British nuclear future in crisis

[HMS Conqueror]

You asked me to "prove" something I never claimed to be true.

[Thanas]

They are all continental quasi-state cartels.

I am getting tired of you playing this evading game. Prove the above statement or you will suffer the consequences.

[HMS Conqueror]

they operate in an industry with artificial barriers to entry and are state subsidised

Your e-threats don't scare me, sir!

[Rabid]

they operate in an industry with artificial barriers to entry and are state subsidised

That's funny, 'cause it's the same for pretty much any other industries which offer a form of public service. I mean, how it's phrased it's true even for the food industry.

But anyway, the fact is that in the end, any power-utilities company is going to be subsidized by the government (in the form of tax-payer money), one way or another, unless you believe it's possible to have a 100% privately-owned & funded power-grid. How much they are subsidized is irrelevant.


... So, if I understand what is being said, the "debate" here is that for one reason or another companies (private or public here is irrelevant) don't want to invest in nuclear anymore, 'cause it isn't economically efficient ? Eh. People have just been pointing that for, what ? The past fifty years or so ?
Anyway, the thing is, the true debate isn't to know if nuclear is profitable or not. All estimates point to "it's a big money sinkhole that may create a lot of qualified jobs, but which cost even more than it payed in the long term". And as the reasoning behind CO2-free power-generation is a long-term one (aka "saving the planet"), you have to analyze what nuclear is worth in light of these objectives.


But, you know what ? Who even care ? The most environmentally-friendly power there is, is the one you don't have to produce in the first place.

For those who can read French, there's this association of experts, called NegaWatt, which published a study showing that France could totally phase out nuclear in less than fifty years by pursuing a policy of systematically reducing power consumptions wherever it made sense, and replacing (some) of the phased out nuclear reactors with a mix of different renewable energy sources.

Here's the summarized report, and here's their website.

[Zaune]

they operate in an industry with artificial barriers to entry and are state subsidised

Your e-threats don't scare me, sir!

209 posts and you're not scared of him yet? I'm not sure if I should be impressed or appalled.

[HMS Conqueror]

they operate in an industry with artificial barriers to entry and are state subsidised

That's funny, 'cause it's the same for pretty much any other industries which offer a form of public service.

I choose the clothing industry.

NB: I wasn't even criticising the practice in this instance (though I do not approve of it).

But, you know what ? Who even care ? The most environmentally-friendly power there is, is the one you don't have to produce in the first place.For those who can read French, there's this association of experts, called NegaWatt, which published a study showing that France could totally phase out nuclear in less than fifty years by pursuing a policy of systematically reducing power consumptions wherever it made sense, and replacing (some) of the phased out nuclear reactors with a mix of different renewable energy sources.

France can't cut its electricity consumption by 80% without seriously reducing its standard of living. If the proposal is to replace nuclear with diffuse renewables, then you have to justify why. Those sources don't produce less carbon dioxide, but cost far more.

Im really just baffled by such effort put into such a worthless proposal. French electricity is already carbon neutral. It is literally the last thing that would need any changes.

[Pendleton]

I don't think Germany has to worry about nukes being entirely unprofitable, safe or publicly acceptable next to their alternatives People have heard the "too cheap to meter" argument since the '50s. No one buys that lie any more, and that's not even the biggest image problem with nuclear these days.

In any case, centralised grid networks are not the answer. Decentralisation has far more merit, especially when you consider more unique problems, such as the IEEE's paper looking into how another Carrington event would affect our modern grids.

[Rabid]

The proposal isn't to reduce France's energetic consumption by 80%, but more to reduce it by roughly a half - and it count ALL primary energy consumptions (transport, heating & petrochemical industry included). In this light, it's a fairly reasonable goal to set on a 50 years timescale.

And as for renewable costing more than Nuclear or other fossil fuels... Gawd, who the fuck even cares ? Seriously, if they weren't costly, we wouldn't have bothered with fossil fuels in the first place. That's self-evident.

