Tech That Will Save Our Species - Solar Thermal Power

NoMoreCoal writes "Salon has up a story by Joe Romm, former undersecretary of energy during the Clinton administration, discussing a lesser-known alternative energy solution. It's a technology that (he claims) is ready to provide zero-carbon electric power big, fast, cheap and (most importantly) right now: solar thermal power. 'Improvements in manufacturing and design, along with the possibility of higher temperature operation, could easily bring the price down to 6 to 8 cents per kilowatt hour. CSP makes use of the most abundant and free fuel there is, sunlight, and key countries have a vast resource. Solar thermal plants covering the equivalent of a 92-by-92-mile square grid in the Southwest could generate electricity for the entire United States. Mexico has an equally enormous solar resource. China, India, southern Europe, North Africa, the Middle East and Australia also have huge resources.'" Interesting stuff, even if he does mention the Archimedes Death Ray.

Solar thermal power/solar photovoltaics

[jmpeax (936370)]

The difference between solar thermal power and more well-known solar photovoltaics. [wikipedia.org]

Re:Solar thermal power/solar photovoltaics

[BVis (267028)]

Relying on the sun for power is not feasible for anything other than base load stuff. When usage starts peaking there is no way to get the sun to send down more energy. A 92 square mile station wouldn't be any more useful than a much smaller station. Solar could only feasibly be a supplement to the grid.

This of course assumes that there's no way to store energy during off-peak periods as heat or hydrogen gas (new tech, great potential. You use the power generated to crack water into hydrogen and oxygen, and store the H2.). Where are you getting the 'base load' information? And so what? That's still power we don't need to generate in dirty ways.

I have to question why you think a 92 square mile station wouldn't be more useful. More reflective area = more power.

Should we wait for the 'right combination' to magically appear, or should we start doing what we can right now and learn what works and what doesn't? This tech is dead simple, it's scalable, and it taps a power source that won't exhaust itself for 5 billion years or so.

Re:Solar thermal power/solar photovoltaics

[Eevee (535658)]

When usage starts peaking there is no way to get the sun to send down more energy. A 92 square mile station wouldn't be any more useful than a much smaller station.

So that's like saying if you need more water then it wouldn't be any better to pull water out of the Mississippi with a bucket than a cup because you can't make the river flow any faster?

Re:Solar thermal power/solar photovoltaics

[hcdejong (561314)]

When usage starts peaking there is no way to get the sun to send down more energy.

Yes you can. If you build your plant large enough to satisfy peak demand, throttling back is a matter of rotating or shrouding a few mirrors or PV panels. This will make the plant more expensive than a base load plant with fixed panels/mirrors, though.
Also, with solar thermal, you can store surplus heat. Plus there's the nice coincidence that in warm climates energy usage tracks insolation (e.g. airco).

Re:Solar thermal power/solar photovoltaics

[xaxa (988988)]

You'd never 'throttle back' free solar power (just like you'd never run a nuclear power plant at less than optimum output -- if you don't use the fuel, it's wasted).

The sun costs $0, so even if the best thing you can do is sell the generated power at $0.00001/kWh to a place 500 miles away you make a profit.

One way to use up excess energy is to pump water upstream above a hydroelectric power station. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity [wikipedia.org]

Re:Solar thermal power/solar photovoltaics

[hcdejong (561314)]

Now that you mention that, you could always use the surplus energy to run a desalinisation plant.

Re:Solar thermal power/solar photovoltaics

[llZENll (545605)]

Well if you would actually read the article rather than spouting off empty criticisms you would know that heat is MUCH easier to store than electricity, and you would only need a plant big enough for average load as you can store extra heat during off peak usage and use it during peak load.

