Solar FREAKIN' roadways discussion

[vger]

What would the panels' LEDs do instead?

-Duxwing

Not sure if this is true, but I think it's possible to have LED's flicker at an insane speed and only consume half the power.

But... why would every panel on the whole road need LED's? You only need them where the lines on the road would be. And if the future of transportation is going to involve smart cars (and it looks like that will be the case) then the cars can communicate with the road system. The road can power down its lights when no cars are around.

[Duxwing]

Not sure if this is true, but I think it's possible to have LED's flicker at an insane speed and only consume half the power.

How about a regular-old strobing LED? On for a second, off for two.

But... why would every panel on the whole road need LED's? You only need them where the lines on the road would be. And if the future of transportation is going to involve smart cars (and it looks like that will be the case) then the cars can communicate with the road system. The road can power down its lights when no cars are around.

Were all cars and roads smart, we would not need road markings because the cars would ask the roads where to go.

-Duxwing

[phoenix_ca]

How about a regular-old strobing LED? On for a second, off for two.

Flashing lights on roads are limited to emergency vehicles and high-priority signage, and with good reason. Making the whole road flash would be very inadvisable.

Not sure if this is true, but I think it's possible to have LED's flicker at an insane speed and only consume half the power.

But... why would every panel on the whole road need LED's? You only need them where the lines on the road would be. And if the future of transportation is going to involve smart cars (and it looks like that will be the case) then the cars can communicate with the road system. The road can power down its lights when no cars are around.

Not possible from a policy perspective (at least not any time soon). You would need to mandate that all road vehicles in that jurisdiction have the ability to communicate with the road, or they would have no markings, seriously increasing the risk of accidents not only to that vehicle but every vehicle nearby. Those sorts of policy decisions are possible; Canada relatively recently mandated running lights on all cars. The thing is that compliance took decades, to give people a fair chance to upgrade their vehicles or buy new ones. For smart roads that would disable markings, you may even be looking at even longer, or a government subsidy program to reduce or eliminate the cost of upgrading current vehicles. Which just means more money spent, by everyone, which is generally unwise.

The easier thing to do economically is to mandate that all new vehicles have that ability, and wait at least a decade (or more) before implementing the changes to the roads.

[Stargate525]

The biggest question I have for them is this: Don't solar cells require some fiddly/expensive materials in their construction? Won't you then incur problems with sinking massive amounts of fairly rare resources into roads? And how are they going to stop people from absconding with these tiles and stripping/selling/retrofitting them for their own purposes?

[Seret]

The biggest question I have for them is this: Don't solar cells require some fiddly/expensive materials in their construction? Won't you then incur problems with sinking massive amounts of fairly rare resources into roads? And how are they going to stop people from absconding with these tiles and stripping/selling/retrofitting them for their own purposes?

Not particularly. PV cells are just a giant silicon p-n junction under a glass plate. You can make them from more exotic stuff, but that's rarely done because high quality silicon is available cheaply in large quantities. Their cost is dominated by the energy and hassle of fabrication, not the value of the materials.

[78stonewobble]

1. So you are saying that if we add wind generators to remplace coal plants we are adding more pollution than remplace the coal plant with a new nuclear reactor???

I already told you, wind generators cost the half of a nuclear reactor for the same power output. Also the cost is a good guide to measure the pollution produced in the manufacture process.

2. About predict future taxation, I refused to explain something so simple again.

3. Noice?? That is your last card?

And why you would had trouble to sleep? Someone would install a wind turbine in your house roof? You dont have any road or car in from of your house?

If someone wants to put a wind turbine in your farm, they paid you 3000 U$S each for month. Seems a really good deal. I never hear nobody being paided for live close to a traffic road.

What about the kitegen approach, they produce noice too?

1. Wind generators do not replace coal power plants. If the wind doesn't blow, the coal power plants need to be there and running, ready to take over. So producing co2, plus adding co2 from the manufacturing of the windmills, constructing them and transporting them. Nuclear power, while more expensive, removes that basic necessary production of co2.

No, cost is not a good measure. Ie. it fails to calculate the human cost of picking the "cheapest", least efficient solution. My guesstimate is on around 22,8 trillion dollars.

