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The answer is the most forceful possible no.Solar power itself is a good thing, but Germany's pro-renewables policy has been a disaster. It has the absurd distinction of completing the trifecta of bad energy policy:Bad for consumersBad for producersBad for the environment (yes, really; I'll explain)Pretty much the only people who benefit are affluent home-owners and solar panel installation companies. A rising tide of opposition and resentment is growing among the German press and public.I was shocked to find out how useless, costly, and counter-productive their world-renowned energy policy has turned out. This is a serious problem for Germany, but an even greater problem for the rest of the world which hopes to follow in their footsteps. The first grand experiment in renewable energy is a catastrophe! The vast scale of the failure has only started to become clear over the past year or so. So I can forgive renewables advocates for not realizing it yet -- but it's time for the green movement to do a 180 on this.Some awful statistics before I get into the details:Germany is widely considered the global leader in solar power, with over a third of the world's nameplate (peak) solar power capacity. [1] Germany has over twice as much solar capacity per capita as sunny, subsidy-rich, high-energy-cost California. (That doesn't sound bad, but keep going.)Germany's residential electricity cost is about $0.34/kWh, one of the highest rates in the world. About $0.07/kWh goes directly to subsidizing renewables, which is actually higher than the wholesale electricity price in Europe. (This means they could simply buy zero-carbon power from France and Denmark for less than they spend to subsidize their own.) More than 300,000 households per year are seeing their electricity shut off because they cannot afford the bills. Many people are blaming high residential prices on business exemptions, but eliminating them would save households less than 1 euro per month on average. Billing rates are predicted by the government to rise another 40% by 2020. [2]Germany's utilities and taxpayers are losing vast sums of money due to excessive feed-in tariffs and grid management problems. The environment minister says the cost will be one trillion euros (~$1.35 trillion) over the next two decades if the program is not radically scaled back. This doesn't even include the hundreds of billions it has already cost to date. [3] Siemens, a major supplier of renewable energy equipment, estimated in 2011 that the direct lifetime cost of Energiewende through 2050 will be $4.5 trillion, which means it will cost about 2.5% of Germany's GDP for 50 years straight. [4] That doesn't include economic damage from high energy prices, which is difficult to quantify but appears to be significant.Here's the truly dismaying part: the latest numbers show Germany's carbon output and global warming impact is actually increasing [5] despite flat economic output and declining population, because of ill-planned "renewables first" market mechanisms. This regime is paradoxically forcing the growth of dirty coal power. Photovoltaic solar has a fundamental flaw for large-scale generation in the absence of electricity storage -- it only works for about 5-10 hours a day. Electricity must be produced at the exact same time it's used. [29] The more daytime summer solar capacity Germany builds, the more coal power they need for nights and winters as cleaner power sources are forced offline. [6] This happens because excessive daytime solar power production makes base-load nuclear plants impossible to operate, and makes load-following natural gas plants uneconomical to run. Large-scale PV solar power is unmanageable without equally-large-scale grid storage, but even pumped-storage hydroelectricity facilities are being driven out of business by the severe grid fluctuations. They can't run steadily enough to operate at a profit. [2,7] Coal is the only non-subsidized power source that doesn't hemorrhage money now. [8] The result is that utilities must choose between coal, blackouts, or bankruptcy. Which means much more pollution.So it sucks on pretty much every possible level. If you're convinced by these facts, feel free to stop reading now, throw me an upvote, and go on about your day. This is going to get long -- I haven't even explained the half of it yet. There are lots of inter-related issues here, and the more you get into them, the worse the picture gets.Issue 1: Wrong place, wrong tech to start the green revolutionRenewables advocates constantly hold up Germany as an example of how large-scale rooftop solar power is viable. But the problem is, Germany's emphasis on solar power is bad policy. I'm pretty sure other countries can do solar better, but that isn't saying much because German solar is just awful. To be blunt, it's a stupid place for politicians to push solar panels. I was there all last week for a work meeting and I didn't see the sun the entire time. From talking to the locals, it's overcast for about a third of the year in the region near Hanover where I was staying. Their solar resource is simply bad, nearly the worst of any well-populated region in the world:Annual Solar IrradianceBetween the northern latitude, the grey weather, and the Alps blocking much of the diffused morning sunlight from the south, Germany is a terrible place for solar power. When you put the US side-by-side on the same scale, you realize that Germany has the same solar power potential as dismal Alaska, even worse than rain-soaked Seattle:Solar Radiation MapI look at this and ask, "what on earth are they thinking?" They couldn't have picked a worse generation technology for their climate.But most people seem to look at it and say, "if Germany is investing so much in solar power, then it's obvious the US should build solar panels too." I insist we examine the contrapositive: if solar power is only taking off slowly in the US, even with significant subsidies/incentives and one of the world's best solar resources, then the Germans should be building even less solar capacity. It's clear their market must be severely distorted for them