It's All About the Real Estate, and the Dependability, and the...

What's your point?

Nuclear is good and wind/solar farms are bad?

Or, is it the "government" is covering up the good in wind/solar farms?

I'm not sure.

I am sure that the map is terribly misleading with respect to the amount of acreage consumed by wind farms. Granted, solar does take the "dirt" out of play for other uses. Wind farms do not.

In Minnesota, we're 7 miles from a huge wind farm and 99% of the surrounding land is in corn. So, the farmers win both ways. They get paid by the power companies and get to continue to farm their land.

And after a few years of listening to "whump whump whump", their children are all above average.

But, alas, not all of the men are good looking.

Population of my town is 650, mostly Norwegians or Swedes.

I'm sure the strong women are well equipped to tolerate those men who fall short of the 'good looking' standard.

That is a G.A. From me Lyn. In Austria power companies pay industry for using roofs to put solar on. Also no loss of space. And I grow vegetables under my panels, since they all burn if there is no shade. I agree that a lot of people are too shortsighted. There is always a place where the sun shines on this planet.

"There is always a place where the sun shines on this planet."

But, not a night.

when it is night at your spot:

Location: 34° 34' 21.60" N, 92° 55' 42.28" W (I have seen you)

You need a drop cord to 34......replace N by S and W by East.

The discussion in the commentary section is a good read on public opinion....the fact that the generation of power via wind and solar requires a conventional source as backup, is a major bone of contention which is playing out in Germany as we speak....

This from the article below....

"In that context, it was surprising that the UK energy minister apparentlhy chose to frame this week's transaction as a choice for nuclear over the "blight" of the tens of thousands of wind turbines required to generate the same electricity, annually. Configuring wind power to provide enough reliable baseload energy to make nuclear unnecessary would require more overcapacity, grid upgrades and energy storage than even California's legislators could imagine. That would cost far more than the £92.50/MWh price tag for new nuclear.

And that brings us back to the price guarantee, or "strike price", which was apparently the key to getting EDF and its partners to commit to proceed on Hinkley Point. Since the UK's coalition partners had previously determined to provide no subsidies for nuclear power, arrangements such as the loan guarantees offered to US nuclear developers were out of the question. Whether the "contract for difference" scheme chosen to support Hinkley Point's future revenue--funded by ratepayers rather than taxpayers--constitutes a subsidy by another name, it is functionally similar to the Feed-In Tariffs (FITs) offered to wind, solar and other renewables in Germany and elsewhere. For comparison, the current German solar FIT guarantees utility-scale installations the equivalent of £84/MWh for a period extending past the planned start-up of Hinkley C. "

http://theenergycollective.com/geoffrey-styles/293016/uk-nuclear-deal-bet-baseload-power

Don't get me wrong. I'll all for nuclear! I think that the environmental risk is minimal, but very real.

I live just over 50 miles from Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station - Wikipedia, the free ....

It's the only major nuclear power facility in the world NOT built by a river, or other large body of water. It seems to work just fine.

I'd vote for more, if given the opportunity.

I'm not so sure about this info. my info says that anything above 45 degrees latitude sucks for solar. sure it can work but with the famous cloud cover over Britain I'm not sure why you chose this graphic, I think it's misleading. the orange shaded areas are better suited for solar.

Not to get too personal, but how's your health?

getting better all the time

Tell that to Germany.....

"Germany is the world's top photovoltaics (PV) installer, with a solar PV capacity of 34.791 gigawatts (GW) at the end of August 2013.^[2] The German new solar PV installations increased by about 7.6 GW in 2012, and solar PV provided 18 TWh (billion kilowatt-hours) of electricity in 2011, about 3% of total electricity.^[3] Some market analysts expect this could reach 25 percent by 2050.^[4] Germany has a goal of producing 35% of electricity from renewable sources by 2020 and 100% by 2050.^[5]

Large PV power plants in Germany include Senftenberg Solarpark, Finsterwalde Solar Park, Lieberose Photovoltaic Park, Strasskirchen Solar Park,Waldpolenz Solar Park, and Köthen Solar Park."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_Germany

Lieberose....

"One of the largest solar power plants in the world is situated near Berlin, Germany. If measured with football fields, its surface covers more than 200 fields. Its electric power is of 53 megawatts."

actually, at any given moment, it's somewhere between 0 and 53 megawatts.

It depends on whether you can use 'seasonal' solar.

We (Sailor Susan & I) designed/installed a 100,000 btu/hr Solar DHW system in Nunavut a few months back. That was at 61 degrees north latitude. The fishing resort does not need solar anything during the winter months. No clientel. Mid-summer hours of darkness:4. Angle of the approx. 500 evacuated tubes: 76 degrees was sufficient to allow the array to absorb 'from behind'.

