As I have stated several times here and on other like threads, we need to develop ALL of the Different methods of renuable energy.

Look, we either start now with a "massive" effort to develop clean renuable energy, or the global warming which is primarily from burning coal world wide, is going to continue until the methane in the oceans releases into our atmosphere, and we are running out of time to prevent that disaster.

KEM PATRICK July 14th

I just received a magazine today with an article on solar panels. As I have said all along these alternative to coal and nuclear are good BUT they will not replace them any time soon. Microsoft's California Mountain View campus of 4 buildings have a total of 2,288 solar panels covering 31,000 square feet (a little more than 20 times the square footage of my condo) yet the Microsoft complex can tap the California electric grid for only 6% less electricity than if they didn't have the solar panels. A company called Sun-Power has solar panel cells that can convert 22% of the suns rays to electricity (about twice it's nearest competitor) BUT 22% is not near good enough to power the US. Some day we will be able to get off oil, coal and nuclear but unfortunately for me I will be long gone and will not see it.

http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/444/

...for the last 30 years, geothermal systems have been successfully demonstrating their capacity to generate electricity. Some areas of the world are blessed with steam or hot water located fairly close to the surface (think of Yellowstone's Old Faithful geyser). In Iceland and locations in the U.S. west, says Tester, "instead of mining minerals from the ground, we're mining heat." Right now, the U.S. produces 3000 megawatts of geothermal electricity. But "not all the earth is so blessed" with hot springs, says Tester, so the trick is "to replicate what nature has done."

"Tester's report assumed that if geothermal were "going to be anything more than a minor curiosity," it would have to supply energy at the level of nuclear or hydropower in the U.S. today – 100 thousand megawatts. EEGS could become such an energy player by 2050,"

As I have said before it is doable it's just not feasible on the scale that we need to day. All of what you have said is great and works on a SMALL scale, for the entire US, it will take TIME and (INVESTMENT). I don't think you appreciate the vast amount of electricity needed just to run the internet server farms let alone the mainframe computers and cooling needs to keep it all running.
Sit down for a second and think of everything that uses electricity, remember if we go to electric cars those millions and millions of cars will have to be plugged into something to recharge.

A propos the business of reducing use of electricity, there is a program in Mexico where the cost of the first few kW are low/kWhr, but at each gradation as you increase your use, the cost/kWh goes up. It can encourage conservation. Something like a graduated income tax.

A recent article espousing increased use and construction of nuclear plants claimed that the safety was unparalleled. They discounted Chernobyl because that is not the type of plant that would be built in the US. This shows that accidents can happen anywhere under any circumstances. Remember that at one time the Concorde had the best safety of any airplane in the world, but it only takes a single mishap when you are dealing with something as potentially lethal as radioactivity.

What do you think of MIT's report on Geothermal~WoLF~? You may have it there in your books and magazines.

KEM PATRICK July 14th, 2008 10:37 am

Yes I have studied the issue, I have a large collection of books and magazines on the subject as well as numerous internet bookmarks. It is not so much that I was "unaware" poor choice of words as much as probably not that familiar with #3, there are some references to this method in my books but they mostly are on large scale use of geothermal in the production of electricity, not in single one house applications.

Hi ~WOLF 522~ You say you have "studied" the issue. Boy you sure do study fast, three hours prior to your last post, you stated you were were unaware of #3. It sort of looks as if your "studying" was to read a couple of links about the subject on the internet.

Your comments about water use? You described the "Hot Dry Rock" method, there are others readily available.

___MIT___ has done some studying and they have published a 2006 report on the subject, which states it would cost (one billion dollars) to develop a Geo-thermal plant by 2050, which could produce ___100 GIGAWATTS ___of electricity.

If a massive effort were implimented, that could be accomplished by 2012. If 20 billion were invested, or less than we spend on the Iraq mess in 20 months, or the cost of a couple of nuker plants, we could have 2,000 GIGAWATTS of clean energy by 2012. MIT states we could have all of the energy needed by just using Geo alone.

And as I have stated several times, we need to use all of the sources of clean re-newable energy, Geo is one method, in my opinion it's the best method, but I'm all for the others also.

