if Germany can go solar, why can't the US?

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I've also read of problems with migratory birds and wind turbines.Solar would be an option in some areas,the southwest and the south.Lennox even has a solar powerd AC unit for sale now,every southerners dream,"You mean the sun can run my AC!! !! !"If I had the funds i'd buy one.
I'm not sure I trust humans with nuclear,they seem to put the plants in areas that are not really safe.

Problem: electric cars are *great* for storing power produced by coal, gas, nuclear or hydro dams. Those have steady output, so when the draw from lighting drops during the late night, the draw from charging cars would balance it out (and vice versa). That arithmatic only works when power comes from a steady source, and it's only an advantage if that source can't easliy throttle.

Problem 2: Solar panels need to be cleaned. In northern climates they need snow removal. Big installation are usually at ground level and have dedicated cleaning staff. I wouldn't ask Grandpa to go up on an icy roof to clean the snow off of his solar array. I'm sure that you could automate it, but that adds cost, environmental impact and maintanence.

Problem 3: You'll probably need a *bigger* distribution network if you don't have a backup power source like coal or gas, since there will be times when whole regions aren't producing any power, but still draw the same amount.

the unsafe plants are run because the building of new safe plants are blocked at every turn

there are tons of reactor designs that produce little no waste and are passively safe with no possibility of meltdown

Oklahoma has so many places that are just barren. It's actually perfect for them in many areas. Texas panhandle is awful, too, if you have ever seen it. Just mostly nothing there. It has a lot of windmills. If you ever seen these things there's nothing to them. They are not very intrusive. You should see them in person first.

As for the birds we have all kinds and their populations are multiplying every year thanks to people leaving them alone and not poaching.
We have lots of geese and herrings.

I have been to windfarms
I cant watch the top as it causes me nausea, they are very noisy even from a far distance you hear the machinery hum. I have also been to them in the winter time when there is ice
the windmills will throw the ice off their blades thousands of feet and if you get hit by a chunk it will break bones
also wind and solar panels are not very eco friendly at all when you take into account how they are made their lifespan and disposal

If you look hard enough you can find problems with anything! I wouldn't get too close to the windmills. I only see them from the high way. When you take everything into consideration, you could say the interstates are far more dangerous than any old windmill farm and yet do we say they aren't needed?

We have a problem with hipster contamination.
http://www.rockcitytimes.com/big-piney- ... amination/

I meant herons lol.

theres not much of an alternative to roads

face it nuclear is the only viable energy source

I think it's better to have a mix.

Would you say we should only have roads, no railroad tracks or airports? No way to travel across the water? Just roads and nothing else because there are problems with the others? Or, should we just get rid of the roads and go only by planes, trains and ships because we all know the most dangerous of them all with the highest fatalities are the roads?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_sulfate

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-IFks2n3hM[/youtube]

Visit Fukushima or the gulf of Mexico, and see what's worse. I find it interesting some people all of a sudden become environmentalists when it comes to wind. "Oh my, it kills birds". "Oh, goodness, the parts go into landfills". ...But when it comes to other forms of power that are considered conventional, it doesn't matter how much worse the pollution is, they just don't notice it. Birds probably get killed way more by cars than windmills. For that matter, they probably get killed more by oil spills and nuclear waste.Not only do they get killed, but their succeeding generations get mutated. You don't get that with wind power, but you do get it through petro-chemicals and fisible material.

Think wind power gives you bad headaches and disturbs the landscapes. You'll have worse headaches from tumors caused by radioactive contamination. Have you ever seen a mining operation before too. They carve out entire mountain tops and drill into seabeds. I'll take a field of wind generators any day over a smoke belching power plant or the not-so smoke belching alternative that can potentially poison the surrounding land for thousands of years.

That makes a lot of sense.

Years ago I had a solar powered fan that mounted to a car window. It was a little fiddly to set up, but you could really feel the difference. And it produced power in proportion to what's needed at a given time.



I've always been amazed at how safe nuclear power has been. It was a totally new techhnology just half a century ago. It brought a number of new engineering chllenges, like neutron bombardment changing the atomic numbers of nearby materials. From the numbers that I've been able to find, it's been a lot safer than what it's replaced (as a whole system cost, including deaths in mining, etc.).

Actually, I've always been an environmentalist. I didn't get my driver's license until my late 20s. I've been a bike commuter since I was 12, year round (in Minnesota) since high school. I've been a strict vegetarian for almost two decades.

The problem with political environmentalists is that their numbers don't add up.



You're probably correct. They also die at a higher rate from flying into windows.



I'd be pretty surprised by the latter. Chernobyl has been bad, but the other accidents are not in the same league. Sonofghandi summed it up nicely:

http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt259659.html#6077478

For nuclear power, less life probably gets harmed while its all running correctly. However, it has the potential, for when it goes wrong to do a lot more damage than coal or wind. Since nculear power was invented, theres been 3 meltdowns (arguably 6 if u count it by reactors). In less than 100 years of its invention theres been this many. In raw numbers it doesn't seem a lot, but considering that nuclear waste will become half as poisonoius in 700 million years, how many nuclear accidents can we realistically expect? If there was a major, societal collapse, what would happen to nearly 500 of the unmanned nuclear reactors currently in existence. Would 500 failing nuclear power plants and decaying nuclear arsenals in an economic collapse make things much worse for those having to live in the post-industrial/post-global world? How would that affect succeeding generations. What would happen to the waste durring that time period. Would humanity be able to contain all this waste and manage it for billions of years? Will we even be around that long, or should we expect extinction as an inevitability (nuclear technology itself could realistically play a role in making our extinction come a lot sooner) considering that 99% of all life that has ever existed has died.

Granted, the uranium in the plants would probably find a point of homeostasis in the environment in less than that time frame (lava flows, techtonics, dillution), but I don't know how humans would fare durring the acctual rebalancing process. Plutonium's another story, though. Its a completely new substance, and we can't really know how that will reintigrate into the environment. It'll decay back into uranium over 20,000 years or so, but its totally alien to the natural environment. Arguably U-235 isn't all that natural either, because its a very rare isotope extracted and isolated from ore that is over 90% U-238.

I'd say that in normal operation, though, coal and oil probably do more damage than wind or nuclear. Just the refining process, itself is very poisonous to surrounding air and water. Although, I've heard that mining of uranium causes a lot of cancer in communities that live near the sites.

Last edited by JNathanK on 20 Jun 2014, 2:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.