People just have to get into their thick heads that energy prices will continue to rise, and learn to do better with less. If the price of the MWh double, why, just use half the same amount of energy !

Finance R&D, subsidize those bastards, do what it takes !

Fusion, if it is ever viable, isn't going to solve all of our problems. It's only ever going to be another piece of the puzzle.


In the end, I'm sure of one thing : The problem won't be solved if you think of it purely in economic terms, and all the more so if you place it in the hands of a private sector which is by design made to care only about making money.

[KhorneFlakes]

Or better yet: Instead of just cutting emissions, switch to things that don't emit as much. Like hydrogen engines for vehicles, and setting up nuclear power plants instead of chopping down shit to make room for wind farms and solar power.

Oh, and actually stick the solar power in SPAAAAAACE. Not on the ground. The ground, for the most part, is generally a stupid place to put solar collectors.

[bobalot]

None of the companies referenced are British. They are all continental quasi-state cartels. Not that I think that is a big problem here, it isn't.

As for the railways; the first thing the private sector did was build them. But perhaps you mean a more recent offence?

• That graph does not prove that the privatisation of British Rail was a success. All it shows is that passenger journey's increased.
• It also shows that between 1955 and 1975 (approximately) passenger numbers decreased. The coinicides with the implementation of the Beeching report, which closed approximately a third of the network. The closures came to an end when the 1970's oil crisis hit and the need for a energy efficient mass public transport system became obvious (As a historical note, in hindsight these closures were considered to be short sighted as many of the stations and routes that were closed acted as feeder lines into the main lines. It also crippled the ability of freight operators to deliver their goods "door to door"). This period also coincides with increased private vehicle ownership and use.
• The massive drop after WWII (and before nationalisation) can be attributed to the ending of WW2, where regulation regarding private vehicles (Petrol rationing, etc) was loosened.

These passenger journey increases could have been achieved under public administration. You need to prove that the cost per passenger journey has remained stable or decreased you show that privatisation was a success.

Then there is the disaster that was RailTrack, the private company that "maintained" the rail infrastructure. It turned out that it didn't properly maintain the infrastructure at all.

It was the Hatfield crash on 17 October 2000 that proved to be the defining moment in Railtrack's collapse.[13] The subsequent major repairs undertaken across the whole British rail network are estimated to have cost in the order of £580 million. According to Christian Wolmar, author of On the Wrong Line, the Railtrack board panicked in the wake of Hatfield.[14] Because most of the engineering skill of British Rail had been sold off into the maintenance and renewal companies, Railtrack had no idea how many Hatfields were waiting to happen, nor did they have any way of assessing the consequence of the speed restrictions they were ordering - restrictions that brought the railway network to all but a standstill

Source

The government report into the British Railway system by Roy McNulty identified a 30%-40% "efficiency gap" with the railways of neighbouring countries (whose passenger railways are largely publicly operated). On top of that, a recent report indicates that the Rail system by Just ecomonics in the UK performs poorly when compared to the rest of Europe.

These reports indicate that privatisation has not been a great "success". I'm not sure that there is convincing evidence that there has been an efficiency improvement. The travelling public certainly haven't benefited in terms of fares. They have some of the most expensive fares in Europe.

[HMS Conqueror]

I don't think Germany has to worry about nukes being entirely unprofitable, safe or publicly acceptable next to their alternatives People have heard the "too cheap to meter" argument since the '50s. No one buys that lie any more, and that's not even the biggest image problem with nuclear these days.

In any case, centralised grid networks are not the answer. Decentralisation has far more merit, especially when you consider more unique problems, such as the IEEE's paper looking into how another Carrington event would affect our modern grids.

Nukes will be more expensive than Germany's coal grid. About 10-20%. Solar is 1,000% more expensive.

Centralisation is more efficient. idk where this idea came from that diffuse industry is better. Do you think steel production would be more efficient if done in local kilns in each village, or centrally in a huge blast furnace?