I may add, about your comments of the use of water. Once the steam has condensed back to water, __(it is re-used)__ and with a plant located near salt water, as is already the case in California, some of the CLEAN and inexpensive electrical power produced, could be used to desalinate sea water. We have lots of sea water. Gonna have lots more if we don't stop burning coal.

Great discussion! Wish I had the energy to stay up all night. Here in PA the "#3" geothermal is having increased popularity. Its much more efficient having a heat pump exchanging heat with 50 deg groundwater than with 90 or 25 deg air. it still takes electricity, of course.

KEM PATRICK July 13th, 2008 11:17 pm

Actually I HAVE studied the issue and as you can see the technology and infrastructure for wide spread use is not there and will not be for decades. Geothermal also uses vast amounts of water, we are looking at global warming and droughts. Just where is all this water going to come from for all these geothermal plants you want?

http://www1.eere.energy.gov/geothermal/faqs.html

What does it cost to develop a geothermal power plant?

Answer: Costs of a geothermal plant are heavily weighted toward early expenses, rather than fuel to keep them running. Well drilling and pipeline construction occur first, followed by resource analysis of the drilling information. Next is design of the actual plant. Power plant construction is usually completed concurrent with final field development. The initial cost for the field and power plant is around $2500 per installed kW in the U.S., probably $3000 to $5000/kWe for a small (<1Mwe) power plant. Operating and maintenance costs range from $0.01 to $0.03 per kWh. Most geothermal power plants can run at greater than 90% availability (i.e., producing more than 90% of the time), but running at 97% or 98% can increase maintenance costs. Higher-priced electricity justifies running the plant 98% of the time because the resulting higher maintenance costs are recovered.

How much water does a plant require?

Answer: The flow required depends on the temperature of the fluid, the ambient (sink) characteristics, and the pumping power required to supply and dispose of the fluid. Excluding fluid pumping, a closed-loop binary-cycle geothermal power plant would need 450 to 600 gallons per minute (gpm) to generate 1 MW from a 300° F fluid with an air temperature of 60° F. If the fluid temperature were only 210° F, one would need 1,300 to 1,500 gpm to generate the same amount of power. If an evaporative cooling system were used, 45 to 75 gpm of make-up (clean) cooling water would also be required to generate 1 MW.

http://discovermagazine.com/2008/apr/03-the-great-forgotten-clean-energy-source

If we could extract all the geothermal energy that exists underneath the United States to a depth of two miles, it would supply America's power demands (at the current rate of usage) for the next 30,000 years. Getting at all that energy is not feasible—there are technological and economic impediments—but drawing on just 5 percent of the geothermal wealth would generate enough electricity to meet the needs of 260 million Americans. The Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) asserts that reaching that 5 percent level, which would produce 260,000 megawatts of electric power and reduce our dependence on coal by one-third, is doable by 2050.

So what is holding us back? Tapping geothermal energy means facing the harsh realities of thermodynamics: Typically, geothermal electricity is generated when hot water or steam underground is piped to the surface to drive a turbine, usually through heating an intermediate working fluid that actually turns the turbine's blades. The turbine drives a dynamo that then produces the electricity. Crucially, the temperature of the piped-up water dictates the efficiency of a turbine-based system: the hotter the better, with a minimum of about 200 degrees Fahrenheit needed. But there is a limited number of geothermal hot spots that naturally contain water and that heat it to such high temperatures at accessible depths. Probably the best example of one in the United States is The Geysers. In a valley 72 miles north of San Francisco, steam billows from the earth's surface. An elaborate array of gleaming metal pipes brings steam up from underground to drive turbines that generate 850 megawatts of electricity.

California, Nevada, Idaho, and Oregon all have enough high-temperature hot spots to potentially meet a significant portion of their electrical demand—as much as 60 percent in the case of Nevada—but rarely are the temperatures as high as at The Geysers, which produces steam of 400 degrees and hotter. Most of the time, developers have to look as far as six miles below ground to locate hot, flowing liquids. Finding suitable drill sites can be a big headache.

Doug Glaspey, chief operating officer of U.S. Geothermal, an Idaho-based company that just finished building a 13-megawatt geothermal electrical plant in southern Idaho, says he wishes he had "X-ray vision, so I could see where the reservoirs are. The highest-risk part of this business, bar none, is searching for reservoirs. Drilling a well costs two to three million dollars per well. If it fails, you got nothing." Moreover, once companies hit a good hot spot, they still have to set up a power plant or a heating system, which requires big up-front costs and multiple wells. Glaspey estimates that it costs "$3.5 million to $4 million per megawatt" to build a geothermal power station.

