Cleared as a result of warning concerning the political nature of commenting on Communism.

It's not more expensive. Solar power, wave power, wind power etc. are all more expensive per kilowatt on average. As well, nuclear power is pretty stable when it comes to output, whereas solar and wave depends entirely on where you are, as the prices can fluctuate to X5 to even X20, from the graphs I've seen, just depending on what kind of geography you're dealing with.

__________________
There are few left who
Stare at the skies with wonder
Wishing to know more;
The clouds still drift by above
But the eyes below are blind.
--Laura Lundberg

Check out my writing, maybe.

I answered the comment by timb before seeing this post. I don't think it would be fair to hold me accountable.

To be fair, we all should have been. It was obviously going into politics.

__________________
There are few left who
Stare at the skies with wonder
Wishing to know more;
The clouds still drift by above
But the eyes below are blind.
--Laura Lundberg

Check out my writing, maybe.

When such comments I think they should be answered when the present erroneous information such as that statement did. I don't want to say more because I think I may have already stepped out of bounds with that one statement.

It's pretty clear then from this discussion that no one country is going to be leading the global economy in developing clean energy, as Obama seemed to suggest in the statments he made at MIT. There is an amazing variety of alternative and clean energy sources available to us already, and which one(s) work the best are going to depend to a very large extent on geographical location. I do agree with one of the posters in this thread, however, that political will to make these changes toward cleaner energy and more efficient use of energy is going to (continue to) be dysfunctional and evolving because as we've all seen, there are many entrenched interests that aren't quite ready to make the switch. I hope that statement isn't political. But when we think of how to best make the switchover from industrial age energy to technology age energy, that "P" word is one that is going to play a major role, IMO.

Energy transition involves moving from current systems to a low carbon future. In my opinion, use of algae for biofuel is a best option to retain existing infrastructure while sourcing power from the sun.

Abundant geographic locations are available in the world ocean and deserts to achieve this goal. Key issues include political stability and proximity logistics for inputs and outputs. The Gulf of Mexico and the North West Shelf of Western Australia are perfect locations to pilot ocean based algae production, bringing nutrient from deep water to the surface to mix with CO2 and algae to make biodiesel.

An area of five square kilometres could produce as much as 100,000 barrels of oil per year, using 1.4 megatonnes of carbon. At this rate, 3500 square kilometres of ocean could fix a gigatonne of CO2.

With current atmospheric load of 384 ppm CO2 = 2 trillion tons, a rough estimate with optimum yield is that converting one ppm of CO2 would require less than 20,000 square kilometres of algae, 0.005% of the size of the world ocean of 361,000,000 square kilometres.

South Australia uses windfarms located in the outback and windfarms located near population centers (well, population center, as there is only one). Because of Australia's large size and low population, there is no real shortage of suitable wind power sites, particularly in the southern part of the country.

There is good evidence that global warming will reduce rainfall in temperate areas such as the US and much of Australia. Australia has been suffering from massive drought and it is suspected that this could be a result of global warming. Australia's rainfall is also highly variable, so we can't be certain that the drop in rainfall wouldn't have happened anyway without global warming.

I can't say what effect global warming will have on winds, I'd guess that overall there would be a slight decrease as the poles warm more than the equator, but it's a complex subject that I don't know enough about.

If you look at the potential capacity of many low emission energy sources you'll see that it's quite large and that people won't need to reduce electricity use if they don't want to. If these sources of energy are cheaper than nuclear, then they will probably be used in preferance to nuclear.

The cost of new nuclear power is very high, and is high whether the new plants are in France, Finland or the United States. Here is a post I wrote in another thread in February:

The cost of an electricity source depends a lot on location and also grid characteristics. In a free electricity market, whichever generating capacity is cheapest for a particular region will typically be built.

yeah, perhaps this is true in Australia, but it is not true for the united States.

Comparing Australia and the USA, regarding costs of nuclear and non-nuclear energy options, both have access to a large adjacent shallow tropical sea with abundant nutrient and available CO2 suitable for algae biofuel production - the Gulf of Mexico and the North West Shelf. It would be great if Australia and the USA could cooperate to investigate methods for algae biofuel production at sea. This would be a more tangible energy technology outcome than most of the proposals on the table for the Copenhagen climate change summit.

And studies have shown that current power consumption levels cannot be met by alternative sources of energy.

