Originally Posted By: Drakiis
stop riding other peoples comment coat tails Wolfgang, put two thoughts together and say something smart for a change. I have six wind farms surrounding me, and just about everyone here has Solar panels on their house, significant energy reductions are happening now, it's just that our infrastructure is not in place for it to be effective enough to show the greater parts of the country. A pie in the sky is thinking that everyone will have a expensive thorium reactor built near their hometown. Do you know how many Nuclear reactors are in the USA? Last I heard barely 100 that is because of expense mostly, and then ecological/health issues and waste byproducts, followed by social concern. This isn't sim city you cant just plop down a reactor where ever you like.


So those wind farms surrounding you, how many homes do they supply energy to and are they still hooked up on the electric grid? Like I said in a previous post. There's been towns here in Oklahoma that are setting up wind farms as well, the biggest issue doing this is cost and efficiency. Many can afford them, but they still have to get the majority of the electricity from a regular grid. So there isn't any savings, and you are still left with needing more energy. Not unless you have thousands of wind turbines supplying a couple dozen homes. Then again what about that eye sore of seeing nothing but windmills across a landscape. That's got to be a pretty sight as well don't you think.

Show me where a wind turbine and solar panels can supply one family size home, with nothing else but solar and wind. I said before I have a friend and ex co-worker that looked into a wind turbine and solar panels. That way he could get off the "grid" and only have maintenance cost of the Wind and Solar energy sources. The cost was going to be significant to buy, it would only supply about a third of the energy he was going to need.

As for Nuclear energy, lets ask France...
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf40.html
If you didn't get that, France get's 75% of their nations energy from Nuclear energy. So now question is, would you rather see the horizon littered with Wind Farms, or have a single Reactor off in the distance? Have you heard of any meltdowns in France lately? I haven't. I'm not against using Solar & Wind... but right now it's just not efficient enough, versus the cost. If it was, you would see a lot more of them, because people would be getting off the "grid" rather than having to pay inflated prices to electric companies. I think we should use everything we have, Wind,Solar,Hydro,Oil,Natural gas,nuclear... your ass on a stationary bicycle that generates electricity... EVERYTHING, until we can get things to be as efficient as they can be versus costs and any enviromental impact. I wish you had more than a typical tree hugging response of "OMG THE ENVIROMENT"

Last edited by Wolfgang; 08/29/11 07:14 PM.