Re:Solar thermal power/solar photovoltaics

[raddan (519638)]

Did you read TFA? CSP can generate power when the sun is not shining due to the high thermal mass of the fluid it uses, which at present are oil or molten salt. Since you are using heat to provide the power (by boiling water to turn a turbine), it doesn't matter that you aren't generating more heat at night-- because you're using the store you created during the day. As far as CSP being the "silver bullet", the author addresses this directly:

Certainly we will need many different technologies to stop global warming

As for base load-- peak power usage is during the day, when the sun is shining. So even if this system did not have the ability to generate electrical power during the night, solar power is worth pursuing. Besides, you want to talk about subsidies? The corn subsidy may be misguided, but how about the Iraq war? That's a war fought to maintain the U.S.'s interests in the region. What interests are those? Oil. We're at $600 billion and counting for that subsidy. "Spreading democracy" is obviously a red herring, since there are plenty of places we've turned a blind eye to that were doing just that. Sometimes, we've even helped out the bad guys [wikipedia.org].

I would love to see $600 billion poured into alternative fuels. It would be a boon to our economy, it would be a great opportunity for scientists and engineers, and it would isolate us from oil politics. Not to mention that it is an ethical thing to do, if we care about our planet.

Oh noes!

[Chris Burke (6130)]

Either way, neither of the two are complete solutions like so many want to believe. Relying on the sun for power is not feasible for anything other than base load stuff.

So this unlimited and completely pollution free* power source can only completely provide for the base load of the entire country (if you make zero attempt to solve the problem)? Oh, how terrible!

Nobody pushing for alternative energy is really that attached to the idea of a "complete" solution. It's the nay-sayers who are always harping on any particular weakness of any one technique and saying "well it can't do everything, what's the point?"

It's nice that people are thinking, but the problem is that the government tends to grant subsidies irresponsibly and places too much importance on any one system. The media plays up the importance of biofuels or wind power, then government pork follows and sends science off on a tangent following a single system.

No the problem is that people naturally stick to the status quo unless whatever the new thing is a "complete solution", so it often takes the government, for better or worse, to get people out of their comfort zone. In some cases, for better, like wind power, which is a fantastic source of power in many places (like west Texas where the farms are going up all the time), and is providing an increasing percentage of electricity, without trying to be a "complete solution". This is exactly what you seem to be asking for -- diversity, using appropriate tech where appropriate -- but it's an example of government pork gone bad?

Not that I believe most of them are subsidized; it's apparently fairly profitable to own a wind farm even without government help.

The money should instead be going into research on how to find the best balance of technology.

That makes no sense. The money required to 1) develop alternative energy sources and 2) do the feasibility studies on where and how they can be deployed and 3) actually build them, is vastly more than the amount of money required to take all those feasibility studies that have already been done and decide which tech to deploy where. "finding the best balance of technology" is pointless if you haven't spent the money to develop the tech, no?

We are going to have use coal for a long time, that's inescapable. There is no one solution that is capable of completely supplanting coal. It's going to require efforts in lots of fields like nuclear, geothermal, and solar. Each has its own characteristics, advantages, and draw backs. It's all about finding the right combination.

Coal is not inescapable, it's not the perfect fuel with no drawbacks in theory, it is itself not a "complete solution" in practice. If you're going to put nuclear on the table, then there's your opportunity to completely replace coal right there.

* In operation of course, not during manufacture, but seriously who cares? Our entire society is built on manufacturing, with the commensurate pollution. If they didn't build thermal solar plants, it's not like nothing else would be built. The comparatively minuscule environmental cost of building the plants is just noise compared to the benefits of running them pollution-free for years.

Re:Solar thermal power/solar photovoltaics

[gurps_npc (621217)]

As others stated, you are entirely WRONG.

The standard plans for buildign Solar Thermal generators include heat storage devices. More importantly, in the areas where these devices are created, what almost ALWAYS happens is that during periods of peak demand, the power output is highest. I.E. During 9-5, when businesses are up and running and air conditioners are up and running , the sun is the strongest.

Then they actually STORE up heat during the peak demand periods, to use in the lower demand period, called night.

Using current technology, solar thermal power plants are almost cheap enough to displace fossil fuels, at least for the southern half of the country.

I would agree that nuclear is probably going to be neccessary for the parts of the country that don't get enough sun. But geothermal is WAY too expensive, except in extremely rare locations.

Buffer it

[rubeng (1263328)]

Hmm, how about using the variable power sources like solar and wind to drive pumps to fill hydropower or compressed-air reservoirs. Power can then be drawn from them at a predictable rate. You'd lose some efficiency, but you could just throw a few more square miles at the problem.

