NationStates Jolt Archive

So, Yucca Mountain, which is not yet approved of as a site for waste, (and on several legal fronts is being opposed by the State of Nevada, and is opposed by 70% of their state) took tens of billions of dollars to research, create, etc. and decades legally to even bring it to the point it's at today.

The casks they are using to hold nuclear waste will last 100 years, while the waste itself will last at least 10,000 years (and as many as 240,000 years).

If it opens in 2010 (which would be an early date for it), it would be nearly full from existing waste already.

Yucca Mountain Capacity: 77,000 metric tons
Existing Commercial Nuclear Waste: 44,000 metric tons
Existing Weapons Related Nuclear Waste: 12,000 metric tons
Additional waste produced by 2010 (assuming NO expansion of Nuclear Power): 10,000 metric tons

Total waste by 2010: 66,000 metric tons
Yucca Mountain would be 86% full already from existing waste in the country. And, again, assuming NO expansion, would be filled entirely in 5.5 years. Billions in maintenance and guarding, etc.

And then we need a new Yucca Mountain all over again.

Personally I think they'd be better off dumping it into space.

Until someone wakes up to the long term environmental benefits of doing something like that, where else are we gonna put it?

You can't dump it at sea, the effects for fish populations and the like would be disastrous, so its gotta be burried somewhere...

It's too heavy to send into space. The costs would be prohibitive.

It's too heavy to send into space. The costs would be prohibitive.
Dump on the moon. I mean who lives there? Leave it in protective crates on the moon but leave it on the moon.
Granted its not going to help but its holds back the damage.

http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/jun99/928862930.Ph.r.html

We could recycle some of the nuclear waste and have less to bury...

Dump on the moon. I mean who lives there? Leave it in protective crates on the moon but leave it on the moon.
Granted its not going to help but its holds back the damage.
Once again, you have to lift hundreds of tons of waste into space. Also, if there is an accident you end up contaminating a large area with radioactive waste.

You can't send it in space. Even the largest rockets would have to take hundreds of thousands of trips to get it all up there. If not millions. Lol, think how much that will cost. Then think of all the rockets that will fail. Now, let's say one of twenty, which is still very generous, that's a lot of failures.

Wee, nuclear waste falling from the sky. That'll be fun. :sniper:

You can't send it in space. Even the largest rockets would have to take hundreds of thousands of trips to get it all up there. If not millions. Lol, think how much that will cost. Then think of all the rockets that will fail. Now, let's say one of twenty, which is still very generous, that's a lot of failures.

Wee, nuclear waste falling from the sky. That'll be fun. :sniper:
Only reason we have failed in past is Americans have got sloppy. The Challenger was known to fall apart in cold atmosphere and they launched in cold atmosphere.
So humans being lazy is trouble.

Only reason we have failed in past is Americans have got sloppy. The Challenger was known to fall apart in cold atmosphere and they launched in cold atmosphere.
So humans being lazy is trouble.
i THINK thats the point. we arent going to be able to totally eliminate human error. so yeah, radiation falling from the sky is inevitable if we try to send it to space

what do the europeans do with their nuclear waste?

http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/jun99/928862930.Ph.r.html

We could recycle some of the nuclear waste and have less to bury...

Doesn't that make the waste a hell of alot more radioactive though? Also, as I understand it, the cost of recycling nuclear waste is also quite expensive...

And yes, I understand the cost is prohibitive, but at the end of the day, isn't the cost to the environment going to be even more prohibitive?