In addition, geothermal power plants have energy efficiencies of just 8 to 15 percent, less than half that of coal plants. High up-front expenses plus relatively low efficiency makes the cost of geothermal electricity about double that of coal, which sells for around five cents per kilowatt-hour.

As you can see for a real small town with a small power plant near a hot spring no problem, for NYC at this time it just will not work.

Hi ~WOLF 123~. there are five states which currenty use geo-thermal for electrical power plants. There are hundreds of locations where GEO is available across the country. In the northern midwest states there are vast geo-thermal fields which could produce all of our required electrical power for centuries.

You say the GEO plants are expensive? How expensive? Not near as expensive as a NUKER and there is no cost for the fuel or any cost to "forever", SAFELY, "ha-ha", store, deadly man-made leftovers. You have not studied the issue.

The problem is, there is no profit for the oil, coal or uranium guys to go that way and they control our elected. We must delvelop geo, solar, wind, tidal and wave power plants and if you study the issue, you will find all of those combined would be quite adequate for the United States and for the rest of the world's nations.

Clean energy too cheap to meter!

StephenB

I hope your ringing defense of nuclear power will still resound in Vichy France after the country is laid waste by another sort of accident. A little leakage ain't nothing compared to a core meltdown and. statistically, that is inevitable. Maybe not tomorrow, maybe not in ten years, maybe not in fifty years, but it will happen and that is what you bequeath your children and grandchildren.

LRBogert July 13th, 2008 7:41 pm

Some applications of geothermal energy use the earth's temperatures near the surface, while others require drilling miles into the earth. The three main uses of geothermal energy are:

Image of a geothermal power plant. The Power Plant gets steam from a production well. The well gets steam from a geothermal reservoir. The used steam goes to an injection well that reinjects the fluid into the geothermal reservoir.

1) Direct Use and District Heating Systems which use hot water from springs or reservoirs near the surface.

2) Electricity generation in a power plant requires water or steam at very high temperature (300 to 700 degrees Fahrenheit). Geothermal power plants are generally built where geothermal reservoirs are located within a mile or two of the surface.

3) Geothermal heat pumps use stable ground or water temperatures near the earth's surface to control building temperatures above ground.

OK, I admit you learn something new every day, I was familiar with #1 & #2, I was unaware of #3.

wolf123:

Twice now you confuse geothermal ... it's not the Iceland version, although there are a few areas in the US where that would be possible.

Geothermal uses the 50º temperature of groundwater for a more efficient heat exchange, using a heat pump, for both heating and cooling homes. The groundwater is piped from at least 12 feet down to the building's heating/cooling system - thus improving the efficiency of the heat pump. When a new home or other building is built with this in mind, you can dramatically reduce the cost of heating and cooling.

It's especially useful in the northeast, and coupled with solar panels on the buildings where appropriate can lead to nearly no-cost heating and cooling in many situations, as the heat pump is electrically driven. Retrofitting older homes will still be an issue - especially if they currently use oil or gas furnaces that would need to be switched from - as the payback time would be rather long. But in cases where the technology is being promoted by utility or state subsidies I've seen payback times of 8 years or less. And of course new construction can take advantage of geothermal in the building design.

KEM PATRICK July 13th, 2008 5:10 pm

"There are enough geo-thermal areas in the United States alone to provide all of our energy needs now and for the next 150,000+ years."

Great for heating water if you live near an active volcano,
"There is no generation of electricity from geothermal sources within the state of Oregon. However, there are several sites where geological data suggest a resource sufficient for power generation may exist. The potential for production of electricity from Oregon´s geothermal resources has been explored at three sites in Oregon.
In 1996, CalEnergy Company received a site certificate from the Energy Facility Siting Council to build a 30-megawatt geothermal power plant near the Newberry Volcanic Monument in Deschutes County. However, despite considerable investment in exploratory drilling, the company did not find a source of heat and steam sufficient for generating electricity. The company canceled the Newberry project and is now pursuing a similar project in northern California."