Re:Solar thermal power/solar photovoltaics

[Jeremi (14640)]

I was listening to an interview with one of the techies who does load balancing on the UK's national grid who said that wind and solar (any form) give him the willies because they're so unreliable from minute-to-minute.

That, as I understand it, is one of the advantages of thermal solar over photovoltaic and wind.... the heat stored in the molten salt acts as a buffer (a giant thermal flywheel, if you will), so that if the sun goes behind a cloud for a few minutes (or even a few hours), the plant's energy output doesn't immediately drop. Indeed, that's how the thermal solar plants are able to reliably generate power even during that regular solar outage we call 'night'. Combine that with the cost advantages (no expensive silicon required, just glass and concrete!) and I'd bet your UK tech guy would be a good deal more comfortable with thermal solar than he is with PV.

92x92 square miles? Jeez, lets get on it.

[tgd (2822)]

Thats 246 billion square feet.

Thats somewhere between the size of New Jersey and New Hampshire.

Talk about pie in the sky... its more realistic to be talking about microwave power stations in orbit!

Re:92x92 square miles? Jeez, lets get on it.

[Soporific (595477)]

Don't you think we've paved that much road by now?

~S

Re:92x92 square miles? Jeez, lets get on it.

[smooth wombat (796938)]

For once, someone gets something close when pulling out statistics.

Using Wiki, New Jersey is 70 miles wide by 110 miles long while New Hampshire is 68 miles wide by 190 miles long.

On a side note, instead of locating the power source in one state, spread it out over southern California (they need all the energy they can get), Arizona, New Mexico and Texas and maybe Florida (hurricanes might pose an issue).

Re:92x92 square miles? Jeez, lets get on it.

[Gotung (571984)]

Yes it would be a gargantuan task to power the entire country in this way.

Which means we shouldn't even try to build 1 plant.

Cause its hard and stuff.

Re:92x92 square miles? Jeez, lets get on it.

[nizo (81281)]

Take a trip through New Mexico sometime; 92x92 square miles of empty sunshiney space is not a problem.

Re:92x92 square miles? Jeez, lets get on it.

[Chris Burke (6130)]

Thats 246 billion square feet.

Thats somewhere between the size of New Jersey and New Hampshire.

Talk about pie in the sky... its more realistic to be talking about microwave power stations in orbit!

Yeah, and guess what the square mileage of farmland in the U.S. is? Hint: Hell of a lot more than New Jersey and New Hampshire combined.

So land-based farming is "pie in the sky", and we might as well talk about orbital hydroponics labs?

Ridiculous. Utterly ridiculous. We've paved over many times more than that amount of land to make our highways and Wal-Mart parking lots, a lot of it requiring dynamiting of mountains first; how exactly is it impossible to put up some mirrors on the ground? If you're imagining a contiguous 92x92 mile area, maybe that's why you're stumbling, not that it's actually any more infeasible, it's just not how it would be done.

Re:92x92 square miles? Jeez, lets get on it.

[swillden (191260)]

Thats 246 billion square feet. Thats somewhere between the size of New Jersey and New Hampshire.

On the other hand, that's less than 2% of Utah, Arizona, Nevada and New Mexico. Any one of those states has sufficient unused desert to accommodate 8500 square miles of solar plants, and it wouldn't make sense to put all of the plants in one place anyway.

Assuming each plant can generate sufficient power to be worth building, there's no problem with finding room. Environmental impact might be an issue, but you also have to factor out the environmental damage done by the current coal plants.

Re:pie in the sky

[by Anonymous Coward]

so we simply build it *on top of* new jersey. it's about the right size, plus there's no wildlife anywhere in NJ to displace. as for the locals, who cares? it's fucking new jersey. the power can then be transmitted directly to new york city. i mean, sure theres *supposed* to be enough power to go around, but when has NYC ever fell short on a challenge to guzzle resources?

Re:pie in the sky

[Smidge204 (605297)]

1) Not a hell of a lot. This is solar thermal, not solar photovoltaic, so there are basically no nasty chemical processes. Some vapor deposition for making mirrors but that's about it.

