT FREE. This is absolutely a risky and expensive project which would make it more difficult to obtain private investment. But it could be quite valu
Typical clueless journos (Score:5, Informative)
Having a fire break out in a concentrator tower is not the plant 'torching itself'. To get a usable Carnot temperature differential.for power generation, the temperature on the heated end of the tower has to be high, so that's where the excessive temperature risk is concentrated. But when journalism is being practiced by scribes who nothing about science, every error condition has to treated as an apocalypse. Welcome to our world, solar developers.
i wonder difference in cost of mirror vs PV panel (Score:2)
(eom)
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Even if there is cost parity, molten salt plants have the benefit that they continue to generate electricity long after the sun goes down, something which obviously is not possible with visible spectrum photovoltaics.
The Ivanpah Solar Power does not use molten salt but its entire cycle is steam. However now that you bring it up one needs to do a cost comparison of molten salt energy storage to new battery technology.
I think concentrating solar production like the Ivanpah will be left in the dust for photovoltaic in the future... photovoltaic is getting cheaper, has less problems, less environmental impact and can easily be decentralized or located closer to the demand.
Slashdot bug reporting: (Score:2)
Ok has anyone else noticed bugs on the front page?
I'm getting cases where after an auto-refresh:
- New articles appear underneath the top text advert and have a big yellow box around them.
- Clicking titles to article just opens a new Slashdot front page, not the article.
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"I'm getting cases where after an auto-refresh:"
Whipslash, IIRC, said they had stopped the auto-refreshing bullshit.
"Clicking titles to article just opens a new Slashdot front page, not the article."
I guess my public report of this last time went unheeded because of faggot moderators not figuring shit out when they were modding.
" New articles appear underneath the top text advert and have a big yellow box around them."
That slashdot is managing to show this same stuff to me, thereby telling me they're active
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Whipslash, IIRC, said they had stopped the auto-refreshing bullshit.
You could be right. But this is being caused by whatever mechanism is adding new stories to the front page.
That slashdot is managing to show this same stuff to me, thereby telling me they're actively circumventing my ad-blocking security measures
Hardly. The div element is called announcement. It's not an advert in the nasty sense we all hate, but rather a static link without tracking or marketing bullshit and without images that I can see. It just seems there's likely a coding error that results in new stories appearing within that div while it is visible.
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The big yellow box is to let you know that new articles were added while you were looking at another browser tab/doing something else. Clicking refresh gets rid of the notification. It should have taken you longer to complain about it than to figure it out.
Interesting. So why does the big yellow box say: "Leap Towards a Career in Ethical Hacking with 60+ Hours of Prep Toward CISM, CISA, & More Certification Exams at 95% off" and why is it formatted exactly like the advert that appears at the top of the screen regardless if there's a new article or not?
It should have taken you longer to complain about it than to figure it out.
Considering the waste of time your comment was it would seem things are still not "figured out".
Oh my gosh, something got hot and melted! (Score:5, Informative)
I work in a factory and stuff is occasionally installed wrong or fails in such a way that stuff breaks, sometimes by melting or having smoke come out of it. Nobody was injured and the result of the problem didn't cascade and create other problems (at least nothing serious apparently) which means it's not a huge deal. Replace the cables, align the mirrors properly this time, update the process for mirror alignment and verification and get on with life.
I seriously wonder what kind of sheltered life people must be living to not have experienced stuff breaking down and having to repair it. Have you not owned a car? A washing machine or dishwasher? A computer with a hard drive? I've twice been in the vicinity of electrical transformers that exploded rather spectacularly, both of which due to high winds. They're up on a pole so nobody got hurt. They were fixed within a matter of hours. Seriously, stuff breaks down, usually for quite run-of-the-mill reasons, often due to human error, and it has to be fixed. Why the shock and mock outrage?
Bienvenidos! (Score:2)
Why the shock and mock outrage?
I see this is your first day on the internet. Here, have a cookie.
Who forgot to trun on no disasters? (Score:2)
Who forgot to trun on no disasters?
Insurance scam (Score:3, Informative)
Evergreen Solar
SpectraWatt
Solyndra
Beacon Power
Nevada Geothermal
SunPower
First Solar
Babcock and Brown
EnerDel’s subsidiary Ener1
Amonix
Fisker Automotive
Abound Solar
A123 Systems
Willard and Kelsey Solar Group
Johnson Controls
Schneider Electric
Brightsource
ECOtality
Raser Technologies
Energy Conversion Devices
Mountain Plaza, Inc.
