So much for a Nissan Leaf!

[Steppenwolfe]

There are many ( some poster's here ) who think we should follow Europe's lead. Europe is doing what they are doing, because they have hardly any natural resources. It's their dire limitation that prompts them to look to whatever they can for energy. We have a great country with land and resources.

Yeah, well fracking will take care of that. Sell tomorrow for a dollar today...

 

[Steppenwolfe]

Why would the worlds leader in oil, gas, and refined fuels (USA) go electric. Oh, that lead is increasing fast and looks like right now reserves are somewhere between 4000-6000 years. For a hoax perpetrated by those who would like to replace private oil with big government green energy they are set to profit from personally. (Gore/Obama)? Crazy HS

Yeah, versus the greedy who sold our resources to Halliburton, Bush / Cheney... Get real.

 

[Loren49]

See, that's what happens when you copy and paste out both sides of your mouth to different posters, in a lame attempt to have a definitive answer for everyone's intelligent counterview.

The reference I posted was: Offshore wind energy faces setbacks in Great Lakes | WRVO Public Media I was making the point (though after a reread I was mistaken with my example), that even with full production by wind it would not have a significant effect on climate. It is not reasonable to conclude what you have. It was a discussion on the alleged negative climate effects of wind turbines and nothing to do with the ideal percent of wind generation.

My error in the example: I read the quote you copied to say that wind generators on all of Erie would produce 4 times our current production of electricity. That is not what it says:confused2: (though no one pointed that out)

You took that out of context!

It is sad that you criticize the use of research and posting of results of studies. I'll go with the science and the research.

Loren

 

[Loren49]

To the dismay of the greens the biggest interest in solar and wind are coming from those prepping to have control of their own energy, anticipating big progressive government armed with a smart grid wanting to control your usage. Wind and solar offer individual power independence from government controls. The motive to go solar is no longer the fabricated green agenda. Sales now are driven by preppers and those leaving the grid and urban big government dependent living. HS

I didn't find data but I bet that a high percentage of solar power capacity in recent years are grid interconnect systems. For anyone with grid access close by these have a much faster payback. There is a good deal of power loss with batteries and they need to be replaced every 5 to 10 years.

Loren

 

[ultrarunner]

Don't forget there are a few grid tied systems that provide emergency power (As long as the sun shines) without batteries or the grid...

I was looking at one yesterday that has a 12 amp outlet... enough for a refrigerator, computer and some LED lights.

I think we could see more of these and this is one example of innovation at work.

SUNNY BOY 3000TL-US / 4000TL-US / 5000TL-US.*SMA America, LLC

 

[Redneck in training]

Don't forget there are a few grid tied systems that provide emergency power (As long as the sun shines) without batteries or the grid...

I was looking at one yesterday that has a 12 amp outlet... enough for a refrigerator, computer and some LED lights.

I think we could see more of these and this is one example of innovation at work.

SUNNY BOY 3000TL-US / 4000TL-US / 5000TL-US.*SMA America, LLC

I think next development will be inverter integrated with a "smart" load center panel that will disconnect the house from the grid (in case of grid failure) and then manage the load based on available power. The least important load will be shed first and the most important last etc.

 

[94BULLITT]

I saw a electric car on the tv show Pawn Stars that supposedly charged itself as you drove it.

 

[Pilot]

Was a comment several posts back about nuclear waste. We have had a solution for that for several decades, but the brilliant members of congress outlawed it--reprocessing. A nuclear power plant uses only about 3% of the potential energy in the fuel. Reprocessing that fuel allows it to be reused to extract another 3%, repeating the process until at the end only a small fraction of the original is left, and what's left has a shorter half life. Congress outlawed reprocessing because it has a potential for use in nuclear weapons. Hasn't stopped N. Korea, India, Pakistan and it doesn't look like it's going to stop Iran. We need to legalize reprocessing and we'll have not only a way to greatly reduce our nuclear waste but in the process greatly extend our nuclear fuel supply.

Nuclear safety: Much safer reactors are available today and some are fail safe.

 

[buickanddeere]

A price that truly covers the cost of production results in less waste. The hidden and future costs are paid or will be paid, they just don't show up on the current electric bill.

How Much Nuclear Waste Does Your State Hold? (DUK, EXC, GE, SO)
How Much Nuclear Waste Does Your State Hold?
By Maxx Chatsko | More Articles
July 27, 2013 | Comments (29)

One of the biggest critiques of nuclear energy is that it produces radioactive waste in the form of used nuclear fuel, or UNF. While the amounts are relatively small -- just 20 metric tons per power plant annually -- they remain radioactive for periods of time that are difficult for humans to comprehend. The waste adds up across the 100 nuclear reactors currently in operation across the United States. At last count, the country's atomic fleet had produced approximately 69,720 metric tons of UNF over the past four decades.

What is the real cost of safely storing or hanling of this material. This cost is not showing up on the current electric bill.

Who pays the cost of particle pollution that causes many breathing/asthma problems, etc.

Many other countries also pay a higher gas price. It discourages waste and addresses hidden costs.

Pay now or pay later.

Loren

You apparently are not familiar with used nuclear fuel and storage. It is NOT a big deal. I have pictures of my kids standing less than 10 ft from used fuel bundles.
As I said earlier you are not concerned with truely dangerous and toxic compounds such as lead, cadmium, arsenic, mercury and organic chemicals such as dioxins.
"Spent" nuclear fuel is a resource to be used later to generate power in liquid sodium reactors.