Iceland is a great place for geothermal lots of volcanic activity under the ground, Kansas is not. Today, Iceland is a world leader in geothermal power production. Iceland is located on a geological "hot spot", where volcanic activity is frequent, and deep depths are not required to tap the geothermal energy. In 2005, Iceland generated over 26% of its electricity from geothermal sources.
BUT why only 26%? Why not 100%.
The reason is the technology to produce vast amounts of electricity just is not there now and the cost of the power plant is enormous.

Perhaps decades from now it will be economically feasible but now a little solar panel here a small geothermal plant there some wind turbines somewhere else will not come close to powering just microsofts server farms.

"Take this: my sister has a modest solar installation on her roof in Tucson. best buy she ever made, she says. Pays zero electric for house. Case closed. Will recapture investment in ten years total–half of that is already done.'

Your still thinking SMALL, how much electricity does it take tucson to run the computer bank and servers that coordinate just the the traffic signals? A modest solar installation will not work.

Jay Leno uses a turbine style wind generator for his very large garage where he works on and stores his antique vehicles. It resembles a typical large roof vent fan used for storage buildings or barns. He sells the excess power developed.

There are "POWER TOWERS" which are now being constructed in some foreign countries, which use both wind and solar and one tower will supply the all of the electrical needs for a city of a million homes.

Thank you for those comments ~MUSTABE~. Right on.

yuck...
Lotsa propaganda above. Take this: my sister has a modest solar installation on her roof in Tucson. best buy she ever made, she says. Pays zero electric for house. Case closed. Will recapture investment in ten years total--half of that is already done. If she sold now the buyer would be thrilled to have it.
In some places, like Tucson, the local energy company does not even pay her for the juice her solar pours back into the system during the hot and sunny days when no one is home (and millions of others are using A/C). So she only gets her break in the evenings, which is when she is using power.
This year Frisco finally forced PG&E to pay for electricity generated at homes at market rates--people here are actually making money on it. Imagine getting a monthly check from your power company!
The biggest drawback to this technology is propaganda:
big investors in power companies do not like egalitarian power. They want control. They like centralized power with the big switches in their own hands. Then like in the Enron crisis, they can raise the rates and speculate the futures market big time, making billions.
Proof is the solar story. And right on about aluminum--one of the world's most common metals--perfect for frames for solar panels, much of which is made from silica, (the root material of glass).
What if every house had a small wind generator on the roof? Or out back? Not a big giant propeller like the big corps use off shore or up in Altamont, but a small little spinner model making just enough to augment the solar at night--for the laptop or various nightlights?
OR TO CHARGE YOUR ELECTRIC CAR!!!
Nuclear is a scourge for future generations. So are dams. Rivers shoud run free and people who build beside them should risk their homes. No sympathy for river shapers! Let the healthy floods flood. Build on stilts if you must live next to a river. Nature is more right than we ever are.
Watch out for scabs and trojan horses. Even in here.

Pro-nukers ignore growing, permanent, cancer-causing, bioconcentrating, non-securable, non-insurable, bomb making, storage cost prohibitive, energy centralizing nuke waste at our own risk. For what?

They make it sound as if we had to choose between nukes and coal to continue overpopulating the earth and concentrating the money-power.

Just think of what a little of our money the fascists throw at nuke power would do for green alternatives. The sun IS a giant fusion reactor you know.

BTW ~WOLF 123~ I was incorrect about the cancer cases rising near Three Mile Island, but cancer cases are always much higher for thoses who live near atomic power plants and many of the nuclear waste storage areas, even when they don't have nuclear accidents.

The problem with conservation as a solution to the destruction of the planet is that it has to be mandated and it has to be worldwide. You can decrease your consumption of energy to the point of sustainability and so can I. But what good does it do when only a handful of people are living this way? I think we could cut our fossil fuel use down by 80% easily and without hardship. But until we have the right laws in place, only token gains will be achieved by conservation, because most people who can afford it will have big boats, big cars and big houses.

The complexity of nuclear power has allowed it do be grossly misrepresented as the biggest threat to our existence. No one died at TMI. However, the problems that occurred resulted in more stringent safety measures for nuclear power plants. As for Chernobyl, it was an antiquated plant that, unlike all US plants, lacked a containment dome. It was also run beyond its design limitations with all of its safety features temporarily turned off for "testing purposes." Chernobyl is not relevant to the modern nuclear industry anymore than the refrigerators from the 1930's that leaked ammonia are relevant to modern refrigerators.