Olsen’s Crop Service and Olsen’s Mills Acquisition Company
Range Fuels
Thompson River Power
Stirling Energy Systems
Azure Dynamics
GreenVolts
Vestas
LG Chem’s subsidiary Compact Power
Nordic Windpower
Navistar
Satcon
Konarka Technologies Inc.
Mascoma Corp.
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How many succeeded though? If the number of failures is low enough, then it will be a good investment.
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I don't follow your logic. Most new companies end up failing, this is not news. Do you think that green energy companies are failing at a higher percentage than other types of companies? Maybe they are, or maybe green energy companies failing just gets more press, causing you to become biased.
Of course none of this is suggestive of insurance fraud.
Re:Insurance scam (Score:4, Informative)
I question the validity of this list, if only because a few are definitely not green, as well as being decades old multinational corporations.
Schneider electric, for example- they make circuit breakers and uninterruptible power supplies, servos, and industrial power distribution (ie. wire & transformers), among a great many other things -- plain old normal electrical infrastructure. They even own APC, who is a longtime producer of UPS's for offices & datacenters -- nobody likes downtime.
Johnson Controls? One of the 800 pound multinational gorillas in the commercial HVAC business? Are you fraking kidding me? The best they can say for being "green" is trying to make a more efficient HVAC system -- you know, R&D for a competitive advantage.
A123 makes lithium batteries - a product in everything from portable electronics to power tools (seriously - who doesn't have an electric screwdriver or drill?) There are a ton of lithium battery manufacturers, and it's no surprise that one manufacturer will be out-competed by another. They don't even clam to be green. The big thing with A123 batteries is they charge fast, and tolerate abuse without exploding. Is not exploding the new green?
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Or, y'know, the coal business [theconversation.com].
I hope ... (Score:2)
Fire and stuff. (Score:2)
Non-native speaker here, please excuse my ignorance -- but why does stuff "catch on fire" in English? Or should I ask, what does it catch while on fire? More fire? My sprachgefuhl tells me it either "catches fire" or it "is on fire". Can someone resolve this for me, please?
A very suspicious fire at a failed enterprise (Score:4, Insightful)
For centuries unscrupulous businessmen and employees have used the cover of a "devastating fire" for to cover up failures of owners/managers and to mask theft by the employees.
The Ivanpah solar plant was backed not just by Google's ($168 million), but by Obama's Department of Energy ($1600 million — strangely omitted from the write-up) as well. And it proved to be a major failure long ago. Just two months ago it was reported on the very edge of closing down [dailycaller.com] for not producing enough energy:
And what it did produce, cost $200 per megawatt hour — nearly six times the cost of electricity from natural gas-fired power plants. Worse! It actually used the evil natural gas to supplement the solar-cells' output... (Remember this the next time someone tells you, how we could "power the planet" with only a fraction of the land covered by solar cells — if only the evil oil/nuclear/whatever weren't sabotaging the efforts.)
This fire may really have been an accident. But a suspicion, that it was deliberate is certainly no less credible, than the FUD-spreading accusation [slashdot.org], some German nuclear plant deliberately released nuclear waste in the air 30 years ago.
FUD - and pure factual misrepresentation (Score:5, Informative)
You sir don't know how to calculate basic math.
The plant cost $2.2B and has a gross capacity of 392 megawatts, therefore the build capacity cost were $5.6/W. The DOE EIA shows coal averages $4.4/W but can be as high as $6.6/W for cleaner plants, and nuclear built costs at a similar $5.5/W. So it was built for a very conventional cost.
But that is just build cost. Then comes the fixed and variable O & M costs for which solar is very low. Half of coal, and a third of nuclear. And that is with coat and nuclear getting all sorts of governmental freebees on the external costs of environmental, health & security impact.
We describe the combination of capital and O&M as LCOE (levelized cost of energy). For which the plant it is a quoted at a LCOE of $0.146/kWh. NOT $200/kWh. Which is competitive which a number of conventional fuel sources like natural gas (wikipedia). PV still ranks cheaper, but there have been few bigger thermal projects to drive down these costs. You might notice that the DOE only quotes the LCOE of theoretical nuclear projects to be delivered in 10 years or fully capitalized 40 year old plants, because the last nuclear plants to be built in the USA had terrifyingly bad economics, and even then don't include their obvious myriad of externalities.
And this is (partially) why in the free market, wind, solar, and decentralized gas-turnbines are killing it. In the last 10 years solar+wind have been leading new capacity installation world wide. by the end of this year solar will have reached 321GW of worldwide capacity, Wind 517GW... most of which was installed in the last 10 years period. Whereas worldwide nuclear capacity declined from 375GW to 372GW in the same period.