to pursue such a sub-optimal energy policy.You're welcome to disagree with my thought process here, but the simplest proof can be seen in the capacity factor, which is the percent of the nameplate capacity that is actually generated over the course of a year. The existence of nighttime means solar capacity factors must be less than 50%, and when you add clouds, dawn, dusk, dust, and non-optimal installations, 18% is the average capacity factor for panels in the continental US. [9] In contrast, Germany's total solar capacity factor in 2011 was under 9%! [1]German residential solar panel installations today cost about $2.25/watt capacity, [10] versus a hair over $5/watt in the US. [11] (Numbers vary over a considerable range. Most of this is labor/permitting costs.) But German panels generate less than half as much actual power over time. So when you normalize the panel install cost by capacity factor, US and German solar power generation are already at cost parity. The payback periods for solar investments are about the same in California and Germany. This is surprising to most solar advocates, who tend to blame higher costs for the low uptake rates in the US. But system economics alone do not explain disparities in installation rates.So why does Germany have 16 times as much nameplate panel capacity per capita as the US? [12] Yes, permitting is much easier there, but that's mostly captured by the $/watt costs since installation companies usually pull the permits. And I don't think the German people are that much more pro-environment than the rest of the world. There's no good reason for the disparity that I can find -- it ought to swing the opposite way. Solar just isn't a good power source for a cold, dark country that has minimal daytime air conditioning load. Solar in Phoenix, Arizona makes sense, but not in Frankfurt. The only conclusion I can come to is that Germany's solar power boom is being driven entirely by political distortions. The growth of solar is not economically justified, nor can it continue without massive political interference in power markets.Many people are surprised to hear that Germany only gets a tiny 2.0% of its total energy / 4.6% of its electricity from solar power (in 2012). [5,13] All the headlines about new records on peak summer days make it seem more like 50%. Despite all the cost and pain and distortions, PV solar has turned out to be a very ineffective way of generating large amounts of energy. They could have generated at least four times as much carbon-free power via new nuclear plants for the same cost. [14] (Nuclear would have been a better option for a lot of reasons. I'll get to that later.)With subsidies for new solar systems phasing out over the next 5 years, solar growth has already started to decline. The installation rate peaked and is now dropping. [13, 15] Despite falling panel and installation costs, the majority of new German solar projects are expected to stop when subsidies end. They're already on the downward side of the technology uptake bell curve:(Data after 2008 from [14], prior to 2008 from Wikipedia)If you pay close attention, all the pro-solar advocates are still using charts with data that stops after 2011. That's because 2011 was the last year solar was growing exponentially. Using data through July 2013 and official predictions for the rest of this year, it's now clear that solar is not on an exponential growth curve. It's actually on an S-curve like pretty much every other technology, ever. Limitless exponential growth doesn't exist in the physical world. [13]Also note the huge gap on that graph between the actual generation and the nameplate capacity. That's where the miserable capacity factor comes in. (I think this is the source of a lot of misplaced optimism about solar's growth rate.) Green media outlets only report solar power either in peak capacity or as percent of consumption on sunny summer days. Both of these measurements must be divided by about 10 to get the true output throughout the year.In reality, solar is scaling up much slower than conventional energy sources scaled up in the past, despite solar receiving more government support. This graph shows the growth rate of recent energy transitions in the first 10 years after each source reached grid scale (1% of total supply):[13]I think this chart is the best way to make an apples-to-apples comparison of uptake rates. Only about a quarter of the "renewables" line is due to solar (the majority is biomass, wind, and trash incineration). So the true solar growth rate from 2001-2011 is only 1/4th as fast as nuclear from 1974-1984, and 1/6th as fast as natural gas from 1965-1975. [13]When a new energy source is genuinely better than the old energy sources, it grows fast. Solar is failing to do so. Yet it's had every advantage the government could provide.What this all implies is that without government intervention, PV solar can't be a significant source of grid power. The economics of German solar have only made sense up til now because they tax the hell out of all types of energy (even other renewables), and then use the proceeds to subsidize solar panels. Utilities are forced to buy distributed solar power at rates several times the electricity's market value, causing massive losses. The German Renewable Energy Act directly caused utility losses of EUR 540 million in August 2013 alone. [16] It's a shocking amount of money changing hands. When you strip away the well-intentioned facade of environmentalism, this is little more than a forced cash transfer scheme. It's taking from utilities (who are losing money hand over fist on grid management and pre-existing conventional generation capacity) and from everyone who doesn't have rooftop panels, and shoveling it into the pockets of everyone who owns or installs panels. Which means it's both a massive market distortion and a regressive tax on the poor.This explains why per-capita solar uptake is so high in Germany. The government has engineered a well-intentioned but harmful redistribution system where everyone without solar panels is giving money to people who have them. This is a tax on anyone who doesn't have a south-facing roof, or