Anyone worried about radiation should start with coal plants which spew it right into the atmosphere with no regulation.

My average daily electrical use is 26 KWHs. Two of the solar panels would do just fine and I'd only need 6 kwhs a day from my electrical company. With three panels I'd be selling them electricity.

It is not only solar we must develop on a massive scale, it is all of them, wind, solar, geo-thermal, wave and tidal, along with hydro-electric. Phase out coal fired plants and then over time the nukers.

There is a lot of discussion here about solar but little about the other viable alternatives. Geo-thermal is perhaps the very best and tidal second. All re-nuables use no mined fuel and none pollute the atmophere with excess Co2 like coal and solar do.

There are enough geo-thermal areas in the United States alone to provide all of our energy needs now and for the next 150,000+ years.

We give billions for nuclear energy and very little to develop renuable energy sources. That's the major problem.

P.S. Of course we will have to give up the computers,,,until they become publicly owned and more efficient....think bicycle-wheel powered.

Business as usual will mean suicide: collective and individual. Your call.

Great posts. All the saner types are here represented , huh? Except that only a couple actually seem to care about the long term sustainability of our situation. Most are talking as if the future generations don't matter. There is only one way to get ourselves out of this suicidal spiral: population control and a gradual lessening of our human footprint. This much is elementary and obvious but we continue to deny its inevitability. Alternative sources will serve us well for a few decades but the evidence indicates that there never will be a truly free lunch. Sorry.

My wife and I left this madness 40 years ago and lived for decades within a perfectly "western civilization" farming society, and along with everyone else there enjoyed a relatively high standard of living..on less than a gallon of hydrocarbons weekly total including our share of public transport, lighting, radio, etc. We had no solar of hydro or wind because we couldn't afford them...would have needed subsidies to do it ....Without chain saws and skill saws and electric motors for sweeping up your bread crumbs there will always be work for our youth...imagine that...

But rational thinking is all but dead and has been for longer than I can remember...

rtdrury July 13th, 2008 2:34 pm

"Au contraire. The SEGS solar-thermal power plants in the California Mojave desert supply for each residential customer an average of 10kWh/day using 18ft x 18ft of collector area."

How nice 10kW a day barely enough to turn on the lights. A 2.5 ton ac unit running 16 hrs a day which you will need in the summer in the mojave desert takes an average of 56 kWh per day.

http://news.cnet.com/2100-1017-257567.html?hhTest=1&legacy=cnet

Expectations of a long, hot--and dark--summer in power-strapped California are putting some of the technology industry's biggest energy consumers on the hot seat.
Critics say so-called server farms--entire floors or buildings crammed with computer servers--are wasteful energy hogs that take up prime office parks or downtown buildings but offer little in the way of employment or aesthetics. Advocates say they allow companies to concentrate on business and let server farms maintain and protect their computer systems.

You like surfing the net and adding your 2 cents to a blog well guess what, solar at the present time can't come even remotely close to supplying the required energy.
Why don't you google electrical needs of a server farm to get a vague idea of the massive amount of electricity needed. It also requires a vast amount of electricity to produce the components to make your computer.

ricg,

Very good points in addition to ezeflyers. Welcome to the world of capitalism, which includes planned obsolescence, gluttony, over-consumption, and wasteful energy use. Live for today and forget about tomorrow. Forget? Tomorrow came yesterday.

Right on, ricg!

I may have missed it in the comments above, but I didn't see anyone suggesting that we start using less energy, including less electricity. It seems obvious that maintaining our current usage provides a convenient excuse for the nuclear proponents and the coal proponents.

Does Las Vegas really need all those lights? Do our cities have to be lit up like solar flares all night? Do we need industries that produce cars when what's needed is mass transit?

Maybe we need to stop worrying about the profits of General Motors stockholders and worry more about the destruction of the only place in the universe where we can live. And maybe we might start realizing that there can not be a compromise with the planet. The planet doesn't care. It's physical processes operate under laws that don't give a damn about whether any of us, or all of us, or everything on the planet lives or dies.

But nobody wants to hear that. No, people would rather just chitter on like monkeys, pretending that it will all get better even though every step we take makes it worse. The profits of the few are more important than the lives of anybody, everybody.

