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The Forum > Article Comments > Is solar power the answer? > Comments

Is solar power the answer? : Comments

By Don Aitkin, published 7/12/2012

In the 80s I argued we had to support excellent research and offered solar energy as an example.

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Surely Green households would volunteer. A good way for them to prove their love of Earth.
Posted by McCackie, Friday, 7 December 2012 3:13:33 PM
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Don,

Excellent article. All you say is familiar to me. But I am wiser now.

Solar power is an enormous waste of money. It will not be viable, at large scale, in the foreseeable future.

Advocacy of solar power is irrational. People who advocate solar power do not understand the costs of it, nor the material requirements. It is not viable at the scale required, and not sustainable (because of the resource requirements, which are about an order of magnitude more than for nuclear for the same electricity output).

Solar and wind need back-up generation or energy storage to allow them to provide a reliable electricity supply and to provide power to meet the varying demand. Solar thermal can provide storage, but it is very expensive. The world’s newest and largest solar thermal power station is now under construction in California. It will have 6 hours of storage. The cost is $19/W average power supplied (and that does not include unplanned outages, for whatever reason), c.f. about $4 - $5 for nuclear in USA, much less in Asia.

The cost of transmission; say about $1,500/MW.km, needs to be included.

We must estimate the cost of the total electricity generation and transmission system. If we do this, we find the following:

“Researchers at the Centre for Energy and Environmental Markets (CEEM), University of NSW, did a desk study and presented a paper “Simulations of Scenarios with 100% Renewable Electricity in the Australian National Electricity Market” (Elliston et al., 2011a).

Lang critiqued this here: http://bravenewclimate.com/2012/02/09/100-renewable-electricity-for-australia-the-cost/ and found:

“For the EDM-2011baseline simulation, and using costs derived from the Federal Department of Resources, Energy and Tourism (DRET, 2011b), the costs are estimated to be: $568 billion capital cost, $336/MWh cost of electricity and $290/tonne CO2 abatement cost.

That is, the wholesale cost of electricity for the simulated system would be seven times more than now, with an abatement cost that is 13 times the starting price of the Australian carbon tax and 30 times the European carbon price. This cost of electricity does not include the costs for the existing electricity network.”
Posted by Peter Lang, Friday, 7 December 2012 3:25:06 PM
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I agree with almost everything in this article except that nuclear reactors have largely been ignored.

The American and Russian nuclear weapons arms race has imposed outrageous costs on humanity. It was known early in the nuclear age that thorium reactors were inherently much safer than uranium reactors but Admiral Richover knew that the uranium route was the only avenue to plutonium for weapons.

There is enough thorium available to supply the current world demand for electric power for 2000 generations. Thorium reactors can be built fail safe and if earthquakes and tsunamis are a risk build them on large barges floating just above the bottom of their cooling ponds (so if they spring a leak they sit on the bottom) with those ponds adequately above sea level; say at least 30m.

In the Japanese tsunami the preventable deaths were all due to failures of civil engineering not nuclear engineering.

I do not know who decided to build a nuclear power station behind an inadequate bund wall or who decided to leave explosion preventative catalyst material out of the reactor dome. Had those errors in design and construction not occurred there would have been much less serious damage at that Japanese nuclear plant.

The nuclear power route, from mine to delivered power, is substantially safer than the fossil fuel route and, if thorium based, produces only very minor amounts of waste.
Posted by Foyle, Friday, 7 December 2012 4:00:34 PM
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@Rhosty: "There are places in the outback like around lake Eire, where the sun shines 365 days a year, only interrupted by very occasional short lived summer storms.."

And prolonged daily blackouts from sundown to sunup, don't forget.

As one of our politicians pointed out, you can't expect to develop a solar power industry overnight.
Posted by Jon J, Friday, 7 December 2012 4:16:27 PM
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Good one, we all know that day by day our natural resources are getting less which is harmful for environment balance. So it's very important that we use the sources like solar energy, wind energy.
Posted by Jessica Larkin, Friday, 7 December 2012 4:36:55 PM
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A cost factor systematically omitted from learned (and basically political) discussions of the supposed economic benefit of nuclear power is INSURANCE. All power sources involve risk of damage at or around the power source. How does nuclear stack up? Who pays for damage arising from Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, Sellafield, Fukushima? Is this damage covered by insurance for which the premiums are paid by those profiting from uranium mining, transport, electricity generation?

Who picked up the tab for the Fukushima disaster? One guess: The Japanese people.

A few years ago there was a sandstorm which came from the middle of the continent, engulfed Sydney and travelled as far as New Zealand. If that had crossed a uranium mine on the way, and scooped up uranium ore mobilised by mining, who would have paid for the hideously expensive cleanup in Sydney? Y'got it: the taxpayers.

Unless the nuclear power industry pays the premiums to insure in full against damage anywhere, any time way into the distant future, nuclear power is a pump for transferring money from the many to the few.
Posted by EmperorJulian, Friday, 7 December 2012 4:56:20 PM
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