2. Well, good. Because you cannot predict taxation 50 years ahead. People are hardpressed to make accurate economic predictions even 5 years ahead.

3. There are clear examples of "enthusiasts" building windmills so close to housing, that the noise disrupts sleep and has negatively affected property value.

"According to these guidelines, annual average night exposure should not exceed 40 decibels (dB), corresponding to the sound from a quiet street in a residential area. Persons exposed to higher levels over the year can suffer mild health effects, such as sleep disturbance and insomnia. Long-term average exposure to levels above 55 dB, similar to the noise from a busy street, can trigger elevated blood pressure and heart attacks."

So yeah, windmills render areas uninhabitable. Roads should too...

[78stonewobble]

First, Thermal solar produce energy day and night. Wind blows at all times in different locations, so if wind does not blow in one place, for sure would blow in another one. Electric cars can help to storage energy when you dont needed. Many countries like Sweden, Australia, Switzerland, Denmark and Norway had almost the 50% of their energy consumption using renowable.

They had complex software to predict energy consumption by zone and time, wind conditions in the whole country, etc.

Complex software my ass... In Denmarks case the high production of windmills can get wasted. When conditions are unfavorable we often have to import power at high cost. When conditions are favorable we have to export at low prices.

Right now we're thankfully importing hydro power from our neighbours, but we are exporting our coal power to countries which have stopped using nuclear power or are trying to. Meaning we've actually taking a step backwards.

[Seret]

1. Wind generators do not replace coal power plants. If the wind doesn't blow, the coal power plants need to be there and running, ready to take over. So producing co2, plus adding co2 from the manufacturing of the windmills, constructing them and transporting them. Nuclear power, while more expensive, removes that basic necessary production of co2.

That's not quite correct, although you're on the right track in pointing out that wind doesn't entirely remove the need for other plant. Grids need reserves online to cover faults and maintenance anyway. Some of this is sitting dormant, but of a type that can get up and synchronise very quickly (eg: diesel, OCGT). So that kind of reserve uses no fuel until it's needed. Other reserves will be either spinning or hot reserve, where a thermal plant is running, but at less than 100% capacity. It can then increase capacity at short notice as needed. Running at less than full capacity is slightly less efficient, while obviously running hot but not producing is highly inefficient, and is generally avoided.

Coal is generally not used for picking up peaking loads anyway, it's cheap and normally used for base load generation. The effect of wind turbines is best seen on consumption of things like gas, and it's not hard to pick out the effect: even a journalist can do it (granted r² of 0.25 is pretty nasty, but this is large scale real-world data). Bottom line: wind power is effective at reducing fuel use and CO₂ production.

No, cost is not a good measure. Ie. it fails to calculate the human cost of picking the "cheapest", least efficient solution

You can put a cost on that too. In a perfect world those external costs would actually be billed right back to the producers of the impact. That won't happen though, as things like coal would instantly be priced out of the market.

3. There are clear examples of "enthusiasts" building windmills so close to housing, that the noise disrupts sleep and has negatively affected property value.

Not in any country with effective urban planning rules. This is a non-argument, there are loads of things that shouldn't be sited close to housing. Most industry, for example. Describing these as rendering areas "uninhabitable" is a bit silly. We have no need or desire to build housing everywhere. Wind farms can quite happily be co-located with lots of things, four whacking great new ones recently sprung up near me on some industrial land near me. Sticking them in industrial areas makes a lot of sense in fact, as they're right on top of heavy electricity users.

There's also no reliable evidence of wind turbines having any negative health impacts due to noise. It's purely nuisance factor. In fact a recent study found that the main causal factor for reports of health effects from wind turbines was media coverage of the supposed health effects of turbines. It's just hypochondria. See also cell phone masts, etc.

There are siting issues for wind turbines (noise nuisance, radar, flicker, etc) but there are issues for every other energy source too. The external impact of wind is laughably low, the NIMBYs are basically just reduced to opposing them on aesthetic grounds.