who can't afford the up-front cost, or rents their residence, etc. People on fixed incomes (eg welfare recipients and the elderly) have been hardest hit because the government has made a negligible effort to increase payments to compensate for skyrocketing energy prices. The poor are literally living in the dark to try to keep their energy bills low. Energiewende is clearly bad for social equality. But Germany's politicians seem to have a gentleman's agreement to avoid criticizing it in public, particularly since Merkel did an about-face on nuclear power in 2011. [17]Issue 2: Supply VariabilityOne major problem with all this solar-boosting, ironically, is oversupply. It's mind-boggling to me that a generation technology that provides less than 5% of a country's electricity supply can be responsible for harmful excess electricity production, but it's true. On sunny summer afternoons, Germany actually exports power at a loss compared to generation costs: EUR 0.056/kWh average electricity export sale price in 2012, [18] vs EUR 0.165/kWh average lifetime cost for all German solar installed from 2000 to 2011. [14] (This is optimistically assuming a 40 year system life and 10% capacity factor -- reality is probably over EUR 0.20/kWh.) German utilities often have to pay heavy industry and neighboring countries to burn unnecessary power. On sunny summer days, businesses are firing up empty kilns and furnaces, and are getting paid to throw energy away.You can argue that this excess summer solar generation is free, but it's not -- not only is this peak summer output included in the lifetime cost math, but excess solar power actually forces conventional power plants to shut down, thereby lowering the capacity factor of coal & gas plants. Yes, this means large-scale solar adoption makes non-solar power more expensive per kWh, too! On net, excess solar generation is a significant drag on electricity economics. You're paying for the same power generation equipment twice -- once in peak conventional capacity for cloudy days, and again in peak solar capacity for sunny days -- and then exporting the overage for a pittance.Why would they bother exporting at a loss? Because the feed-in-tariff laws don't allow utilities to shut off net-metered rooftop solar. Utilities are forced by law to pay residential consumers an above-market price for power that isn't needed. Meanwhile, Germany's fossil-burning neighbors benefit from artificially-low EU energy market prices. This discourages them from building cleaner power themselves. It's just a wasteful, distorted energy policy.Remember, electricity must be used in the same moment it's generated. [29] The technology for grid-scale electricity storage does not yet exist, and nothing in the development pipeline is within two orders of magnitude of being cheap enough to scale up. Pumped-hydro storage is great on a small scale, but all the good sites are already in use in both Europe and the US. The only plan on the table for grid-scale storage is to use electric car batteries as buffers while they're charging. But that still won't provide anywhere near enough capacity to smooth solar's rapidly-changing output. [19] And if people plug in their cars as soon as they get home from work and the sun goes down, the problem could get even worse. California's regulators have recently acknowledged that the generation profile at sundown is the biggest hurdle to the growth of solar power. The classic illustration is the "duck chart" (shaped like a duck) that shows how solar forces conventional power plants to ramp up at an enormous rate when the sun stops shining in the evening:[29]People often complain about wind power being unreliable, but when you get enough wind turbines spread over a large enough area, the variability averages out. The wind is always blowing somewhere. This means distributed wind power is fairly reliable at the grid level. But all solar panels on a power grid produce power at the same time, meaning night-time under-supply and day-time over-supply. This happens every single day, forever. At least in warm countries, peak air conditioning load roughly coincides with peak solar output. But Germany doesn't use much air conditioning. It's just a grid management nightmare. The rate of "extreme incidents" in Germany's power grid frequency/voltage has increased by three orders of magnitude since Energiewende started. [20]The severe output swings have even reached the point where Germany's grid physically cannot operate without relying on neighboring countries to soak up the variability. The ramp-down of solar output in the evening happens faster than the rest of Germany's generation capacity can ramp-up. (Massive power plants can't change output very quickly.) Which either means blackouts as people get home from work, or using non-solar-powered neighbors as buffers. Here's one day's generation profile for German solar power, showing how net electricity imports/exports are forced to oscillate back and forth to smooth out the swings in production:[21]If Germany's neighbors also had as many solar panels, they would all be trying to export and import at the same time, and the system would fall apart. The maximum capacity of the entire EU grid to utilize solar power is therefore much lower than the level reached by individual countries like Germany and Spain.Solar boosters often say people need to shift their energy consumption habits to match generation, instead of making generation match consumption. That's feasible, to an extent -- perhaps 20% of power consumption can be time-shifted, mostly by rescheduling large consumers currently operating at night like aluminum electrosmelters. But modern civilization revolves around a particular work/sleep schedule, and you can't honestly expect to change that. People aren't going to give up cooking and TV in the evening, or wait three hours after the sun goes down to turn on the lights. And weekends have radically different consumption profiles from weekdays.It all adds up. PV solar output doesn't properly sync up with power demand. That severely limits the maximum percentage of our electricity needs it can provide. Germany hit that limit at about 