"If someone brought up solar power in Finland, they'd rightly be called an idiot, because solar power simply wouldn't work there very well. It's too far north, and there isn't much sunlight." Gosh, if only Finland had access to the ocean... or if they had some kind of wind! But no... Oh well, they can't use solar -- I guess they'll have to burn a dead thing for energy or use Rube-Goldberg nuclear. That's their only choice.

While the politicians are proposing the new nuclear plants, maybe the politicians could propose injecting everyone with herpes to guarantee re-election! They're about as popular (with the exception of the third-world and the southern US.)

Not even the Senate could reach a human at Google.

The fact that you're citing "Wikipedia" speaks for itself, but here's some actual German energy facts:

http://www.nationmaster.com/country/gm-germany/ene-energy

As you can see, they use fossil fuels for most electrical generation and 30% for nuclear (slighly old numbers, as they've increased renewable generation since then to 17% of their total power generation). Now to put their solar growth alone into perspective, "Germany set a new world record installing 7,400 MW of solar PV in one year. The country also reached a renewable energy electricity penetration of more than 30% on February 7th, 2010." http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2011/03/new-record-for-german-renewable-energy-in-2010??cmpid=WNL-Wednesday-March30-2011

It has doubled the amount of energy from solar panels and, before their nuclear decision, already targeted to have 35% of electricity generation from from renewables by 2020. So while Luddites tell us that France will be selling nuclear power (which France has to heavily subsidize with taxpayer dollars) France already has 6.7% of its energy generation supplied by renewables with their goal of having at least 20% by 2020.

Meanwhile nuclear plants don't even have their storage issues worked out.

Yeah, first off, they're not using their nuclear plant because it was down for refueling. They're not using their coal plant because it wasn't needed because of all the renewable energy that they've got (150% of load, previously). Thirdly, they don't make a large profit because their profits are rebated back to their customers. Nuclear is dead in the long term because, not only is it unpopular, it simply isn't needed in the long run, no matter what Slashdot says.

So to sum up this thread, and how Slashdot is broken in general. "Bill Gates is right!" "I agree." "You're right and I agree with you." "Everybody above is right and I agree with them." Even though the Bonneville Power administration was running 100% with renewables already (without even using microhydro, solar thermal, or tidal), and is making money at it, it's important to notice that Slashdot's mod system says this can't be done.

Exactly. For those who think that the results are the same I'd encourage them to try it. I do switch back to Google occasionally, but for primary sources (ie. anything statistical, anything in the government, anything research related) Google just sucks. Unless you want Wikipedia and blogs, then have at it.

No, Bing got caught incorporating Google's results. And personally, I don't care how Bing's doing it. Their results are better. And yes, Microsoft is scum.

Too late. I already found that with Bing I get primary sources rather than the first search result being Wikipedia followed by a bunch of blogs, so I switched. (And I hate Microsoft.)

"renewable" isn't going to cut it, either."

I love how something which is being done, ie. power being 100% generated by renewables, today, can still be denied by people who don't want to accept that it is. Reality is no match for anyone's ego gratification. Here's BPA's power output by power source:

http://www.transmission.bpa.gov/Business/Operations/Wind/baltwg.aspx

"Slow down progress?" That's just terribly obvious framing. Actually by voting this way they're speeding up progress towards modern renewables. After all, nuclear fission technology is not a "modern" technology, it's over a half century old and it's simply not needed anymore (Bonneville Power Administration shut down its nuclear plant for refueling and their coal plant was shut down because it was unnecessary and still had excess power to export -- 100% from renewables so please, please don't post stupidly about "baseline" power.)

They're in a particularly sunny climate, there are already rolling out solar thermal storage systems so that their solar can generate 24 hours per day, They have tidal sources which France used to generate hundreds of megawatts back in the 60's out of a single installation -- ignoring the efficiency increases of what we can do today.

Fuel is finite, so fuel based sources are out of date. Meanwhile, renewables just keep coming down in price. Solar dropped 20% last year alone, and is expected to drop another 20% this year. Meanwhile, nuclear keeps increasing in cost. Costs for implementation, fuel, owner's costs, massive grid tie-ins, and let's not even discuss the fact that they don't pay for their own insurance and push that on to the public purse in the event of a catastrophe.

So "progress?" I don't think that word means what you think it does. The first world has made it's decision and you can flog the dead horse of nuclear, but the only new adopters will be the third world and powers that want to refine for nuclear weapons, such as arabic countries, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

Yes, this music industry will push back, just like Napster.

Just think, they could have controlled the online music industry by now since they owned Napster, instead they gave an entire new industry to Apple. That's just smart management. And remember, those same geniuses are in charge still.

That's why they get the big money.

To put it in perspective, the supercollider cost about $8 billion over ALL its years. By contrast the nuclear fission industry received $38 billion in taxpayer loan guarantees in a single year, and the CBO projects that it will default on more than half of them. That's about $20 billion in taxpayer money. In one year. And that doesn't include direct subsidies, the eight year federal tax credit, the $2 billion dollar cost overrun fund, and debt waivers.

...off the roof of a building!

Now when the same problems cause a second leak we can 100% confirm those problems are the cause!

How else will we address the third leak?

Wow, $6.79 of purchasing power per hour for 15 hour shifts! Where do I sign up? Gotta love the libertarian view of "screw them, they're a different color." I've pretty much stopped posting to slashdot because I'm so disgusted with you people.