RFK Jr. Solar Op Ed In The Slimes - Even Hogs Would Not Wash In This Drek - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: SgtRock
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: December 14, 2012, 01:31:47 am
content: Greetings EEVBees:--Hang on to your hats this one is a doozy. RFK Jr. & company do PV Solar their way.http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/13/opinion/solar-panels-for-every-home.html?hp&_r=1&"we need to ask whether it is really sensible to run the 21st century by using an antiquated and vulnerable system of copper wires and wooden poles."--I did not know they had gotten rid of copper wires and wooden poles. Did I miss something. How many houses in Germany or Australia, where they have a decent amount of sunlight, are not hooked up to the grid."Electricity-producing photo-voltaic panels installed on houses, on the roofs of warehouses and big box stores and over parking lots can be wired so that they deliver power when the grid fails."--Uh, Yeah, but if you want to send it anywhere you will still need "an antiquated and vulnerable system of copper wires and wooden poles." What they do not want to mention is, if you want power when the grid is down, then you will need lots expensive deep cycle batteries and more complex inverters, so it is a matter of 2 to 3 times the cost, and not a trivial matter of wiring differently. Again deliberate deception. They were hoping you would think it was a plot by Bush."Solar panels have dropped in price by 80 percent in the past five years and can provide electricity at a cost that is at or below the current retail cost of grid power in 20 states, including many of the Northeast states."--All purchased in China, and made afordable for rich folks courtesy of non rich tax payers."First, the investor-owned utilities that depend on the existing system for their profits have little economic interest in promoting a technology that empowers customers to generate their own power."--Ah, yes, those greedy investors again. But as I understand it RFK Jr. has some investments himself, as does Al Gore."Second, state regulatory agencies and local governments impose burdensome permitting and siting requirements that unnecessarily raise installation costs. Today, navigating the regulatory red tape constitutes 25 percent to 30 percent of the total cost of solar installation in the United States, according to data from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and, as such, represents a higher percentage of the overall cost than the solar equipment itself."--The EPA, the Unions, and guess which party is responsible for all of those unecessary and harmful regulations."More than one million Germans have installed solar panels on their roofs, enough to provide close to 50 percent of the nation’s power"--Except Reuters says it is 4 percent.http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/26/us-climate-germany-solar-idUSBRE84P0FI20120526-- "Germany has nearly as much installed solar power generation capacity as the rest of the world combined and gets about four percent of its overall annual electricity needs from the sun alone. It aims to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent from 1990 levels by 2020."--Oh, well, Bobby and his ghost only misstated the actual figure by a factor or 12-1/2. Also please note that Alaska is 4-1/4 time as large as Germany. These folks would not know the truth if it hit them in their investments."let’s incorporate solar power arrays and other clean energy technologies in their designs, and let’s allow them to be wired so they still are generating even when the centralized grid system is down."--This is a lie. It is not disallowed. It is merely Expensive.Horse sense is the thing a horse has which keeps it from betting on people."William Claude Dukenfield, W. C. Fields 1880 - 1946Best RegardsClear Ether

author: Unknown
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: December 23, 2012, 01:50:16 am
content: Easy as falling off a log ....

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: December 23, 2012, 08:31:09 am
content: uh, does the article even need a review other than "bollocks" ? Clearly written by some twit (sorry expert) who has no idea and thinks the system is made up of only what you can see.Panels are coming down in price and are very cheap now if you shop in the right places but the problem of storage remains, although given the low output at the moment grid tying is the most economic way to go but that does not give you independence only integration for mutual benefit.