[AngelLestat]

As I said in the begining, I was a nuclear defender 5 years ago, then I saw the true numbers in price against other renewable energies and the risk which present. I change my mind, Its clear that some of you dint knew the true values when this disccussion start, but now you know them and remain in "negation mode", this is for pride or lack of understanding?

if someone does not want to be convinced, there is no words or facts to change that.

No, it's not common sense, it's an equation.

You're saying that x ≤ y (where x is the lifetime output and y is the embodied energy), but you don't know the values of x or y.

Let's do some quick sums and see if we can check your assumptions a bit. PVGIS projects output for a panel of that size (about 0.25m²) in the US right up by the border with Canada lying flat on the ground would generate about 30kWh per year (assuming only 10% efficiency and a whopping 25% system losses). 30kWh is 108MJ, if we assume that they get a hard life and only last 10 years then that's about 1GJ lifetime production. That's about equivalent to the embodied energy of 0.25m² of polysilicon (the silicon being by far the most energy dense part of the system). So to even reach break-even point you have to assume a very short life and very low efficiency in the worst possible location. I don't think it's at all unreasonable they could achieve better numbers than that, so no I don't think it's common sense that they won't achieve EROEI>1.

Sorry for the late, But I just see this reply.

First in your example I am not sure if they took all the energy cost or just a part from the developing process. But even if its right, where you want to go with this example? I said that a normal PV in normal circustances takes 2 years (sure less with the new ones) to recover the energy waste in its manufacturing. You said 10 years and with only the main component in low irradiance place.

Your example just validate mine.

This brick is not just a PV, it weight a lot more with a complext structure and several materials. Why is not common sense to said that the pollution in its manufacture would not be less efficiency than normal PV?

No, they're talking about PV. The cost of PV panels has dropped to the point that over their lifetime they're now around grid parity.

Yeah I realize that after link the current prices of the different technologies.

I was keep focus in the PV growing efficiency over the years but no so much in their cost. For that reason I keep the old data from Solar Thermal vs PV.

An INES >4 rating is not a "major disaster": it is an "accident with local consequences," at worst killing a few. For a major disaster, see INES >5.

You can use the adjective that you want, still counts like a disaster. Of course is not a global disaster.. Lucky us....

Let's not: we're comparing power sources, not activities in general. Let's instead consider wind power. Ignoring the Chernobyl accident's extra cancer deaths because the estimates thereof vary from four thousand to almost a million and could make the number of deaths from any power source infinite, I found that nuclear power accidents have killed fewer people in history (136) than wind power accidents killed last year (~160). Should wind power keep killing at this rate (which actually will increase with the number of turbines) and we include the extra cancer deaths from Chernobyl, wind power will out-kill nuclear power in twenty-five years.

You dont have shame to post this comment?

You dont read your own sources???

The first source said the same that I said. That the numbers of confirmed death of chernobyl is more than 4000, with some reports which mention more than 100000.

Your second source come from this page!

http://www.caithnesswindfarms.co.uk

Are you serius????

Nuclear power plants produce almost no pollution because they are few, power themselves, and yearly each produce about a few tons of waste--replacement parts and ludicrious safety standards included. Whereas wind turbines require constant, expensive maintenance and must be built by the hundreds, further increasing cost to life, limb, and ledger.

They produce radiation waste that it takes thousands of years to decompose, you can not buried and shield this radiation in a 100%, there is also risk of an breakage or leakage caused by natural disasters or just for poor procedures in their buried. The maintenance of a nuclear plant is a lot higher than a complete farm of wind turbines of the same potence (you can get this information even from nuclear sites sources). And that maintenance takes more lives than a wind farm.

Is like when somebody mentions the birds killed by wind turbines, the fact is that fossil and nuclear plants kill more birds for the same energy.

A wind turbine is not only noisy but also can just fall over, crushing whatever lies beneath it and partly exploding into shrapnel; they therefore render huge swaths of land uninhabitable to all but the many people foolishly living near them.

You take a time to think before write?

-We can say the same to you about your scientists.

-See my data.

-Chernobyl was wisely not built near a city.

My scientist? My values comes from international organizations which results are also corroborated and monitored by small organism.

