The only way to make this world safer is to do away with electricity.
Of course thats not going to happen. And right now we are focused on ONE incident thats going wrong. Not on the fact that there are how many other plants that DON"T have anything wrong....
On the topic of solar being unfeasible cost wise... I have but a single question.... costs here run about 20,000 or so to put enough up to power a house almost all the time. There are rebates to cut that in half but lets just say there were no rebates...
Electricity will be like gas, will not do anything but go up in price over the years.
Figuring one can easily have a 300 plus dollar a month electrical bill... assuming it all stays the same we are talking appx 6 years to break even. I think most solar cells last a hair longer..... batteries I"m not sure... but bottom line there, you could technically save more, if not, spend the same amount as electricity, but without the use of production of power via other methods...
Bring the Raid on for me anyway. We need it, unless we intend to move back to no power, ride horses etc....which actually, other than no AC in this miserably azzed hot state I live in, wouldn't be a big issue personally.
Jeff,
"Miserably hot"... lol... can I quote you on that to my wife? She's been on a roll lately for wanting to move somewhere like southern AZ or NM or TX, because the winters here get her down... I keep telling her, having grown up in NM, that the problem in those places is that summer sucks!
If I'm reading you right you showed the numbers for break-even on solar? Interesting. Around here the break even point is so far in the future that it really makes no sense... over 20 years if I remember right. Had a tech looking at an older system installed on a house a client was looking to buy... the numbers the tech talked about were uninspiring to say the least (in terms of my clients putting up new solar equipment). About the time the system breaks even, it's worn out!
The angle I'm approaching this from at this time isn't one of using alternate sources, though that's certainly interesting. Right now my points are:
- this technology is incredibly dangerous when stuff goes wrong, and stuff does go wrong.
- it's yet another example of us foisting our problems onto future generations, and I'm tired of that kind of thinking.
- looking backwards at the amount of public subsidy so far- which I've seen quoted as 150 billion in two articles now- and considering that we get 20% of our power from nuclear, I think it's VERY arguable (and defensible, lol) that that same 150 bil spent on power grid upgrades and greater heating/cooling efficiency in buildings would have netted us that SAME 20%. In other words, we could be using 20% less energy and not have these ticking time bombs generating unmanageable waste, sitting around everywhere.
-and looking forwards, I am arguing that we'd be better off appyling the next 150 bil, if indeed we are going to spend this public money on energy subsidy, on things like the above, rather than on more ticking time bombs generating more waste we can't get rid of, and deferring more nightmarish cleanups to future generations.
Alternative energy sources are another conversation. I agree that the magic bullet, the obvious solution, does not exist.