2) No doubt it would change the local environment, but considering it's currently desert the change would probably improve conditions for local wildlife. Add shade, decrease ground temperatures, maybe even help retain moisture in the soil.

3) High voltage DC transmission can send electricity thousands of miles while maintaining acceptable losses. About 5% per 1000 miles. You can't do it with AC because such long cables have huge capacitance that makes reversing the voltage 60 times per second rather difficult. Also, there's less issues with synching the AC waveform with whoever it's connected to - local inverters do that.

Why not simply build a nuclear powerplant closer to the consumers?

1) NIMBY - everybody wants it but yet nobody wants it.

2) Waste is still an issue, since the USA is scared shitless to reprocess nuclear waste (it's actually illegal in this country thanks to anti-proliferation legislation).

=Smidge=

Heat to turbine or Stirling Engine?

[Roy van Rijn (919696)]

This makes me wonder, is generating electricity using this method more efficient to do with heating water to go into a turbine... or using a (huge) stirling engine? I've read that a Stirling Engine is the most energie efficient way to turn heat into movement (thus electricity?).

Can anybody shed some light on this? (no pun intended)

Re:Heat to turbine or Stirling Engine?

[WhiplashII (542766)]

A stirling engine is remarkably efficient - it approaches the carnot limit of efficiency. (You can get one that will run off the heat from your body!) The problem is that its $/Kw is way too high - and it gets worse as you draw more power from it. Turbines, while a little less efficient, can cheaply handle extremely large power levels. So if you weigh in the lifetime cost, you normally go with turbines.

A second Manhattan Project

[Markee (72201)]

There are many alternative concepts for low- or no-carbon energy in the drawers. Hoewever, most of them still have the status of an unproven technology. They are perceived as being driven mostly by tree-hugging nerds who can't do the math, or mad-scientist type of guys who are desperately fighting for a silly idea.
For some this may be true, for some it certainly is not. But to know which tech belongs to which category, a serios research investment needs to happen.

Now imaginge that a country of the size of the United States would invest just the cost of 1 month worth of Iraq war into the development of alternative energys. A research facility town in a desert, funded with anything they need to prove whatever technology promises to deliver clean energy on a larger scale, and invest what is necessary to solve the problem, or dismiss the technology, could probably do more for the world climate and world economy than most other measures.

The Manhattan project was an example of an must-do project where absolutely anything needed to solve a complex technical problem was done, investing any manpower and money possibly needed to solve the task.

Now think of doing the same, but this time not to build the most destructive weapon on the planet, but to get rid of oil as the primary energy source, lose the handcuffs of oil dependency, and save the climate.

Other uses of Solar Thermal Power

[va.va_va.va (973230)]

STP is a very common technology here in Brazil, especially in households that use it to heat water to be used in the shower (replacing our famous electric shower heads). Some industries also use it to pre-heat water that they use in the manufacturing process, saving millions of dollars every year. -vava

ausra

[AnotherBlackHat (265897)]

Before reading the fine article, I thought it would be a PR piece for Ausra.

If you read the stuff at their website, http://ausra.com/ [ausra.com], they answer a lot of the questions that have been, and doubtless will be asked here;

It's possible to store thermal energy and use it to produce electricity at night.
Some places do receive more sunlight than others, and plants built in those places would be more efficient.
They have a nice PDF that shows (among other things) the normal solar radiation for different areas - plants work better in deserts than in river valleys, but there are plenty of places you can build them that are cost effective.
Ausra isn't vaporware - they already build a plant in Australia, and they are building one in southern California.

The current plant is cost competitive with scrubbed coal, and future plants are supposed to be on par with unscrubbed coal plants.
That last may be hype, but at the very least they can already produce electricity for less than 12 cents a kilowatt, and cutting that in half doesn't seem unreasonable.

Even so, at best these kinds of plants will only supplant oil and coal burning electric plants.
We're still going to burn oil in our cars, home heaters, etc.

Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with Ausra, but most of my information about them comes from them, or their press releases, so take it with a grain of salt.

-- Should you believe authority without question?