When you talk percentages, don't forget to count the dead.

ezeflyer, I think it was late last year or early this year when '60 Minutes' did a segment on the French nuclear power industry and how safe and efficient it is, and the precautions it takes against a calamity from happening. And now this unexpected leak.

And I definitely agree with your last post. I would only add, "and militarists."

You said it well, ezeflyer!

StephenB: "Solar simply doesn't have the production density needed to run a modern society"

Au contraire. The SEGS solar-thermal power plants in the California Mojave desert supply for each residential customer an average of 10kWh/day using 18ft x 18ft of collector area. For each of those, the plants offer another 20kWh/day of energy that may be utilized for industrial processes. Scale the plants down, spread them out with local ownership, and get rid of miles and miles of high voltage lines, and utilize the waste heat in more diverse applications. Such a collector size easily fits on a residental roof and commercial roofs are prime candidates.

Considering that 60% of aluminum is currently chucked in landfills instead of recycled, a very representative example of overall industrial waste, we really need to look deeper at how much "production density is needed to run a modern society". Increase aluminum recycling from 40% to 90% and thereby cut some 5% from overall electricity consumption, then utilize the solar plant waste heat in the recycling process and cut another huge chunk of carbon-spewing coal/gas consumption in that process. This also saves the ecosystems that would otherwise have to sink the waste heat - which nuke plants also generate. Nuke plants however do not so easily accomodate other industrial processes.

Unfortunately public debate is not a feature of capitalist culture. Instead we're supposed to swallow a few nuggets of "conventional wisdom" and let the capitalists partake in their wildly inefficient an wasteful resource allocation and production. The people's role is to dutifully consume! Hilarious!

Thanks peaceman. Good points. I'll add that if we were truly "not man apart" the planet would be run like a wildlife preserve by ecologists and other scientists and artists, instead of by economists, politicians and old oilmen.

Ezeflyer, Excellent comments! I do agree.

Wolf 123, Regarding solar panels, Germany, a northern hemisphere country leads the world in installing these panels, followed by Japan.

You seem to prefer nuclear power over the ones I had mentioned, but when the costs of maintaining these plants, coupled with the hazardous waste with, as you know, a mighty long shelf life, and ALWAYS the possibility of a human or technical error (I won't include sabotage or a direct military strike on a nuclear power plant), I think, and I'm not a scientist or an engineer, but if we reversed our priorities from the insane military research and development of newer ways to kill and maim people and objects and utilized the scientific community in R&D of sustainable technologies for producing adequate energy, it can be done.

Nuclear plants can also gain acceptance because it is difficult to blame cancers on them, particularly those that take years to develop. Probably the best example of documenting nuclear plant produced cancers is Chernobyl.

I may be paranoid, but I think I have cause to be. I don't trust our government, nor the corporations that run it. Recently it's come out that they ordered the EPA, (the NRC and other agencies?) to hide the truth about toxic substances and dangers of global warming, among others.

Nuke waste is a problem that lasts forever. It bio-concentrates to produce more cancer forever and can't be safely stored forever.

It's not our paranoia that keeps this taxpayer funded, hugely expensive, corporate centralized energy boondogle from being developed. It is our knowledge of it's costs and dangers plus the fact that insurance companies won't touch it.

Can humanity afford to continue it's profligate lifestyle? Can we afford more people on our planet? Can less than 1% of the population own and control all of the world's resources without destabilizing our planetary ecosystem?

I think these are the important questions. The ones we have yet to get serious about.

~WOLF 123~ I concede that I was wrong about the high number of cancers associated with the Three Mile Island accident. The article I quoted is not credible.

Taking the front end and the back end into consideration about the nuclear energy cycle, the inescapable conclusion is that nuclear power generation in the long term is doomed to failure and with catastrophic consequences. Using nuclear reactors to boil water in order to produce electricity is like using a chain saw to cut a pat of butter for your morning toast. It may work, but would a sane person do it? As for the French not being paranoid about nuclear power, but of course, why would they be. The Pacific Islanders paid and are paying the price of their nuclear testing. Incidentally the French first tested in Algeria, fourteen times! Perhaps if the testing were done just outside Paris the French would have developed a different appreciation of nuclear power.

