What's Your Favorite Renewable Energy

Your comment seems to treat solar power and hydrogen as somehow exclusive, rather than as different parts of the energy production chain.

Except we're not allowed to build any more dams, even in places that could use them. Some protected bug or fish is in the way. And not to mention the greenies wanting to tear down a few of the existing ones.

Small earthquakes are commonly associated with geothermal sites. No one is really sure about the big ones.

http://spectrum.ieee.org/green-tech/geothermal-and-tidal/earthquakes-hinder-green-energy-plans [ieee.org]

Well, we have the Multivac [multivax.com] to solve that little problem.

Great. When you solve the (not insurmountable) problems of launching such huge mass into geostationary orbit, construction and maintenance on something the order of hundreds of square kilometers in space, focused transmission over distances of 40Mm, you'll be a billionaire.

You can't extract energy from a static magnetic field. You can only extract energy from an object moving through a static magnetic field, in which case you are extracting it from the kinetic energy of the object itself.

Zero-point energy is the lowest possible potential. While not devoid of energy entirely, by definition, you cannot extract any further energy. There is no lower potential you can reduce it to. Think of the Casimir effect as a static pressure source. At the nanoscale, it will act as a force pushing two plates together. That force is a potential, which can be extracted as the plates move together. Once touching, they have reached the lowest possible potential, and energy must be applied back to the system to pull the plates apart.

Pseudoscience buzzwords do not make an energy source.

For several decades, physicists at Chalk River in Canada have been working out ways to use Th232 in a CANDU-style reactor (light and heavy water, no liquid sodium) to produce power and breed U233 as a byproduct. Since U233 is a good fuel for CANDU systems, you wind up with a process that burns abundant Thorium-232 while removing the need for a fast reactor.

See: http://www.nuclearfaq.ca/brat_fuel.htm

Fukushima was designed for the estimated worst case on a 250 year time scale.

Unit 1 was designed for a peak ground acceleration of 0.18 g (1.74 m/s2) and a response spectrum based on the 1952 Kern County earthquake, but rated for 0.498 g. The design basis for Units 3 and 6 were 0.45 g (4.41 m/s2) and 0.46 g (4.48 m/s2) respectively. All units were inspected after the 1978 Miyagi earthquake when the ground acceleration was 0.125 g (1.22 m/s2) for 30 seconds, but no damage to the critical parts of the reactor was discovered. The design basis for tsunamis was 5.7 meters.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_Nuclear_Power_Plant#Power_plant_information [wikipedia.org]

The 9.0 MW Thoku earthquake occurred at 14:46 JST on Friday, 11 March 2011 with epicenter near the island of Honshu.[50] It resulted in maximum ground accelerations of 0.56, 0.52, 0.56 g (5.50, 5.07 and 5.48 m/s2) at units 2, 3 and 5 respectively, above their designed tolerances of 0.45, 0.45 and 0.46 g (4.38, 4.41 and 4.52 m/s2), but values within the design tolerances at units 1, 4 and 6.

The earthquake was followed by a 15 m (49 ft) tsunami arriving 41 minutes later which topped the plant's 5.7 m (19 ft) seawall

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_I_nuclear_accidents#Earthquake_and_tsunami [wikipedia.org]

They didn't know a 15 m tsunami could happen there or would.

They should have known. There is evidence for such large tsunamis all over the place. They should have considered geologic and archaeologic records. Even in the historic record are many tsunamis larger than 15m. Japan, in 1854, 28m, and in 1896, possibly 30m. The 1923 Japanese tsunami is perhaps best remembered, and that was 12m, plenty high enough to swamp Fukushima. There is a 1993 tsunami in Japan that reached 31m. Now that was after the plant was built, but gave them ample warning that they needed to make changes. Basing statistics on cherry picked information is asking for trouble. That they didn't design for it doesn't speak well of their planning. I can't see how they would not know. It seems more like they deliberately downplayed or ignored these records, and chose to gamble in order to save money.