Here is a handy tool to determine potential solar based solely on latitude.

There are similar pages which take weather records and graph them similarly. They can be helpful because some places are cloudier than others.

http://astro.unl.edu/classaction/animations/coordsmotion/daylighthoursexplorer.html

I just don't want the lights to go out.

The cleaner the source, the better...within reason.

Now how about the race for the biggest, scariest rollercoaster?

http://cr4.globalspec.com/blogentry/23527#newcomments

The freaking planet is supposedly about to die...and this is where some of the smartest engineers go to work. Wonderful.

Energy supply and use is not as simple as 'the good old days'. Now we have terms like 'distributed' vs ' centralised', and time shifting technologies (like short and long term storage buffers).

Big, centralised power generators that are hooked to substantial energy losing grids and consumers plugging in at the end of the chain is maybe no longer a good business model. Another urban myth was the move to all night street lighting just to create enough load for the base load suppliers to have a (paying) load on their gensets.

As for nuclear, some of the serious costs are the insurance and cleanup decommissioning expenses. And some also say that nuclear fuel sources also have a relatively shorter- than-expected life depending on demand.

Bottom line, when you reach for a drill, is it a corded version plugged into a wall socket, (and where is the extension cord to reach the job), or is it now a lithium ion cordless? It somewhat explains where you are in the energy use cycle in any 24 hours and the need for centralised 'over capacity' or distributed energy sources, sized for the job, with 'no strings attached'.

As for the real estate, as mentioned by others, renewables can co-share the same real estate, wind above, PV, pedal power and geo-thermal under the ground. Nuc energy sources are usually not real-estate sharing friendly and need all the isolation they can economically buy for good PR.

The fact that airplane hangers take up more space than auto garages is an apt comparison, as it demonstrates the tendency of people to see what they want to see.

To compare a nuclear power plant to a solar power plant by contrasting acreage strikes me as assinine.

Funny, that's how you strike me, too!

I spent 30 years living 50 miles due West of the Crystal River NPS. For those who don't know, it was the sister plant to three mile island built at the same time by the same contractor and now out of commision 20 years early due to the same shoddy workmanship. Large structural failure in the containment dome! Go figure huh?

When three mile island wmelted down we had to start having yearly "Nuclear Preparededness Drills" because the prevailing winds were from the West. Thanks to no oversight and poor construction.

I have serious reservations about Nuclear power as we currently do it. We have not solved the waste problem and it's not going to get better or go away so sticking our heads in the sand and pretending it won't come back to bite us is GLOBALLY STUPID.

We allow private contractors to build reactors is equally ignorant of human nature. These folks are not concerned with public safety or health, all they are interested in is government dollars and profit margins and if that means taking short cuts in construction to ensure we pay our targeted divided to the shareholder, most who are millionaires, well "HEY, WE DON"T LIVE NEAR IT SO WHY SHOULD WE CARE?" is the prevaililng attitude among the ultra weathly construction firms and their supporters.

Can we make wind and solar viable on a global scale? Well guys that what engineers are supposed to figure out.

SO GET TO WORK AND QUIT LOLLY GAGGING!

Well everyone seems to be stuck thinking of nuclear power in terms of designs that were current 40 years ago....While the majority of these plants are still operating as well as they did in the beginning, that is just a testament to the viability of this form of energy production.....The problem as I see it is the public is apprehensive to accept the new designs for no good reason other than distrust....The problems everyone refers to are danger of meltdown(grossly exaggerated), and the radioactive waste generated....Both of these problems have been addressed in the new designs....I think this is a lot of the problem with the Hinkley Point C proposal, it's using the old design!! WTF

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/21/farce-hinckley-nuclear-reactor-haunt-britain

I don't see much hope for nuclear power until the fracking frenzy goes away.

All the Sarah Palins of the world want to "drill, baby drill". Regardless of the environmental disasters they may cause.

I think we are on the same page Eagle and Lyn, its not that Nuclear is dangerous, it is, but most of the risk could be managed if it weren't a for profit industry. Anytime you figure increasing wealth against public safety, well increased wealth always wins because its the wealthy who make the policy and they make policy that benefits themselves, not mankind.

There are three forces in the universe that run everything. Matter, Energy, and Enlightened self intrest. I'm sure you can tell which is the strongest on this planet.

You should of course be aware that public utilities are regulated by the respective state Public Service Commissions of that state, which oversees nearly every aspect of these operations....including profit margins...

http://www.psc.state.fl.us/

http://www.floridapsc.com/utilities/electricgas/index.aspx

http://www.floridapsc.com/utilities/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_utilities_commission

Eagle, you didn't really offer that as proof of good oversight did you? I mean you live in Florida right? You have checked out the reason for the CRNPS containment dome failure and early retirement of the reactor. if not, take a look at what all those regulators didn't see or saw and passed anyway.

