Solar energy or nuclear power or ???

Nuclear energy is a very viable option. The only real downfall is that it is expensive to start and you have to dispose of the waste. It's really pretty safe now so....

Given the choice I'd rather have solar power. I think its a natural source that isn't utilized near as much as it could be. Although nuclear power sounds good, I'm like you-I'd wonder if there is a way that it could be used against us. Where I'm at, we don't have the choice of either.

SOLAR power is way way way way and a thousand times better then nuclear well for this great development and efforts of the government there i CONGRAGULATE you !!!!!soon u people will be in solar powered COUNTRY!!!! i sure hope this would come with a great positive effect on our ECOLOGY and most importantly GLOBAL WARMING this may help us in having a little more time before EARTH comes to its horrible FATE!!!!which is seen in the form of global warming or the gren house effect by the scientists who also Xpect to find a better safer home for humans in future!!!!

Nuclear power is bad for the environment where as solar power has no deadly by products and is a re-newable source.

I would much rather see renewable sources of energy over nuclear energy. But I can understand as to why some countries would prefer to use nuclear power. The sun and the wind are in my idea of the way to go!

definitely id go for solar power. here in our country it is the major power source for those living in the mountains or in the places that cant be reached by electric poles. the good thing about solar power is its renewable, wont pollute the environment. in contrast to nuclear power, you would to think on how to dispose the nuclear wastes wisely

SOLAR ENERGY Up to: Main Sustainability Page Up To: Energy Page This page will have my own opinions about solar energy, but I will gladly include references to other opinions. The applications of solar energy include powering earth satellites (successful), powering emergency telephones along highways (successful), heating water with rooftop installations (successful but at best marginally cost-effective where energy is cheap), electric power where grid energy is not available (apparently not cost-effective at present compared to diesel generators) and central station electric generation (not presently economical). Central station generation is the application that needs to be compared to present generation methods - burning coal, oil or natural gas or nuclear energy. We have a separate page on nuclear energy. Like nuclear energy, solar energy does not put CO2 into the atmosphere, and so needs to be considered if global warming has to be avoided. It has lots of supporters among those who oppose nuclear energy. There are many schemes for generating electricity from the sun. These include Photovoltaic cells. These are an attractive field of research, and have gradually been made more efficient and less costly. Power towers. Mirrors focus sunlight on a boiler, which generates steam and then electricity. Here's a Boeing power tower project. Burning biomass. This competes with other uses of agricultural land and requires more labor than present energy generation methods. My opinion is that except for special applications, solar energy is a resource and not a reserve, to use economic jargon. This means that our civilization would survive if we were dependent on solar energy, e.g. could not use nuclear energy. However, solar energy would be expensive enough to put nations that decided to depend on it alone at a serious economic disadvantage compared to nations that were not constrained to rely on it. Their citizens would be poorer. The basic cost problems with solar energy are High capital cost. This is probably not insuperable. The need to store energy, because of daily, hourly and weekly (from clouds) and seasonal availability. The need to transport the energy long distances. This might put cloudy countries at high latitudes at a severe economic disadvantage. Maintenance cost. One person, experienced in maintaining complex systems gave me an estimate of one percent a month, e.g. a system costing $40K costs $400 per mont to maintain. There will be more discussion of specific solar schemes on this page. Comments and suggestions to deal with particular issues are welcome. Solar Power Satellites Solar energy is more easily collected in space than on earth. The solar collectors can be permanently aimed at the sun, and there are no clouds. This has given rise to proposals for solar power satellites that would collect solar energy and beam it to earth using microwaves. The energy would be beamed to rectenna fields that would rectify the microwave beams and distribute the energy to users. Advocates of solar power satellites make quite favorable cost estimates, but others are more doubtful about the costs, especially launch and construction costs. The International Space Station will doubtless yield information about such costs. Here are some articles by advocates of solar power satellites. "Solar Power Satellites: An Idea Whose Time Has Come" by Seth Potter, New York University, "The World's Energy Future Belongs in Orbit" by Dr. Gerrard K. O'Neill, "Solar Power from Space" by Texas Space Grant Consortium. Another SPS advocacy site SPS2000 is a Japanese proposal for a small system in low earth orbit. Wind There is some recent optimism about wind power. Kenetech is said to be building wind turbines capable of generating electricity at 5 cents per kwh. (1997 note: Alas, Kenetech, said to be the leading builder of wind power systems, went bankrupt some time in 1995 or 1996). There was said to be a 500MW plant being built in Carbon County, Wyoming. Another significant build is said to be in the Guadaloupe mountains in West Texas. It will be interesting to see if the cost estimates hold up after the plants are built and if there are enough suitable sites to generate a substantial part of the country's electricity. (I'd change "said to" if I had links to references.) There is information about wind power and other forms of "renewable energy" at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. This laboratory hopes to demonstrate technology capable of 4 cents per kwh electricity by the year 2000. Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) has additional information. Here's a reference to some surveys on the public acceptablility of wind power. Here's a page Solar Energy by some enthusiasts. 1997 August 16: The San Jose Mercury has a story today datelined Washington about the U.S. solar energy industry. Here are some highlights: Sales last year amounted to $850 million. (This is less than half the cost of one 1,000 megawatt power plant.) The industry relies heavily on exports, and the Government wants to reduce that dependence. The U.S. Government has put $1.5 billion into solar research in the last 25 years. President Clinton announced a "million solar roofs initiative" intended to achieve that by 2010 - either photovoltaic or hot water heating. California will give $54 million in solar subsidies next year. 18 states require utilities to buy power from residents and small businesses at retail rates. This is a real racket, because the power is produced whenever the householder has it available rather than when the utility needs it. The effect will be to put peaks into the utility's power requirements curve. Of course, it won't matter if the amount of power put back into the utility's system is very small - which may be likely. Here's the last sentence of the article: But because the utility industry's power grid is so extensive, and its output so inexpensive, only about 30 percent of solar-power sales are within this country. For years to come, solar cells will probably be too expensive to compete directly with electricity from the power grid. Once an industry (or other activity) is created by subsidy, it is very hard to get it to stand on its own feet. It has lobbyists who influence Congressmen and other Government officials. The solar industry also has an ideologically motivated constituency. We are fortunate that its subsidy isn't much larger. You can download "A Consumer's Guide to Buying a Photovoltaic System" at http://www.doa.state.wi.us/depb/boe/fact_sheets/fact_sheets_view.asp?factid=22 I read the guide and it seems accurate to me. 1. Your photovoltaic electricity will cost you $.25 per kwh. 2. You don't pay property taxes on photovoltaic systems. This constitutes a subsidy. 3. In most of Wisconsin, the utility has to buy back your excess electricity at retail prices whenever you have an excess. In other places the utility only pays avoided cost, which may be as low as 1.5 cents per kwh. This is another subsidy, coming ultimately from the utility's other customers. 4. You can legally prevent your neighbors' trees from growing tall enough to shade your site. My impression is that the reader of the guide will have to be a reasonably wealthy enthusiast to do it on the basis of the information provided. It would be interesting to know how many systems there are in Wisconsin and whether installed systems continue to be used. There have been news stories early in 2001 about wind systems about to be built in Washington that would produce electricity at $.06 per kwh, later to be reduced to $.03 per kwh. However, at present the state of California is taking proposals for fixed price contracts to produce electricity, and apparently all the proposals being submitted are for natural gas powered plants. Up to: Main Sustainability page Send comments to mccarthy@stanford.edu. I sometimes make changes suggested in them. - John McCarthy The number of hits on this page since 1995 November 13.