author: TerraHertz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 23, 2012, 09:51:58 am
content: I'd guess one reason panel prices are going so low has a lot to do with excess production capacity. Due to overshoot, since production was ramped up when government subsidies for grid-connected solar systems were set stupidly high. At least in Australia, for a while the electricity companies were paying ..what was it? 65c / KWHr? for solar power fed into the grid, when coal fired power was selling for around 17c / KWHr (and probably costing the utilities much less to buy at source.)I heard some people with 3-phase power were rorting the system by sucking power (at 17c/KWHr) on one phase, and 'selling it back' via an inverter at 60-something cents on another phase.When a bureaucratic scheme creates situations like that, you know things are f*cked up.Now the solar subsidy has gone much smaller, but is probably still way above true coal-fired generator costs. (And thank you, carbon credits scammers, for distorting that market so much.) So we have panels being sold into a greatly shrunken market.I'd like to know what the EROEI is for recent solar panels. How long does the panel take to produce the energy its total manufacturing chain consumed to produce it?Last time a saw a figure (years ago) it took a typical panel 12 to 17 years to produce the electricity/energy required to make the panel. Glass, aluminium and silicon wafers take a LOT of power to make.Not that I dislike solar electric. Still planning on getting a nice big array myself, when the price is low enough. But it will be for grid independence, with battery backup and other power input sources too, not a silly 'grid connected' system where I'm still at the mercy and whim of the power company.This would have happened a lot sooner, if Uncle Vernon hadn't allowed four 120KW 3-ph UPSs to be destroyed because 'no one would want them.'

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: December 23, 2012, 10:14:57 am
content: prices on ebay are low at the moment, but the same sellers will sell you the same panel for 2-3x their ebay price on their own websites, yes the market is distorted,I tend to buy a panel every couple of years, slowly building up my capacity

author: HackedFridgeMagnet
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 23, 2012, 11:28:45 am
content: QuoteThere is no point putting up an unverifiable figure like that, please do the research and present something useful, hopefully with a source.Had a look on wikipedia, it's obviously very hard to measure EROEI but it says 6 times the energy is returned. I guess that is over the the 25 year or so life cycle.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_returned_on_energy_investedThat at least sounds plausible.

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: December 23, 2012, 11:33:29 am
content: I don't know how much energy is needed to make a panel but 25x365(.26)x2(being pesimistic) = 18'263 hours at an average of 2 hours sun a day. so say a 100W panel (that will actually deliver around 50W) that is 913'150W, does it take anywhere near 1 MW to make a 100W panel ?

author: HackedFridgeMagnet
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 23, 2012, 12:59:22 pm
content: Quotegotta get the units right. I think you mean 1MWh.Energy not power.

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: December 23, 2012, 01:12:54 pm
content: You can use your MW as slow or fast as you likeDoes anyone know realistically how much power it takes to make a panel ?

author: TerraHertz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 23, 2012, 01:37:56 pm
content: Quote from: HackedFridgeMagnet on December 23, 2012, 11:28:45 amHere's a source for that EROEI figure of65.http://ef4india.wordpress.com/2011/11/14/eroei-calculation-for-the-solar-photovoltaic-energy/That's for 30 year lifetime, in India with high sunlight levels, and using a factor called 'Energy Intensity of Economy' that seems to be a shorthand for converting monetary cost to energy. Which strikes me as highly dubious, given how distorted prices for things (energy/materials/service) can be. Also considering that there wouldn't be any economy at all, if oil ceased to be affordably available.True energy costs of manufacturing things are almost impossible to work out. How much energy did it take to educate the mechanic who maintained the truck that carried the bolts that were used to install the turbine that powered the factory that built the turbomolecular vacuum pumps that were used in implanters making the silicon wafers that became the solar cells?Personally I think EROEI figures are always way off due to greatly underestimating the original energy input required.So it wouldn't surprise me if the EROEI of solar panels is actually negative. Especially given that the lifetime isn't going to be 30 years. It's going to be until the first heavy hailstorm or other really bad weather, for many installations.Though they're still a good deal on a personal scale, if the energy markets are so distorted that one can pay for solar cells in dollars much less than they _should_ cost if true energy costs showed up on the price tag.

