Dishing out power with a solar engine

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couple of points

Re nighttime storage issues etc. One factor is that surge capacity is most needed during summer daytime heat, exactly when solar power would be most available. Industrial scale solar generation could provide incremental power when it is most needed, thus reducing the need to build additional fossil fuel or nuclear plants.

Speaking of nukes, frgough wrote

"[...]I am much more excited about the portable nuclear power plants Japan is producing. A sealed reactor that provides several megawatts in a structure the size of a water tower and lasts for 20 years.

Now if we could just get rid of the nuclear hysteria holding this thing back..."

I thought this quote might be relevent, from

"This example, unfortunately, is not fictitious. In 1999, workers at the JCO Co. uranium processing plant in Tokaimura, Japan didn't follow proper procedures and mixed too much uranium -- 16 kilograms instead of the approved 2.4 -- with nitric acid in a storage tank and started a fission reaction that went temporarily out of control. All 310,000 residents in the city were evacuated, 21 people were sickened, and three workers were hospitalized. While this may have been an innocent accident, it probably was the result of a technique the JCO workers used to improve their efficiency."

(details verified on )

Problem is that catastrophic failures of nuclear power technology are greatly catastrophic over wide areas (anybody want some cheap real estate near Chernobyl?).

Rational fear of catastrophe is not hysteria.

Posted by: bruce_mcculley@...   Posted on: 10/25/06 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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