Skimmed your link, found a lack of math and a highly slanted view of energy generation technologies. FYI, the section of Nuclear power seems stuck in the Gen II and Gen II+ era, little that I could see on Gen III or Gen IV reactor's. Also the section of PV technology seems to ignore all the issues with those techs, such as the high energy inputs needed to produce PV cells (it takes somewhere around 5 to 7 years for a PV cell to pay back the total energy requirement for it construction, if you leave out maintenance and degradation of the PV cell itself), or the fact that you have to use a number of toxic metals in their construction such as Arsenic, Cesium and Cadmium to name a couple.

But thank you for the link, it's always interesting to see a different view point, even if I don't agree.

... Just as soon as he shows us all HIS plan to ditch all fossil fuel use, without a negative energy balance at any time, will all the math shown, and the most pessimistic assumptions you can make about renewable availability and construction/maintenance energy costs baked in. After that, I want him to figure out how to PAY for it. Then I want him to take a good look at what goes into all those 'Green' technologies. A solar panel is energy intensive to make, and requires some toxic materials.

And extremely illegal. The FCC would fine you in the five or six digit range for that kind of broadcast in a heartbeat. And the FCC would find you, they are really good at it. You would also blow local HAM operators off the band, which would not endear you them ether.

You do realize that Chernobyl was a RBMK type reactor and Fukushima used BWR technology. Completely different operating envelopes and failure modes. The only similarities between the two are: 1. They both produced power from controlled nuclear fission chain reactions. 2. They both heated water to transfer energy from the reactor core to the generator turbines. 3. They both had major (INES level 7) accidents.

I question your figure on cost per kWh of nuclear power, according to a recent DoE paper, the average cost of nuclear power generation in the US in 2012 was $.03/kWh .

But having said that you kind of missed the point. Everyone says that solar is so clean because it does not pollute at the point of generation, but you really have to look at all of the costs involved, not just the money, and the fact is that manufacture of solar cells is a very dirty and energy intensive procedure. Add the fact that solar cells contain heavy metals, Cadmium, Arsenic and Lead, that you not only have to deal with at the point of manufacture, but they do not magically go way when the cells reach the end of their life span, so you have to dispose of the cells in such a way that those highly toxic heavy metals do not impact the environment. There is a process to handle spend nuclear fuel, is there a process to handle degraded, toxic solar cells? Then you have to have the energy to make the cells in the first place, which, with maintenance costs, is somewhere between 10 and 30 years of the solar cells energy generation BEFORE they break even on the energy sunk into their creation, at which point they have degraded somewhere between 5 to 30%. Then you have the amount of ground taken up by the panels, ground that you can not use for anything else.

Do not get me wrong, I am not anti-solar. I think solar energy has a role to play in any future energy budget, but at the same time I do not think that solar will ever generate more then 5%, maybe 10% of the world's energy needs. We need something different to replace fossil fuels, but it will not be solar.

The sun does not always shine, nor does the wind always blow.

And do you have any idea how much energy and toxic materials it takes to make your 'clean' solar panels? Cadmium is not a fun metal to manufacture stuff from, nor is Arsenic, and both are used in semiconductor solar cells. As for the amount of energy needed to make all those cells, on average, the energy returned on energy invested (EROEI), which is the ratio of the amount of energy generated vs the amount of energy needed to manufacture and maintain the cells over their life times, makes the payback time somewhere in the range of 10 to 30 years depending on the local energy costs.

Or how large a solar plant you would need to equal one mid-sized nuclear plant? Lets do the math!

First lets pick a nuclear plant, one from somewhere roughly in the middle of list size wise, say the Byron Nuclear Generating Station, a modern two unit PWR plant generating 2300 MW of power 24/7.

Next lets look at solar facts. The daily average irradiance for the surface of Earth is approximately 6 kWh/m2, and that is assuming no clouds, haze, dust, or whatever that is in the atmosphere that might block your power giving sunlight. Now, you have to factor in your solar cells. The most are in the area of 16% to 18% efficient and cutting edge is 19.5%, if you can keep them cool. For the sake of argument I'll give you magical bleeding edge 19.5% efficient cells that keep themselves cool passively. So with our bleeding edge cells we are getting 1.17 kWh/m2 of electricity, and we need to generate 2300 MW in total.

Time to break out the calculators. As you might remember from science class, the metric system is based on powers of ten, so converting from megawatt-hours to kilowatt-hours is not that hard. 1 MwH is 1000 kwH, so the 2300 MwH from the Byron Nuclear Generating Station is 2.3 million kwH, or the output of 1.966 million square meters, almost two square kilometers, of magical bleeding edge solar cells.

But it gets more complicated then that, because the Byron Nuclear Generating Station generates power 24/7 remember? Our solar farm will only generate electricity while the sun is up, so to generate enough power to makeup for the short fall we have to DOUBLE the size of the solar farm, and then find a way to safely store some 27600 MwH of power. And don't say 'We don't have to generate and store on site, we can buy power from other places.' Long distance transmission of that kind of power is not the answer, because it still has to be generated SOMEHOW.

So to sum it up, you have 3.9 square kilometers of solar cells, and some, most likely rather large, system to store some 27600 MwH of power for the nights. Now that you have your power plant, you have to deal with the fact that your solar cells are going to start to degrade, at a rate somewhere between .5% to 1% a year, depending on the type, so within 20 years you might be getting only 80 to 90% of your new plant output.

So, how good does solar look now?