France has a serious waste problem. They are experimenting with fast reactors that would "burn" waste, but right now its piling up and/or going to Russia. (And Russia is Russia.)They also have a dirty reprocessing plant in La Hague that should be cleaned up or shut down. They are also trying to find their own Yucca Mountain.

The key is the Generation IV DU/waste fast reactors that no one has perfected yet.

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=31466

It would appear the one thing that neo-cons love about France has hit a road bump. What I would like to know is where the waste from their plants goes.

KEM PATRICK July 13th, 2008 5:30 am

"Those who say there were no deaths at Three mile Island, are not counting the huge numbers of cancers which arose down-wind from that site."

I would suggest that you google cancer deaths at three mile island

Although safety systems at the Three Mile Island facility performed well and the radiation leak was relatively small, the Three Mile incident was sensationalized in the media. Antinuclear proponents urged residents to evacuate, adding to stress levels and panic. In the end this nuclear accident resulted in no deaths or injuries to plant workers or members of the nearby community. On average, area residents were exposed to less radiation than that of a chest X-ray. Nevertheless, the Three Mile Island incident raised concerns about nuclear safety, which resulted in safety enhancements in the nuclear power industry and at the NRC. Antinuclear sentiment was fueled as well, heightening Americans' criticism of nuclear power as an energy source.

Cancer and three mile island: no significant increase in five-mile radius

No Significant Rise In Cancer Deaths In 3-Mile Island Residents Over 20 Years, According To Study

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0CYP/is_3_111/ai_100730766

Although the Pittsburgh team found no statistically significant rise in cancer deaths, there was a slight increase in overall mortality among the TMI population, with the deaths due primarily to heart disease. However, the heart disease is not thought to be related to radiation exposure, but rather is most likely due to the population having well-established heart disease risk factors (such as smoking and socioeconomic status) that were not measured. Another possible factor is the stress of living within the plant's shadow following the accident.

WHAT huge numbers of cancers which arose down-wind from that site????

Burning coal is by far the worst polluter and if we continue to burn coal, we will insure the Arctic totallly thaws due to global warming. In fact the latest data shows the Arctic MAY be totally ice free within two to three years. We may have already killed the hog. I'm not sure if we can prevent a world wide disaster like humanty has never experienced.

If any don't believe that is a world wide disaster, they will realize it when the Arctic's methane gas blossoms out into our atmosphere. If we think global warming is a problem now, wait until that happens. It is not at all funny and it has already begun.

Nuclear is far better than burning coal. Nuclear is far worse than truely clean energy. Those who say solar, wind, geo-thermal, tidal and wave are not feasible or practicle, have not studied the issue and they are wrong.

Those combined methods are feasible, practical, very affordable and the technology is well proven. We just do not have the government backing, tax incintives and funding to do it, as has been the case for nuclear power.

Consider this also. Uranium ore is a finite source and may run out by 2040 to 2050. What do we use then, ___ more coal? Those who say there were no deaths at Three mile Island, are not counting the huge numbers of cancers which arose down-wind from that site. It was a very close call that that accident didn't steralize huge areas of Pa, New York and New Jersey and kill millions.

It will happen someday, it's just a matter of time, not "IF". ___ "WHEN AND WHERE" are the questions. That also goes for France, Japan, Russia and China, etc.

"If sunbeams were weapons of war, we would have had solar energy centuries ago."
~Sir George Porter~, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry.

hydro energy systems
No new dam has been built in the US in decades, little endangered mino fish might die, environmental terrorist threaten to sue.

solar
Only feasible in the southwest unfortunately sand storms can cause massive damage resulting in no electricity for quite some time, blocks sun light to endangered fauna, environmental terrorist threaten to sue.

geothermal
Great for heating water if you live near an active volcano,
"There is no generation of electricity from geothermal sources within the state of Oregon. However, there are several sites where geological data suggest a resource sufficient for power generation may exist. The potential for production of electricity from Oregon´s geothermal resources has been explored at three sites in Oregon.
In 1996, CalEnergy Company received a site certificate from the Energy Facility Siting Council to build a 30-megawatt geothermal power plant near the Newberry Volcanic Monument in Deschutes County. However, despite considerable investment in exploratory drilling, the company did not find a source of heat and steam sufficient for generating electricity. The company canceled the Newberry project and is now pursuing a similar project in northern California."

wind
The esteemed democratic senator kennedy has made it clear, there will be no wind farms blocking his view off Martha's Vineyard.

all of the above are nice BUT there is no massive infrastructure to take advantage of them, they are great for a little show BUT how do you plan on generating enough electricity to power the US? None of the above technology is currently capable and will not be for decades, so in the mean time we all read our pc monitors by candle light?