As for what we Europeans do with our waste, well I can't speak for the continental Europeans, but I know that we used to recycle and then bury our nuclear waste. I am aware that many other nations also used our nuclear recycling facility sellafield to decomission their waste.

more info at: http://www.sellafield.com/

It currently cost something on the order of $20,000/kg to put something into LEO. That works out to $1.5 trillion to put the equivuilant amount of waste into LEO, which is why it is prohibitively expensive. (And note, putting it on the moon will cost many times more than that.)
As pointed out above, there is the danger. The shuttle lifts 28 tons, meaning 2750 launches. Even the heaviest launch vehicles (Energias and Saturn 5s) can put around 100 tons into LEO. That means 770+ trips. The shuttle has the lowest failure rate of any launch vehicle at 2%. That works out to 55 acidents. And even if we bring shuttle failure rates down to airline levels, there would be such a significant risk that even 1 failure would be simply unacceptable.

without a huge technological advancement, we really cant do much with the nuclear waste

We could build a huge cannon and blast several tons of waste into space with each shot. It would be pretty economical compared with modern rockets, and we don't have to worry about calculating the energy and trajectory to get it into LEO. Just blast it out fast enough to keep going away from earth.

We could build a huge cannon and blast several tons of waste into space with each shot. It would be pretty economical compared with modern rockets, and we don't have to worry about calculating the energy and trajectory to get it into LEO. Just blast it out fast enough to keep going away from earth.

Nope. Time, money, payload limits, and the unacceptable risk of launch failure still prohibit this.

Once again, you have to lift hundreds of tons of waste into space. Also, if there is an accident you end up contaminating a large area with radioactive waste.


I agree with him.

say we have a 99.9% success rate at launching waste into space or to the moon. we would be send hundreds of thousands of rockets into space, and if just 10 of those fail, theres a good chance that 3 or 4 will hit land and kill a lot of people. also take note that, the earth doesnt actually get bigger or smaller unless a meteorite or something hits the ground. we would essentialy be putting earth on small rockets and sending it into space.

solar and hydro electricity are possible and fairly affordable, why isnt this done?

few rich enough want to pay for it, and the ones who do are laughed at by other rich people (who generally vote for bush), end up feeling dumb, and forget about it

Lets just make it all into dirty bombs. That saves money and reduces the amount of nuclear waste!

I agree with him.

say we have a 99.9% success rate at launching waste into space or to the moon. we would be send hundreds of thousands of rockets into space, and if just 10 of those fail, theres a good chance that 3 or 4 will hit land and kill a lot of people. also take note that, the earth doesnt actually get bigger or smaller unless a meteorite or something hits the ground. we would essentialy be putting earth on small rockets and sending it into space.

solar and hydro electricity are possible and fairly affordable, why isnt this done?

Sort of. ;)
Re-read my above post. We could do it in under 1000 launches. But even the shuttle has a failure rate of 2%. Most other systems are between 5% and 15%. Crashing onto land isn't the risk (consider how many launches have done so to date...). The risk is spreading large amounts of radioactive and toxic waste 1500-11,500 tons, depending on the failure rates) over large areas.

Sort of. ;)
Re-read my above post. We could do it in under 1000 launches. But even the shuttle has a failure rate of 2%. Most other systems are between 5% and 15%. Crashing onto land isn't the risk (consider how many launches have done so to date...). The risk is spreading large amounts of radioactive and toxic waste 1500-11,500 tons, depending on the failure rates) over large areas.

Yes. The real risk isn't crashing back to land, but mid-air explosions.

If we're serious about getting off this rock and getting into space in any meaningful way we are going to have to develope a more cost efficient way of getting payloads and interplanetary vehicle parts into space. I still like the giant mag-lev/rail gun idea. Probably impossible, but I'm just spitballing ideas here folks. I'm not a freaking rocket scientist or anything.

Anyhow, once this has been built and the bugs are worked out you encase a ton or two at a time of the radioactive waste in a multi-layered container made out if the stuff they make the black boxes in airplanes out of (or something similarly strong) and shoot it up into orbit. If it doesn't make it all the way up, the multiple layered casing will protect it (and us) when it comes back down. Once it's up there you aim it in the general direction of the sun and scoot it on it's merry way for a date with our local nuclear furnace. If it hits Venus or Mercury, so what. And if it makes it close enough to the sun it will be pulled in the rest of the way. Hell, it'd burn up before it ever got there.

