Bill

If the public were infomred and had a choice your 'associted concerns' would be show stoppers. It just is not easy for 'joe average' to swim against entrenched vested interests.

HP,

As I have said before, solar and wind are not competitors of nuclear power. They compete with and, to the extent they are generating, replace natural gas.

Nuclear power's competitor is coal.

The reason for the start of nuclear power in the US was that Admiral Rickover wanted a proof of principal prototype for a submarine reactor. We ended up with Shippingsport reactor in Pennsylvania.

Andrew,

I have to respectfully disagree. My list is associated concerns of nuclear power but, IMHO, they are not show stoppers.

Bill

Bill:
We know why there are nuke plants in the world and USA. Officials paid off and at one time before the whole picture was looked at the nuke industry was sold as the power of the future I remember the ads of safe clean energy.
This is as the site says, we need to cut back but I feel we won't. When Portugal and other make the attempt I am sure the nuke indistry will start to hand out sling shots and BB guns to take out the solar cells. Thing is there is no danger to the environment when a windmill or solar cell fall over.

Bill

Based on what you have written above risks of nuclear energy are too high, that is why we have to have - A Nuclear Free World http://ncrcafe.org/node/854

HP,

I make no claims about nuclear power being 'green'. Is there a rigorous definition besides whatever Greenpeace likes?

Nuclear power is not a renewable power source. It 'burns' a fuel.
Nuclear power fuel requires environmental disruption to mine.
Nuclear power needs policing to make sure it is done safely. This requires a strong central agency.
Nuclear power has used fuel and waste disposal issues that require public safeguards. Ibid strong agency.
Nuclear materials processing can cause injury to the workers and public. Ibid strong agency.
Nuclear materials can be processed into weaponry. Strong international safeguards are required.
Existing nuclear weapons can be stolen. Strong protection required.

The environmental disruption of uranium mining is much less than with coal.
Nuclear power has no carbon footprint when generating.
Nuclear power carbon footprint is equivalent to renewable energy sources when the full fuel cycle is considered.

Bill

Carbon- and nuclear-free America possible by 2050

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/8/1/92920/47226

Renewables Becoming Cost-Competitive With Fossil Fuels in the U.S-

"If the U.S. is to join the world leaders in renewable energy—among them Germany, Spain, and Japan—it will need world-class energy policies based on a sustained and consistent policy framework at the local, state, and national levels."

From: http://www.worldwatch.org/node/4526

HP,

The gist of my first comment on this string was: "Why PV solar when thermal solar is more cost effective?"

If costs are of no concern we can generate solar energy from moonbeams and do just fine.

Bill

Billy:
give it up. You keep putting a price as I said before on green. I also have trouble with your numbers. When whole countries are commited to not using nuke power it is a wake up call. Europe has had higher energy cost for many years so are much more willing to accept a non nuke green way to power their homes. Plus if the price is higher then America maybe start to use less power. It is a win win for the country and people. As more people get into green the price will drop, building a nuke plant costs more every year and again as others have said you skip over storage. Sorry I don't find nuke a green type of energy.

zephy,

Do you have a reference for a 100 year useful life on PV panels? I thought they degraded with time and that 20 to 30 years was a reasonable lifetime expectation.

I should think a century would be a reasonable expected life for a thermal solar plant.

An actual useful life of 100 years would certainly change the economics. The useful life of the existing nuclear reactor fleet is being extended from 40 to 60 years in the US and has rather dramatic economic impact. The reactors, however, are generally getting pretty extensive maintenance to go to 60 years.

Bill

to the people argueing against pv power on cost basis';
you fail to take into account that PV panels will last practically forever with extremely low maintenance costs. I know that they are "only waranteed for 20 years" but in truth if properly made they can last for centuries. add that into your calc's & they are more than competitive against virtually any other generation scheme.

