Oh you're talking about solar thermal plants and yeah they do show more promise and certainly should be pursued. Even in the new "Cosmos" series they were presented as a clean alternative future imagined, I presume, by Ann Druyan who wrote the show. Still you have to consider the amount of material used in building the installation and the energy used in mining, refining, and transporting each type of material. More energy is used in constructing and installing the mirrors, the buildings, the heat storage equipment, and the electrical generation plant. Gas and electricity from conventional sources are used in operating the plant. Decommissioning includes tearing down the plant and returning recyclable materials. This usually nets a negative energy cost. The bottom line is that plants will have an Energy Payback Time of 12.5 months.
Also they still need lots of ground area. A normal coal or nuclear plant produces 1,000 MW (which amounts about 100 homes), 20 times that of the parabolic mirrored (more expensive and harder to make) plant. 1,000 MW would require 40 km2, an area two-thirds the size of Manhattan Island in New York!
Nonetheless there have been dubious pronouncements that 9% of the area of Nevada could provide enough solar electricity to supply the entire USA. Still it's electricity is still more expensive then for conventional power.
And although it could work for US and some other countries like Mexico there are still lots of countries that it couldn't be comprehensible like Japan or most of Europe. There is even a company in Germany that is advertising the idea that 1% of Sahara under solar thermal plant could supply whole world with electricity. But how realistic is to haul electricity from Sahara to Japan or even Europe?
Also we constantly have to rely on Sun but sometimes stuff happens like volcanoes erupt that fill the atmosphere with dust and decrease the amount of rays that come to us. Now that didn't happened since 19th century but if you had society totally dependent on solar and something like this happened it certainly would not be pretty
So what makes fusion so much better then solar and other? Well you can build it practically inside of the big city because it's clean and safe. It doesn't exist yet but listen in this video what Michio Kaku says to those that are constantly saying "Fusion is decades away" (scroll to 1m36s)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gRnezJNFro
Achieving fusion energy is difficult, but the progress made in the past two decades has been remarkable. The physics issues are now understood well enough that serious engineering can begin. An Apollo 11-type program where we mobilize our scientific talent can bring fusion online in time to stabilize climate change before it is too late.
And when you talk about the cost consider that whole ITER costs like 1 month of war in Iraq and yet no one complains about it's cost that does not solve anything and yet fusion will solve oil dependency, CO2 problem, wars for oil and many more. I mean what is a greater danger death by terrorist or by global warming and pollution?
Also fusion technology would open outer space for us. Deuterium is five times as common on Mars as it is on Earth, and thus could provide a plentiful energy source to space pioneers possessing fusion technology. Fusion rockets could theoretically produce exhaust velocities of 8% or more the speed of light. Since rockets can be engineered to achieve about twice their exhaust velocity, such systems could make interstellar travel within a human lifetime possible.
Also they still need lots of ground area. A normal coal or nuclear plant produces 1,000 MW (which amounts about 100 homes), 20 times that of the parabolic mirrored (more expensive and harder to make) plant. 1,000 MW would require 40 km2, an area two-thirds the size of Manhattan Island in New York!
Nonetheless there have been dubious pronouncements that 9% of the area of Nevada could provide enough solar electricity to supply the entire USA. Still it's electricity is still more expensive then for conventional power.
And although it could work for US and some other countries like Mexico there are still lots of countries that it couldn't be comprehensible like Japan or most of Europe. There is even a company in Germany that is advertising the idea that 1% of Sahara under solar thermal plant could supply whole world with electricity. But how realistic is to haul electricity from Sahara to Japan or even Europe?
Also we constantly have to rely on Sun but sometimes stuff happens like volcanoes erupt that fill the atmosphere with dust and decrease the amount of rays that come to us. Now that didn't happened since 19th century but if you had society totally dependent on solar and something like this happened it certainly would not be pretty
So what makes fusion so much better then solar and other? Well you can build it practically inside of the big city because it's clean and safe. It doesn't exist yet but listen in this video what Michio Kaku says to those that are constantly saying "Fusion is decades away" (scroll to 1m36s)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gRnezJNFro
Achieving fusion energy is difficult, but the progress made in the past two decades has been remarkable. The physics issues are now understood well enough that serious engineering can begin. An Apollo 11-type program where we mobilize our scientific talent can bring fusion online in time to stabilize climate change before it is too late.
And when you talk about the cost consider that whole ITER costs like 1 month of war in Iraq and yet no one complains about it's cost that does not solve anything and yet fusion will solve oil dependency, CO2 problem, wars for oil and many more. I mean what is a greater danger death by terrorist or by global warming and pollution?
Also fusion technology would open outer space for us. Deuterium is five times as common on Mars as it is on Earth, and thus could provide a plentiful energy source to space pioneers possessing fusion technology. Fusion rockets could theoretically produce exhaust velocities of 8% or more the speed of light. Since rockets can be engineered to achieve about twice their exhaust velocity, such systems could make interstellar travel within a human lifetime possible.
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
