Reply #44: Nonsense. Solar power is NOT cheaper. [View All]

[NNadir]

Over 30 nuclear power plants are now under construction on the planet mostly where people can add and subtract and add two numbers, (we don't qualify in this country) and over 103 are planned in 24 countries. 441 plants currently operate. I would say that an industry which is planning a 25% increase is pretty successful, especially one with such an excellent safety record when compared to other forms of energy.

http://pubs.acs.org/cen/coverstory/8237/8237nuclearenergy.html

If solar power is cheaper, how come people aren't building comparable solar capacity? They just like to waste money?

Not so long ago, on this web site, I showed that it would take 1/3 of the US GDP to install solar capacity sufficient to replace the world's nuclear capacity, and in doing that we would need to ignore the existence of 1) night, 2) rainy days 3) clouds. We didn't even approach the financial and environmental cost of building batteries and redundant capacity to address these issues.

Solar power is the chimeric promise that I've been hearing about since my childhood. When I was a boy, you couldn't really say it was bullshit, because no attempts were made to do it. Now however, billions and billions have been spent and still the capacity is far less than 1% of world power capacity. Now we can say "bullshit!" While one form of solar power is cheap, successful and scalable, wind power, PV power is neither cheaper, safer, cleaner, more scalable, or as reliable as nuclear power. It's severe environmental impacts are not seen because it is tiny, and it is tiny because it doesn't work very well and can't be said to work very well because it is still incredibly expensive. If it did work, the world would be rushing to embrace it as the world (except the illiterate US) is rushing to embrace nuclear power.

Solar only advocates are remarkable for their Bush like pronouncements of absurdity as reality.

We deserve what we are going to get.