Even if chernobyl was not close to a city, they need to relocate 350000 people.

http://earthshots.usgs.gov/earthshots/sites/all/files/earthshots/earthshot/chernobyl/2000px-Chernobyl_radiation_.png

Is money more important than the workers' lives? I would gladly pay more for safe power: would you?

Hahaha, the funy joke is that you are using this comment to defend nuclear plants against wind turbines. What is wrong with you?

It's not even really fair to count Fukishima as a "nuclear disaster," at least in terms of excuses to not keep using nuclear power. From that perspective, it would be just as logical to say we can't have nuke plants because a meteor might hit one. Fukishima was more or less a perfect storm.

What are the odds of a nuclear plants being hit by a meteorite? Close to 1/10000000.

What are the odds of a nuclear plants having a disaster? 1/20

Are these odds the same for you?

No, cost is not a good measure. Ie. it fails to calculate the human cost of picking the "cheapest", least efficient solution. My guesstimate is on around 22,8 trillion dollars.

Least efficient?? 22,8 trillons??? what are you talking about?? you dont have a clue dont you?

2. Well, good. Because you cannot predict taxation 50 years ahead. People are hardpressed to make accurate economic predictions even 5 years ahead.

They dont need to predict nothing, just follow the graphic and its tendency. Is already happen. And these studies was made to advise world investors (and these investors paid for that information), they need to trust in your word instead?

Complex software my ass... In Denmarks case the high production of windmills can get wasted. When conditions are unfavorable we often have to import power at high cost. When conditions are favorable we have to export at low prices.

Lol, poor of you, So you always produce electricity in the worst moments and you always need electricity when you are not produccing? Then you are the less lucky country in the world. I wonder how a meteorite did not erase you from the map already.

So this is mean that you dont know how predict wheather, consumptions times, or when to activate or not fossil plants?

I can not believe that being true. Lucky for you I am sure that there is smartest people managing that.

Right now we're thankfully importing hydro power from our neighbours, but we are exporting our coal power to countries which have stopped using nuclear power or are trying to. Meaning we've actually taking a step backwards.

You are exporting coal becouse you not longer needed, becouse you are using free energy resources, so you can sell that coal instead using it.

When the electric cars number increase, you would not have any issue with the storage of energy.

Edited June 13, 2014 by AngelLestat

[WestAir]

Everyone seems to be against this idea in this thread, but if I had a couple of million dollars you'd bet my driveway and private road to my house would be using this roadway.

[RuBisCO]

When solar panels are cheaper then asphalt then it will be a great idea. Why not put solar panels OVER parking lots to start off with. Then they won't be driven over, they can provide shade and weather protection for cars, they can be interfaced with parking lot lighting, etc.

Why is there no kickstarter for these people:

http://us.sunpower.com/commercial/products-services/solar-parking/

Oh because they are an actual functional company and not a con.

Anways I see nothing wrong with putting solar panels OVER roads, it would be more effective

1. Solar panels do not need to handle traffic running over them

2. They shade the road from the weather, dry in rain, no snow!

3. Lighting can be placed overhead instead of unorthadox from the road surface its self.

Anyways solar power is getting cheaper and is already cost effect in some places and projected to beat out coal in general by 2020. Intermittent renewables like solar, wind, wave power can only make up small part of the electric grid as they can't be turn on, on demand, eventually grid storage will be needed to acheive renewables above 20-30% of the power grid and then we will need to add in the cost of grid power storage.

Edited June 13, 2014 by RuBisCO

[Z-Man]

I found that nuclear power accidents have killed fewer people in history (136) than wind power accidents killed last year (~160).

Read your second source again. 160 (or rather 166) is the total number of accidents in 2013, including those where nobody was hurt. The source lists 146 total fatalities to date. Still higher than your nuclear death toll, but considering the wind fatality list also contains deaths from traffic accidents during transport of material and the like and your nuclear death toll nothing of the sort (on top of the other significant omission)... well, there is a certain bias visible.

(You are of course right in one point: simply plonking down wind turbines is not going to give us enough energy.)

