a.ashfield <a.ashfi...@verizon.net> wrote: That is false logic. You might as well claim Tokamaks are the answer, and > we should do the research here, no matter what the cost, or be left > behind. The problem is of course that if the system is fundamentally > uneconomic no amount of research is going to fix it. >
It is not clear whether solar thermal is fundamentally uneconomical, or whether it has not been funded enough to lower the cost. The price per kilowatt hour is close enough to PV or wind that it may be competitive. Also, that depends on the market and the geographic location. The Tokomak is not competitive. That seems pretty clear. See: http://lenr-canr.org/RossiData/KrakowskiARIES.pdf For a long time, people said that wind and PV would never become competitive. Some conservatives still say that. They do not take into account the hidden social and economic costs of coal, such as 20,000 dead people a year. They do not take into account the cost of uranium fission reactor accident. You could not take into account this cost before now, because there were not many major accidents with Western European and U.S. reactors. The Fukushima accident has displaced 90,000 people and contaminated somewhere between 4% and 8% of the land in Japan. That is a very high price to pay for electricity. - Jed
