On Fri, Apr 4, 2014 at 4:42 PM, Chris de Morsella <[email protected]>wrote:
Solar PV has been here for 60 years and THOUSANDS of times more money has >> been spent developing it than has been spent on LFTR R&D, and yet solar PV >> is still just a rounding error in our total energy budget. >> > > Haha - if you call the almost 150 GW of currently installed solar PV > capacity a rounding error > I do indeed call 1.5*10^11 watt-hours a rounding error! Human technology uses 1.5*10^17 watt-hours worldwide, so by your own figures photovoltaics provides .0001% of that, assuming that the weather is always cloudless and it never gets dark at night. And it wouldn't be even that big if governments didn't bribe people with tax breaks to do things that would otherwise make no economic sense. > solar PV has also been doubling every two or so years for quite a while > now and is projected to surpass 300GW of globally installed PV capacity by > 2017. > Big deal, then by 2017 PV would supply .0002% of our worldwide energy needs, assuming that the weather is always cloudless and it never gets dark at night. And it's easy to see why you picked 2017, Germany has been more aggressive in pushing photovoltaics with tax breaks and it got the highest electrical bills in Europe as a reward, but even the Germans are getting fed up with this nonsense and will pull the plug on solar subsidies in 2018, so expect a crash then. > > Compare this capacity with the current capacity of LFTR which is 0 watts. > And by a curious coincidence zero is also the amount of money spent on LFTR R&D over the last 40 years. > >> I want to know if I really understand you correctly, are you saying >> that a major problem (or even a minor problem) with using Thorium for >> energy is that there isn't enough of it? Is that really your position? >> > > > > No it is not my position and never has been > Good, then let's stop all this idiotic talk about recoverable Thorium reserves. > The big issues with LFTR are that it simply does not exist > True. > and in order to bring it into existence would require a large scale > concerted multi-decadal effort. > A keen grasp of the obvious. A changeover of the way human civilization is powered from fossil fuel to ANYTHING elsewould require a large scale concerted multi-decade effort. >>> the world is facing a recoverable uranium peak that will be reached >>> within a decade or two (at current extraction rates, if nuclear is ramped >>> up peak uranium will be reached that much sooner). >>> >> >> Uranium prices are the lowest they've been in 8 years. >> > > So? > So Economics 101 would say there is a contradiction between "a recoverable uranium peak will be reached within a decade or two" and "Uranium prices are the lowest they've been in 8 years". >>> I do not inhabit the same magical thinking universe you seem to live >>> in. >>> >> > >> How nice for you, therefore by accepting my bet you can make an easy >> $1000. >> > > Nice polemic... what assurances do I even have that you would actually > pay. > The same assurance that I have that you would actually pay. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
