I agree everyone is greedy, not saying the people who wants to sell solar power are saints, im saying they have been hindered to develop solar energy cause of the fact. Solar has actually caught up, just look at Germany, saying that one Nuclear plant produce more energy then all the solar energy in the world is just misinformation.
Yeah I support the use of nuclear powerplants. First of all, they are established and are able provide cities with power that is reliable. I'm all for innovation, but the demonization of those facilities just makes me facepalm. The problem with solar-power is, that some locations don't fit the climatic standards for them to reach a passable degree of efficiency and in the wintermonths there is not enough solar energy to provide the power needed, so we are still searching for a solution for this old energy-storage problem. Wind is also tricky, it's not windy everywhere and if we create these huge facilities near the coasts, the energy needs to travel way too long (think of cables and loss of voltage). If you want renewable energy to take over, start coming up with ideas, it's not as simple as it seems.
Look at germany it is not the sunniest country in the world they are doing great, also you do realize solar panels can be placed where there is sunlight and as we already have power lines we can get our power through there.
I am from germany, they are not doing "great", solar panels were subsidized by the state, that's why most people who have them got them in the first place. I support solarthermal energy for hot water, no problem there, but photovoltaik in germany is just not providing the energy needed, again, in winter the sun shines for about 8h at 20 degrees. You can't power your home with that. On the other hand, if you really got some money, you could invest in some pretty expensive energy-storage solutions, that can help you out in autumn, when winter comes, you still need some other energysource or need to find a way to store energy. Powerlines: You can't just plug-in some solar-powerplants somewhere and hope that the energy arrives somehow, that's not how it works, you have something like a radius around powerplants where it's efficient to provide energy, if you make electricity travel, you need new lines that can cope with that, and put up higher voltage. Anyhow, the most important issue is the summer-winter discrepancy when it comes to energy provided by the sun.
I know it is not what Im talking about, this would be something that would be possible in the future, cause as we cant just go out and tare down the Nuclear plants that we have ATM its a time process over many years that we can exchange nuclear power for solar energy until we get a viable solution to the problem. So little refinement has been done to this technology, solar farms would be something that could gather up huge amounts of energy and store it as well as have a high enough output to travel to me even, and I live next to the arctic circle the sun doesn't even get over the horizon here ATM its dark 90% of the day. I cant use solar panels on my house in the winter but it would not stop me from getting commercial solar energy if they develop it. I know its hard do compete with nuclear power, but it is something that is bad for the planet as well as for the future of the planet, every technology has its downsides I just see it as being the worst option, unless they can find a way so we have no nuclear waste then I think it should die out eventually, as I said we cant just flip a switch now and stop producing electricity for nuclear power, but I think we will eventually move beyond this and its not as far off as people believe.
Guess I kind of gotten off topic with the question, I would say I support Nuclear power but not for the reason of it being nuclear power. Cause we cant just go flip a switch right now and turn em all off, I support that we have to keep em for now and replace em as we go, but I don't support making new ones cause we should as said move on to better sources of energy.
That's reasonable, here in germany after fukushima everyone wanted to get off nuclear energy without knowing anything about power or the distribution of it at all. they were showing these cooling towers and the voiceover was talking about massive pollution, what a joke that was. They wanted to shut down the plants by 2020, now they are aiming for 2050. That's just irrational, whenever I hear people talk about how bad these plants are, it reminds me of people making decisions and forming opinions on emotions instead of thinking rational about the problem and what might happens if the really shut down nuclear power within 5 years. In my book there are bigger problems than nuclear powerplants or powerplants in general, if I'd try to change something it would be production, because there you'll find huge amounts of waste and pollution as an outcome.
I'm okay with nuclear energy as long as all the necessary precautions are taken, and any waste is disposed of properly. I suppose location is also important.
To produce the 25 tonnes or so of uranium fuel needed to keep your average reactor going for a year entails the extraction of half a million tonnes of waste rock and over 100,000 tonnes of mill tailings. These are toxic for hundreds of thousands of years. The conversion plant will generate another 144 tonnes of solid waste and 1343 cubic metres of liquid waste. Contamination of local water supplies around uranium mines and processing plants has been documented in Brazil, Colorado, Texas, Australia, Namibia and many other sites. To supply even a fraction of the power stations the industry expects to be online worldwide in 2020 would mean generating 50 million tonnes of toxic radioactive residues every single year.