HP,

I got a chance to push a pencil on this PV generation plant:

With the following assumptions:
30 year useful life
6 hours/day of rated power
no lost time for maintenance
Cost of plant $10,000/kilowatt
6% interest
100% financing after completion of the plant
No operating costs, profit, or electrical delivery expenses

The electricity will cost $0.65/kilowatt-hour just to pay the loan.

In 2006, the average retail price for electricity in the US was $0.10/kilowatt-hour. A 600% increase in electricity cost will drive off any industry that can move and probably bankrupt the rest.

Bill

Since I moved to Canada it is nice to see parts of the US are paying more for fuel than most of Canada. It isn't higher taxes so I guess it is just good old profits

Europe has had higher costs for fuel,food, etc for years and have adjusted. You can buy an electric car in Europe that fits 80% of the avewrage driving needs. Wind/ Solar are growing. The US is starting to feel the higher costs and will jump into the alternative market real fast.

It looks like Portugal is becoming the world laboratory for renewables. There are Germans, Brits, Aussies... there working on any number of projects. They are taking their obligation to reduce GHG production probably more seriously than any other nation.

http://mmadan.wordpress.com/2008/04/09/ft-portugal-is-renewable-energy-powerhouse/

Glenn,

You are correct that the enrichment plant at Paducah, KY is a major emitter of chlorofluorocarbons. This is the only one of the US diffusion enrichment plants still in service.

USEC is building a centrifuge plant to replace the Paducah plant. Centrifuge plants do not, to my knowledge, require Freon. Centrifuge plants are also much less energy intensive than diffusion.

Bill

HP,

I believe you have mischaracterized the PV solar industry. It has been growing very rapidly. I believe it is in excess of 40% per year. That is an incredible growth rate. I don't follow it too closely but, yes, the costs have been coming down and the conversion efficiencies have been going up.

As far as wind is concerned, huge companies are in it. Both GE and AREVA have wind turbine divisions. I don't know about the AREVA subsidiary but I know GE turbines has a substantial backlog of work.

As far as green causing unemployment, if your cost of electricity is prohibitive to industrial customers, it can cause economic difficulty. PV solar electricity is not a few percentage points above fossil or nuclear power; it is more like 500 or 1000% higher (I will try to figure out a way to reference that claim-right now it is an intuitive number).

Bill

Bill one other thing, if this green power started to take off on a world scale the cost would drop to manufacture such solar/wind farm. If this cost drop profits go up don't they? For some reason, ( we know the reasons) why can't huge companies get with it. Green does not = unemployment as we keep hearing. It is like Bush being against better fuel mileage. I can't understand how having a more fuel efficent car is cheaper and takes less people to make. If anything as we have seen even a hybrid cost more to buy.

But just think. We could have cleaned up one nuclear waste accident (sort of) for just twice what this cost(based on NRC estimates of a transport accident with "spent" fuel). I think we had better save up half a trillion for nuclear, (or borrow it),and continue to ignore real progress like this.

Billrowe! Wake up.Nuclear is not even much of a sum gain when you consider mining, enrichment - filthy plus uses huge amounts of chlorofluorocarbons, - construction, decommissioning, waste management, waste transport, building the facility for centuries of storage, (then our grandchildren and then their greatgrandchildren etc. etc. take it so we need not figure those costs) it is not green or cheap.

The nuclear industry is waging a campaign to have us do what wall street won't. Invest (actually subsidize) an insane, expensive boondoggle, that would not even exist today left to the market. The only reason that any country would build one, is for bomb making materials. As uranium ore becomes harder to extract (and eventually runs out) the sum gain in power will reduce to a wash, but why should the corrupt, well connected, welfare addicted, nuclear industry care? Sure France can just send us their waste. When the various presidents, Clinton included, went around the world acting as GE and Bechtel salesmen, that was part of the deal. The American people will cover the enormous cost and responsibility of managing those wastes for centuries. France would and did just throw them in the ocean before that. How green.