And as for renewable costing more than Nuclear or other fossil fuels... Gawd, who the fuck even cares ?

Your parents, or whoever else pays your electricity bill. More widely, everyone who doesn't want to live in a world where electricity is a luxury good only affordable by the wealthy.

We should adopt the solutions that are the most cost effective, not randomly, nor based on someone's silly back-to-nature ideology.

And nuclear isn't a fossil fuel.

Or better yet: Instead of just cutting emissions, switch to things that don't emit as much.

If you think for a moment you should see what is wrong with this statement.

[Alkaloid]

Your parents, or whoever else pays your electricity bill. More widely, everyone who doesn't want to live in a world where electricity is a luxury good only affordable by the wealthy.

We should adopt the solutions that are the most cost effective, not randomly, nor based on someone's silly back-to-nature ideology.

And nuclear isn't a fossil fuel.

It has most of the same problems as fossil fuels, namely generating power from it produces a by product we really don't want, and it is a finite resource. The wast problem will be less of an issue than fossil fuels at least short term because we understand the dangers and already take steps to reduce them, but if we don't take steps to develop renewables until we can actually run the world on them and just switch to nuclear all that will happen is this debate gets put off another hundred years until people start predicting peak uranium or something similar. You got stuck into Tanner upthread about throwing his hands in the air and proclaiming it all too hard because nuclear is more expensive, but you are doing exactly the same thing. Simple fact is that the last 30 or so years we have been neglecting development of renewables, at some point we will have to catch up, and it will be expensive to do. So, do we bite the bullet now, when we still have two relatively cheap and reliable power sources we can fall back on, or do we do it when we have nothing to fall back on at all if we screw it up?

[Aharon]

@HMS Conqueror

Earlier in this thread, you asked what Germany plans to do about intermittency. Obviously, the problem isn't solved yet, but the government has taken a number of steps that are sound and lead in the right direction.


Here's the link to the german concept: link, actual goals/measures start at bulltet point 11..

Of those ideas, several points are already realized, others still in progress. You'll note that I didn't comment, but only shortly summarized the last 15 bullet points, if you're interested in discussing them, I could try and make the list more complete.

11. The new RE-Law strongly incentivises market- and system integration.
12. There was a moderate rise in the REL-Levy from 3,53 to 3,592 ct/kWh.
13. Subsidies for PV were cut even further than originally planned.
Market- and flexibility rewards are a suitable incentive.
14. Concerning lesser consumption: There are incentives for enterprises to invest in energy efficient equipment, i.e. for A/C.
15. The market transparency control doesn't exist yet (http://www.bmwi.de/BMWi/Navigation/Pres ... 83422.html).
15. Don't know anything about this.
16. Program still exists, exact conditions: credit with very low interest rates and a 3-year grace period (source)
17. New construction planning law hasn't happened yet, to my knowledge.
18. Initiative exists and makes progress (http://www.erneuerbare-energien.de/file ... l_5_bf.pdf)
19. Grid development acceleration act seems to have been enacted (http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/bunde ... gesamt.pdf)
20. Energy industry act was changed to strengthen the foundations for intelligent grids and stores (http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/bunde ... gesamt.pdf)
21. Energy Research Program decided on, new focus on grid and storage (http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/bunde ... gesamt.pdf)
22. Faster construction of gas and coal plants, 10 GW of coal and gas plant still 2020. I didn’t find information wether the planning acceleration act already passed.
23. flexible and efficient plants
24. More efficient use of CHP subsidies, new CHP act (http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/bunde ... gesamt.pdf)
25. more efficient buildings
26. more money for building rehabilitation
27. schedule for building rehabilitation
28. change of procurement ordinance to include energy efficiency as a criterion.
29. energy efficiency measurements in all of europe
30. new mobility and fuel strategy
31. find new final disposal place for nuclear waste, deconstruction of the Asse II disposal
32. no pro-nuclear change in policies, monitoring.
33. Monitoring by several institutions
34. tasks of different ministries
35. Improving safety of existing nuclear plants in europe and worldwide
36. intelligent grids.
37. Strategies for more energy efficiency
38. stronger competition within energy sector