4%. They are now finding out what happens when you try to push further.Issue 3: Displacing the wrong kinds of powerYou may have noticed in the daily generation chart above how wind power is throttled back when the sun comes out. Residential solar has legal right-of-way over utility-scale wind. A lot of the power generation that solar is displacing is actually other renewables. Most of the rest is displacing natural gas and nuclear power. Coal power is growing rapidly. [6,8]Here's what the weekly generation profile is predicted to look like in 2020:[22]Notice the saw-tooth shape of the big grey "conventional" (coal/gas) category. What all this solar is doing is eating into is daytime base load generation, which seems good for displacing fossil fuels, but in the long run it's doing the opposite.The majority of electricity worldwide comes from coal and nuclear base load plants. They are big, efficient, and cheap. But base load generation is extremely difficult and expensive to throttle up and down every day. To simplify the issue a bit, you cannot ramp nuclear plants as fast as solar swings up and down every day. It takes several days to shut down and restart a nuclear plant, and nuclear plants outside France are not designed to be throttled back, so nuclear cannot be paired with the daily oscillations of PV solar. Supply is unable to match demand. You end up with both gaps and overages.Most people think Germany is decommissioning its nuclear fleet because of the Fukushima accident, but the Germans didn't really have a choice. They are being forced to stop using nuclear power by all the variability in solar output. That's a big, big problem -- Germany gets four times more electricity from nuclear than solar, so the math doesn't add up. The generation time-profile is wrong, and the total power output from solar is too low. They have to replace nuclear plants with something else.The normal way to handle variable power demand is via natural gas "peaker" plants. But Germany has minimal domestic natural gas resources and load-following gas plants are very expensive to operate, so what they're doing is building more coal plants, and re-opening old ones. [6,8,22] It's expensive and inefficient, but you can run a coal plant all night and then throttle it back when the sun comes up. It has better load-following capabilities than nuclear (although worse than gas). The German Green Party has been fighting nuclear power since the 1970s, and has finally won. Nuclear is out, and coal is in.If you're a regular follower of my writing, you'll know what a terrible idea this is. [23] Replacing nuclear power with coal power is unquestionably the most scientifically-illiterate, ass-backwards, and deadly mistake that any group of environmentalists has ever made. It's unbelievable how much cleaner and safer nuclear power is than coal power. The Fukushima meltdown was pretty much a "worst case scenario" -- one of the largest earthquakes ever recorded, the largest tsunami to ever hit Japan, seven reactor meltdowns and three hydrogen explosions -- and not a single person has died from radiation poisoning. [24] The expected lifetime increase in cancer rates due to the released radiation is somewhere between zero and a number too small to measure. [25] Even spectacular nuclear disasters are barely harmful to the public. Studies are now showing that the stress from the evacuation has killed more people than would have been killed by radiation if everyone had just stayed in place. [26,27]In comparison, coal power kills about a million people per year, fills the oceans with mercury and arsenic, releases more carbon dioxide than any other human activity, and is arguably one of the greatest environmental evils of the industrialized world. [23]This is counter-intuitive, but second-order effects are enormously important. Expansion of photovoltaic solar power past 1-2% of total electricity demand means less nuclear, and more coal. The amount of damage this does completely overwhelms the environmental benefit from the solar panels themselves. You have to avoid building so much solar power that it destabilizes and eliminates other clean power sources. When you get to the "duck chart" stage, things start to get bad. Otherwise you'll end up worse off than when you started, as Germany has found out to its dismay.So that all sucks a lot. German solar power is hurting people and the planet. But there's more.Issue 4: The kickerThe category for "biomass" power you see in all these charts is actually firewood being burned in coal plants. 38% of Germany's "renewable energy" comes from chopping down forests and importing wood from other countries. [28] Effing firewood, like we're back in the Middle Ages or something. Due to overzealous renewables targets, and a quirk in the EU carbon pricing system that considers firewood carbon-neutral, Europe is chopping down forests at an alarming rate to burn them as "renewable biomass." The environmental movement has spent most of the last 200 years of industrialization trying to fight deforestation, and that noble goal has been reversed in an instant by bogus carbon emission calculations.In the very long run, over 100 years or so, firewood is close to carbon neutral because you can regrow the trees and they absorb CO2 as they grow. Unfortunately, using firewood for fuel destroys a living carbon sink and releases all its carbon to the atmosphere right now. When you consider that you're destroying a carbon sink as well as releasing stored carbon, firewood is actually much worse than coal for many decades thereafter. [28] The next few decades is humanity's most critical time for reducing carbon emissions, so this policy is mind-boggling lunacy.Germany is so focused on meeting renewables targets that it is willing to trample the environment to get there. They've managed to make renewables unsustainable! It's tragicomic.To summarize: Energiewende is the worst possible example of how to implement an energy transition. The overzealous push for the wrong generation technology has hurt citizens, businesses, and the environment all at the same time.I want to make it clear that I'm not saying we should abandon solar. It should