I'm curious about those studies, because...really? It's ridiculous to say that current power consumption levels can't be met with alternative sources of energy--solar power alone falling on the Mojave Desert could meet global demand for energy, in principle.

Any study claiming that alternative sources of energy aren't enough must be making assumptions about how quickly/economically alternative power sources will be utilized. It takes time and resources to build solar power plants; it takes time and resources to build long distance high voltage DC lines.

Certainly one can reasonably argue that alternative energy sources can't be economically ramped up quickly enough to meet energy demand on some particular timescale...but the specifics will depend a lot on ones assumptions.

As for the political/economic viability/profitability of nuclear power in the U.S...I live in an energy industry state where the energy lobby pretty much has 100% political clout. From my perspective, the reason nuclear isn't going anywhere has NOTHING to do with the more or less powerless treehugger lobby. Just look at who's pushing nuclear. Is it the energy industry? No. They push the heck out of coal, natural gas, wind, hydro, and even solar...they are pushing for things that are PROFITABLE to them.

Do you really think that the same powerful energy industry that can push COAL plants across the country is weak and powerless to resist the mighty treehugger lobby when it comes to nuclear? I don't think so. I remember the energy industry ads in the 1980's touting the Riverbend nuclear power station...at that time they must have thought nuclear power was going to be profitable. But over the years, their interest in nuclear waned.

I think the bottom line is that the energy industry just isn't that excited about nuclear because it just isn't as profitable as the alternatives. And it has little/nothing to do with the treehuggers, because the treehuggers have never been more than a minor irritant to them before.

So who's pushing nuclear? As far as I can tell, it's mainly right wing politicians who like to use it as a political football. It makes them sound like they're more serious about energy independence than the other side, even though the energy industry itself doesn't really care.

US fuel consumption of one billion barrels of oil per year could be produced by algae in 20,000 square kilometres of ocean. For reference the Gulf of Mexico is 1.6 million square kilometres - 80 times bigger. A better site for ocean based algae biofuel production than the Gulf is the Pacific coast of Central America, utilising the big tides there. You say "studies have shown consumption levels cannot be met by alternative sources" but the reality is there is market failure regarding new technological innovation in energy supply. A joint Australia-US study of algae biofuel might overturn your conventional wisdom. As Jeffrey Sachs has argued, the Copenhagen Summit can most usefully address climate change by a focus on new technology.


ETA: Here is a sea map of the Gulf of Mexico. You could grow algae on the Florida or Texas or Mexico shallows, pumping nutrient up from either the middle of the Gulf or from the Caribbean using waterbags. Growing algae on 1% of the Gulf could have a marked effect to reduce water temperature, and so reduce hurricane intensity. This diagram of world tides shows why the Pacific Isthmus and especially North Australia are better sites to get tidal pumping.

I notice how you don't use your logic to explain how COAL manufacturers don't, you know, spend a lot to advertise for wind/solar energy.

Amazing how quickly the logic falls on its face. . .

I mean, seriously.

If Coal only cost about $20 (hypothetical), Nuclear $30, and Wind/Solar $100, then of course a lot of companies would go for coal, as it's the cheapest alternative to all three. Saying "They don't embrace nuclear, so that means nuclear is so expensive of all the choices!" is just plain wrong. According to all the arguments, currently fossil fuels are the cheapest alternative, but they also carry the greatest environmental cost. Meanwhile, the worst-case-scenario with Nuclear was an isolated incident where all controls were ignored, and graphite used, and all sorts of little things adding up to a huge accident. The second worst case scenario barely had any casualties.

I had all the documentation saved in regards to cost comparisons, but I'd have to find it again online, as my other two computers are currently kaput. I'm having little luck.

And this is wrong:

Even Barack Obama supports nuclear power (or he did when he was campaigning for office); he also states that we need more protections on it, but that nuclear power should be embraced. Not exclusively, mind, but no one's arguing that we should go "only" nuclear. Though I guess Barack is a hell of a right winger, neh?

But, you know, hey, we all need our scapegoats. "Right Wingers" makes a good one, no matter how representative of reality it is. . .

__________________
There are few left who
Stare at the skies with wonder
Wishing to know more;
The clouds still drift by above
But the eyes below are blind.
--Laura Lundberg

Check out my writing, maybe.

Define alternative.

How so?