Bill, you keep putting a cost on green. The free ride is over. I have no problem paying more if that is the case for electricity that supports the country as the article says and has next to zero footprint. It takes a few trucks and men to replace or repair or as the tech gets better upgrade this solar farm. Nukes as Portugal is showing the world isn't the answer. We have free sunlight, wind and waves the world should put them at the top of the power grid.

Bill, you forgot to include the costs of treating forever increasing cancers due to the nuclear waste generated that cannot be safely stored for all time.

Hollow Point,

You asked for my 2 cents worth:

I applaud the Portugese government for trying to energetically develop a diversity of alternative power sources. Most of the electricity in Portugal currently is provided by a mix of hydroelectric and fossil fuel. The hydroelectric is pretty well maxed out, like the US.

They are trying to wean themselves off fossil which is commendable. They are also trying to develop local expertese and manufacturing which is also very commendable.

This particular project has me somewhat puzzled. Photovoltaics are a more expensive form of grid electic power generation than parabolic concentrating thermal power. The operating costs are roughly the same for both solar technologies but the capital is much higher for PV. It could be that cooling water is not available at this site. Another possibility is that the government wanted to provide a starter project for domestic photovoltaic manufacturers.

As commendable as this project is, it is not very cost effective. Using the numbers in the article, the installed cost is in excess of $10,000/kilowatt. For comparison, Nevada One, a somewhat larger thermal solar generator, cost about $4,000/kilowatt. For further comparison, the cost of land based wind generation is usually cited at about $1,700/kilowatt and about $2,000/kilowatt for offshore wind.

The solar costs listed here are greater than the front end cost of nuclear (a new plant being planned in Florida has an estimated cost of about $3,800/kilowatt). To try to equate the capital cost we would need to adjust for capacity factor, the fraction of time that the generator is providing its rated power. The capacity factor for solar is about 0.25 (i.e. full power for about 6 hours a day). Nuclear has a capacity factor of about 0.9 (a little over one month offline a year for scheduled and unscheduled maintenance and refueling.) The operating costs of nuclear are, of course, higher than with solar primarily because of fuel, security and more complex maintenance.

As far as carbon footprint, this PV solar is guite low but probably a little greater than a hypothetical nuclear plant would be. The carbon footprint from a concentrating solar thermal plant would be less than either the PV solar or the imaginary nuclear plant.

Regards,

Bill

In America if you are not making millions off the people then it isn't a good idea and they fight it.
Start your own company? How about getting a million signatures on a paper and give it to the elected officials a month before the election. Tell him put it in writing that wind/solar farms start 30 days after the election of they resign. Time to play hard ball with these people it is the only thing they understand.

The important thing about renewable energy is to build with an eye toward permanence (cuz the resource is permanent). The first costs are usually very high (dams, solar arrays, wave energy generators), but if you go with a cheap solution it'll break down before you really enter the 'earnings age' of these technologies, which is after 20-30 years of operation. Take a look at Hoover Dam. It took 30 years to pay off, and has been pumping free money into the American economy for the 30 years after that.

Time for some simple, if not preceisely accurate math. One billion pounds invested in wave "farms" in Portugal will power 450,000 homes. Did I read that right? If so, that's less than a weeks's worth of mayhem and slaughter in Iraq. Duh???

da black has the answer. It is as simple as the good life - community by and for the People without "representative" middle management. This is an idea who's time has come. I would definitely invest both my time/energy and my resources in community projects that don't have a heirarchy of "managers". Paid labor should be the construction science and technology expertise - and then let the community work out the individual's share of maintenance. This is doable - Co-ops have been doing it successfully for decades... and for those who have more money than time, they hire surrogates to fufill their responsibilities (but have no more say than one person ever has). We the People could become our own corporation... and then on to full access high speed internet provision, and when that all comes together, dare I hope - we might tackle community HealthCare... as the community realizes that indeed we are stronger and better working at these issues together... its a whole new world!