definitely be part of our generation mix. Due a mix of bad climate and bad policy, Germany ran into problems at a very low solar penetration, and other countries will be able to reach higher penetrations. But even if we ignore cost, there is still a maximum practical limit to solar power based on the realities of grid management.You can't build more PV solar than the rest of the grid can ramp up/down to accept. The necessary grid storage for large-scale solar power is a "maybe someday" technology, not something viable today. Calls for 50% of power to come from solar in our lifetimes are a fantasy, and we need to be realistic about that.You can't force utilities to buy unneeded power just because it's renewable. The energy and materials to build the excess capacity just goes to waste. That is the opposite of green.We have to learn those lessons. We can't sweep this failure under the rug.Every time a renewables advocate holds Germany up as a shining beacon, they set back the credibility of the environmental movement. It's unsupported by reality and I think even gives ammunition to the enemy. We have to stop praising Germany's Energiesheiße and figure out better ways to implement renewables. Other models should work better. They have to -- the future of the world depends on it.[1] Solar power by country[2] Germany's Energy Poverty: How Electricity Became a Luxury Good - SPIEGEL ONLINE[3] German 'green revolution' may cost 1 trillion euros - minister[4] Global Warming Targets and Capital Costs of Germany's 'Energiewende'[5] Germany's 'Energiewende' - the story so far[6] Germany: Coal Power Expanding, Green Energy Stagnating[7] Merkel's Blackout: German Energy Plan Plagued by Lack of Progress - SPIEGEL ONLINE[8] Merkel’s Green Shift Backfires as German Pollution Jumps[9] Capacity factor, Price per watt[10] German Solar Installations Coming In at $2.24 per Watt Installed, US at $4.44[11] It Keeps Getting Cheaper To Install Solar Panels In The U.S.[12] Germany Breaks Monthly Solar Generation Record, ~6.5 Times More Than US Best[13] Germany and Renewables Market Changes (source link in original article is broken, here is an updated link:http://www.bp.com/content/dam/bp...)[14] Cost of German Solar Is Four Times Finnish Nuclear -- Olkiluoto Nuclear Plant, Plagued by Budget Overruns, Still Beats Germany’s Energiewende[15] 313 MWp German PV Capacity Added in July 2013 - 34.5 GWp Total[16] EEG Account: 5,907 GWh of Renewable Energy in August Sold for EUR 37.75 at Expenses of EUR 399.52 per MWh - EUR 540 Million Deficit[17] Germany will dilute - not abandon - its Energiewende plan[18] German power exports more valuable than its imports[19] Ryan Carlyle's answer to How large would an array of solar panels have to be to power the continental US? How much would such an array cost to build? What are the major engineering obstacles to powering the US this way?[20] Electricity demand response shows promise in Germany[21] Energiewende in Germany and Solar Energy[22] Problems with Renewables and the Markets[23] Ryan Carlyle's answer to What are some policies that would improve millions of lives, but people still oppose? Why do people oppose them? What is the one area where you wish politicians and the public would pay attention to scientific consensus or other data?[24] Stephen Frantz's answer to What is a nuclear supporter's response to the Fukushima disaster?[25] Fukushima Cancer Fears Are Absurd[26] Evacuation ‘Fukushima’ deadlier then radiation[27] Was It Better to Stay at Fukushima or Flee?[28] The fuel of the future[29] Fowl Play: how the utility industry’s ability to outsmart a duck will define the power grid of the 21st century

Anti-science activism and statistics-illiterate fear-mongering are killing millions of people. It's shocking and horrifying to realize how many completely-preventable deaths happen every year due to unnecessary fear of 20th-century inventions. Sometimes, the legitimate science in favor of a beneficial technology is so crushingly overwhelming that I have to call opposition to it tantamount to mass murder.I feel very strongly about this. Well-intentioned activists and media fear-mongering are making large swathes of the public into unwitting participants in a vast global calamity of scientific-illiteracy. It is outright killing millions of people. There are several global issues like this, but the one most on my mind lately is...Expansion of Nuclear Power to Replace Coal.First, some background. Coal is the largest global source of electrical power:Coal is also the worst source of electrical power. Leaving aside global warming, coal power outright kills a million people worldwide per year [1] due to massive air pollution and the occasional mining accident.Annual premature deaths from coal power, for a few nations/regions that have access to nuclear power:US - 13,000 deaths per year [2]Europe - 22,300 deaths per year [3]India - 115,000 deaths per year [4]China - Estimates vary from a few hundred thousand up to over a million -- it was estimated at 400,000 in 2006 and has risen steadily since then [5]Stop for a second and really look at those numbers. A million deaths per year is a tragedy, but a million preventable deaths per year is an embarrassment to our species. We can do better, guys. We have to do better.Just about anything would be better than coal. Unfortunately, there aren't actually very many economical, scalable options for replacing base load power plants. They have to run 24/7 with a reliable output, and renewables don't fit the bill. Solar and wind are too variable to directly replace coal. Geothermal, hydroelectric, and tide/wave power are limited by the number of sites around the world with suitable conditions for large-scale generation. Natural gas isn't available in sufficient quantities for any nation but the US right now, and even that's controversial due to the massive shale gas drilling required.There is only one power source than can act as a direct 1:1 replacement for coal power, is cost-competitive with coal power, and has no global warming implications: Nuclear Fission.Despite what you may have been told, nuclear power is fantastically safe. The only way it's possible