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: December 23, 2012, 01:50:47 pm
content: The cost of chinese coal is obviously low and unlike stupid countries like the UK they are not exporting their natural resources but the products of it that are worth far more.I think we can draw the line at: it cost energy to make the power station in the same way it cost energy to build the solar panel factory, so lets make the existence of the factory the starting point. How much power does it take to make the panel and yes that includes extracting and transporting the materials. I have no interest in costs, money is a fabricated entity and it's value is extremely relative and it depends on where you are, the argument is about power in versus power out, money has nothing to do with it.

author: TerraHertz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 23, 2012, 02:16:37 pm
content: Quote from: Simon on December 23, 2012, 01:50:47 pmBut that's obviously invalid. You must average the energy cost of building the factory, over the expected number of solar panels it produces. The real difficulty comes from more tenuous connections like infrastructure. None the less those should still be factored in somehow. A society only has a finite amount of resources, and allocates them to things that *seem* to be worthwhile. In this case solar cells. What would that effort and energy have gone to otherwise? It's a real cost.QuoteI agree about the money. It's just a very inaccurate shorthand for real energy costs.But I'm sorry I can't help with the energy costs of solar panels. It's something I've wanted to see a good analysis of for ages. Anyone know?I've never even been able to find an estimate of the energy cost of making pure silicon. Let alone for turning it into working semiconductors or solar cells.It seems to be very energy intensive, relative to the amount of material.And destructive. Who else knew silicon is produced from sand (SiO2), by heating it together with charcoal? And guess what's used to make the charcoal? Trees. Lots of them.

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: December 23, 2012, 02:46:56 pm
content: my point is that either you build a solar panel factory or you build a power station, at least one needs building, so if we go in steps and break it down, the most overwhelming factor is how much power goes into the process versus power out. Did you know that make electricity in a power station is about 30% efficient ? and you still need to get the coal to the power station or pump the oil or gas to the power station. So really conventional power generation is not as efficient as people like to think, but we are not comparing that to anything because it's not the new kid on the block. Never have i seen a comparison of the true amount of power into a power station versus the electricity out, think of the whole coal power station as you want to look at the solar panel one and you soon find that some people are pushing an agenda, I don't know the figures but it is startlingly obvious that unfair comparisons are always made.Either way conventional fossil fuels will get more and more expensive, as fast as panels come down in price other forms of power go up in price, yes I know I said it's not about price, but when the difference is overwhelming the difference in manufacturing/generation efficiency will start to drop out of the equation, nothing is useful if you can't afford it.

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: December 27, 2012, 08:39:45 pm
content: oh, did I suddenly kill the discussion with some logic ?

author: Kremmen
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 27, 2012, 09:17:50 pm
content: Quote from: Simon on December 23, 2012, 01:12:54 pmNo you cannot. The (Mega)Watt is a unit ofpower, just like horsepower is. If your car engine pumps out say 200 hp at some point in time, you cannot use that "as slow as you like", it is there continuously as long as you push pedal to metal.On the other hand the MWh (Mega)Watt-hour is a measure ofenergyand that you _can_ use over whatever period you like.

author: HackedFridgeMagnet
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 27, 2012, 09:23:59 pm
content: He had a winking icon, pretty sure he was joking.

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: December 27, 2012, 09:27:54 pm
content: Quote from: Kremmen on December 27, 2012, 09:17:50 pmI sort of take your point but I was refering to a total amount of energy produced / used over a long period of time at varying rates, compare it how you like.The panel will produce near 1MW of power for a 100W panel (so at a rate of 25-50WH if you must ask) over many years, how much power does it take to make a panel ? how much power goes into a power station to get a MW out ?

author: G7PSK
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 27, 2012, 10:11:59 pm
content: Quote from: Simon on December 23, 2012, 01:50:47 pmWhy do you think the coal mines were closed in the UK, Chinese coal is cheaper even after the trip half way around the world.