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That may be the theoretical capacity — which it never achieved for whatever reason.
Yeah, and the regulatory climate — whereby government would sponsor one, but fine the other kinds of energy has nothing to do with it. Sure.
This very plant we are talking about required 3/4th of its costs to be underwritten by government — use your own $1.6 bln
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Those are international numbers led by developing countries installed capacity like China and India who could care less about regulation.
You mean like the $100 Billion (time.com) that has gone into every single nuclear pant ever built since the beginning of the DOE? You mean like the current nuclear research, loan guarantees and insurance coverage? All for an industry that collapsed under its
Every bit as well designed as (Score:2)
Android
Been done (Score:2)
http://larryniven.wikia.com/wi... [wikia.com]
Hm (Score:2)
A spokesperson for the plant said itâ(TM)s too early to comment on the cause, but it appears that misaligned mirrors are to blame.
It's to early to comment on the cause, so let's do it anyway.
Hmm. Not an mdsolar submission. (Score:2)
Strange how a lot of submissions about bad things supposedly happening in Nuclear come from mdsolar.
But something big in Solar power, like a huge facility fire, gets reported by someone else.
Coincidence?
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Yeah. Hi mdsolar.
And, actually, I HAVE brought up submission patterns elsewhere.
And no, I didn't "wait until something can be said to make renewable solar sound unsafe".
Because renewable solar really isn't all that unsafe. This was an unfortunate accident that damaged a facility. But nobody died. Shit happens.
But the last couple submissions screaming about "dangerous stuff going on at nuclear facilities" came within a day of one another and both were from mdsolar.
And mdsolar has a track record of FUD'in
Re:This shows how safe solar is. (Score:5, Insightful)
If we regulated it as heavily as nuclear it would be a 6 month shutdown and line by line review of the code.
Re:This shows how safe solar is. (Score:4, Informative)
If it had anywhere near the potential for disaster as nuclear, it almost certainly WOULD be as heavily regulated.
=Smidge=
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You mean like the coal plants that we know emit far more radiation and kill far more than any nuclear reactor ever has? Fukushima is at what 6 so so scary.
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What has that got to do with this story? Hint: nothing.
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Right, because an accident could be an unlimited liability economy shattering disaster... Compared to a nasty fire. It's the magnitude of the risk that governs the magnitude of the response.
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If you have a software error that can cause such a thing your design is rather poor. If we were worried about safe power generators we would be building in an iterative fashion rather than the many many one off plants we have built so that the contracting works is spread around enough places to get political support.
Harm to the environment (Score:2, Insightful)
Nuclear plants, when running normally, do not kill 28,000 birds a year [csmonitor.com].
In fact most nuclear plants will never have an accident at all, much less one that harms the environment.
Meanwhile these solar reflection arrays BY DESIGN will kill tens of thousands of birds a year if they are operating "properly".
The tower setting itself on fire was, to anthropomorphize the situation, an act of suicide over the guilt build up. The tower just could not take it anymore. Strange that a tower should care more for the env
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Nuclear plants, when running normally, do not kill 28,000 birds a year.
Neither do dogs.
And still people keep those murder machines around the house, post pictures of them, pet them, lick them... [kickstarter.com]
Won't someone please think of the birds?
Re:Harm to the environment (Score:4, Informative)
crashes with cars and trucks kill as many as **340 MILLION** birds on U.S. roads every year — a much higher toll than bird deaths from many other human activities. If alternate energy naysayers wanted to save birds they could just stop driving.
Re:Harm to the environment (Score:4, Informative)
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Or keep their cats indoors or put bells on them when letting them go outside.
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My suspicion is that birds that populate the desert are much more likely to be endangered or threatened than the typical starlings and grackles hit by cars.
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Nuclear plants, when running normally, do not kill 28,000 birds a year
No, they kill hundreds of thousands [thinkprogress.org]. Which is at least a fraction of the millions killed by coal - and the hundreds of millions [sciencenews.org] killed by glass windows, let alone cats.
most nuclear plants will never have an accident at all, much less one that harms the environment
True. Unfortunately, the few that do cause economic damage costing hundreds [iaea.org] of billions [psr.org].
Solar isn't perfect, but it's got a long way to go before it gets worse than our current alternatives.
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The nuclear bird kill number is bogus [atomicinsights.com]. No one really knows how many birds are killed in uranium mining and milling operations.
If it was nuclear we'd have... (Score:2)
A small fire... Plant personnel had the fire out by the time firefighters got there.
It's a non-story.
But boy... Doesn't "WORLD'S LAAAAAAAARGEST SOLAR PLANT !!!TORCHED!!! ITSELF! OMG! LOL! BBQ!" sound sooo much better?