to think nuclear power is worse than the other base-load alternatives is to simply not know the actual statistics. One graph should instantly end the safety debate over nuclear power for anyone with eyeballs and a shred of intellectual honesty:Page on The9billionTo my mind, that's the only chart you need. Feel free to stop reading and upvote now if you're convinced. But I'm going to get into the details to make sure there's no room for doubt in anyone's mind.Let's get a few things straight, before people flip out and start writing off-topic rebuttals:This isn't an argument about whether wind or solar power are good, because they are good. They serve a valuable role in providing distributed, non-base-load power generation to offset a certain amount of fossil fuel consumption.This isn't an argument about whether expanding nuclear power has challenges, because it does have challenges. Weapons proliferation risks and waste disposal are obviously politically-sensitive issues.This is a simple question of which economically-feasible, base-load power technology harms the fewest people per unit of energy produced. That's the type of power generation we should be using to replace coal power... as fast as possible.The clear winner is nuclear. The safety statistics are just so cut-and-dried that it's flabbergasting to me that anyone even bothers arguing the point. Depending on who you believe, it's either AS SAFE as renewables, or EVEN MORE SAFE than renewables. People differ on the exact number of deaths, but every credible estimate puts nuclear, wind, and solar in a league entirely separate from fossil fuels. This graph makes coal power look as safe as juggling chainsaws:Deaths per TWH by energy sourcePeople claim that intermittent accidents make nuclear power unsafe. No, they don't. Fukushima hasn't caused a single death due to radiation exposure, and experts expect no measurable increase in cancer rates. [6] The supposed "high rates of thyroid abnormalities" that people have been making a big deal about lately are actually no higher than the normal baseline rate for non-exposed parts of Japan. [14]Even Chernobyl, the only nuclear accident that has ever killed any significant number of people, only caused 64 confirmed deaths in the initial incident and following 20 years. Our best understanding of radiation dose response says a few thousand additional people will die someday due to slightly-increased cancer rates, which puts the cumulative eventual Chernobyl death toll at 4,000 according to the official UN committee on radiation exposure, UNSCEAR. The highest estimate anyone has ever made for Chernobyl's cancer impact is 985,000 deaths, but scientists consider this to be an extremely flawed and wildly-inaccurate number. It was made by a single Russian who was trying to sell a book about Chernobyl at the time, and his calculations failed peer review. The highest estimate by a credible scientific entity for eventual increases in cancer deaths due to Chernobyl is 60,000, and even that was based on the now-discredited Linear no-threshold model for cancer rate estimation. [7,8]To recap, the best scientific estimate is 4,000 deaths from Chernobyl, with a safe upper bound of 60,000 deaths. Why is this rate so much lower than people expect? Because our bodies are naturally tolerant of small amounts of radiation. Normal, natural Background radiation dose levels all over the planet vary from under 2 mSv/year up to 6 mSv/year. This is the level that we've been evolving for over a billion years to tolerate without issues. The global average marginal radiation exposure from human sources is about 0.6 mSv/year, almost entirely from medical devices. The generally-accepted limit for safe radiation exposure to the public from human sources is 1 mSv/year. This is an incredibly conservative level, and there is no evidence of harm occurring until much higher doses.Chernobyl only dosed inhabitants of the region with 10-50 mSv over a 20 year period. This is roughly equivalent to simply living in a region with naturally-high radiation levels.Fukushima only dosed inhabitants of the region with 1-15 mSv. This is far below the safe threshold for lifetime exposure in nuclear workers of 100-250 mSv.Emergency responders receive higher doses. The exposure levels to the public are low in large part because of evacuations. But they're also low because nuclear plant accidents release much less radiation than most people think.Compared to a million per year for coal, nuclear's estimated 4,000 deaths from a single incident in 1986 is just fantastic. Most of those 4,000 haven't even died yet -- they're predicted deaths prior to 2065. Frankly, even the implausible upper-bound estimate of 60,000 deaths is still fantastic. Even if we were building more of those awful Chernobyl-style Soviet RBMK reactors, we would STILL be better off with nuclear than coal. Coal kills as many people as 16 to 250 Chernobyls every year. But the types of failures that occurred at Chernobyl and Fukushima are actually impossible with modern reactor designs. New "Gen III" plants built today contain passive cooling loops that eliminate the risk of Fukishima- or Chernobyl-style meltdowns. So that risk won't even exist for any reactors we build today. Nuclear power is getting even safer.In comparison, a single hydroelectric dam failure in 1975 -- the Banqiao Dam -- killed far more people than every nuclear accident in history combined. "But what about nuclear plant radiation evacuations," you ask? Hydroelectric power over the years has permanently displaced somewhere between 40 and 80 million people from their homes due to reservoir flooding [9] versus 160,000 displaced for Fukushima [10] and 350,000 for Chernobyl. [7] Unlike permanent displacements from hydroelectric power, nuclear meltdown evacuations are temporary. People started moving back into many areas around the Fukushima plant in 2012 because the worst radiation had already passed.Is hydroelectric power scary? No. And nuclear shouldn't be either. These statistics prove that the only reason people are more afraid of nuclear power than hydroelectric power is ignorance. If you think nuclear power is dangerous, you could