I am disturbed to discover

[sentientbrendan (316150)]

that only 1 or 2% of global power needs are met by solar power at current time! Whereas, power generation techniques such as nuclear, which my hippie buddy Zed assures me are "bad" and will "be totally like Chernoble, like booom man," is account for some 20 odd percent of global power generation and is being expanded in many countries! Some places use nuclear almost entirely!

Apparently a crazy sect of cultists called "scientists" (who I believe live in California and are led by Tom Cruise) are contradicting the knowledgeable and sagely hippies and spreading lies about how nuclear power is actually safe when done right, and waste can be stored safely at Yucca mountain for some 10,000 years. Furthermore, they suggest that spent nuclear fuel can be reprocessed so that it will have a significantly shorter half life, on the order of a few hundred years. I think we can safely ignore these crackpots, with their "Phd's" and other cultish paraphernalia, and listen to my friend Zed who works at greenpeace.

These same crazy scientists in an effort to derail solar panel have pointed out some problems with Zed's plans to save the world. Before we can deploy solar power plants of any size, we must address these obstacles. I am not familiar with them myself, as I don't get outside much, but I read about them on wikipedia. They are called:
1. Night time.
2. Clouds.

"Night time", judging by it's title, seems to be some kind of dark temporal force preventing the rays of the sun or "Sol" from reaching the earth. I suspect this does not exist, it even sounds like something out of a science fiction story. If it does exist, I am confident that if we set our best space/time physicists to work on it, we can eradicate this shadowy nemesis.

I'm not sure what clouds are, but according to wikipedia they are "a visible mass of droplets or frozen crystals floating in the atmosphere above the surface of the Earth or another planetary body."

I don't know about you, but this sounds like an unlikely scenario to me. I mean, water "floating in the atmosphere." Water doesn't float in the atmosphere! It stays securely packed in mountain dew bottles. I'm sure we can ignore these hypothetical "cloud" problems when building our solar panels, and they will not cause any problems.

In any case, let's ignore these so called "logistical problems" (a term that sounds like cult speak to me!) and deploy solar power globally. Zed assures me that the primary problems facing global power right now is a lack of positive thinking.

Re:so in other words

[Ctrl-Z (28806)]

... and without the radioactive waste.

Re:Hmmm..

[og_sh0x (520297)]

My guess would be that it would cost less than the Iraq war. Sounds like a good deal, no?

Re:Hmmm..

[internetcommie (945194)]

For us humble taxpayers, yes, but won't somebody think of the weapons industry?

Re:Hmmm..

[DrWho520 (655973)]

Forget subsidizing this with tax dollars. I have a few bucks to invest. Let me buy some stock. Or how about some energy bonds? The US sold war bonds during WWII, let us buy Alternative Energy Bonds for investing in solar and geo and fuel cells.

Re:Why do you think that?

[by Anonymous Coward]

The article does not mention the installed cost of such a system, but it's probably tens of trillions of dollars. More if you factor in the need to store energy overnight and on overcast days.

Do you have some kind of source for that number, or are you just pulling that straight out of your asshole?

Re:Why do you think that?

[mmurphy000 (556983)]

Our current energy infrastructure cost trillions of dollars to build

Citation, please. Else, don't cite figures.

and solar thermal would be more expensive.

Citation, please. Certainly the article cited in the OP didn't make such claims. I'm not saying you're wrong, but you'll be a whole lot more convincing if you'd provide some citations.

By comparison the Iraq war has not cost a trillion (unless you do a lot of hand waving and use funny numbers).

In 2005, the Congressional Budget Office estimated the cost of the war at $500 billion. That was three years ago. Others put the cost at $1 to $2 trillion in 2006. See this article [guardian.co.uk] from The Guardian (UK) for details. If you would like to provide some citations refuting these figures, please do so.

The article does not mention the installed cost of such a system, but it's probably tens of trillions of dollars.

And your basis for this claim is...what, exactly?

More if you factor in the need to store energy overnight and on overcast days.