On the actual topic, it's a bold idea. Forget about the LEDs, though. And do durability tests under realistic conditions. The scratch tests from thunderf00t's video hardly count (tires normally do not scratch), but it's probably going to be the main issue. And when that is solved, do a cost comparison to the obvious alternative of placing the panels next to the road. Or on roofs. In short, worth investigating, probably not worth doing.

Edited June 13, 2014 by Z-Man

[vger]

What are the odds of a nuclear plants being hit by a meteorite? Close to 1/10000000.

What are the odds of a nuclear plants having a disaster? 1/20

Are these odds the same for you?

Context. I was specifically talking about Fukishima. It was caused by a major earthquake. If a tornado destroys a home, it doesn't mean houses are unsafe.

[xcorps]

What are the odds of a nuclear plants having a disaster? 1/20

You're going to have to source that with something besides an antinuke blog.

The nuclear power plant design strategy for preventing accidents and mitigating their potential effects is "defense in depth"--- if something fails, there is a back-up system to limit the harm done, if that system should also fail there is another back-up system for it, etc., etc. Of course it is possible that each system in this series of back-ups might fail one after the other, but the probability for that is exceedingly small. The Media often publicize a failure of some particular system in some plant, implying that it was a close call" on disaster; they completely miss the point of defense in depth which easily takes care of such failures. Even in the Three Mile Island accident where at least two equipment failures were severely compounded by human errors, two lines of defense were still not breached--- essentially all of the radioactivity remained sealed in the thick steel reactor vessel, and that vessel was sealed inside the heavily reinforced concrete and steel lined "containment" building which was never even challenged. It was clearly not a close call on disaster to the surrounding population. The Soviet Chernobyl reactor, built on a much less safe design concept, did not have such a containment structure; if it did, that disaster would have been averted.

Risks from reactor accidents are estimated by the rapidly developing science of "probabilistic risk analysis" (PRA). A PRA must be done separately for each power plant (at a cost of $5 million) but we give typical results here: A fuel melt-down might be expected once in 20,000 years of reactor operation. In 2 out of 3 melt-downs there would be no deaths, in 1 out of 5 there would be over 1000 deaths, and in 1 out of 100,000 there would be 50,000 deaths. The average for all meltdowns would be 400 deaths. Since air pollution from coal burning is estimated to be causing 10,000 deaths per year, there would have to be 25 melt-downs each year for nuclear power to be as dangerous as coal burning.

Of course deaths from coal burning air pollution are not noticeable, but the same is true for the cancer deaths from reactor accidents. In the worst accident considered, expected once in 100,000 melt-downs (once in 2 billion years of reactor operation), the cancer deaths would be among 10 million people, increasing their cancer risk typically from 20% (the current U.S. average) to 20.5%. This is much less than the geographical variation--- 22% in New England to 17% in the Rocky Mountain states.

Very high radiation doses can destroy body functions and lead to death within 60 days, but such "noticeable" deaths would be expected in only 2% of reactor melt-down accidents; there would be over 100 in 0.2% of meltdowns, and 3500 in 1 out of 100,000 melt-downs. To date, the largest number of noticeable deaths from coal burning was in an air pollution incident (London, 1952) where there were 3500 extra deaths in one week. Of course the nuclear accidents are hypothetical and there are many much worse hypothetical accidents in other electricity generation technologies; e.g., there are hydroelectric dams in California whose sudden failure could cause 200,000 deaths.

University of Michigan Health Physics Society

[jwenting]

When solar panels are cheaper then asphalt then it will be a great idea. Why not put solar panels OVER parking lots to start off with. Then they won't be driven over, they can provide shade and weather protection for cars, they can be interfaced with parking lot lighting, etc.

Which in some parts of Spain at least is happening. Many malls/shopping centers there have roofed over carparks, and some of them are getting solar panels installed.

But solar panels are extremely expensive per KWh produced, and have a relatively short lifespan.

Still better than meatgrinders though (oops, wind generators). Those not only cause a lot of noise, look butt ugly (be happy if you don't live in an area with literally hundreds of them littering the horizon in every direction), and cause changes in rainfall patterns, specifically reduced rainfall in their wind shadow, thus making land nearby not only useless for habitation and tourism, but also for agriculture and quite likely nature in the long run.