If we're serious about getting off this rock and getting into space in any meaningful way we are going to have to develope a more cost efficient way of getting payloads and interplanetary vehicle parts into space. I still like the giant mag-lev/rail gun idea. Probably impossible, but I'm just spitballing ideas here folks. I'm not a freaking rocket scientist or anything.

We're getting there as fast as we can.

Anyhow, once this has been built and the bugs are worked out you encase a ton or two at a time of the radioactive waste in a multi-layered container made out if the stuff they make the black boxes in airplanes out of (or something similarly strong) and shoot it up into orbit. If it doesn't make it all the way up, the multiple layered casing will protect it (and us) when it comes back down.

You mean good old .25 in. stainless steel?

That won't work, for the same reason we don't make aircaft out of the same material as black boxes.
See:
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a4_001
http://travel.howstuffworks.com/black-box.htm


Once it's up there you aim it in the general direction of the sun and scoot it on it's merry way for a date with our local nuclear furnace. If it hits Venus or Mercury, so what. And if it makes it close enough to the sun it will be pulled in the rest of the way. Hell, it'd burn up before it ever got there.

Essentially yes.

Sort of. ;)
Re-read my above post. We could do it in under 1000 launches. But even the shuttle has a failure rate of 2%. Most other systems are between 5% and 15%. Crashing onto land isn't the risk (consider how many launches have done so to date...). The risk is spreading large amounts of radioactive and toxic waste 1500-11,500 tons, depending on the failure rates) over large areas.

We could do it in under 1000 launches... right now but what about in 5 years, when we have more waste?

We could do it in under 1000 launches... right now but what about in 5 years, when we have more waste?

Going by the OP:

Yucca Mountain Capacity: 77,000 metric tons
Existing Commercial Nuclear Waste: 44,000 metric tons
Existing Weapons Related Nuclear Waste: 12,000 metric tons
Additional waste produced by 2010 (assuming NO expansion of Nuclear Power): 10,000 metric tons

Total waste by 2010: 66,000 metric tons

At 100 tons of payload per launch, that's 660 Energia payloads (assuming no protection) for the projected need 6 years from now. Even using the shuttle that would make 2358 launches. That's far below "hundreds of thousands".

Only reason we have failed in past is Americans have got sloppy. The Challenger was known to fall apart in cold atmosphere and they launched in cold atmosphere.
So humans being lazy is trouble.
]
Hmm. So the Russians never lost a rocket, and neither have the Europeans? Or the Japanese?

One of the biggest software screw-ups in history was the failure of an Ariane rocket.

It's a problem in complexity, not laziness. It is possible to build something that is too complex for humans to know all the possible interactions - and no matter how diligent they try to be, it's not possible to cover all possibilities.

The failure of the Ariane 5 Flight 501 failure can be traced to an unwillingness to write new software. They went with the software for the Ariane 4 in the new Ariane 5 rocket body.

Or, as the investigating team later held, "there was a definite risk in assuming that critical equipment such as the SRI had been validated by qualification on its own, or by previous use on Ariane 4."

Lazy French? I wouldn't characterize it as laziness. Lack of vision, an inability to correctly foresee all possible combinations of events, possibly.

And while they did know that cold was a potential problem for the Challenger, if you read the investigation you'll find that they didn't connect this with the booster seals before the accident - they knew there was burn through of the seals, but they had been designed to burn through in a limited manner, and everyone thought that the burn-through was within tolerable engineering limits.

Lazy Americans? I wouldn't characterize it as laziness. Lack of vision, an inability to correctly foresee all possible combinations of events, possibly.

Not to mention China, Brazil, and India.

The Chinese and USSR/Russian space programs make NASA look as safe as a church.
I belive the USSR saw the largest number of fatalities in a single accident (the 1960 Nedelin disaster at Baikonur, when a rocket exploded on the launch pad killing more than 100). The 1996 Long March crash officially killed 6, but I've heard rumors that the death toll may have actually been in the neighborhood of Nedelin...