@cost
I don't understand your focus on cost. Energy is not a luxury good. A four-person household needs about 5.000 kWh electricity a year. At 20 ct/kWh, that's about 1.000€ a year, less than 100€ a month. Compare that to the middle income in germany in 2009, which was 1311 € netto (http://www.diw.de/documents/publikation ... 0-24-1.pdf table on page 4).
Sure, it's a relatively big chunk of costs - but it's not something you can't afford with middle-income.

[Thanas]

they operate in an industry with artificial barriers to entry and are state subsidised

Your e-threats don't scare me, sir!

Last warning. Provide proof of that or I will proceed to ban you for being too stupid to read the rules of this boad.

[HMS Conqueror]

It has most of the same problems as fossil fuels, namely generating power from it produces a by product we really don't want, and it is a finite resource. The wast problem will be less of an issue than fossil fuels at least short term because we understand the dangers and already take steps to reduce them, but if we don't take steps to develop renewables until we can actually run the world on them and just switch to nuclear all that will happen is this debate gets put off another hundred years until people start predicting peak uranium or something similar. You got stuck into Tanner upthread about throwing his hands in the air and proclaiming it all too hard because nuclear is more expensive, but you are doing exactly the same thing. Simple fact is that the last 30 or so years we have been neglecting development of renewables, at some point we will have to catch up, and it will be expensive to do. So, do we bite the bullet now, when we still have two relatively cheap and reliable power sources we can fall back on, or do we do it when we have nothing to fall back on at all if we screw it up?

1. Putting the debate off 100 year is fine. Except hydro which is pretty much already maximally exploited, no power source we build now will last 100 years, including renewables (which are not really renewable - the plant is the fuel).

2. Fission fuel with breeders will last >10,000 years, which is too long to worry about in terms of our our piddling current technological capabilities.

3. I don't doubt a renewable grid could be built in terms of raw possibility. But why? It offers no advantage over nuclear and a lot of disadvantages.

4. I doubt renewables will ever be a major grid component. Possibly solar in the very long term. But nuclear fusion is showing greater improvement than the mass energy storage technologies needed to really make solar work.

Aharon: I don't mean a wall of politicians' vague "invest more money in nice things!", I mean how technically are you going to do it, ideally in 1 paragraph?

The only really satisfactory way is to store a huge amount of energy - and thats a big unsolved fundamental physics problem. At the moment it imposes unreasonably huge costs.

And you don't think an equiv. 10% drop in salary is significant? That's a greater standard of living drop than that caused by the recession. And that being for people on "middle incomes", not the poor.

Thanas: That they're subsidised is evident from the thread where subsidies for, eg. renewables generation have been discussed extensively. That there are artificial barriers to entry for opening a power plant is surely not in doubt? If you still can't think of a way to continue with your random nitpick I am sure that banning me will make you right

[Aharon]

Aharon: I don't mean a wall of politicians' vague "invest more money in nice things!", I mean how technically are you going to do it, ideally in 1 paragraph?

The only really satisfactory way is to store a huge amount of energy - and thats a big unsolved fundamental physics problem. At the moment it imposes unreasonably huge costs.

And you don't think an equiv. 10% drop in salary is significant? That's a greater standard of living drop than that caused by the recession. And that being for people on "middle incomes", not the poor.

It is not a big unsolved fundamental physics problem, it's a political and economical problem. All you need is a bunch of pumped-storage power stations and other ways to store the energy from renewables. It's just currently more expensive, or not doable given current laws, so you need political incentives. And as I tried to make clear by showing the actual measurements taken. It's not vague promises, it's actual money being invested to further those goals.

