Where do we go from here? How can we transition from fuel based energy systems to sustainable 21st Century technologies?

Where do we install various systems? How much they cost? How quickly do they pay for themselves? How might the technology evolve? And what are thelogistical challenges of nuclear power? How do we manage radioactive waste? What about evacuation plans for the areas near nuclear power plants? A large percentage of the US population lives within 100 miles of the Indian Point reactor – everyone in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, and The Bronx. Everyone in Northern NJ and Westchester. If nuclear power is so great, why then have no new nuclear power plants been built since the early 1980’s? Why are we so upset about Iran’s plans to build a nuclear facility? Why do nuclear plants require tremendous government subsidies?

Land based wind costs about $1 per watt of installed capacity for large scale plants, like the Atlantic City facility, more for residential scale turbines, like Mike Mercurio’s in Long Beach Island, NJ.

Offshore wind is about $3 per watt, for example the 25 Megawatt wind farm on the Arklow Bank, offshore of Ireland.

Photovoltaic solar is about $7 per watt, however, new module designs from Sunpower and Akeena promise to cut that significantly.

How about those tidal systems Marine Current Turbines is building offshore of Vancouver and Nova Scotia? Are they way cool or Rube Goldberg? (click here for wikipedia)

When you think about it, isn’t Nuclear Power a Rube Goldberg machine? You’re fissioning uranium under (hopefully) controlled conditions to boil water under tremendous temperature and pressure to generate steam to turn a turbine to generate electricity. Wind power, solar power, are so much more elegant. (The dictionary definition is“A Rube Goldberg machine is an exceedingly complex apparatus that performs a very simple task in a very indirect and convoluted way.”Nuclear Power fissionsuranium to boil water under tremendous temperature and pressure to generate steam to turn a turbine to generate electricity … Wind Turbines – wind turns the turbines. Solar – light excites electrons.

Is that why we use solar panels on the space station, rather than a nuclear reactor?

It’s hard to really price nuclear because of the tremendous external costs. Insurance – picked up by the government. Security – picked up by the government

. Waste disposal – picked up by the government. Time. It costs 10 years to build a nuclear plant – assuming you had the money and the permits and the environmentalists would let you. So what does that mean? $20 per watt? $50? The nuclear industry won’t say. And when they do they don’t factor those costs borne by the government. What happens to a plant like Oyster Creek, Salem, or Seabrook, built on the shore, if sea level rises?

Wind scales up, so if you’re building a 150 MW facility composed of 50 turbines, each rated at 3 MW, as soon as you put in the transmission lines, and plant the first turbine it’s generating power. No Fuel – no fuel costs. No pollution. That first turbine takes 5 – 8 days – more for off-shore. And each additional turbine is 5 – 8 days. Your limiting factor is your crew. You can have 5 or 10 crews planting turbines side by side. Same with solar. You can do a small house in a half-day, a large house in 2 days, a school in a week – or in a day – assuming you had the crew.And as you keep adding solar modules or wind turbines, you keep adding to the capacity of the system.This has national security ramifications – if a terrorist flies a plane into a wind turbine, he or she knocks out one wind turbine – one out of 25, or 100, or 500. If terrorists destroy a nuclear power plant – they’ve destroyed the whole thing.

Which of these technologies makes sense? Which are sustainable? Which do you want in your backyard?