One question, do you have the vaguest idea how much electricity just one server farm in a medium size insurance company uses 24/7/365? Server farms were the main reason calif. had rolling blackouts several years ago (that and ken lays greed).

Three Mile Island nuclear accident resulted in zero deaths, no deaths have been reported in any accident at a nuclear power station in the US. Just what is considered to be a serious accident depends on one's point of view - where one stands on an issue depends on where one sits. Those who fear radiation regard any accident, however minor, as serious. A utility would regard as very serious, from a financial standpoint, any accident that damaged the reactor enough to put it out of service, even if no radioactive material were released. The potential financial penalty serves as a powerful incentive for the utility to maintain safety.

Russia is helping to build Iran's nuclear power plant, I wonder how the ME is going to like a Chernobyl going off in their back yard?

http://www.earth-policy.org/Updates/Update42.htm

COAL TAKES HEAVY HUMAN TOLL:
Some 25,100 U.S. Deaths from Coal Use Largely Preventable

http://nucleargreen.blogspot.com/2008/01/health-effects-or-generating.html

The French have reacted appropriately, cautiously, and timely. This spill is not a big problem. Luckily, uranium is not very toxic compared with other radioactive substances. In general, France's nuclear power production serves as a model for others.

I think that nuclear power is superior to solar or wind for the high population density here in France. France does not get winds like Germany. Solar simply doesn't have the production density needed to run a modern society.

Americans are paranoid about nuclear power. This is interesting because it was the only nation to use atomic bombs in war. Of course we were trained to fear nuclear attacks during the cold war. So the thought of nuclear <> invokes fear in America. This is not true in France.

Over the time that France has used nuclear power, America, northern Europe, China, etc. have released materials many times more toxic then uranium into the environment. Today, mercury, cadmium, and other heavy metals are found throughout the environment. These toxins come from coal-fired plants. And, of course, burning coal aggravates global warming.

Good comments, people. A little uranium leak, huh? All the trillions of dollars spent around the world on nuclear power plants should have been spent on solar, wind, geothermal and hydro energy systems which are safe, renewable, and cost effective. I think KEM PATRICK explained it very well on several ocassions. Thanks for the links. Elena is brave to travel to "No man's land."

With all the lighting both public and private, at our disposal by a flick of a switch, we are living in a modern version of "The Dark Ages."

But they still tell us that nuclear is clean, safe and reliable.

The French nation is the poster child for nuclear power. Frenchmen also have a killer cigarette smoking rate.

Do any believe they ever stopped dumping nuclear waste in the oceans? Or the Russians? Or the US? Who else may be?

What is killing off the ocean's phytoplnkton? Phytoplankton is our very most important plant life, essential for all life.

http://www.whyplankton.com

Just to put this in perspective, this is what they consider "a level-one incident on the seven-point scale to rank nuclear accidents" that occurred during routine operations. Just wait until somebody really screws up.

Love this link.

http://www.kiddofspeed.com/chapter1.html

All eyes are on France. It has the largest, most advanced and most ambitious nuclear power program on the planet. One major screwup and orders for reactors could be canceled in the US, UK and western Europe. Au revoir nukes! This was a close call.

France was one of many countries, including the US, that dumped radwaste into the oceans until the 1970s,and Greenpeace was a major crusader to end it. The real beef Greenpeasce had with France was testing nuclear bombs in the atmosphere. Gaullic pride/got slam dunked in two world wars thing. C'est histoire ancien.

The French were ocean dumping nuclear waste in drums back in the sixties. Greenpeace brought it to our attention. The drums leaked radiation into the Pacific Ocean.

Along with nuclear weapon testing, radiation in the oceanic food chain has brought theretofore non-existent cancers to Pacific Islanders and who knows to how many consumers of seafood around the world.

Radioactive waste is the most dangerous and persistent of all contaminants. Nuclear power will condemn the world to increasing cancers forever.