For reference, on averagae the U.S. creates about 2,000 metric tons of waste per year.

I think a space program, at this point, has to be ruled out.

I did hear of this mixing process, where a mixture is like 20% waste and 80% soil, and extreme amounts of heat are added making the mixture solid, and then, the waste dies down after "only" 200 years. Will take a rediculous amount of energy and money, and waste will still last beyond our lifetimes, but I think that is the way.

And also, a rapid development of wind power, solar, further development of Hydroelectic (can increase it's capacity by 25%, around the world by MUCH more, like 200%), and also major development of tidal, wave, underwater current, and geothermal (geothermal especially out west) power.

Eventually we can phase out nuclear, but first, have to phase out fossil fuel oils (most finite obviously). Which means #1 on priority is cars being converted (our cars are almost entirely dependent upon fossil fuel while we get electricity for power plants from many different sources.) And then coal, because coal is worse on us than nuclear. Then finally (and still importantly because it's costly) nuclear can be phased out. I think nuclear should go, but not before the others.

It seems like any nuclear waste storage situation is in itself a problem it its expenses and safety and the fact that it will last tens to hundreds of thousands of years. The best way to avoid that, I beleive, is to stop/lessen our waste production.

For reference, on averagae the U.S. creates about 2,000 metric tons of waste per year.

I think a space program, at this point, has to be ruled out.

I did hear of this mixing process, where a mixture is like 20% waste and 80% soil, and extreme amounts of heat are added making the mixture solid, and then, the waste dies down after "only" 200 years. Will take a rediculous amount of energy and money, and waste will still last beyond our lifetimes, but I think that is the way.

And also, a rapid development of wind power, solar, further development of Hydroelectic (can increase it's capacity by 25%, around the world by MUCH more, like 200%), and also major development of tidal, wave, underwater current, and geothermal (geothermal especially out west) power.

Eventually we can phase out nuclear, but first, have to phase out fossil fuel oils (most finite obviously). Which means #1 on priority is cars being converted (our cars are almost entirely dependent upon fossil fuel while we get electricity for power plants from many different sources.) And then coal, because coal is worse on us than nuclear. Then finally (and still importantly because it's costly) nuclear can be phased out. I think nuclear should go, but not before the others.

It seems like any nuclear waste storage situation is in itself a problem it its expenses and safety and the fact that it will last tens to hundreds of thousands of years. The best way to avoid that, I beleive, is to stop/lessen our waste production.

Fossil fuels will drift out of use as they become more expensive and as other technologies become less expensive.
Wind power will never be a major power source.
Solar power has potential (especially in space based collectors), but currently way too unreliable and expensive.
Hydroelectric has such an environmental impact that I wouldn't advocate it's use.
Geothermal and ocean based technologies are good (and getting cheaper). Hydrogen and/or bio fuels (alcohol, methane, biodiesel) will compete with advanced batteries. Whichever is cheaper while providing enough power will win out.
Fission will be phased out in favor of fusion, once the technology is viable at lower costs. Fusion will be the greatest power source - low costs, low danger, and low wastes.
http://www.fusion.org.uk/susdev/environ.htm

(and on several legal fronts is being opposed by the State of Nevada, and is opposed by 70% of their state)

And they still voted for Bush...:confused:

Fossil fuels will drift out of use as they become more expensive and as other technologies become less expensive.
Wind power will never be a major power source.
Solar power has potential (especially in space based collectors), but currently way too unreliable and expensive.
Hydroelectric has such an environmental impact that I wouldn't advocate it's use.
Geothermal and ocean based technologies are good (and getting cheaper). Hydrogen and/or bio fuels (alcohol, methane, biodiesel) will compete with advanced batteries. Whichever is cheaper while providing enough power will win out.
Fission will be phased out in favor of fusion, once the technology is viable at lower costs. Fusion will be the greatest power source - low costs, low danger, and low wastes.
http://www.fusion.org.uk/susdev/environ.htm

I agree about fossil fuels.

