Nuclear Power? The way foward?

[Goa]

Goa and other Solar enthusiasts: Can you please provide some links to articles about the economics/effeciency of solar power? Thanks.

http://energyfutura.blogspot.com/

Firstly, I'm not a solar power enthusiast, and while I think that we should support further developpment of photovoltaic, we should for instance better spent the bigger part of our money elsewhere (especially on research which increases energy-efficiency). But it just annoys me to death when the same old wrong argument appears again and again...
For the link you asked for: Wikipedia (where I got my nukbers from) links to this article: http://jupiter.clarion.edu/~jpearce/Papers/netenergy.pdf
I found similar numbers on other papers and it's about the number that my prof gave me at my photovoltaic course.

 

[Xanikk999]

As nobody else contradicted it's up to me: This is not true! It was true some 40 years ago, but today it's definitely not true anymore. At the moment it takes typically something between 1 to 5 years (depending on technology used and location) to get the energyinvestment back. Considering a lifetime of about 40 years you get during the whole lifetime something between 8 to 40 times more than you invested in energy.
I really don't understand how this false argument appears again and again in discussions like this .
On the other hand there are big problems with solar cells, especially the unpredictable availabilty and the high costs, but there is still a lot of place for further developpment.

You just proved my point. Its still not viable. Nuclear power is much better still.

 

[El_Machinae]

At the moment it takes typically something between 1 to 5 years (depending on technology used and location) to get the energyinvestment back.

You're saying it delivers a 20% payback rate, and then 30 years of return? That can't be true, or everyone would be doing it.

I'd certainly purchase solar if it took 5 years to start making my money back.

 

[Goa]

To Xanikk999:

You wrote this:

Right now solar power isnt viable really. It takes more energy to make the power then what you produce.

And this just simply is wrong. There are other arguments against aolar power, so if you are against solar power use them...

To El_Machinae:

You're saying it delivers a 20% payback rate, and then 30 years of return? That can't be true, or everyone would

No, this is only in terms of energy. To produce solar cells you use energy. And it takes 1 to 5 years to get this energy back. In terms of money payback rate is unfortunately not the same

 

[The Great Apple]

Here's something interesting. Coal, like everything that comes from underground, contains traces of radioactive material. Left alone, this radioactive material is harmless. However, when coal is burnt, this radioactive material is released into the atmosphere. The amount of radioactive material released per kWh by coal burning is higher than the amount of radioactivity material left over from nuclear power plants.

I've heard this too from my GCSE geography teacher. Do you have a source for this?

I'm a nuclear fan. While I'd prefer the world to go renewable, it ain't going to happen before we run out of fossil fuels.

The ideal solution would be either for the people at JET, or at the new one they're making in Cadarache to make a huge massive breakthrough, and for fusion to become viable. I'm kinda hoping this will happen before we run out of fossil fuels or everything might go down the pan.

I heard quoted by a GreenPeace dude the other week that if every country used nuclear power at the rate they use fossil fuels, we'd be out of nuclear fuel in 30 years. Anybody know if this is true?

 

[El_Machinae]

You mean if we used a 1000 barrels of uranium a second (which is how fast we use oil)? We'd be toast.

Or you mean at current consumption levels? Maybe, but that's not factoring in alternatives.

 

[The Great Apple]

Consumption levels. I don't want to think about how much power 1000 barrels of uranium a second would chuck out...

 

[cgannon64]

Such short sightedness is why the world is in such an energy crunch right now. Had they invested in it a long time ago we'd be in great shape, but all the dithering has left us with a serious shortage which whill have much tougher economic consequences.

Such short-sightedness is also why the oil industry (I mean, OPEC) could totally destroy renewable energy if they wanted to, just by lowering prices for a while.

That's not really true, or we wouldn't see businesses building oil rig platforms or power plants. My point is that businesses will still build coal plants, but not nuclear. The reason is that nuclear does not give a rate of return that matches the opportunity cost of the money.

Another more obvious and likely answer is that there is little to no popular support for building nuclear power plants. Wall Street's money isn't worth a damn if no town is willing to accept a nuclear power plant in their backyard.