Solar and wind power do leave waste. Especially when you consider mining for battery components and chemicals. Chernobyl and Three Mile Island were using antiquated technology which was designed to use weapons grade plutonium. And even including those disasters (as well as Fukushima) death rates per energy generated from nuclear are as low as solar and wind. We already have the nuclear waste. We have to do something with it. We can make it inert, and in doing so generate enough electricity to power earth for hundreds of years. With the nuclear waste we ALREADY HAVE. Not using it is (leaving it in its current state with a half life of thousands of years) far more dangerous than using it in breeder reactors (which would reduce the half life of waste to hundreds of years and make it far less potent).
They are shutting down old technology. We do have a way of eliminating it. We can make that waste inert (waste that we already have and need to do something with). The safest solution for all of that nuclear waste is to use it in breeder reactors. I have no problem with solar or wind. We should use them as well. But the absolute most dangerous form of energy generation is fossil fuel. And in order to stop that we need as much nuclear as possible (as well as wind/solar) ASAP.
Transmission is going to be expensive and there is a much lower hanging fruit available - rooftops. In California which is among the most aggressive in Solar only 15% of new construction includes solar panels. The beauty of Solar is that there is very little of the side-effects of other energy production technologies, which means that we do not need to centralize production the way we do with other energy production methods. We need the same amount, just need to harvest more of it We don't want the Earth to become Venus...
Agreed. It wouldn't cost much (less than $3 trillion total) to fully fund solar on every roof in America. Especially when you consider the cost of doing nothing (effects of climate change will cost us $2 trillion per year).
Chernobyl and Three Mile Island are terrible examples for your argument. Not a single person died because of Three Mile Island that I know of. Chernobyl used ancient Soviet design which also did not have a modern containment vessel because the United States had the only containment vessels and we would not sell them one.
This is pretty promising... https://www.fastcompany.com/9067213...s-five-times-more-energy-than-its-competitors
In places where you have frequent wind patterns, a wind farm is a lot more space efficient than a solar farm, but these places are not as common. FWIW, this January we had a kid back from college and took a nice family vacation in Joshua Tree, on the way home we did a tour of the wind farm off of the I-10 near Palm Springs. Very interesting place. Each one of the big turbines by itself produces about as much electricity as 1.5 acres of solar panels. But the narrow valley there is a very unique place for building such a farm. Solar panels are easy to install almost anywhere.
For sure. I'm fully on board with solar, as much as possible. Though not as our only source of power. I don't know how reliable wind is out in the vastness of the sea, but if it is constant building these would be a no brainer...
Have you seen this idea on how to use trains to store wind and solar generated electricity? https://www.vox.com/2016/4/28/11524958/energy-storage-rail Very simple, very inexpensive.
But that wall is likely much cooler under water than when the enlightened individual wrote those words... that's proof.
Yeah, it's a variation on the different kinetic energy storage solution, You will usually see it in device form in FESS systems. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flywheel_energy_storage
BTW, FESS like systems were once used in F1 (the famous KERS system - kinetic energy recovery system) in a special flywheel configuration up to 2014 or so, but with the advances in batteries and the great emphasis on space and weight in the sport, there was a move to MGU-K and MGU-H systems (the first one a bit like a standard hybrid system) and the 2nd one close to what you will see sometimes called an e-Turbo on road cars.
We should already have alternative energy sources solidly in place. We don't and won't because big oil doesn't want competitors and because they are greedy. We have some alternative energy sources. We have a small number (tiny in comparison to gas run cars) of electric cars. We have some wind turbines. Some hydro. Some solar power. There needs to be more investment in those resources. We are behind and we will only get further behind.