I would like to see that solar, wind and hydropower become the major source of electricity in the world, but sadly when push comes to shove, governments will always go for the cheaper option with the highest results, irrespective of the possible repercussions for safety and the environment. I know that Australians are getting subsidised for installing solar power, is that true? I wish all governments will do that...

Solar power and wind power are the best. The only downside to them both is they cost allot to maintain and set up. But they don't cost nearly as much as a nuclear power plant does. I really don't understand why we are not currently using natural energy everywhere.

Honestly, I prefer solar power. While it is quite expensive initially, and doesn't pay off right away, it is much cleaner than any other source of energy. Check the website listed in my profile and you'll find some wonderful information in the solar power section. You will also find some good information in the nuclear power section as well. Good conversation is to be had on that site, so I'd hope you'd join it. Great information there.

solar energy..It is clean, safe and no pollution

solar powerand nuclear power will be come ultimate resource that will be used for the production of electricity and etc.... of course solar energy is the energy which is sufficient for charging solar batteries . notonly thatr butr it may be useful for all appliances which run on SOLAR POWER.

If there is an option i would definitely go for tapping the solar energy. But in the conditions where power demand is more than what solar power can supply, we have to look for other sources as well. Many other forms like win or tidal energy may be used. But in nuclear energy, the output power is extremly high which lures us to use it as an alternative source.

I am from Australia as well I live in New South Wales, and yes I heard this news from our Prime Minister, and I do not believe that anyone should have to power to do this. I agree to stay with Solar energy not nuclear power. So I solidly believe in Solar Energy.

i was more interested in solar power

Nuclear is very danger in futhure , if any leak in the plant means it damage the surrounding place also,for eg in Russia most of the Nuclear power plant are clso due to side effect

The Solar Power in a renewable resourse and is cheaper than the nuclear power ..... way cheaper ... and most of all it is very safe,,,, unlike the nuclear power plants.... but it is not widely practiced mainly because its outcome is not that much to that of the nuclear power ... energy can only be extracted on the day time and it also depends on the weather but the nuclear enery can be extracted at any time with huge and enormous amounts ... wich is later used in turning the turbines which are used to generate electricity thus it is more efficient but way dangerous as its reaction once started can never be ended (FISSION) and even if its going in loss it will have to keep running ...

wow...I wish solar energy was so diffuse in Italy, too.. I think we all have to take into greater consideration solar energy, or wind energy and all the other so called "good energy"...I think we don't use them as much as we could and I am sure it is all because of money and the power of oil company...those important groups are not willing to let governments develops systems using other than petrol...therefore I am sure we must ask for more investiment on solar energy or wind energy...but anyway we need more studies to be conducted over nuclear energy...we need to think about our future and if nuclear power can be under control, it will be very very useful..

I don't like nuclear power at all. It's has of lot of disadvantages: it takes about ten years to build a nuclear power plant and it costs very much; no assurancy company will assure a nucler power plant; nuclear waste is very toxic and it will for thousands of year; and more and more. According to me solar energy, together eolic and other forms of energy, is the future.

Eventhough the nuclear power seems so promising but it possess a greater risk for the citizin. We cannot prevent any accident that may occur. It would be better to go for the solar energy.