Discussion: Solar Energy in America

I'll first correct a bit of misunderstanding, that might actually alarm you (I am personally of the opinion that spent fuel pool risk has not been taken seriously enough, with too much focus being on the reactor core). Spent fuel pools are generally outside of containment, in the reactor building (so at the same facility). Some reactors have moved some of their spent fuel to air cooled storage casks still on site. Harry Reid has blocked final disposal of nuclear waste at the Yucca Mountain site (which may not have been the best technical choice in the first place). Deep bore holes and geological salt deposits are popular choices among technical experts for final disposal of radioactive waste.

There is always a probability of failure for a great many sources of electricity and energy. Many of these failures can lead to large consequences for the public. The normal everyday manufacture of solar PV cells has a significant chemical danger to the public that is offloaded to superfund sites, or more frequently to the Chinese countryside. Failure of a superfund site to contain chemicals can lead to large scale poisoning of the population. Even a single facility of PV manufacturing has the danger of silane explosions and venting toxic gasses.

http://www.khq.com/story/18798212...moses-lake

Rooftop solar panels introduce increased fire risk to the community. Fires that can be catastrophic to the surrounding buildings and population.

The important thing is to balance the aggregate risk from each source of power. Nuclear is by far safer than fossil fuels which kill people on a daily basis, hydropower that leads to extremely deadly dam break scenarios, wind power which is more dangerous to maintain (though deaths to the public are rare, they have occurred due to ice throw accidents), and about on the same footing as solar power (though there isn't much data because so little power is produced by solar). Fly ash spills and increased asthma and lung cancer are the price we pay for using coal for 50% of our electricity, not to even mention global warming. Oil has oil spills plus again, the other known bad effects of fossil fuel air pollution.

I am for a good mix of power sources. I am for using renewable resources in a variety of applications (especially lower power and more remote locations). I just think building a base of nuclear power is the single best solution currently available for about 50-60% of all electricity usage. You can probably push renewables (including hydro) to 30% and another 10-20% of natural gas for peaking/close load following. I think that would provide the lowest combined economic, environmental, and social cost of electricity for hundreds of years.

(I am personally of the opinion that spent fuel pool risk has not been taken seriously enough, with too much focus being on the reactor core).

There is always a probability of failure for a great many sources of electricity and energy.
manufacture of solar PV cells has a significant chemical danger to the public

Rooftop solar panels introduce increased fire risk to the community.

Fossil fuels... kill people on a daily basis,
hydropower that leads to extremely deadly dam break scenarios

This will be my last post on this subject in this thread.

We all know that the probability of a nuclear failure is lower than with other energy sources, but the problem is that the cost of a nuclear failure can be immensely higher than failures of other energy sources. No other form of energy production can leave a city uninhabitable. No other form of energy can cause a mass evacuation, except maybe a dam break. But even after the worst dam break, people can recover. A nuclear accident can leave an area uninhabitable for very long periods of time... so much so, that it doesn't matter if it's ten or 100 times more safe, because a failure can be vastly more devastating.

But it is not vastly more devastating than the 60,000 estimated extra deaths per year thanks to coal. It simply isn't.

The risk is similar to the risk posed by a variety of chemical plants. The benefits are electricity rather than certain chemical products but the risk is similar in terms of permanent contamination leading to unlivable land.