From the article cited in the OP, "Commercial projects have already demonstrated that CSP systems can store energy by heating oil or molten salt, which can retain the heat for hours." That covers overnight hours. You'd locate the facilities in areas that typically don't have extended periods of overcast days (e.g., US Southwest, as mentioned in the article). Neither will provide 100% coverage, and so you'll probably still need existing power generation facilities, but they can be scaled back in operation the vast majority of time. What isn't discussed and probably needs to be is whether it is more effective to keep those facilities operating at bare minimum levels vs. come up with some other means to deal with extended poor generation periods.

Is it even possible to build one that big?

First, the reference to the 92x92 mile grid says "Solar thermal plants covering the equivalent of a 92-by-92-mile square grid in the Southwest..." You might note that "plants" is plural. So we're not talking a single 92x92 mile plant, but a large number of plants that cover an equivalent area. However, it's unclear how large an individual plant in this scheme would be vis a vis the ones in operation today.

Re:Hmmm..

[AGMW (594303)]

They should continue, "unfortunately, there are a fair amount of countries that don't have access to the sun. "

I think it's quite interesting that a lot of the poorer, indeed third world [LOL - Australia ;-)], countries of today could be the power suppliers of tomorrow. Of course that will depend to a large degree on them stopping killing each other long enough to allow the current rich nations to come in and setup the plants!

The problem then becomes one of supply - how do you get the Solar Thermal riches of the Sahara up to Europe without massive power losses. There was a Chinese scientist 5 or 10 years ago who put forward an idea for a "Super Grid" to allow us to move power around the globe more efficiently. Maybe this needs a bit more thought!

Re:Hmmm..

[monxrtr (1105563)]

Grids are expensive and security risks. A decentralized power system would be much more economically efficient, more resilient to regular local outages caused by weather storms, and much more competitive in offering consumers lower prices. Grid = Monopoly. It's economically efficient to transport oil and gasoline by tankers and by semi truck to decentralized filling stations.

When solar power can be stored and transported similarly at competitive costs to world oil distribution markets, the solar energy market will be ready. The market certainly won't be ready, won't be competitive, if you are building "super grids". That's nothing more than a massively economically inefficient subsidy (payoff) to politically connected constituents (just like ethanol farmers and processing plants).

Re:And a related problem...

[mhall119 (1035984)]

I seem to recall that the sun is only available during the daytime.

The sun is available all the time, but sometimes you have issues like your planet getting in the way.

So you definitely need some means to switch the power, transferring from areas that have sunlight at any given moment to those that do not.

You can always store the energy as something more transportable. For example, you can use the generated electricity to turn water into Hydrogen, and transport the Hydrogen. Of come up with some kind of artificial photosynthesis that uses solar energy to build hydrocarbons from water and atmospheric CO2.

Or, you can just store the energy in batteries, and use them at night.

Re:And a related problem...

[hador_nyc (903322)]

Most solar thermal plants use some medium that the sunlight heats up. That medium is pumped close to the bottom of a water tank to generate your steam. The thing is that the sun heats up the stuff a lot, and you can store that medium in a well insulated tank. You can then pump it from that storage tank to the boiler after the sun goes down. Even the early versions setup in California in the 70s did this, and that plant is still running today; albeit with some upgrades. Beyond that, as another commenter pointed out, using some electricity to electrolysize(sp?) water into hydrogen to be burned in an ICE or better yet used in a fuel cell would get you power after hours just fine.

Re:And a related problem...

[B'Trey (111263)]

You know, sometimes it helps to RTFA. One of the specific advantages of this type of system is that the energy of the sun is not directly converted to electricity, as it is with solar cells. Rather, the energy is used in the form of heat, which in turn is used (via heating a fluid) to drive a generator. That means that you don't need to store electricity - you need to store heat so that the heat can be used to drive the generator during times when the sun is not available. The article specifically mentions using oil or molten salt to store the heat. Heat up oil or molten salt, store it in well insulated containers, and it will stay hot for a very long time. When you need it, you run the hot oil or salt through a heat exchanger, extract the heat and generate more electricity - all while the sun is on the other side of the planet.

Re:And a related problem...