[Pipcard]

Solar freakin' roadways? Why not have a SOLAR FREAKIN' MOON!?

(Just to let you know, I don't believe in the feasibility of either (especially when the cost to build them will likely outweigh the potential savings by a lot). But they are interesting concepts.)

Edited June 14, 2014 by Pipcard

[Camacha]

I am not buying it. Solar panels typically are fragile and need to be clean. On the contrary, roads surfaces need to be hard wearing, take a beating and get soiled by everthing and anything driving on them. In short, not the ideal combination, or actually far from it.

If you put the solar panels in sound proofing walls along the roads, sure, I could see it working. Pollution might still be an issue, but you utilize alot of building area. But inside the roads themselves I do not see it happening.

[Camacha]

Context. I was specifically talking about Fukishima. It was caused by a major earthquake. If a tornado destroys a home, it doesn't mean houses are unsafe.

In the case of nuclear plants I beg to differ. They need to contain their material at all times. At all times. An earthquake, flood, tornade or any other Simcity disaster that is going to compromise that is a huge problem. Houses are not inherently unsafe if they get hit by disaster, but a contained disaster in itself that is a nuclear plant is.

If your house contained easily spreadable Ebola, it would be a dangerous house. Nuclear plants are beefed up, but not impossible to damage.

[AngelLestat]

Still higher than your nuclear death toll, but considering the wind fatality list also contains deaths from traffic accidents during transport of material and the like and your nuclear death toll nothing of the sort (on top of the other significant omission)... well, there is a certain bias visible.

Is not higher! Why nobody reads?

Here there is the same source.. Read.

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

It said more than 4000 by WHO source, and the Torch report (the last report made in 2006) it said 15000 confirmed death, and a future estimation of 60000.

http://www.chernobylreport.org/?p=summary

Safe my ass!!

Context. I was specifically talking about Fukishima. It was caused by a major earthquake. If a tornado destroys a home, it doesn't mean houses are unsafe.

But this is not a house! Is a nuclear plant!

It needs to be safe against any natural disaster, terrorism, or other causes. You can not leave it at chance! The risk is too much.

And all the other accidennts in different nuclear plants? Was due to natural disaster too??? No.

You're going to have to source that with something besides an antinuke blog.

I already explain this, there is 470 nuclear plants in the world, 16 of them had INES>4 Disasters, and 99 of them if you count from INES 2.

This mean that 430/16 = 1 in 27

Or 430/99 = 1 in 5

University of Michigan Health Physics Society

I quote WHO and you quote michigan.

Michigan is one of the states with less renowable energy, but they had 5 nuclear plants.. I wonder if some bills dint fall by chance in the pocket of one professor.

Becouse he skip to mention WHO report and all negative effects.

Still better than meatgrinders though (oops, wind generators). Those not only cause a lot of noise, look butt ugly (be happy if you don't live in an area with literally hundreds of them littering the horizon in every direction), and cause changes in rainfall patterns, specifically reduced rainfall in their wind shadow, thus making land nearby not only useless for habitation and tourism, but also for agriculture and quite likely nature in the long run.

Also people states that at night, wind turbines come to live and behead people and **** girls. They are here with a single purpose; electrocute people with clean energy.

I know about irrigation systems. You can have wind which modify the sprinklers area. But each sprinklers is affected in the same way, so you end with a similar layout.

The same happens with Wind turbines, they modify the area with the same patron so the layout remains.

But well, I guess that release radiation pollution, paid a major price and risk people worth the effort.

And the view of a Nuclear plant between the montains is so much nice than an ogly Windmill in the hill.

---------------------------------------------

For those who see a problem with the wind turbines view.

Why not use Kite instead?

The energy that you get is similar becouse is the same concept but in different perspective, but the benefic of kite is in the height.

If you reach the jet streams which are pretty constant with 5 or 6 times more wind speed, you get a lot of energy with just an small kite.

[vger]

But this is not a house! Is a nuclear plant!

It needs to be safe against any natural disaster, terrorism, or other causes. You can not leave it at chance! The risk is too much.