Certainly there is a coal specific lobby, and their particular interests will of course be coal specific. That doesn't negate the fact that there are also plenty of other energy industry interests, including ones looking to make profits off of alternative energy technologies.
That's not what's happening, though. The energy industry isn't ONLY pushing coal, they're also pushing wind, natural gas, hydro, even some solar...basically, they're going for wherever they expect to make good profits.

If nuclear were so economically promising, then they'd be pushing harder for nuclear than those other alternatives.
Unfortunately, many studies are biased, flawed, and/or fraudulent when it comes to politically charged topics. Sometimes it's better to follow the money. People may say one thing in public, but when they put their money into the markets it will tend to go where they REALLY expect the viable profits to come from.
You say that as if you think it somehow contradicts what I was saying.

In order for your logical argument to hold any water at all, you would need to add the statement, "...And Barack Obama is representative of broad left wing support for nuclear power. Therefore it's not mainly right wing politicians who are pushing for nuclear power."

And so what even then? Even if there were broad support for nuclear power among left wing politicians, they're still politicians.

Obama still supports nuclear energy. As you'd expect, Obama gave a great speech at MIT. The text of his speech for anyone interested can be found at this link:

http://climateprogress.org/2009/10/2...-energy-jobs/#

I've seen a number of proposals and refinements for a big project for Solar in the Sahara with enough output to power all of Europe and Africa. This idea seems pretty workable to me, and economically feasible. That doesn't rule out other greenish more local ways of generating power (tides, wind, etc), but it is something that big industry and big investment are likely to support.

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Forming opinions as we speak

I was reading about the same project -- Solar in the Sahara -- and it looks like the direction that we need to go, IMO. Nuclear is a nasty business no matter how safe we can make those plants. Wind and hydro, perhaps even algae, are excellent fill-in-the gap strategies. But as the article I read stated, the amount of solar power falling on the earth in two weeks is more than the entire global population uses in a year -- paraphrased. Our clean, never diminishing (well, not for another few billion years or so) source of energy is there 24/7. We just need to figure out how to capture it. If we could put the existing energy companies into the driver's seat in capturing and converting that energy, then we could a) maintain employment stability, b) avoid dysfunctional political fighting and c) get out of this carbon-based energy system in the shortest possible time. Hey, here's a link to that Sahara Sun article I found, for anyone interested:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/...ahara-sun.html

And when it's dark?

The UK alone has a maximum typical demand of around 63GW. (This is going to be early evening, winter).

Let's assume that drops off as 63, 50, 40, 30, 20, then 10GW through the night till morning. A total of perhaps 250 Gigawatt Hours.

The largest capacity discreet battery I can find is 2,640 Whrs. We would need about 95 Million massive high capacity car batteries to run the UK through the night. Or 25 Dinorwig Pump-storage Power Stations ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinorwig_Power_Station ) which would have to be recharged during the day.

I just don't think it's practical to centralize solar like that. You end up with a VERY expensive transmission infrastructure that's only used 50% of the time. If you've only got a 50% duty cycle, then you want to minimize the infrastructure costs - i.e. make it local.

"stored heat at solar thermal plants can deliver electricity through the night," They say. Really? Add up all of Europes requirements, and we're looking at a TWHr over night. You can do that with stored heat? That's enough to evaporate 1.6 million tons of water. Where are you keeping it?

I still think that clean alternatives to the usual power stations will be required. Fission for now, fusion for later, geothermal, wind, tidal and wave as well. Meanwhile, top it up as best we can with local wind and solar.

Simple rule of thumb: if the energy source can be profitable, somebody is building it. So, since there will always be markets where solar is cheaper than nuclear or vice versa, no one source is ever going to provide all of our energy. Besides, there is no low-carbon energy source that we can build fast enough to be the exclusive answer to our energy needs. I've seen estimates that we'd have to ship 1200 wind turbines, 45 sqkm of solar per day, or one new reactor every 3 days for fourty years to replace all of our fossil fuels. (I'd quibble with the exact numbers on all three estimates, as they all depend heavily on highly variable factors). Some mixture of sources seems far more likely.

As for algae, ocean turbines, etc--even if theoretically viable they are all far far away from commercial development on a useful scale. There is a lot of engineering involved in going from a proof-of-concept to a mass-producible and reliable product. It has taken decades for wind turbines to get to the point where they are competitive--any new source has to go through the same learning curve. You also have to consider what technologies in their infancy today will be competing with later: much cheaper photovoltaics, mature wind turbine designs, Gen IV reactors, and the alien ZPM we are going to find buried in Antarctica.