[hador_nyc (903322)]

In other words, NYC is "solving" the "problem" of electricity wasted into heat (by resistance) by wasting a ton of electricity running a gigantic fucking A/C unit 24/7... which coincidentally, is just a heat pump. Is it just me, or is this really silly to start with?

You might think so until you consider some details I didn't mention. The amount of energy wasted on cooling the superconductor is significantly less than the amount of energy lost in transmitting the power. Proper insulation does help, along with the fact that we are talking about a few limited, but VERY LARGE underground wires. In a single wire in your house, not that much power is wasted say heating up the wire that say supplies your tv with power. Touch it, it's not warm. The problem is when you try to send enough power for say Manhattan Island where you have roughly 10 million people at work during the day. Then you are sending A LOT of current, and it's the current that heats the wire. That same copper in your tv power cord ain't that good when you put a lot of power in it, and your transmission losses get huge. By cooling a special metal turning it into a superconductor, you eliminate those losses. Thus by spending a bit more energy on cooling, you save a lot more overall by using the material without resistance.

Read up on power losses on high power transmission lines and superconductors; then you'll understand how they make sense in limited installations.

Re:Hmmm..

[Noryungi (70322)]

Of course, it begs the question: How much of our current resources will it take to create/maintain these plants?

Of course, if you had read the article, you'd know that these solar plants use no special material, except aluminium. Building and maintaining these thermal solar plants would probably cost a lot less than, say, building equivalent nuclear plants. And, to stay with this example, it would last longer and produce zero radioactive materials.

They should continue, "unfortunately, there are a fair amount of countries that don't have access to the sun. "

Which is a pretty ridiculous argument: by definition, all nations and all continents on this earth have access to the sun, even Antarctica. Some nations, due to their geographic position on the globe, simply have better "sunlight" than others. Event then, solar energy is available pretty much all around the world. For instance, one of the most important country in Europe for solar energy is Germany, which is not especially noted for its warm climate...

Before criticizing that type of technology, you really should read the article, you know. You might learn a thing or two.

Re:Hmmm..

[BVis (267028)]

But then you get into issues of power storage which we don't need to go into here and now.

Why not?

(At least these designs have the advantage that some of them are decently efficient in partial-sun situations; solar panels won't do this until another generation or so, they don't produce good current in even partial shade.)

Ah, you're thinking of photovoltaics, which the technology in question is NOT.

Nuclear is not the magic bullet you seem to think it is. There's still a few major issues I see with nuclear:

* Waste that is toxic for hundreds of thousands of years
* The profit motive leading to corners being cut and safety being a casualty
* NIMBY (not in my back yard)
* Security - these plants are prime targets for terrorism

I know that other countries have made nuclear work (France is the most cited example.) However, those countries have been able to regulate the plants more closely without conservatives jumping all over their governments for 'promoting socialism' and 'over-regulation'. Our plants are (and would be) operated by for-profit companies. More corners being cut = more profit, so you better believe they'll cut those corners.

Re:Hmmm..

[BlueParrot (965239)]

* Waste that is toxic for hundreds of thousands of years

If you reprocess it and burn the actinides it is 300 years for uranium ore levels of radioactivity. Besides, many chemicals we tolerate in other energy systems ( such as photovoltaics ) are toxic indefinitely ( Lithium, Arsenide, Gallium ). If you can tolerate photovoltaics or the molten salts used in solar thermal plants, then nuclear waste is not a problem.

* The profit motive leading to corners being cut and safety being a casualty

Argument by fear. In the entire history of civilian nuclear power in the US there has been one major accident which didn't kill anyone, this is far better than virtually every other industry in the country. If you were to apply the same irrational argument to other parts of the infrastructure society would grind to a halt.

* NIMBY (not in my back yard)

This is a problem with all energy generation and not specific to nuclear. It applies just as well to windmills and solar as it does to nuclear plants. Furthermore this is a legislative problem, not a technical one.

* Security - these plants are prime targets for terrorism

Not really, the plants are well guarded and the containment structures are designed to survive a direct hit by a large airliner. An attack that would be a danger to a nuclear power plant would likely cause much more damage if directed towards an urban area or other piece of infrastructure ( such as a train station or airport ). Furthermore if terrorist attacks are an issue then a few nuclear power plants are relatively easy to guard and difficult to attack. It is also unlikely a terrorist organization that had the ability to launch a sufficiently fierce attack would pick a nuclear power plant as a target since there are far more vulnerable sites available.