In your comment previous to this one, your state:

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'...most of the risk could be managed if it weren't a for profit industry. Anytime you figure increasing wealth against public safety, well increased wealth always wins because its the wealthy who make the policy and they make policy that benefits themselves, not mankind.....'

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....but in your more recent comment, the example provided of the permanent shutdown of Crystal River Nuclear Power Plant as a result of damage occurring during maintenance/upgrade, disproves your assertions above.

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The damage done during the upgrade/maintenance wasn't given a pass or somehow missed. The reactor was not used to generate profit once the damage had occurred. When the for-profit company realized that the damage could not reasonably be effectively repaired, the decision was made to permanently shut down the reactor. This was a huge loss of Progress/Duke, and yet public safety still won against attempts to increase the wealth of the wealthy.

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This is clearly an example of things working well. Please be conscientious and avoid vilifying good decisions and proper responses.

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This country was harmed significantly when the sensationalist media misconstrued the triumph of the design to the operator error induced and exacerbated incident in 1979 at Three Mile Island.

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Nuclear Energy continues to be unfairly maligned, sometimes even for its successes. Please don't contribute to this underhandedness. Arguments should compare the actual costs, risks, and benefits, rather than attempting to redefine categories.

That's okay.

As a recent conversation I had with the guys at one of the local auto parts stores revealed to me the Chinese and the US are working on the theoretical design of a super capacity trans continental electrical grid connection system to primarily go from China to the US and Canada.

The intention behind it is that we will ship our dirty coal over there where they will burn it in huge power plants and then send the electricity back to us on the supergrid.

The environmentalists are wild about it being that it could eventually eliminate 100% of our dirty coal burning power here in the US and Canada.

Before anyone calls BS just remember that at one time the thought of shipping the majority of our metal ore and scrap iron over to other countries just to have them melt it down and send it back to us as base stock or new products was looked at as an incredibly stupid and unrealistic idea too.

As hairbrained as that sounds, it is actually a very sound basis for what will undoubtably be the ultimate solution to our energy issues. 50% of the earth is always in sunlight. A global HV grid fired by multiple generators, but primarily wind and solar, will easily supply all of our needs. If you've ever seen a telecommunications path overlayed on a globe, it's pretty easy to visualize. Politically, he who owns it controls his own destiny.

The down side is the realistic physical size it has to be. To be reasonably practical any one part of it would need to have a workable power handling capacity between continents measured in 10's to 100's of tera watts.

What that would involve is line voltages of at least a 30 million volts and a 100,000 amps per phase.

Although not impossible it raises things to a whole new level of electrical power transmission design.

Maybe it will be 'wireless'. Don't ask me HOW!

I have been thinking about it and reading up on EHV power line design and theoretical SHV (Super High Voltage) transmission line design and from what I can see about 3 million volts is the upper limit of practicality simply being that the towers get so massively huge but above all apparently the biggest issue is power loss to corona discharge at that high of voltage.

At 3 million volts the estimated corona discharge loses could get up over 100 Kw per mile of transmission line in certain atmospheric conditions!

Then there is the physical mass of the wires as the amp levels go up. Right now I can't find anything on wire sizing for currents over 2500 amps in long distance transmission lines. Apparently the shear size and mass of the cables becomes a problem at capacities that high.

Even though given a 3 Mv 2500 amp 3ph transmission line that is still some 22.5 GW of service capacity but still a few thousand times short of the theoretical 10's of TW numbers I heard about.

If we imagine that solar collection technology continues to improve, I suppose we could also imagine that electricity could be transformed into something easily transportable...like light, on one end; beamed through fiber optic cables, and turned back into electricity on the other end. That would be cool.

The problem is the converting electrical power to light and back again efficiently.

We have the tech to do the forward conversion from electrical to light easy and efficiently enough.

The problem is the reconvert from high intensity light back to electricity again.

LynDoor™Industries Super NANO SuperConducting carbon nanotube technology will save the world.

With our patented SCCNT we will be able to transmit 100TW around the world so quickly that the power will arrive at the destination before it leaves the source.

Once charged the grid will run forever with further energy input. We'll have to dump the extra energy into outer space to keep from blowing the whole fracking world apart.

Coming soon the a plug in near you.

a net does not require that each individual thread support the total capacity of the net. The fineness of the grid is equally important. I freely admit that I don't see any materials or technology today that will work, but I am quite sure that telegraph opperators could not conceive of terabytes per second data.

Will they do it with smoke and mirrors?

Following up on Lyn's smoke and mirrors ... this Norwegian town of Rjukan did it this week after having it on the drawing boards for around 100 years ... they brought sun into the village using big mirrors. Now, extend this to a global network? Where is the Lone Ranger and Tonto when you need them?