Yes, I agree. If a country increases in size, it should be able to increase the size of its capitol. Bigger country, bigger building. Abolishing capitol gains would eventually result in mismatched building/country ratios, forcing leaders to compensate by inciting wars or worse yet, taxing capital gains.
The poor are punished by inflation when basic survival increases exceed their wages. It is not a big deal to a millionaire if the price of food goes up by 50% but it is a big deal to a minimum wage worker. The millionaire will be impacted by a slower increase in net wealth while the minimum wage worker faces the choice of homelessness or starvation.
I haven't read the FIT for Germany, but typical FITs only pay when energy is delivered. If the wind stops blowing, the generator is not able to charge for the capacity of the facility during that time.
Power exports are highly volatile and depend on who else is generating at the time and what the demand is at that time. If the majority of exports occurred in the evening, the exporter is likely doing so at or below cost. However, daytime rates are often several times higher than the price at night which would be a gain for the exporter.
The bottom line is that renewables make power trading more volatile but not necessarily more expensive. More generators mean more competition and the potential for lower prices. The power system is very complicated and very hard to characterize.
Not quite. Nuclear generates baseload power, meaning that it generates close to the same amount around the clock. It cannot react quickly enough to follow the daily fluctuations, making it unsuitable to be the sole source of power in the grid. Natural gas, hydro dams and to a lesser extent, solar PV can be used to follow load. Because of low prices for natural gas, most of the new generation comes from natural gas turbines and combined cycle facilities. Natural gas has about half the CO2/MWhr of a MWhr generated by coal. Not perfect, but a step in the right direction.
Doesn't matter. Have you seen those tiny arms? T Rex will never be able to shoot straight.
Don't tell that to the Brazilians!
Oh...for some mod points right now!
Your attitude underscores why liberal arts courses are useful. While they aren't useful for practical things like programming or designing chips, they are useful for getting out of the dark cave that many techs end up being trapped in. It takes a very specialized mind to do tech work and most people don't have that kind of mind. Inverting this thought, this means there is a whole society out there created by people who are not techs. If you want to participate in society beyond sitting behind a computer, understanding the rest of humanity is important and that is what humanities courses are for. Life is not just about working, nor is it just about money.
The nuclear plant is likely held in an LLC. This is a common corporate structure for all power plants, not just nuclear ones.
Have you checked the price of solar panels these days? Roughly $1000/kW. That's half of what it was a few years ago. The real problem with PV is its intermittent nature.
A classmate from grad school told me about his time as a night manager at a KFC somewhere in South Carolina. As one might imagine, KFC does not attract the sharpest knives in the drawer. During the day shift, there were some renos going on that required moving things around in the store room. The cleaning supplies ended up below a rickety shelf that held stored the bleach. Had these guys paid attention in high school, they might have understood that storing chemicals like this was very hazardous. To make a long story short, the shelf collapsed while my classmate was on duty. The resulting poison gas cloud forced the closure and evacuation of the restaurant. Fortunately, my classmate had a good understanding of chemistry, and got everyone out before they burned their lungs.
That is why learning chemistry is not a waste of time, even though it seems like a useless subject.
You fool! All the girls took French. That was reason enough for me to take it.
It is sad that it takes a comic strip to illustrate just how out of kilter things have become:
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1086
Geothermal?
E = MC ** 2 +- 3db