Re:Hmmm..

[dave420 (699308)]

With Pebble Bed reactors [wikipedia.org], nuclear power has a great future:

1. Yes, but it's easy to store pebbles (they're sealed in graphite, waterproof, and can just be loaded into barrels and put underground. They're also rather small (the size of a tennis ball).
2. Pebble Bed reactors can't melt down. If they get too hot, they generate less heat, resulting in an abandoned reaction stabilising long before thermal damage can occur in the containment
3. Ignorance will always be a problem :)
4. Hardly. The level of security at nuclear power plants is ridiculously off the scale. Also, with pebble bed reactors, the pebbles are practically useless for making weapons.

Pebble bed reactors seem to be the way forward. I suggest reading about them to see their benefits. It's interesting stuff.

Re:Hmmm..

[MrNaz (730548)]

Is there enough material on the face of the earth to construct a Dyson sphere? Oh, and just to ask that question, I had to dig through three layers of ridiculousness. Are you sure you're not after a sci-fi forum?

Re:Hmmm..

[mcvos (645701)]

The problem with this plan is that it doesn't scale out.

If you're worried about scaling, you should be a fan of solar power. It scales better than just about anything else, except possibly hydrogen fusion and zero-point energy, neither of which seem to be very viable in the near (or even distant) future.

It's subject to the Windmill effect, where it's contesting with other uses for land, and eventually, it will be a source of clutter on the landscape.

Windmills don't actually use all that much land. A single windmill produces quite a decent amount of power for its footprint, and is small enough to place on dikes, next to roads, or on off-shore platforms.

As for these big mirrors, deserts have plenty of empty space, and could probably use a bit if shade. In inhabited areas this is going to be a bigger problem. There, solar cells are probably easier: simply cover every roof with them, and you've got plenty of energy without sacrifing any space.

Turns out wikipedia even has a page about solar shingles [wikipedia.org].

Re:Hmmm..

[hey! (33014)]

It's well worth examining here what "begs the question" means in a technical sense -- and not as a usage Nazi. I understand that most people mean "leads to the question" when they say "beg the question."

"Begging the question" is to ask a question which only makes sense to ask after certain other questions have been answered. The classic example is, "have you stopped beating your wife?" You cannot expect a meaningful answer to that question unless you have established that the person being asked has, at some time in the past, beat his wife. It's not valid to ask the first question until the second has been dealt with.

In this case, the argument is that plants such as this could produce a given amount of energy does not beg the question of the resources needed to create or maintain them. It leads to that question, but does not beg that question. If we were, on the other hand, to ask the questions in reverse order, we would be begging the question. It makes no sense to consider asking how many of our current resources will will apply to these plants until we have answered how many of our current resources these plants will replace.

Furthermore, "How much of our current resources will it take to create/maintain these plants?" is a kind of catch-all question. You aren't saying, "Well this stuff requires a million kilos of unobtainium per watt produced, wouldn't that be more expensive than oil over the next twenty years?" That would be a valid question.

Asked generically, your question amount to this:Wouldn't it be easier and cheaper just to go on as we have indefinitely? This indeeds begs a question, namely, which is can we?

Re:Hmmm..

[q-the-impaler (708563)]

They should continue, "unfortunately, there are a fair amount of countries that don't have access to the sun. "

If industrialized nations decreased the demand for oil, the price would decrease as well. This means cheaper oil for the solar-challenged countries.

Re:What exactly is your point?

[Captain Hook (923766)]

Really? There are places on earth that have no access to the sun? Where?

Caves

Re:What exactly is your point?

[Rogerborg (306625)]

There are places on earth that have no access to the sun? Where?

Your mom's basement.

Re:What about storage and transmission?

[xaxa (988988)]

Has anyone even read the summary? It says plants. That means more than one.

Solar thermal plants covering the equivalent of a 92-by-92-mile square grid

There are some pictures of the German plant here [google.co.uk].