Five cheers for Portugal!
One little point of correction: when they said Portugal's would be the world's largest wind farm, they were probably talking power output, not number of turbines. California's plant is probably older and uses the smaller turbines of the past--now they're mostly 1 or 2 MW and some offshore are even bigger.
One thing you see over and over in discussions of peak oil/climate change is the statement that "we need to use it all." We do need a wide range of power sources, coupled with conservation and efficiency, but we can't afford to invest our resources in dead end technologies, when we face the economic crises caused by skyrocketing oil prices. We've got to get it right from the start. Ethanol and nuclear power are dead ends, ethanol because it uses scarce agricultural resources and is not energy-efficient--some plants are much better than corn, but only algae promises to actually reduce CO2--and nuclear power because in fifty years they've never solved the huge problems of waste disposal and terrorism targets, as well as because of the expense. As for "clean coal," there ain't no such thing. You can put scrubbers on power plants and the air emissions are cleaner, but then the ash is more toxic, and its disposal is not even regulated by EPA. Sequestration does solve the CO2 problem--in the theoretical sense where waving the word around is enough. There are no demonstration sites proving it would actually work, and most scientists say it won't be ready for at least 20 years. That's too late. Besides, it doubles the cost of "cheap" coal. And then there's the highly destructive mining (see www.ohvec dot org).
Portugal's solutions are the real ones, and I salute their government officals.

The land area occupied by US nclear weapons bases and facilities is 15,654 sq miles, which if occupied by solar thermal electric plants would supply more than twice the US electricity consumption in winter and four times the US electricity consumption in summer.

da Black anarchy,
Count me in...lets start a company together.

"Solar PV generated power could provide 10,000 times more energy than the world currently uses" - Solar Century.

billrowe

Some people support nuclear energy, but here is just one of the problems: Children living near nuclear facilities face an increased risk of cancer.
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8785

One major european country already has about 90% non-CO2 generating energy --- France---almost all nuclear! And they have a strategy for nuclear for well over a 100 years.Best of all (for them) since rest of world is far behind them their price of nuclear fuel is far less than it was projected due to lower demand. Just pushes back clock for introduction of better technology. So France will continue to have the benefit of lower prices well into future.

But the energy problem worldwide is bigger than the nuclear potential. All technologies will be needed,and the shortfall will still be large without continued fossil fuels (mainly coal).So cleaner coal,increased efficiency, lower per capita energy use in developed countries, and lower growth rates in developing countries, alsong with reduced energy use lifestyle changes (mainly limiting population) will be the ultimate fixes-- assuming a bonanza like practical fusion power does not come along...

Hemp4victory, I agree with you that our old friend Cannibis should walk this journey with us. I, however, don't care about just industrial hemp. I love the weed and anyone who would take such a helpful flower and demonize it is, in my opinion, an asshole.

Goner, I'm not arrogant enough to believe that my idea was finished. Fine tune it if you can. However, we need to actually start DOING something like this. Maintenance wise, yes, there will always be costs for energy generation. Fine. Here's a fine tuning right here. After the initial payback for the equipment, simply charge a small maintenance fee. Put the fees in escrow. If after a certain number of years pass with no major upgrades or maintenance outlays, rebate the money back to customers. This would prevent major capital accumlation (a damn good thing) and would provide essentially free power.

It's a total shame that it just can't happen in the US. Ever since RAYGUN has taken the solar panels off the White House, neither party has tried to put it back on.

Don't worry though. Do a google search for solar power generator . We're all going to have to be our own economic vigilantes if we're going to get off the fossil fuel based power grids. And while we're at it, let's encourage countries where hemp is legal to use that crop to help manufacture durable and more reliable solar panels. And along with it, throw out both parties and give people like Nader, Mckinney, Sheehan, etc ... a chance.