Gawkerism at its best.
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If this were nuclear or oil we'd have a fucking environmental disaster on our hands.
Actually fires happen in nuclear plants just like any other industrial facility. They rarely pose a nuclear safety risk because of the extensive systems in place to mitigate fire impact. Of course, if the fire damages any safety systems the plant would need to be shut down until repairs are complete. There have been a few serious fires that have gotten plenty of press, in all cases the plant was safety shut down using the designed features for doing so. No environmental disasters.
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Problem is that your nuke plants are baseload and are *expected* to be up & running at all times, so shutting down just one for safety ususally means having to find a gigawatt of power somewhere else
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Problem is that your nuke plants are baseload and are *expected* to be up & running at all times, so shutting down just one for safety ususally means having to find a gigawatt of power somewhere else
Somewhat true, but since nuclear plants have such high capacity factors (90% in US), you don't need much spinning reserve on the grid, because its unlikely you'll lose more that one unexpectedly, and most of that 10% down time is planned. Whereas, with wind for example, you can see a drop in output in all windmills over a very large area. Just like in Germany, when sometimes they can't even supply 2% of demand. You need backup for the entire system, not just one or two plants.
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Besides which, you are almost certainly spinning for a GW anyhow. It's a very typical size for thermal plants.
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" because its unlikely you'll lose more that one unexpectedly"
When something happens that's bad enough to trip a nuke plant offline, it usually affects a sizable chunk of the grid.
And getting your nuke plant back online isn't trivial.
Here's an example full of irony - in late Feb 2008, a sudden decline in wind production required the Texas grid operators to cut power to several large interruptible industrial customers, dropping over 1.1 GW of demand within 10 minutes.
So a near crisis was averted and a big pi
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Low wind does not coincide with high solar output. Yes, there are summer days with low wind, but also
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Re:This shows how safe solar is. (Score:5, Insightful)
2) The danger of solar comes mostly during installation and maintenance. Working on the roof (where most PV panels are installed) [fairwarning.org] is the most dangerous construction job out there. And the always-generating nature of PV panels makes them an electrocution hazard [motherjones.com]. Not really an issue here since Ivanpah is a solar thermal plant.
3) After fuels that you burn and Banqiao, solar is [forbes.com] the most dangerous energy source [nextbigfuture.com] once you normalize for amount of electricity generated. About 10x deadlier than nuclear power,
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Re: This shows how safe solar is. (Score:4, Funny)
If this were mdsolar it would be "This hot new solar plant is *on fire*!"
Re: This shows how safe solar is. (Score:5, Funny)
Would you prefer, "Solar Energy Has its First Chernobyl"?
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Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Hits closer to home when the misalignment blinds pilots.
Re: This shows how safe solar is. (Score:3, Funny)
You mean omellettes?
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Forget the birds. Won't someone please think of the gamblers flying into Las Vegas [qz.com]?
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But what about WHEN THE SUN GOES DOWN??? What then? Hmmm?
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Mmmmm .... Popcorn!
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There is no radiation leak. There are no emissions other than the smoke of the burning cables. The only downside here is that energy production for the plant is at 1/3 capacity because only one of three towered is currently operating.
The "bad" here is we have a solar power facility that took a large chunk of government money on the promise that they'd provide safe, clean, and reasonably priced energy but failed to provide the energy output they promised, at the price they promised, has failed to pay back their loans, and has now suffered a major failure that will reduce output further. They've asked for a government grant to pay back their government loans, which I don't know if they got or not, regardless they've gone to the governmen
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" the history with nuclear is unless you're a total idiot nothing bad happens."
Did you even bother paying attention as to who is up for election this year?
Nothing but old total idiots.
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By the way Three Mile Island is safe. I mean, you can walk around. It was almost nasty, but the history with nuclear is unless you're a total idiot nothing bad happens.
Given that the world is full of total idiots in critical jobs, that's a pretty good argument against nuclear power.
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You thought all that clowning around, 'Cthulu 2012 Why vote for the lesser evil?', wouldn't eventually make it to Antarctica?
At this point I'd lay odds all three still in the race are ridden by 'brain slugs'. Cthulu isn't going to leave things to chance. Think about it: If you were Cthulu and you decided to run for president. What would you do? Buy up the contracts on all the likely candidates souls, so you can't lose.
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Oh certainly the plant is protected by numerous firewalls and VPNs between it and the internet, each windows 10 workstation, and windows server 2016 is professionally configured and have all of the necessary security patches installed and anitvirus software installed; so the short answer would have to be only during daylight hours.