I should also point out that the high cost of new nuclear in the west is largely a function of first-of-a-kind engineering costs, red tape, and decades of stagnation in the supply chain. If we were building even 5 a year, economy of scale would change everything.

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Do try not to take me too seriously.

You assume markets are efficient. However, energy markets suffer from corruption due to vested interests and lack of incentives for innovation and change. A shift to put more resources into research and development for energy alternatives could rapidly produce new sources, for example waterbags to grow algae for biofuel, that would change the situation for climate and energy.Yes, but no one has done the calculations for using waterbags at sea to grow algae. My very rough estimate is that US fuel supply could be delivered by 20,000 square kilometres, under 2% of the Gulf of Mexico, and the only material needed is polymer fabric.Your claim that algae is "far far away from commercial development" is baseless. The algae biofuel industry is expanding rapidly. Due to the first principles of high yield compared to other biofuels such as palm oil and corn, algae biofuel will be massive once simple technological constraints are addressed. The resources needed to address these constraints are small.

One thing that a lot of people miss is hydro (although hydro has a very substantial environmental impact). The various energy sources using waves or tides suffer from a fairly low density and will probably suffer badly from NIMBY, as is being seen with a wind project off Cape Cod, but they may have local uses. OTEC (Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion) is workable, and has been demonstrated, but it's pretty obvious that there are many places it won't work (like Peoria), and it does require a lot of up-front capital expenditures.

Of course, of the five listed, four have been demonstrated, the exception being fusion. Back when I was attending college, commercial fusion power was just around the corner. Back then NASA had just put people on the Moon, and poorly performing male college students could look forward to being required to wear camouflage pants. From what I've seen, commercial fusion power is still about thirty years away. Drat.

I think one thing that needs to be kept in mind is that EVERY energy technology has an environmental impact.

There is considerable evidence that wind turbines can result in bird and bat deaths, as well as other issues like noise (US governement website)

A lot of the photovoltaic materials (solar power) are toxic, or are made from toxic materials, and so there are concerns from the manufacturing process, and maybe eventually with disposal. They are also fairly energy intensive processes to make them (LINK).

I have not studied the various ones to know all the details. But life-cycle analysis is going to be critical to comparing the various systems. And even still, there will be tough choices to make, such as picking wind turbines that kill birds and bats, or hydroelectric dams that block salmon runs.

__________________
At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

One Earth, One Sky - IYA 2009
All moderation in purple

*SIGH* Don't forget to compare people who advocate more responsible behavior to hitler soon...

If a technology cannot compete under the current tax incentives, I'd argue it isn't ready for prime time. If a new clean energy technology cannot get venture capital funding or a research grant these days, it probably isn't worth investigating.

In any case, the point is irrelevant to algae biofuel, as there is considerable research being funded already. When and if the technology is ready, I'm sure there will be large scale adoption.

No, my claim is based on historical trends and R&D of similar technologies. Algae biofuel is in about the same position that Wind was in the mid 1980s--interesting technology that clearly shows promise but has a lot of R&D to go before it is competitive. Having a competitive technology then has to be followed up with a build up of manufacturing capacity and investment in infrastructure and O&M experience. There is a huge difference between a demonstration project and providing a measurable percentage of our energy needs. It isn't just a question of research funding, but actual maturity of the technology.

__________________
Do try not to take me too seriously.

__________________
At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

One Earth, One Sky - IYA 2009
All moderation in purple

You'll get no argument from me on any of those statements. There is, of course, the other issue in that hydropower is rather dependent on local topography, and in a lot of places there just aren't enough places left where it's worthwhile to put dams.

Transmission costs aren't trivial, either. Put a big solar farm in the Mojave (with all the concomitant environmental impacts, like killing significant amounts of the flora because the solar collectors will block the sunlight) and the electricity still has to get to where people are going to use it. That cost has to be included in the costs of building and maintaining the plant. I put a new GigaWatt (or so) plant in Waterford, CT (there are already two nuclear plants there; the third was decommissioned about a decade ago), and the distribution network is already present and paid for. No chance for putting a GW of solar or wind there; both are too diffuse.

The negative environmental impact of nuclear is exaggerated. After all, some of the drinking water in LA was supposedly more radioactive than the waste water (low-level radioactive waste) disposed of from Three Mile Island. Now, if only I can dig up the citation.