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: December 27, 2012, 10:14:49 pm
content: we buy coal in ? goodness, well at least we have some left for when we need it unlike our oil reserves.

author: Kremmen
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 27, 2012, 10:22:41 pm
content: Quote from: Simon on December 27, 2012, 09:27:54 pmThe point i was trying to make is not really about how i like. Sorry but you really do need to get your units straight. Otherwise it is difficult to make sense of what you want to say. Once more for the record:The unit of energy is Joule. One Joule ofenergyequals thepowerof one Watt over the time of one second. Hence energy = power * time, and we get Watt-seconds (Ws), Watt-hours (Wh), and MegaWatt-hours (MWh).So a solar panel may very well produce MegaWatt-hours of energy over a long period of time, but definitely not MegaWatts (MW) of instantaneous power. That is like saying it will produce thousands of horsepowers of power, hp being also a measure of power. (1 MW = 1341 hp).QuoteRather: The panel will produce near 1MWh of energy for a 100W panel (so at a rate of 25-50W if you must ask) over many years.As to: " how much power goes into a power station to get a MW out ?": none, preferably. All of the power comes out of the plant. But had you asked how muchenergygoes into a plant vs how much comes out, we are back in business and can start calculating efficiencies etc. The answer of course is, that out comes always less than goes in - we still haven't invented the perpetuum mobile. The direct efficiency of the plant varies accordingly to what the fuel is, nuclear vs various chemical alternatives, but that is too naive approach, you of course need to account for the infrastructure costs of providing the fuel and handling the waste (or not, as the case may be).

author: HackedFridgeMagnet
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 27, 2012, 10:34:03 pm
content: I don't think your imported coal comes from China.Top coal exporters (not coal producers), these countries have 80% of the market.Australia 27.1%Indonesia 26.1%Russia 10.1%United States 6.9%South Africa 6.3%Colombia 6.3%

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: December 27, 2012, 10:42:23 pm
content: Yes I'm getting Wh and W totally mixed up, i thought WH was for stored power but i think we know what we are on about (I think your referring to power capacity).My argument is that when people look at alternative forms of energy every little tiny bit of power in has to be taken into account in order to make the solution look worse than the problem and it is expected that it has to be "input free" to be viable.But I have never seen a realistic examination of how much power it costs to run a power station including transporting and preprocessing fuel because this is what is done for the alternative, it's time for a fair fight. A power station running on coal is running about 30% efficient, after the fuel has been obtained and gotten to the power station, and that suddenly makes alternative forms look more viable as we suddenly realize that it is currently normal to invest power into energy generation that will be lost as heat etc but the average voter does not understand these finer point so are easily brainwashed by figures unfairly heaped against new forms of power generation.

author: Kremmen
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 28, 2012, 09:22:13 am
content: Quote from: Simon on December 27, 2012, 10:42:23 pmWell, you kinda got that part right. What you (and many many others) call "stored power" is just energy (energy == power capacity). Energy in some specific form - in the case of batteries it is chemical, but you can also store energy in other forms. Grid power is often used to pump water into reservoirs at high altitude. During peak consumption the water runs turbines to generate extra power back into the grid. In this case the excess power is turned into potential energy of the stored water, and later released back. Also back in the day i have participated in designing huge uninterruptible power supplies to bank mainframes and the like - power levels in the hundreds of kW. At that time due to the state of the art, there always was a large flywheel involved, to turn the generator while the driving DC motor was switched from failed grid to battery power. The flywheel stored kinetic energy that was converted to electric power during the instant of switchover. Conceptually the same thing as charging and discharging a battery. Speaking of batteries, everyone must be familiar with the car battery sizing system where you talk about Ah. Meaning that a battery can provide so and so many amp-hours of current. Now Ah is not strictly a unit of energy, and there is the unsaid assumption that the voltage is nominal 12 V (voltage * current * time is a unit of energy). Ah is of course inaccurate and lately esp. lithium-based batteries have started to indicate the capacity in Wh, which is a proper unit of energy.QuoteAs a general purpose power generation scheme, pv cells are a joke. Germany is a hotbed of activity in this sense due to the strong green movement there. They have done some considerable sized installations at exorbitant cost. The positive side is that you can get pv cells at reasonable prices from the German eBay. At my latitudes pv is only used for isolated summer cabins, islands and some special cases where running the grid to the site would be even more expensive.Myself, i am not against green energy as such and i can live with some subsidy to push research and development. At the same time i have no illusions about the current and near future where fossil fuels and nukes rule. The Germans have now decided to tear down their entire nuclear power system by some near future point in time. I say good luck. Our neighbors the Swedes made the same decision in the 90s, to quit by 2000 and we laughed even then. Sweden still runs most of their nuclears and whatever they don't it is more due to the age of the stations than this decision.One place where solar might have a chance is places like middle of Sahara and similar. Either coat the entire place with pv cells or mirrors and use solar to break water into hydrogen which can be stored and transported via pipelines just as oil.