Solar thermal generation via a turbine is one of the best ideas out there. It allows solar energy to be stored in the form of heat energy for generation at night. It solves the storage problem. Combined with PV and wind/wave, in a sunny climate like Portugal it can provide a great deal of energy.

To Russ--what do you mean "last 8 years"? We should have shifted to solar back in the 70s after the first energy crisis.

To anarchy--you'll never reach a point of free power because all equipment will need to be replaced at some point. Not that your ideas aren't worth exploring, they just need more fine-tuning.

Here's an idea. Why don't all of you, who are begging the 'government' to do something like this, why don't you set up a corporation, get your friends and families to invest in building these machines, do the work yourselves and, after amortizing the cost over a period of time and issuing pro rata bills to your customers, guaranteeing free energy to your customers after the installation is paid for.

No, this would take too much unity and trust than even 'progressives' are willing to extend. The fact is that, we could all have plenty of free energy tomorrow if we would invest in each other. Instead, we invest in KBR, Enron and their ilk. Disgusting. When will we all see that all that is needed is to "make the first last and the last first"? Stop working to make the rich richer and work to make your poor asses better off.

Most people would rather trust some bureaucrat, who is beholden to no one but the wealthy, to do things like this, than to trust in each other. Can you trust a farmer to provide you food as you set him up with absolutely free electricity forever? Can you trust the clothier to keep you warm and comfortable so that he never has to pay an electric bill ever again? Fuck being 'progressive'. Why not try actually progressing?

The "San Gorgonio Pass at the West end of the Coachella valley in California is reported to have over 4000 turbines,

http://www.palmsprings.com/services/wind.html

which is significantly more than the 130 reported here as "the world's biggest wind farm".

"When you have a programme like this there is no need for nuclear power."

There's the crux of the matter right there.

But when we have a country full of wealthy elites that are wealthy becuase of the oil/coal/nuclear industry they certainly won't give up their jobs to fund power or jobs that are more grassroots and egalitarian. Who owns the sun? Who owns the waves? Who owns the wind? The people do.

Since they can't put a price on it (though I'm sure they're trying) we don't have those renewables.

Combine this kind of technology and can do attitude with agressive population reduction--which can be done--and we will begin to resemble true human beings.

www.StudentsForTheEarth.org

.

No to nuclear power, solar energy first:

Nader: On the table;

Obama/McCain: Off the table

Vote Nader 2008

amazing what a country can do when the Government does the best thing for the people and not big corporations. I wish Canada would do the same thing out west. You could even set it up so the farmer could still use the land. These things don't pollute and make electricity.
WHERE IS PRO NUKE BILLY WHEN YOU NEED HIM???

Excellent work. And there's great truth in the statement "The cost of inaction is very high indeed".

The US has lost enormous ground over the last 8 years in pursuing wrong action. No progress has been made. It has been all regression.

The stakes are so high today that wrong action just invites more disaster.

Great article, particularly because it included a chronically overlooked technology: wave power. I have yet to read in ANY U.S. media a sentence like this:

"It is the start of a potentially giant global industry with Portuguese firm Enersis planning to invest more than £1bn in a series of [wave] farms that together would power 450,000 homes."

The History Channel (or it may have been Discovery) had a program on this last year, and the implications are staggering; a British engineer opined that there's enough wave energy just offshore (on the Atlantic side of the British Isles) to supply England with ALL its electric power needs.

Think of the wave energy our country could tap, with our vast coastlines! We do NOT have to revert to a 19th-century lifestyle because of energy shortages. We are just using the WRONG KINDS of energy (coal, oil, natural gas, nuclear). "Green" electricity adds NO greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, and almost everything but airplanes can run on it.

EZEFLYER

yes, i'm grateful some countries have leaders with common sense........

Great example!

the portugese have the right idea!! Time for the us gov to start building, how about all that land laid to waste testing nuke weapons in the fifties? that would be the perfect spot!

And the portugese Economics Minister sounds very well informed, I wish we had more people like him working in OUR Government.