@drop in salary
Well, I wouldn't consider a car a luxury good, either. Yet, it comes at more than four times that cost (According to Autokostencheck.de, a small car (Renault Twingo 1.2 Bivalent) will cost you 151€ a month for fuel and insurance, without paying of the credit. Assuming a price of 8.730 €, of which you pay 4.000 immediately, at an interest rate of 6% you have to add 291 € for financing the car).

[Thanas]

Thanas: That they're subsidised is evident from the thread where subsidies for, eg. renewables generation have been discussed extensively. That there are artificial barriers to entry for opening a power plant is surely not in doubt? If you still can't think of a way to continue with your random nitpick I am sure that banning me will make you right

Man. You sure take the shortbus to school, don't you? Just because parts of an operation are subsidized does not mean the nuclear power part is, nor does it make them "quasi state cartels". I want you to prove how they are cartels, and how they are quasi-state.

And while you are at it, name those "artificial barriers" as well.

[Simon_Jester]

HMS, something caught my eye, and I have to ask: how are giant wind farms or carpeting deserts with solar cells "back-to-nature" ideology? A wind farm is no more a natural artifact than a nuclear reactor. It requires less physics to understand, and that's about the only significant difference.

1. Putting the debate off 100 year is fine. Except hydro which is pretty much already maximally exploited, no power source we build now will last 100 years, including renewables (which are not really renewable - the plant is the fuel).

2. Fission fuel with breeders will last >10,000 years, which is too long to worry about in terms of our our piddling current technological capabilities.

3. I don't doubt a renewable grid could be built in terms of raw possibility. But why? It offers no advantage over nuclear and a lot of disadvantages.

It offers a few disadvantages, and a few advantages. In my opinion it balances out and we should probably build plenty of both, or a lot of whichever is permanently and consistently cheaper, and I'm not sure which that is.

4. I doubt renewables will ever be a major grid component. Possibly solar in the very long term. But nuclear fusion is showing greater improvement than the mass energy storage technologies needed to really make solar work.

I know some guys who work on fusion, guys with actual plasma physics degrees, and even they would laugh at this.

Here's the catch. Mass energy storage is (or can be) done by building machines that pick up heavy things, then put them down. This is not hard. It could be done using 19th century technology if you really wanted to. Pumping twenty tons of water up a twenty-meter height difference will store an amount of potential energy equal to one kilowatt-hour. You won't get all that energy back from the turbines when you pump it back down, of course, but that gets the general idea.

More advanced methods using things like molten salt are just icing on the cake (warning: do not add molten sodium icing to water cake. )

By contrast, fusion reactors are still many years of very hard, complicated work from becoming economical. It is possible, perhaps even likely, that we'll see working useful fusion reactors in our lifetime. But we won't see them soon, and probably not before 2035-2040 at the earliest. If you're talking about things that we can plan around now, and write checks and sign contracts to build, fusion is not in the cards.

Aharon: I don't mean a wall of politicians' vague "invest more money in nice things!", I mean how technically are you going to do it, ideally in 1 paragraph?

The only really satisfactory way is to store a huge amount of energy - and thats a big unsolved fundamental physics problem.

You haven't even done Wikipedia-level research on this, have you? It's all bluster. "Pick up heavy things, then put them down" is not a big unsolved fundamental physics problem.

And you don't think an equiv. 10% drop in salary is significant? That's a greater standard of living drop than that caused by the recession. And that being for people on "middle incomes", not the poor.

That 10% income has been spent for a long time, so it doesn't cause a new change in disposable income the way the recession did. Unlike the recession, it is evenly distributed: people who get fired from their jobs suffer a 100% loss of income all at once, but nobody needs to randomly spend 100% of their income on their electric bill for no reason.

There is a huge difference between paying your electric bill and the decline in standard of living caused by a recession.