 

[Loren49]

You apparently are not familiar with used nuclear fuel and storage. It is NOT a big deal. I have pictures of my kids standing less than 10 ft from used fuel bundles.
As I said earlier you are not concerned with truely dangerous and toxic compounds such as lead, cadmium, arsenic, mercury and organic chemicals such as dioxins.
"Spent" nuclear fuel is a resource to be used later to generate power in liquid sodium reactors.

U.S. GAO - Key Issues: Disposal of High-Level Nuclear Waste

Commercial nuclear power production in the U.S. has resulted in over 70,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel—fuel that is used and removed from nuclear reactors—and the inventory is increasing by about 2,000 metric tons per year. In addition, nuclear weapons production and other defense-related activities have resulted in about 13,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel and other high-level nuclear waste. This high-level waste is extremely radioactive and needs to be isolated and shielded to protect human health and the environment. It is currently being stored primarily at sites where it was generated. After spending decades and billions of dollars to research potential sites for a permanent disposal site, including at the Yucca Mountain site in Nevada, the nation remains without a repository for disposal and future prospects are unclear.

Prolonging interim storage of spent nuclear fuel at reactor sites could have financial and other impacts. For example, the federal government bears part of the storage costs as a result of industry lawsuits over DOE’s failure to take custody of commercial spent nuclear fuel in 1998, as required. In December 2013, DOE reported that the federal government has paid industry about $3.7 billion in damages and has projected future liabilities at about $21.4 billion.

Researching, planning, and constructing a permanent disposal facility is a costly and complex project which could take from 15 to 40 years before a facility is ready to begin accepting spent fuel and once the facility is available. It will take several more decades to ship spent fuel to it. Shipping spent fuel to interim storage sites is no less complex than to a disposal facility and could result in shipping the spent fuel twice—first to the interim storage facility and second to the permanent facility. In both interim storage and permanent disposal scenarios, the shipping campaign is likely to take decades.

Friends of the Earth: Energie en Klimaat Nuclear energy is not the answer

Still, the volume of waste is not the main problem associated with nuclear waste. The main problem is that high-level waste remains dangerously radioactive for up to 240,000 years (Greenpeace, 2004). After half a century of research there are still no satisfactory solutions to this problem.

The most commonly suggested solution is to build underground waste repositories for long-term storage. In 1987, the U.S. Department of Energy announced plans to build such a repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. According to the plan, high-level radioactive waste will be buried deep in the ground where it will hopefully remain unexposed to groundwater and unaffected by earthquakes (Cunningham et al, 2003).

On a timescale of hundreds of thousands of years, however, it is impossible to predict whether an area will remain dry or geologically stable. Moreover the costs of monitoring and maintenance over such a timescale are unimaginable and generations for hundreds of thousands of years to come would still have to pay the cost for a few years electricity for our generation. The Yucca Mountain scheme has generated huge public outcry and it is likely that the project will never go ahead. Similar problems elsewhere in the world mean that there are currently no final repositories in operation.

In the last decades researchers have been working on the technology to reduce radioactivity and the decay time of nuclear waste, the so-called transmutation process. This has often been optimistically heralded as the future solution to the waste problem, however, there is no guarantee that research into transmutation will be successful, and if it is the financial costs will be enormous.


And from the scientists:
Nuclear Reprocessing: Dangerous, Dirty, and Expensive | Union of Concerned Scientists

Nuclear Reprocessing: Dangerous, Dirty, and Expensive
Reprocessing is a series of chemical operations that separates plutonium and uranium from other nuclear waste contained in the used (or “spent”) fuel from nuclear power reactors. The separated plutonium can be used to fuel reactors, but also to make nuclear weapons. In the late 1970’s, the United States decided on nuclear non-proliferation grounds not to reprocess spent fuel from U.S. power reactors, but instead to directly dispose of it in a deep underground geologic repository where it would remain isolated from the environment for at least tens of thousands of years.

While some supporters of a U.S. reprocessing program believe it would help solve the nuclear waste problem, reprocessing would not reduce the need for storage and disposal of radioactive waste. Worse, reprocessing would make it easier for terrorists to acquire nuclear weapons materials, and for nations to develop nuclear weapons programs.

Sodium-cooled fast reactor - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

These still result in highly toxic nuclear waste.

Nuclear reprocessing - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Economics[edit]
The relative economics of reprocessing-waste disposal and interim storage-direct disposal has been the focus of much debate over the past ten years. Studies[39] have modeled the total fuel cycle costs of a reprocessing-recycling system based on one-time recycling of plutonium in existing thermal reactors (as opposed to the proposed breeder reactor cycle) and compare this to the total costs of an open fuel cycle with direct disposal. The range of results produced by these studies is very wide, but all are agreed that under current (2005) economic conditions the reprocessing-recycle option is the more costly.[40]

In July 2004 Japanese newspapers reported that the Japanese Government had estimated the costs of disposing radioactive waste, contradicting claims four months earlier that no such estimates had been made. The cost of non-reprocessing options was estimated to be between a quarter and a third ($5.5–7.9 billion) of the cost of reprocessing ($24.7 billion). At the end of the year 2011 it became clear that Masaya Yasui, who had been director of the Nuclear Power Policy Planning Division in 2004, had instructed his subordinate in April 2004 to conceal the data. The fact that the data were deliberately concealed obliged the ministry to re-investigate the case and to reconsider whether to punish the officials involved.[45][46]

Has this storage cost for the past few decades been included in electric bills or passed on to taxpayers?

It appears the facts are in conflict with your opinion.

Loren