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: December 28, 2012, 12:14:31 pm
content: Quote from: Kremmen on December 28, 2012, 09:22:13 amThis is something I have always advocated, you can produce hydrogen gas, let the oxygen into the air and pipe the gas to europe, simples, people will argue that electrolysis is sooooo ineficient but again they will ignore that running efficiency of fossil fuel poer stations is 30% before worrying about the infrastructure power requirements.I have mixed feelings about nuclear, so long as we have a money based society I will not trust humans with nuclear.

author: SeanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 28, 2012, 02:50:47 pm
content: Simpler than hydrogen you just put a HVDC link in addition to the one across the straits, and possibly a few across the Med to get the power to the consumers. Losses will be in the order of 10% total, much better than transporting a difficult to handle fuel. You can use excess to make hydrogen and then reform CO2 out of the air to make methane or methanol in a chemical Fischer Troph plant to make synfuel. Probably only 50% efficiency, but a good use of excess demand, you simple size the syngas storage to keep the plant running for a 2 day period to handle demand swings.

author: Kremmen
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 28, 2012, 03:56:32 pm
content: Quote from: Simon on December 28, 2012, 12:14:31 pm2 issues - operational safety and long term storage of the waste. Ideally, both should be strictly authorized and controlled by parties not in the revenue loop. A nuclear steam generator is not all that complex in principle. As our anglo-saxon friends say - the devil is in the details.The problem with issue #1 is that a huge proportion of the world's nuke generating capacity is rather old and not up to modern safety standards. In some cases the plants have been also run with totally idiotic operating procedures and rules such as 3 Mile Island and Chernobyl. Both of those accidents were man-made. Also a lot of the older cold war era nuke plants were designed to produce weapons grade fissionable as waste products - usually at the expense of inherent plant safety. In Japan the Fukushima disaster was due to natural causes but also there the safety design of the plant was not up the task due to the age of the installation.Proper fail-safe reactor design combined with reliable containment and sufficientpassiveemergency cooling in addition to active safety systems goes a long way to ensure trouble free operation. Of course it is impossible to design away every single failure mechanism but a lot can be done, and better than it used to be done.As for issue #2, the final storage of spent fuel is a tough nut to crack. AFAIK Finland is the only place where this has been resolvedhttp://www.posiva.fi/en/final_disposal/. Not to everyone's satisfaction of course, there are always those who won't be happy whatever the suggestion. But i think it will do the trick.My opinion regarding nuclear power is that when you apply modern engineering and known operational best practices in a supervised manner (by 3rd parties), then the end result can be quite reliable. I believe this to be the case at least in Finland, although not necessarily everywhere. But i don't lose sleep over our powerplants.Quote from: SeanB on December 28, 2012, 02:50:47 pmSure, whatever makes the most sense. Hydrogen is just a no-brainer but if there are better options then by all means. The core idea was just to put the otherwise useless solar energy there to some use.