Wind power actually does have a great chance at rising. It's already 6% of Germany's power and is supposed to rise to about a third by 2010, effectivley replacing their nuclear plants which shut down the same time. Wind power can produce from 17-39 times the energy that was put into making the tower (pouring the steel, etc.) compared to 11 times for coal and 16 times for nuclear. And the industry is expanding at a pace of 30% a year, unmatched by any other energy. There was a great study done called Wind Force 12 which I strongly reccomend, showing that wind is perfectly capable of being 12% of the world's power by 2020.

About solar power: it's too expensive in the U.S. However other countries (like Japan) that have to import their energy and pay a lot more for their power, can actually save money, right now, by using solar panels over conventional energies. Japan is actually the leading (per capita I think) user of solar panels in the world.

Geothermal has a LOT more developing it could do, and could be a major cog in our "new energies" solution. It's about as abundant and inexhaustable as solar power.

Tidal power itself is, to my knowledge, not as easy to get as the others. There exist only a few places with the right kind of bays, with narrow passages of land that can be dammed to harvest the power. But it should be used where possible.

Hydroelectric is bad for the fish, yes. Many declines in salmon populations etc around the country because of dams, but then again, only 3% of U.S. dams are hydroelectric. There are thousands of dams in New England that were built in the 1800's damaging rivers and fish populations that aren't even used for anything any more. Some have been removed, and it has been a proven way of restoring fish populations, so it would make more sense to go after those first, instead of dams millions depend on for power. But still, they are very damaging. I prefer HE dams to fossil fuels because they replace fossil pollution that could have been worse, and for that reason, they should continue to be developed to phase out fossil fuels, and then as we phase out nuclear. HE dams would come next, phase those out and restore our rivers and fish.

Fission will be better, but that is decades away. Not only because of cost, but because there hasn't even been an experiment with a net positive energy production yet. So its not just costs, because it hasn't yet produced for a net gain in power at any cost. But when it comes, it will be important.

I agree about fossil fuels.

Wind power actually does have a great chance at rising. It's already 6% of Germany's power and is supposed to rise to about a third by 2010, effectivley replacing their nuclear plants which shut down the same time. Wind power can produce from 17-39 times the energy that was put into making the tower (pouring the steel, etc.) compared to 11 times for coal and 16 times for nuclear. And the industry is expanding at a pace of 30% a year, unmatched by any other energy. There was a great study done called Wind Force 12 which I strongly reccomend, showing that wind is perfectly capable of being 12% of the world's power by 2020.

Yes, it's rising. But it's not going to be able to match what we need. It only accounts for about 0.4% of global electricity (or about .14% of global energy). And there are associated environmental problems (bird and bat kills, low frequency vibrations, and such) as well as space concerns.

About solar power: it's too expensive in the U.S. However other countries (like Japan) that have to import their energy and pay a lot more for their power, can actually save money, right now, by using solar panels over conventional energies. Japan is actually the leading (per capita I think) user of solar panels in the world.

It's expensive for a number of reasons.
I'm not sure about Japan. I've lived here nearly 14 years, and have traveled a fair bit. But I've never seen a solar panel. However NASDA is experementing with an SPS due to be launched in the next couple of years (http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/technology/nasda_solar_sats_011029.html).


Geothermal has a LOT more developing it could do, and could be a major cog in our "new energies" solution. It's about as abundant and inexhaustable as solar power.

Geothermal is still quite expensive, but is getting cheaper.

Tidal power itself is, to my knowledge, not as easy to get as the others. There exist only a few places with the right kind of bays, with narrow passages of land that can be dammed to harvest the power. But it should be used where possible.

OTEC (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_thermal_energy_conversion) power generation will be a big one, especially if global warming actually plays out (as it works off the temperature variations between surface and deep waters).
Tidal stream power and wave power are also under development.