As to the poor, the poor usually live in smaller homes and own fewer appliances- they consume less electricity per capita, although the electric bill may still hit them somewhat harder than it does the middle class. I find it hard to believe you wouldn't accept this if we were talking about, say, food prices...

[Rabid]

@drop in salary
Well, I wouldn't consider a car a luxury good, either. Yet, it comes at more than four times that cost (According to Autokostencheck.de, a small car (Renault Twingo 1.2 Bivalent) will cost you 151€ a month for fuel and insurance, without paying of the credit. Assuming a price of 8.730 €, of which you pay 4.000 immediately, at an interest rate of 6% you have to add 291 € for financing the car).

Further, gasoline price is currently €1.65/L in france, and I fully expect it to reach €2/L by the end of the year (it's already the case in Italy, for example). It's likely by the end of next year gasoline will be at €2.3-2.5/L.

Now, let's imagine the following scenario for someone living 30 kilometers away from his job, and 10 kilometers away from the nearest supermarket. This is the reality of million and million of people here, who have been chased away from the cities because of the high real estate prices.

2 x 30 kilometers daily for job commute, 5 days a week ;
2 x 10 kilometers weekly for the trip to the supermarket ;
In four weeks, that does 1280 kilometers traveled. I'll be generous, and say in reality he traveled only 1000 kilometers.
With a mean consumption of 7 liter per hundred kilometer, this mean 70 liter of gasoline per four weeks.
At current gasoline prices (€1.65/L) this mean €115,5 in gas prices over the period.
With a gasoline price of €2/L, this would be €140.
With a gasoline price of €2.5/L, it's €175.

Say this guy touch €1900 net per month, this is already a big chunk of money he has to literally burn away...


What's my point ? My point is that energy IS costly. And I'm going to be thrown stone at for saying it, but that it IS a luxury. We have been blinded by the era of Cheap Oil to think that the current model of resource consumption was.. well, we didn't really think about the consequences, or how sustainable it could be.
We are all in agreement here, I believe, to say that something has to be done, and quickly, to steer us away from the wall we are running into. The only question at this point, is how we are going to do it.

Nuclear IS a possible answer. But it can't be the only one. It has shown its limits. And the Oil Era has shown us the dangers of becoming too reliant on a single source of energy.
I see you like thinking in economic terms, so picture this as diversifying your action port-folio to reduce investment risks.

The advantage of renewable over nuclear, from a sustainable development point of view, are numerous :

- First, it is decentralized. It is harder to take down a power grid relying primarily on decentralized power sources than it would be if it was based on a few huge centrals producing gigawatts of power. The downside is that such a grid may cost much than a centralized one to maintain - but we have already established that the end of Cheap Energy is over anyway, so we might as well bite the bullet and get over with it.
- Secondly, the energy can be produced with local resources, ending the dependency on foreign energy sources. I don't think I have to draw you a picture of what this would imply... The downside is that these new power sources still use resources (rare elements), for their construction, that might have to be imported (China, US, Peru & Bolivia, I'm looking at you). But it is only a one time investment, and with R&D and sensible recycling policies this foreign dependency can also be reduced.



Your main argument, Boat, is that Renewable is costly and has drawbacks. Well, Nuclear also has its drawbacks, doesn't it ?

You base your arguments on economic calculations, saying that in this frame of reference Nuclear beat Renewable hand down. Maybe.

However you fail to understand that Nuclear is dead. You can't build nuclear anymore. It had become difficult after Three Miles Island ; next to impossible after Tchernobyl. After Fukushima ?
Fission is dead.
Deal with it.


Now, until Fusion can come on-line, we have to deal with the realities of the ground : we're going to have to do renewable.

Hundreds of millions, billions are being invested as we speak on better, more economical wind turbines, solar generators.. ; more efficient power-storage solutions, etc...