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: December 28, 2012, 04:16:03 pm
content: Quote from: Kremmen on December 28, 2012, 03:56:32 pmThat is your problem. As we are dealing with something so potentially dangerous do you really think we can trust any government that is being lobied by private interests. Just look at the UK, the government have and continue to sell off all controlled assetts and services. Nuclear in the UK is and would be run privately, by people wanting to make a profit and who are lobying (corrupting) the government.Just look at the massive fuck up in the Uk over the way the banks got away with it, I have no doubt large scale control of nuclear would go the same way. As we all sit here with our technical minds we need to remember that we are governed by a bunch of assholes that have to technical grounding, want to be popular AND rich. I have no faith in human nature, and proof of dishonesty in the field of energy is the lack of clarity in comparisons between current and prospective means of energy generation. I am well aware of the overwhelming problem and that it won't be solved by panels on a few houses or turbines in fields, the true all round answer is to look at our consumption first, but then I forgot that is tabu to tell people what to do and not to be wasteful, while that will save energy, leave the energy companies and the government out of pocket (taxes).This argument will always revolve around money and politics, shoot the politicians and replace them with engineers and we'd be coming up with solutions in under a year !

author: Kremmen
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 28, 2012, 09:29:10 pm
content: Quote from: Simon on December 28, 2012, 04:16:03 pmAgain, in the general case i tend to agree. I don't want to make this about me and my country, but there are reasons why i am not too worried about Finnish nuclear power. I guess politics is fundamentally the same everywhere but despite the differences in party agendas, i have to say that basically i trust our politicians. That does not mean at all that i agree with them on every issue, but there are 2 things that build confidence: transparency and lack of corruption. I'm sure you can't know it, but Finland has repeatedly been ranked as one of the least corrupted, indeed often _the_ least corrupted country in the world. That does not mean there is none, but it also means that large scale capers are an automatic political suicide. Mr Berlusconi's political career in Finland would be about 10 seconds in duration. Recently it became the done thing for each MP and minister to publicize their private financial status, i.e. personal debts and holdings in various commercial enterprises and similar things. Even trivial (elsewhere) items like taxi costs for MPs and things on that level can cause headlines here. And i promise you that not a single national level investment but causes endless discourse between the politicos and media. Of course that is the same everywhere but there doesn't seem to be a culture of hiding the decision making process behind smoke & mirrors. I don't know if such a thing as a national character exists really, but at least you can say that we lot are a pretty homogeneous bunch (some would use the word inbred...) and still as a rule consider that a man's word is his bond, even for politicians to some degree. Seems to result in less diverging/hidden agendas overall, i don't know.So what i probably try to say is that while there is certainly lobbying it is at least mostly quite visible and tractable.QuoteWe have had our issues with bank subsidies as well, but nothing earth shaking. A number of banks have folded and those that remain have probably learned a few lessons even though they escaped the full consequences of their actions..Here the power companies are private enterprises as well. They of course lobby their case like everyone else. But bribery - i really don't think so. In Finland there is a government agency (Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authorityhttp://www.stuk.fi/en_GB/) that issues permissions to construct and operate a nuclear generating station. That agency is in turn under higher political oversight by the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health and operates closely with the Ministry of Trade and Industry. Referring to what i wrote above, I have a hard time picturing those boys to be bribed by a power company. Theoretically possible of course, but as the government operations and decisions are completely transparent, the process can be challenged at any time. Go see the Rad Authority web page that i linked, to see what i mean. Specifically on this page is a simplified picture of the assessment and monitoring process:http://www.stuk.fi/ydinturvallisuus/ydinvoimalaitokset/ydinvoimalaitosluvat/en_GB/luvat/Politics is the running of common affairs. Money will always be of primary interest to everyone so is naturally in the epicentre of politics in multiple ways. But to replace politicians with another group of people is really not recommended. I repeat myself, but who else should run our common affairs if not the politicians whose specific job it is? Engineers - no way. The majority of us are nerds and anoraks who can't give a shit about common issues, are totally incompetent and as useful as pope's balls. Who else then - the military? Hmm, its been tried and is being tried in many places with sad results. The only place where it seems to - kinda - work is Thailand where they every now and then throw the corrupt prime minister out the window and a colonel or two look after things for a while. The people don't seem to be any worse off and eventually the next PM pops up. Not my kind of democracy but seems to work for them. Mainly i guess because everyone is loyal to the king in the end...Edit: typos

