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Comment by iharhajster | Hacker News Reader

It amazes me how humans constantly have sheer lack of will power to solve some global issues. For example, according to this pie [1], electric car is still a car indirectly running on fossil fuels.

For fun, let's think for a second how much solar panels does it take to power planet Earth. After rough calculation it's about 496805 km2, which is approximately an area of Spain. This calculation is based on consumption predicion of 198 PWh per year in 2030, and average solar energy of 1000W/m2 with 20% efficiency and 70% sunny days a year. Of course, this is an ideal "world is at peace and there is always somewhere sun shinning" model and it uses today's best available technologies. Storage and transmission system errection would pose a cooperation challenge on a global scale. Just morning food for thought...

[1] http://www.tsp-data-portal.org/Breakdown-of-Electricity-Gene...

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> still a car indirectly running on fossil fuels

the change isn't going to happen overnight. Even if the car still runs on fossil fuels, it's more efficient to produce them at scale, where you can have better exhaust management, and (usually) exhaust produced out of the city. Charging will usually happen nightly, which is good for balancing the load on the grid. In some plants, carbon can be captured, and at the very least exhausts are scrubbed better than what comes out a car's exhaust pipe. So even when an electric car runs on a LNG or coal plant, there's still efficiency gained.

People are selfish, we have more than we need, and all the pleasures and luxuries to satiate every desire we could possibly have. It's (sadly) not surprising that protecting the earth isn't high on many people's agenda.

From the article: > Ten years ago we thought hitting even a 25 percent wind-penetration level would be extremely challenging, and any more than that would pose serious threats to reliability,”

I do remember reading articles 10 years ago and thinking that we would probably not get anywhere near where we're at today. Frankly, I'm more impressed with the technical progress than with the political bureaucracies which prioritize their own bureaucratic inertia above actually solving the problems we have.

But your car is also a battery and you could charge it using excess home solar.

I personally think the answer is to expand nuclear power. Current and next generation plants are way safer than the designs used for Cherynobl, Three Miles or Fukushima .

Nuclear power seems cleaner, but when you take under consideration things like waste fuel storage it simply does not make much sense.. Yes, it's a great short term solution, but what if in 500 years there is nobody to take care of all of the spent fuel, and clean up all of the nuclear power plant sites?

In 500 years the fuel will have decayed to near-harmlessness. It'd still be a toxic heavy metal, so you don't want to eat it, but simply standing next to it isn't going to kill you.

There's also the little detail that we're using the least efficient fuel cycle imaginable. More efficient ones, e.g. involving breeder reactors, wouldn't produce nearly as much waste.

What if just one of the almost 500 power plants goes into a meltdown after a disaster/asteroid strike/pandemic . How long will it take for the fuel to become harmless? 20k years?

Compare how many people are killed, let alone animals per unit of energy produced with Wind as compared to Nuclear. Wind is far more deadly to humans (from accidents) & animals than the public is lead to believe. Nuclear despite its accidents is far less lethal towards the environment around it.

Wind is only a third as deadly as coal apparently, which isn't too great in my book: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2013/09/29/forget-eag...

Also: http://firsttoknow.com/in-october-2013-two-engineers-became-...

however, the article is saying "coal is the biggest killer in U.S. energy at 15,000 deaths per trillion kWhrs produced, while nuclear is the least at zero. Wind energy kills a mere 100 people or so per trillion kWhrs, "

I don't claim that nuclear is not safe in a short term, especially when we can fully control it. But in a long term it is dangerous to the planet as a whole, not only to humanity.

We could build breeder reactors and burn up >90% of the stuff we call "waste".

The cost of nuclear is really unimpressive and the permitting takes ages due to the unpopularity and safety concerns.

(Hinkley Point C I'm taking as an example; it's being guaranteed electricity prices far above those of wind)

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