Undeclared final war

Pretty much all of life's problems can be solved with high explosives. 

Actually, if you read that article it would take roughly 0.5% of the worlds desert to supply us (IE, Europe) with electricity if the appropriate technology was developed.

Okay, so we take .5% of the worlds deserts, now we have to make sure the solar panels are protected from sandstorms, and we have to repair the scratched panels that won't work at optimum efficiency, then we have to house repair people who have to live near these god forsaken parts of the world. This requires an impressive highway system (to get to the solar panels) that must be maintained (good luck preventing desertification). Then you need to have an excellent supply transport so that these repairmen don't get stranded in the desert due to warfare or such, you think the US wants all it's power stranded in the Sahara or something? I thought thats what we're trying to get rid of. Besides thats at our current level of power use, power usage has shown to be increasing rapidly and will double at a high pace, so in say 200 years we'll need to cover 100 % of all deserts. Granted nuclear power suffers from this same problem but it can create much more power in a far smaller space.

You cannot argue that Nuclear power is safer than solar power though.

Certainly can't but if energy production was based on safety measures there would be no coal mines or natural gas stations in the Gulf of Mexico. It's based on profit and morality has very little to do with it. Solar power has a huge investment for not so much profit (I mean you think a nations going to give its land for free? Rent costs money and unless you want to nationalize the electric supply industry solar power just isn't profitable.)

Personally i don't care if it takes more space than a Nuclear power plant, its proven fact that living in relatively close proximity to a Nuclear power plant is bad for your health.

Then here's a solution, don't live next to a nuclear power plant, declare the area a "no-entrance" area, like a high-level security military base, fences don't always keep people out, they tell people they don't want to come in as well.

Thats just one little piece of anecdotal evidence but its an example of the widespread ecological disasters Nuclear power plants cause meaning the amount of space they take up becomes an irrelevance.

Then regulate where nuclear power plants go, personally I don't want a nuclear power plant anywhere near an open system like a river or lake. They can remain set aside using a closed coolant system, which some do utilize.

So you defend one of the major flaws of nuclear power by declaring we can simply blast it into outter space from a platform , I agree totally

Unfortunately this is unlikely as it costs $20,000 per pound to ship something into space, and until we get a space elevator (which would bring costs to $400 a pound) I think sending it into the earth is the best bet. (Not underground, but down into molten fissures since theirs all ready radiation from the earths core there.)

Why is everyone ignoring the fact that uranium is in fact a finite resource like oil, gas or coal? yes, low grade ore can be used instead of uranium to power electricity but that eventually means that the effect it has on the environment is damn near identical to the effects of burning fossil fuels.

Edited by Denis - 15-Feb-2007 at 07:19

Originally posted by Zaitsev Denis nuclear power is NOT dangerous. The life expectancy of a worker in a coal power plant is alot shorter than one in a nuclear plant. You can fly a plane into a power plant, which is effectively a giant block of concrete and lead. It won't to squat. You can walk into a nuclear reactor and try you hardest to cause a nuclear meltdown and you wouldn't be able to succeed as the computer would stop you.

Edited by Aelfgifu - 15-Feb-2007 at 07:46

And the way things went, this was the good case scenario. The bad case scenario would have killed off half of Europe and make the whole of Eastern Europe uninhabitable.

True, but the best case scenario is Three Mile Island, where a near meltdown was averted before the shielding went bad thanks to good information.

The soviets at chernobyl at all kinds of separate problems that contributed to the meltdown. First they were taxing the system to the limits because a nearby city requested more power and another reactor nearby was offline. Then at the time of the incident they were understaffed. Also there was faulty instrumentation that was giving incorrect readings to the manager of the plant. (These readings would have been contradicted by other readings that no one saw because of the understaffing.)

Mind you nuclear power isn't safe, it's just cheap and reliable as an energy source.

Why is everyone ignoring the fact that uranium is in fact a finite resource like oil, gas or coal?

Yes it is, but the amount of nuclear power plants you can have is also a finite resource, and it takes years upon years to "burn out" uranium rods. So we'll have enough uranium to power the world for a thousand years, or until our civilization starts harnessing another form of energy we don't know about.

And of course the deserts will be expensive to build on; so are Nuclear power plants. The average Nuclear power plant costs around 2 billion sterling to build!

That's initial costs, and not at all expensive when you consider coal and natural gas plants, as well as renewable energy plants and infrastructure.

The sun is a finite resource, strictly speaking.

Have you even looked into the possibility of CSP Emmet? Its safer and a technology that works now. There are flagship projects going on in California as we speak. Its time we got a little cooperation from the powers that be to stop spending f**k all on solar and seriously look at developing the CSP. If it doesn't work like the scientists say it won't I'll support Nuclear because there will be no other choice. other than that, I support the CSP.

we'll be talking about cold fusion next

Yea, but we might as well be talking about cures for cancer and rocket cars and cities on the moon. Cold fusion doesn't exist right now, and although it would be a better alternative, it isn't feasible with current manufacturing processes, fission reactors are and I think they are the best choice taking all the pros and cons.

Why would one be afraid of that? If there's a PRACTICAL alternative which is as clean, then it's a good thing. However there's a difference between putting lots of money into research, and meeting the power needs of today.

Originally posted by Zaitsev Actually I have studied nuclear power quite significantly. Chernobyl was over 2decades ago, with inferior technology and hopeless workers. A better example of nuclear power is One Mile Island. Here the inept plant workers did everything they could possibly do wrong, and the safety systems in the technology still averted a meltdown. Since then the technology has progressed even further. Perhaps you should have done a little research in the last 20 years.