Just you Kaep.

One does not have to be associated with big coal to disagree with you, just an education is sufficient.

Have you any idea of what the second law of thermodynamics is? I doubt it as it says nothing about the fossil fuel requirements of solar energy collection.

I agree with DavidL to a point. Make the costs real and the market will sort it out...however the CO2 tax attempts to do exactly that and the scheme has failed in Europe. Maybe it's just that the financial types set it up, or maybe putting a "price" on something that is currently free and unlimited (the right to pollute) is like putting a price on human suffering: it doesn't work! (if it did there wouldn't be millions starving)
I'd like to see a private startup make power with new nuke tech and see if it is a cheap as they say...of course the waste problem would have to be costed too, as well as setup and decommission costs which are currently paid for by the states that run nuke power.
Despite KAEP's views, there are solar thermal plants running in desert areas that produce power at similar rates to gas powered plants...the tricky bit is the distribution.
The old "there is no substitute for base-load power" assumes that 1900s electronics will still be used...nice assumption for the coal crowd but we already have the software to cope...so long as we abandon the base-load central grid system and embrace networked power...however that would involve removing the effective subsidies to industry from homes and involve, gasp, real competition and thus less industry profit. Clearly unacceptable! It might involve infrastructure that needs to be paid for rather than profited from. I'm sure SPAusnet is actively lobbying against any sort of decentralised network power grid for the same reason that Telstra loves the copper wires our grandparents paid for.

Ozandy:
1. Get real! There are no such efficient solar thermal plants generating electricity anywhere on the planet. Soon, perhaps, but not yet. Besides which, in order to store heat so that they can operate 24/7 most of the time, or at least 7 hours after sunset, takes tens of thousands of tonnes of melted salts, costing many millions. It's dead calm and raining where I am right now. If I was reliant on solar thermal, PV or wind power, I'd have none. baseload power may be overrated, but it certainly isn't yet possible to run our commerce, industry or even our domestic power supplies without it, unless via hyper-expensive and very limited battery storage.

2. As for Ozandy's assertion that nuclear plants do not fund their own waste storage and dismantling programs, the US scheme which is funded by industry has many times as much money as is needed to do exactly that. Note: not government, private. From memory, it is funded by a levy of a bare 0.1 cent per kWh on all output.

We can live without base load power, I did for about 12 years, but it's a low level existence. I tried wind & solar, but they were more trouble than they were worth. I even made up a water power thing, to use while sailing, but again, not worth the hassle.

You see I lived on my yacht, & apart from a few months, when along side a jetty somewhere, with the luxury of shore power, I made my own.

It wasn't much, just a couple of 12V lights, but then I wasn't lighting a ballroom.

My little fridge was gas, as was my 2 burner stove, so it was just light & a radio. No TV or computer, in the simple life.

Having thrown out all alternate power generation gizmos, just a couple of hours of the 6HP diesel, or 3 hours of the little Honda generator would give 2 or 3 days light, for about a liter of fuel, but the diesel was smelly, & vibrated, where the Honda was almost silent, so it did most of the work.

I did not mind it at all, but it's not for everyone. This was highlighted by our eldest, then 4 years old daughter one time. When we were moving ashore for a period she asked, "daddy, will we have real electricity in this house, or just the Micky Mouse stuff we have on the boat".

Out of the mouth of babes.

Livet dangerous, forget the Second Law.

Simple Math, right

Nevada One Solar plant is about 20% efficient in turning solar into electricity,

So that means the best you could ever hope for is it producing 5x as much power.

So even if in the future there are some incredible major breakthroughs where solar cells can convert 99.9% of sunlight to directly electricity

AND the sun operates at maximum efficiency at all times

AND there's no transmission losses to get all this imaginary power to your house...

even in that impossibly perfect world,

a large futuristic solar plant similar in size to Nevada One will still only produce about 1/6th the power of the smallest nuclear power plant Fort Calhoun build 50+ years ago today does.

That is no where near enough, sorry but it is sheer folly to keep throwing money and research at such a self limiting technology with so little potential.

All fossil fuels BTW are also solar energy, millions of years ago plants converted solar energy into growth and when they died that stored up solar energy turned into the various fossil fuels we all know and love today.

That is why solar cells & wind will never compete with fossil fuels, you cannot get what the sun produces in one year to equal what it produced over millions.

f solar was viable in any way we wouldn't have to invest anything in infrastructure, the free market would have already done it.

And if they were viable they wouldn't need subsidies to stay in business

When oil & coal were starting out, government DIDN'T NEED to invest in them!

Once these facts are assimilated, POPULATION CONTROL becomes essential for human survival. That's where all the ANGER arises.

I suspect the real impediment to understanding such simple facts is that soon, someone will have to tell women they can only have 1 to 2 kids per lifetime.

I see maths is not your strong point.

Renewable power does work, just as a Porsche can be used to commute to work, in that presently it is hideously expensive. As the corner stone of modern economies is inexpensive power, renewable power is a pipe dream until they become more cost efficient, which may be 3 to 4 decades. While I support beefing up the research from what has been spent in the past 4 decades, it isn't ready now. Nuclear power is available now, and anyone serious on taking action on climate change will embrace it.