not be more wrong.People are scared because they don't understand radiation. They're scared because it's invisible, and because the media sensationalize the hell out of every tiny nuclear incident, no matter how little impact it actually has. It's pure, mindless fear devoid of any real data whatsoever. The fear is encouraged by entities who profit from it -- by the fear-mongering news media, and the coal lobby, and environmental groups who get donations and manpower from scared activists.And that mindless fear kills people. Fear of radiation literally scares people to death. Stress and mental illness caused by the over-reaction to the Fukushima meltdown have clearly been the biggest impact of the accident. Many estimates say that the stress from the Fukushima evacuation killed more people than just having everyone stay in place would have. Some people did need to be evacuated, particularly families with young children immediately around the plant, but about a hundred thousand people would have been safer staying in place than evacuating. [15,16,17] Small amounts of radiation just aren't anywhere near as harmful as people think.But the direct alternative to nuclear power, coal, is harmful. China, Germany, and Japan have all recently moved away from nuclear because of the Fukushima incident, towards coal and other hazardous power sources. China's decision to build relatively little nuclear power in favor of more coal power is going to end up killing millions of its citizens. Not all nations have nuclear technology, but the worst coal-power-abusers -- India, China, Europe, and the US -- certainly do.Opposition to nuclear power has already killed millions of people, and will continue to kill millions more. It causes massive CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels. It puts mercury, cadmium, and all sorts of other heavy metals into the ecosystem. I can't stress enough how utterly counterproductive anti-nuclear activism is for human health and the environment. It makes me want to tear my hair out how backwards people are getting this.The facts are in, the research is done, and you can either believe the data or you can be a tiny part of the anti-science juggernaut of public opinion that is killing millions of people. It's that simple. Nuclear power is safe. The alternatives are not."But is there enough fuel," you ask"? Yes. Even if we quadruple nuclear power production to eliminate coal, we have roughly 50 years of usage in known conventional uranium deposits, and another 250 years in thorium deposits. That compares quite well to the 300 years or so of reserves we have for coal. (And these reserves figures are very likely to continue to increase as technology develops and we find more deposits.) Even if we run out of all of that, we have many thousands of years worth of additional uranium dissolved in the world's oceans. [20]"But can we afford it," you ask? Yes. In terms of cost, nuclear is fully competitive with its dirtier and less-reliable alternatives:But this really overstates the cost of nuclear relative to fossil fuels, because nuclear power is the only electricity source that fully prices all of its waste streams into the user's electricity cost. [11] We technologically solved the waste disposal problem a long time ago -- vitrify the waste and put it in deep geological storage in salt formations like the US military does at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. The salt creeps into the excavated caverns and seals away the waste for millions of years -- locking it away until long after it's harmless. This level of waste disposal is included in the price of nuclear power, unlike coal.And coal does produce a massive amount of toxic waste. An incredible 131 million tons of it annually in the US alone... mostly dumped in landfills and open-air ash ponds. When people talk about "clean coal" and coal pollution controls, what they really mean is just using expensive scrubbing equipment to redirect pollution from the smokestack to these massive ash ponds. [18] Here's a satellite image of 5.4 million cubic yards of the Tennessee Valley Authority's heavy-metal-contaminated Fly ash spilling into a river and small town in 2008:There are over 200 documented cases of coal ash ponds significantly contaminating the environment in the US alone. [19]The real kicker to coal's toxic waste problem is that coal ash is radioactive. Coal plants emit more radioactivity to the environment around them than nuclear plants do. [12] That's still not enough radiation to hurt anyone, but it certainly adds insult to injury.Coal power producers also don't have to pay the cost of lung diseases and heavy metal poisoning caused by their emissions. Nuclear plant operators not only pay damages to people affected by meltdowns, as TEPCO continues to do in Japan, but also pay all of the handling and disposal costs for their entire routine waste stream... all the way through plant decommissioning. [13] When you include the cost of all these negative externalities, nuclear is dramatically cheaper than coal power. Actually, you don't even need to factor in decommissioning and site remediation costs -- on the simple basis of public health impact alone, coal is one of the most expensive power generating options:The United States' reliance on coal to generate almost half of its electricity, costs the economy about $345 billion a year in hidden expenses not borne by miners or utilities, including health problems in mining communities and pollution around power plants, a study found.Those costs would effectively triple the price of electricity produced by coal-fired plants, which are prevalent in part due to the their low cost of operation, the study led by a Harvard University researcher found."This is not borne by the coal industry, this is borne by us, in our taxes," said Paul Epstein, a Harvard Medical School instructor and the associate director of its Center for Health and the Global Environment, the study's lead author."The public cost is far greater than the cost of the coal itself. The impacts of this industry go way beyond just lighting our lights."Coal-fired plants currently supply about 45 percent of the