Hydroelectric is bad for the fish, yes. Many declines in salmon populations etc around the country because of dams, but then again, only 3% of U.S. dams are hydroelectric. There are thousands of dams in New England that were built in the 1800's damaging rivers and fish populations that aren't even used for anything any more. Some have been removed, and it has been a proven way of restoring fish populations, so it would make more sense to go after those first, instead of dams millions depend on for power. But still, they are very damaging. I prefer HE dams to fossil fuels because they replace fossil pollution that could have been worse, and for that reason, they should continue to be developed to phase out fossil fuels, and then as we phase out nuclear. HE dams would come next, phase those out and restore our rivers and fish.

The damage from large HE dams (Hoover, Aswan, Three Gorges) goes way beyond fish populations.
Land immersion destroys local comunities, scenic spots, archeological and historical sites, and wildlife habitat.
The resevoirs created are rarely healthy ecosystems.
Furthermore, local climate changes (due to increases in local humidity and temperature) further damage the local ecosystem.
Agricultural and marine fisheries fertility are also damaged. For example, the phyto- and zooplankton blooms off the Levantine (associated with the Nile floods) have been disrupted since the construction of the Aswan High Dam.
(I'll leave aside issues of land seizures, forced resettlement, dessertification, and the whole self-defeating flood-control problem. In case you missed it, I have a strong visceral dislike for large scale hydroelectric power. ;))

Fission will be better, but that is decades away. Not only because of cost, but because there hasn't even been an experiment with a net positive energy production yet. So its not just costs, because it hasn't yet produced for a net gain in power at any cost. But when it comes, it will be important.

( ;) Fusion - fission's been around 50+ years ;))

Yes, it's rising. But it's not going to be able to match what we need. It only accounts for about 0.4% of global electricity (or about .14% of global energy). And there are associated environmental problems (bird and bat kills, low frequency vibrations, and such) as well as space concerns.

It's expensive for a number of reasons.
I'm not sure about Japan. I've lived here nearly 14 years, and have traveled a fair bit. But I've never seen a solar panel. However NASDA is experementing with an SPS due to be launched in the next couple of years (http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/technology/nasda_solar_sats_011029.html).

Geothermal is still quite expensive, but is getting cheaper.

OTEC (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_thermal_energy_conversion) power generation will be a big one, especially if global warming actually plays out (as it works off the temperature variations between surface and deep waters).
Tidal stream power and wave power are also under development.

The damage from large HE dams (Hoover, Aswan, Three Gorges) goes way beyond fish populations.
Land immersion destroys local comunities, scenic spots, archeological and historical sites, and wildlife habitat.
The resevoirs created are rarely healthy ecosystems.
Furthermore, local climate changes (due to increases in local humidity and temperature) further damage the local ecosystem.
Agricultural and marine fisheries fertility are also damaged. For example, the phyto- and zooplankton blooms off the Levantine (associated with the Nile floods) have been disrupted since the construction of the Aswan High Dam.
(I'll leave aside issues of land seizures, forced resettlement, dessertification, and the whole self-defeating flood-control problem. In case you missed it, I have a strong visceral dislike for large scale hydroelectric power. ;))

( ;) Fusion - fission's been around 50+ years ;))

About wind power, it will be able to rise to 'what we need' in a major way. I doubt it would take over single handedly for fossil fuels and nuclear and everything combined and save us in the next 30 seconds, though. Again, 12% makes it a major player - we're talking entire countries untold of pollution avoided, etc. 12% is significant.

As for bird deaths, I reccommend you read:
http://www.awea.org/faq/tutorial/wwt_environment.html

I'll quote a part about birds...

Birds and bats occasionally collide with wind turbines, as they do with other tall structures such as buildings. Avian deaths have become a concern at Altamont Pass in California, which is an area of extensive wind development and also high year-round raptor use. Detailed studies, and monitoring following construction, at other wind development areas indicate that this is a site-specific issue that will not be a problem at most potential wind sites. Also, wind's overall impact on birds is low compared with other human-related sources of avian mortality

...