And all the other accidennts in different nuclear plants? Was due to natural disaster too??? No.

When you're done acting like a religious crusader, let me know.

[phoenix_ca]

I already explain this, there is 470 nuclear plants in the world, 16 of them had INES>4 Disasters, and 99 of them if you count from INES 2.

This mean that 430/16 = 1 in 27

Or 430/99 = 1 in 5

It's not even close to that simple. That kind of reductionism is just absurd. You're lumping-in modern reactors with piles of safeties with old and poorly managed reactors that didn't even have a freaking containment vessel (like Chernobyl).

This is what a modern reactor looks like (remember that Chernobyl and Windscale didn't even have containment vessels) when designed with safety in mind.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vggzl9OngaM

The CNSC has a pile of other videos that go into detail about reactor safety systems here, and you should watch them, and hopefully you'll see there's a massive difference between these things and the reactors you're talking about. You can also very easily find videos about Europe's reactor designed and their own myriad of safety features. You're pointing at absurdly poorly designed and managed reactors and using them as "proof" that reactors like these are "unsafe". They aren't.

Edit: And here's a useful article on just how Japanese bureaucrats messed-up when choosing reactors and were, frankly, dumb enough to not take the CANDU design Canada was offering them. Fukushima might not have happened had they been wiser. Now would you kindly stop trying to conflate all these modern designed reactors with other designs that were notoriously unstable?

Nuclear power isn't dangerous. Idiots fighting over control of it and ignoring safety entirely is what's dangerous, just like with nuclear weapons, or drugs, or guns.

Edited June 14, 2014 by phoenix_ca

[78stonewobble]

1. That's not quite correct, although you're on the right track in pointing out that wind doesn't entirely remove the need for other plant. Grids need reserves online to cover faults and maintenance anyway. Some of this is sitting dormant, but of a type that can get up and synchronise very quickly (eg: diesel, OCGT). So that kind of reserve uses no fuel until it's needed. Other reserves will be either spinning or hot reserve, where a thermal plant is running, but at less than 100% capacity. It can then increase capacity at short notice as needed. Running at less than full capacity is slightly less efficient, while obviously running hot but not producing is highly inefficient, and is generally avoided.

Coal is generally not used for picking up peaking loads anyway, it's cheap and normally used for base load generation. The effect of wind turbines is best seen on consumption of things like gas, and it's not hard to pick out the effect: even a journalist can do it (granted r² of 0.25 is pretty nasty, but this is large scale real-world data). Bottom line: wind power is effective at reducing fuel use and CO₂ production.

2. You can put a cost on that too. In a perfect world those external costs would actually be billed right back to the producers of the impact. That won't happen though, as things like coal would instantly be priced out of the market.

3. Not in any country with effective urban planning rules. This is a non-argument, there are loads of things that shouldn't be sited close to housing. Most industry, for example. Describing these as rendering areas "uninhabitable" is a bit silly. We have no need or desire to build housing everywhere. Wind farms can quite happily be co-located with lots of things, four whacking great new ones recently sprung up near me on some industrial land near me. Sticking them in industrial areas makes a lot of sense in fact, as they're right on top of heavy electricity users.

There's also no reliable evidence of wind turbines having any negative health impacts due to noise. It's purely nuisance factor. In fact a recent study found that the main causal factor for reports of health effects from wind turbines was media coverage of the supposed health effects of turbines. It's just hypochondria. See also cell phone masts, etc.

4. There are siting issues for wind turbines (noise nuisance, radar, flicker, etc) but there are issues for every other energy source too. The external impact of wind is laughably low, the NIMBYs are basically just reduced to opposing them on aesthetic grounds.

1. The problem here being, that if your electric grid consists of relatively large and relatively modern coal powerplants. Those coal powerplants need to run most of the time, because as you say, they cannot be used to pick up swift changes to electrical production or demand. Even if they have a small, but additional capacity to deal with peak demands.

2. I agree... But the point was that you cannot only use cost as the only measure of danger or impact, because the cost calculations can be highly selective, dare I say even purposefully ignorant.