Investing more in nuclear today would be uselessly splitting the few funds we have to invest into a dead end.
What's more, in the case of France, our reactors are too old, and we are going to have to spend more than a hundred billion euros in the next thirty years to dismantle the old reactors. Do you really think you can sell as "economical" an energy source like that ?
The private sector you so revere has very well understood the situation.

[Simon_Jester]

Personally, Rabid, I think nuclear is going to get a revival again in time: a decade or two, perhaps, but in time. This is mostly because fossil fuel power is becoming steadily more expensive and there is a price argument- China is still building nuclear plants, for example. Then again, China doesn't have to worry about public opinion very much, and their government has always been more oriented toward long-term planning and (I infer but cannot prove) willing to write off occasional industrial accidents as the cost of doing business than most of the Western democracies.

Building a lot of nuclear plants can actually be smart, if you're worried about energy infrastructure in 2040, willing to spend money accordingly, and don't insist on never, ever having a meltdown anywhere.

[Rabid]

I agree with you, S_J. Different calculus leads to different answers. But I don't think the West is going to get back to nuclear as a prime alternative to oil in the decades to come. This, is going to be the job of Renewable energies as far as I can tell.

[Rabid]

Edit : "[...] prime alternative to Oil, Coal & other fossil fuels [...]"

[Sky Captain]

- First, it is decentralized. It is harder to take down a power grid relying primarily on decentralized power sources than it would be if it was based on a few huge centrals producing gigawatts of power. The downside is that such a grid may cost much than a centralized one to maintain - but we have already established that the end of Cheap Energy is over anyway, so we might as well bite the bullet and get over with it.

I'm not sure mostly renewable energy powered grid always would be more decentralized than nuclear or fossil powered grid. It may be true in some areas which are lucky to have good wind and solar resources, but such locations aren't always where most power is needed. A renewable energy grid would benefit greatly from having long transmission lines to move power from areas with surplus resources to areas with low resources.
Consider the idea about placing solar power stations in Sahara and building transmission lines to power the European countries. If anything such grid would be more wulnerable than our existing grid. Blow up trans Mediterranean cables and you just cut off large portion of European electricity supply. Not to mention the whole being dependent on energy generated in unfriendly countries thing.

[Rabid]

I'm not a big fan of the EuroSaharan Solar Complex (whatever its real name is). For the reasons you gave.

I agree a renewable power grid might not be totally decentralized. That's not really reasonable to envision with today's technologies. But I think that's it's likely to be far more decentralized than what we have today (example : go to Germany, you're going to see solar panels on almost every houses [/hyperbole]).


But anyway, the report I cited earlier (NegaWatt) shows that France could have an almost totally renewable AND sitting-inside-its-borders power-grid in fifty years, with efforts done in parallel to reduce the total power-consumption of the country.



The main point of my rants is that as much as we have the technology to do Nuclear we already have the technology to do Renewable - maybe not at full scale, yet, but with the same kind of investment the pro-nuclear suggest for their own lobby, that wouldn't be a real problem to further debug the systems and have something workable in 5-10 years.

[Zaune]

...Consider the idea about placing solar power stations in Sahara and building transmission lines to power the European countries. If anything such grid would be more wulnerable than our existing grid. Blow up trans Mediterranean cables and you just cut off large portion of European electricity supply. Not to mention the whole being dependent on energy generated in unfriendly countries thing.

I don't think many advocates of renewable energy are really talking about that kind of project though, because in addition to the vulnerabilities you already mentioned there's considerable logistical problems involved in running a large-scale solar power plant in such a hostile region, not to mention the problem of transmission fall-off.

The main application of solar power that people are talking about right now is to carpet the roofs of existing buildings with solar panels and connect them to a power regulator that can draw on the grid if demand exceeds supply, and feed excess power back into the grid -for a corresponding rebate on one's electric bill- if supply exceeds demand. Panel technology is nowhere near efficient enough to guarantee self-sufficiency even for private homes, but it could certainly shoulder a large fraction of the burden of power generation without taking up any space or needing much infrastructure support.