No matter how extensively wind is developed in the future, bird deaths from wind energy are unlikely to ever reach as high as 1% of those from other human-related sources such as hunters, house cats, buildings, and autos. (House cats, for example, are believed to kill 1 billion birds annually in the U.S. alone.)

On the same page you can find some info about low frequency vibrations. They are easily avoided through redirecting of signals or just simple planning ahead before construction.

As for acreage, 99.9% (or 95%, have 2 different sources) of the land 'used' by a field of windmills isn't actually occupied by anything and can still be used for other things, such as farming, without disturbing crops or livestock. It's just the land needed for spacing so the windmills don't block each other.

About solar panels in Japan...
http://www.solarbuzz.com/StatsCountries.htm
Japan is in fact the world leader in solar panel installations.

Geothermal agreed, but it's completley dependent upon where and what situation's you are talking about, because they aren't all identical. For example, in Hawaii, geothermal is 25% of the states power, perfectly competitive with all other forms. In central america there is geothermal abundance in countries like El Salvador, Guetemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, etc. But it probably couldn't economically be done in the U.S. east of the Mississippi (my opinion) because there is much less economically viable potential. It's expenses are more site related than technologically, where it trumps other technologies in plant life (which can reach 150 years depending upon units, as compared to 40 years for nuclear and 20-30 for coal), as well as operating costs, and construction time. A 10MW plant for example could be built in only 6 months, compared to years for other technologies. But in general we're in agreement.

Agreed on HE. I was going to mention the Aswan one and how it erodes coastlines by like 15 feet a year but I couldn't remember the name of the dam. I never meant to suggest it only, exclusivley, harms fish populations.

I meant fusion, sorry.

About wind power, it will be able to rise to 'what we need' in a major way. I doubt it would take over single handedly for fossil fuels and nuclear and everything combined and save us in the next 30 seconds, though. Again, 12% makes it a major player - we're talking entire countries untold of pollution avoided, etc. 12% is significant.

As for bird deaths, I reccommend you read:
http://www.awea.org/faq/tutorial/wwt_environment.html

I'll quote a part about birds...

On the same page you can find some info about low frequency vibrations. They are easily avoided through redirecting of signals or just simple planning ahead before construction.

As for acreage, 99.9% (or 95%, have 2 different sources) of the land 'used' by a field of windmills isn't actually occupied by anything and can still be used for other things, such as farming, without disturbing crops or livestock. It's just the land needed for spacing so the windmills don't block each other.

Well, I hope you're correct. At least building wind farms avoids flooding land for hydroelectric...

About solar panels in Japan...
http://www.solarbuzz.com/StatsCountries.htm
Japan is in fact the world leader in solar panel installations.[quote]

Interesting. However I was not surprised to see that the "market" is skewed due to government intervention.

[quote]Amongst the industrialized countries, the Japanese and German Governments have led the way in legislating for the use of high subsidies to stimulate development of their domestic solar markets.

When it's viable without subsidies, then it will take off. (And that day shouldn't be too far off. Especially as space becomes less the realm of government and more the realm of enterprise.)

Geothermal agreed, but it's completley dependent upon where and what situation's you are talking about, because they aren't all identical. For example, in Hawaii, geothermal is 25% of the states power, perfectly competitive with all other forms. In central america there is geothermal abundance in countries like El Salvador, Guetemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, etc. But it probably couldn't economically be done in the U.S. east of the Mississippi (my opinion) because there is much less economically viable potential. It's expenses are more site related than technologically, where it trumps other technologies in plant life (which can reach 150 years depending upon units, as compared to 40 years for nuclear and 20-30 for coal), as well as operating costs, and construction time. A 10MW plant for example could be built in only 6 months, compared to years for other technologies. But in general we're in agreement.

Yep.

Agreed on HE. I was going to mention the Aswan one and how it erodes coastlines by like 15 feet a year but I couldn't remember the name of the dam. I never meant to suggest it only, exclusivley, harms fish populations.

I meant fusion, sorry.

:D No worries in either case.