3. And just what constitutes effective urban planning rules? The supposition that " There's also no reliable evidence of wind turbines having any negative health impacts due to noise. It's purely nuisance factor." ? ... In that case our effective urban planning rules just cut the distance between human living and windturbines to say 3 meters. In which case, we would end up with reliable evidence, that windturbines are noisy and that noise is a health factor.

I agree that in most places it isn't a problem, because as you say ... the rules are actually pretty effective most places, but they shouldn't be set in stone and if people are building windmills legally in a way that does negatively affect other people (health even), then we should really see if the rules are adequate. It does render area uninhabitable, just like chernobyl did. The difference is that we can easily deconstruct the windmill and render it habitable again. Not use the technicality that obviously people don't want to live right next to windmills or in allready noisy/polluting or just smelly industrial zones. We could use the same argument to say that the chernobyl exclusion zone is a non problem, because noone wants to live there anymore.

4. Here we're being selective again. The cost and impact of the decision to only build wind energy in a country like mine, which also has coal power, which we do nothing to replace. Should include the continual impact of those coal powerplants. They are part of the decision / policy, even if they're hardly ever mentioned.

It's like trying to loose weight, while eating some cake every week. It's possible, but hard. Very much harder, if you also stop going to the gym, because now your eating cake in that period. The full outcome of decisions does not only include what you do, but also what you end up not doing.

[78stonewobble]

HAHAHAHAHAHA LOL X3

I do not know whether to laugh or mourn. How can you be so naive?

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

"4,000 fatalities[1][2] – Chernobyl disaster, Ukraine, April 26, 1986. 56 direct deaths (47 accident workers and nine children with thyroid cancer) and it is estimated that there were 4,000 extra cancer deaths among the approximately 600,000 most highly exposed people.[3]

The World Health Organization (WHO) suggests it could reach 4,000 civilian deaths, a figure which does not include military clean-up worker casualties.[5] A 2006 report predicted 30,000 to 60,000 cancer deaths as a result of Chernobyl fallout.[6] A Greenpeace report puts this figure at 200,000 or more.[7] A disputed Russian publication, Chernobyl, concludes that 985,000 premature cancer deaths occurred worldwide between 1986 and 2004 as a result of radioactive contamination from Chernobyl.[8]"

Only 28 years have passed since the accident, so the list is not complete.

How can you prof if someone die by natural cancer or by chernobyl causes?

Easy, you had statistics from the average of cancer death in some location, if that average increase drastically there is only one explanation.

The cost of not going nuclear = 125.000.000.000 lives (WHO numbers btw.).

If chernobyl cost 4.000 lives: We'd need 31.250 chernobyl sized accidents to make nuclear power unsafer than the alternative.

If chernobyl cost 60.000 lives: We'd need 2.083 chernobyl sized accidents to make nuclear power unsafer than the alternative.

If chernobyl cost 200.000 lives: We'd need 625 chernobyl sized accidents to make nuclear power unsafer than the alternative.

If chernobyl cost 985.000 lives: We'd need 127 chernobyl sized accidents to make nuclear power unsafer than the alternative.

In other words... In the absolutely worst calculation of the chernobyl accident, we killed 124 mio. people to save under a mio.

Offcourse... That's a whole nother way of solving the worlds problems, but I doubt people would vote on it.

Or to put the numbers in another perspective.

Just driving cars around, kills around 1 mio. people and maims tens of millions, a year.

Edited June 14, 2014 by 78stonewobble

[vetrox]

Im sorry, did i see that video right. The glass tiles have a wierd textured surface on them to make them have friction? Im sorry but wouldnt that be incredibly noisy.

The only way I could see this working would be recreational areas and peoples driveways. Replacing roads with it? That would surley do more harm than good. Besides, other than the fact it doesnt produce electricity, whats wrong with asphalt? I love asphalt, when i see and smell a road being repaired or re surfaced..I dunno hot asphalt looks really tastey. If it wasnt toxic I would probably eat it!

[phoenix_ca]

If it wasnt toxic I would probably eat it!

I wouldn't recommend that, even if it were tasty and non-toxic, given how hot it needs to be to soften. O.o