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: December 28, 2012, 10:12:07 pm
content: after £2000 of each UK tax payers money was spent propping up banks they stopped telling us how much of our money had been ploughed into private enterprises that were holding the country to ransom, I guess £5-10+K per head is now in the banks and despite this our government allow the bosses to take huge pay packets and bonuses despite running at a loss and owing ME money, if it was any other company they would have been locked up and left to rot in jail.Big bankers are of course giving "donations" to the current political party in power.Under that megalithic cock up and monument to corruption in a so called democratic country I would never trust anyone in this country with nuclear power, after all the rich people that run these things can afford to hop on a plane and move half way around the world should it all go wrong and us scum get killed off by an accident.

author: mianchen
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: December 28, 2012, 10:22:21 pm
content: Quote from: G7PSK on December 27, 2012, 10:11:59 pmChinese coal costs lives and blood not moneyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_mining#Chinaas many as 20,000 miners die every year!

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: December 28, 2012, 10:24:14 pm
content: that is why it is nice and cheap and that is all anyone cares about !

author: Kremmen
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 28, 2012, 10:45:37 pm
content: Quote from: Simon on December 28, 2012, 10:12:07 pmI may be incredibly naive but i don't have quite so pessimistic view about affairs here.One problem with private enterprises is that there is no political control over their rewarding systems. A company is free to pay whatever it wants to its employees. That does not usually enter the picture when subsidies are decided, except that this practice has been strongly criticized here recently ( formerly part state owned power companies).The national debt only keeps growing here as well and is a considerable amount per capita, same with these bank salvaging operations that apparently everyone has had to do. Still, the problems are at least acknowledged and solutions publicly presented (and criticized). I am not really that much into politics so my competence to discuss specific solutions to specific problems quickly runs out but i do understand this: Often/usually those who have to solve the toughest problems win no popularity contests whatever they do, because the solutions are painful to all. It is so human to live and let others die (or at least, pay).But regarding hidden bribery in the form of "support", again there is this:http://www.vaalit.fi/15515.htm. This is about publicity of election funding and may not cover the whole issue but you get the tone.Fortunately we don't have anybody who is really filthy rich so mostly everybody needs to stay put

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: December 28, 2012, 11:00:23 pm
content: if the banks were not holding the country / world to ransom they would have failed and those people would have no income, but we the public are paying to keep them afloat. No man who has crashed his company and had the good fortune to be rescued by people much poorer than him should take any bonus. If a counties laws can permit that it is not fit to handle nuclear power.

author: Kremmen
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 28, 2012, 11:49:15 pm
content: Quote from: Simon on December 28, 2012, 11:00:23 pmAn admirable attitude but i am afraid you are committing what is called a logical fallacy (non sequitur to be precise). From unacceptable rewarding principles in the banking world, it does not follow that a country (government) is unfit to supervise use of nuclear power. It/they may be unfit but it won't be because of too big payments for banking bosses.It is always very easy to find things that are wrong in the world. However, at the same time it is worth bearing in mind that all problems do not have easy solutions, nor are all problems connected. Some are and others not.

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: December 29, 2012, 02:41:00 pm
content: I don't trust our politicians given their current record. Big businessmen will not give a toss about safety and will lobby the government who will let them have their way, I can just see it happening. In a country where the head of the ruling party tells someone that for £250K they can have a chat with the primeminister and wister in his ear and get things done to help their company I will not tollerate nuclear. We need to clean up the legislative body before they legislate and lay plans for such a potentially deadly energy system.

author: SeanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 29, 2012, 03:20:56 pm
content: That is expensive Simon, here it costs 25k...........

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: December 29, 2012, 04:58:49 pm
content: yes it is so expensive that after it was revealed that the ruling political party are completly corrupt they still got to stay in power as though nothing was and it was forgotten in a week. and you want me to trust them with nuclear ? NO WAY !

author: ftransform
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 29, 2012, 05:15:30 pm
content: Quote from: Simon on December 29, 2012, 04:58:49 pmoh baby I trust your control rod...

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: December 29, 2012, 06:16:43 pm
content: Quote from: ftransform on December 29, 2012, 05:15:30 pmNot now darling