nation's electricity, according to U.S. Energy Department data. Accounting for all the ancillary costs associated with burning coal would add about 18 cents per kilowatt hour to the cost of electricity from coal-fired plants, shifting it from one of the cheapest sources of electricity to one of the most expensive.Coal's hidden costs top $345 billion in U.S.: study (emphasis added)Coal just sucks. The only good thing about it is that you can build coal plants fast and cheap. Then they start killing people and destroying the environment, and the costs start adding up. Practically anything is cleaner and cheaper than coal in the long run.Nuclear is a vastly superior power technology. Engineers solved the energy crisis a long time ago, and now it's time for politicians to catch up. All of the common complaints and fears are either already solved by modern technology, or are based on outright misconceptions. I'm not saying nuclear power is perfect -- nothing is -- but it's worlds better than the alternatives. The challenges inherent in expanding nuclear power are surmountable and require no new technology.It's an objective fact that we could save millions of lives and improve the quality of life for countless others by phasing out coal power and replacing it with nuclear energy. That's before you even start worrying about climate change! This is a crisis where science simply has to triumph over ignorance, it just has to. We're literally killing ourselves here, and the solution was invented decades ago. I think educating the public to stop fearing nuclear power is truly a moral imperative for our generation.[1] Environmental impact of the coal industry[2] Death and Disease from Power Plants[3] European coal pollution causes 22,300 premature deaths a year, study shows[4] Coal-Fired Power in India May Cause More Than 100,000 Premature Deaths Annually[5] Pollution From Chinese Coal Casts a Global Shadow[6] The Cancer from Fukushima (and Hiroshima) - Fire in the Mind[7] Chernobyl disaster[8] TORCH report[9] Questions and Answers About Large Dams[10] Fukushima Accident 2011[11] Radioactive Waste Management[12] Coal Ash Is More Radioactive than Nuclear Waste[13] Nuclear Energy Institute - The Facts About Nuclear Decommissioning Trust Funds[14] Ministry: Rate of Fukushima thyroid abnormalities roughly normal - AJW by The Asahi Shimbun[15] Fukushima Cancer Fears Are Absurd[16] Was It Better to Stay at Fukushima or Flee?[17] Evacuation ‘Fukushima’ deadlier then radiation[18] Disposal: Coal Ash Waste[19] In Harm's Way: Coal Ash-Contaminated Sites[20] How long will the world's uranium supplies last?

There are initiatives, in the planning stages, to remove space junk from low Earth orbit – but nothing concrete. The subject of space debris is very complicated. There are more than 22,000 pieces that are 10 cm across or larger and maybe half a million more that are smaller. Removing debris is complicated both technically and legally. The technical complications range from the vast amounts of energy needed to maneuver in space and the hazards of grappling an object that might fracture into many smaller objects. The legal complications are:Under international law, space debris belongs to the original owner of the object that was launched into space, so it can't be removed without permission.In order to safely and effectively grapple large objects, their specifications need to be known, and that introduces all kinds of ITAR issues with sharing advanced technologies.Technology designed to remove debris from orbit could also be used to remove active satellites from orbit, and thus may be seen as a space weapon.There is an international group called the Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee that has representatives from eleven different space agencies. They are tasked with looking into it, but don't have authority to resolve the mentioned legal issues.As many debris objects as there are, they are still pretty spaced out. So collecting the debris is difficult. We can't just send up a spacecraft with a catcher's mitt to scoop up debris, because it would only affect the small amount of volume carved out by the cross sectional area of the catcher's mitt. It costs a tremendous amount of fuel to change a spacecraft's inclination. And filling the sky with these garbage scoops would be counterproductive because if just one of them were to hit an object and break apart, it could let loose more debris than it ever could have caught.Some of the ideas under investigation to remove space debris are:EDDE - Electro–Dynamic Debris Eliminator: This is a space vehicle that would be propelled by the Earth's magnetic fields and would use large expendable nets to capture and decelerate large debris objects.SpaDE – Space Debris Elimination: This would fire bursts of gas from the Earth's surface at objects in space to decelerate them. For many LEO objects, it is calculated that a 3% deceleration would be sufficient. Estimates are that it would take about 500 gallons of gasoline per object to power the "air cannon".Sling-Sat – TAMU Sweeper: This is a project of Texas A&M. Their idea is to create a small spacecraft that would instead of capturing debris, catch it and immediately propel it away in a plastic collision. This would be carefully calculated so that the energy of collision would decelerate the debris into a deteriorating orbit and would propel the Sling-Sat on a trajectory to the next piece of debris.Another option is to use ground based lasers to use light pressure to decelerate objects. Most estimates say the energy needed to deorbit the debris isn't practical, but it could potentially be used to prevent a predicted collision with an active asset.One option involves giant aerogel nets.One of the big concerns is that even if we weren't adding more, over time large pieces hit each other and produce a greater number of small pieces, so the cloud would keep growing. An analysis from NASA's Orbital Debris Program Office here at JSC predicts that if we could remove just 5 of the largest pieces, each year, we could actually keep the debris threat in check. 62% of the debris is believed to be made up of large Russian rocket upper stages.