California Lawmakers Extend the Life of the State's Last Nuclear Power Plant (npr.org) 101
Citing searing summer temperatures and expected energy shortages, California lawmakers approved legislation aimed at extending the life of the state's last-operating nuclear power plant. From a report: The Diablo Canyon plant -- the state's largest single source of electricity -- had been slated to shutter by 2025. The last-minute proposal passed by the state legislature early Thursday could keep it open five years longer, in part by giving the plant's owner, Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E), a $1.4 billion forgivable loan. California, like other U.S. states and countries, has been struggling to reduce its climate-warming emissions while adapting to a rapidly warming world. Record-breaking heat waves have stressed the state's increasingly carbon-free electrical grid in recent years, triggering rolling blackouts as recently as 2020. Grid operators, fearing a similar crash, issued a statewide alert to conserve energy last month.
The state has set the goal of getting 100 percent of its electricity from clean and renewable sources by 2045. Advocates for Diablo Canyon claim that target will be difficult to achieve without the 2,250 megawatt nuclear power plant. Diablo Canyon generated nearly 9 percent of the state's electricity last year and roughly 15 percent of the state's clean energy production. Maintaining operations at Diablo Canyon will keep our power on while preventing millions of tons of carbon from being released into the atmosphere," said Isabelle Boemeke of the group Save Clean Energy. "This is a true win-win for the people of California and our planet." Nuclear power has seen a resurgence in recent years as the climate crisis has worsened and governments increase efforts to cut climate-warming emissions. The Biden administration launched a $6 billion effort earlier this year aimed at keeping the country's aging nuclear plants running.
The state has set the goal of getting 100 percent of its electricity from clean and renewable sources by 2045. Advocates for Diablo Canyon claim that target will be difficult to achieve without the 2,250 megawatt nuclear power plant. Diablo Canyon generated nearly 9 percent of the state's electricity last year and roughly 15 percent of the state's clean energy production. Maintaining operations at Diablo Canyon will keep our power on while preventing millions of tons of carbon from being released into the atmosphere," said Isabelle Boemeke of the group Save Clean Energy. "This is a true win-win for the people of California and our planet." Nuclear power has seen a resurgence in recent years as the climate crisis has worsened and governments increase efforts to cut climate-warming emissions. The Biden administration launched a $6 billion effort earlier this year aimed at keeping the country's aging nuclear plants running.
1 or 2 or both? (Score:2)
1 or 2 or both?
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"Oh... Diablo Canyon Two, why can't you be more like Diablo Canyon One?" [frinkiac.com]
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This still doesn't solve the underlying problem: The utility companies operating nuclear power plants are enormously corrupt and criminally incompetent.
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then we're not allowed to charge our EVs except on approved holidays.
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This still doesn't solve the underlying problem: The utility companies operating nuclear power plants are enormously corrupt and criminally incompetent.
These are the same corrupt and incompetent utilities that are producing electricity by wind, sun, and rain. How does closing Diablo Canyon fix that problem?
They keep the plant running for a few more years so they have more time to fix the issues of corrupt and incompetent utilities that can't produce enough energy by other means. I'm thinking the corruption and incompetence is not in the utilities but in the government. Keeping Diablo Canyon running buys time to clean out the government too.
Wherever the
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The problem is the nuclear plant is built very near two seismic fault lines.
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The problem is the nuclear plant is built very near two seismic fault lines.
Was this problem just discovered? If you know about it then I assume so does every legislator that approved this loan. Yet they got the loan anyway. So, it must be that the risks of the seismic fault lines is considered acceptable for the plant to continue operating.
Every nuclear power plant is built to withstand an earthquake. The risks of earthquakes was put under review all over the world after the quake that caused the meltdowns at Fukushima. If Diablo Canyon did not meet these strict requirements
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What we should be doing is demanding we get stock in exchange for government investment. If I is a private citizen give a private company money I get a share of ownership in that company. It stands the reason that if my government takes my tax dollars and gives it to a private company
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What we should be doing is demanding we get stock in exchange for government investment.
Or you could just further limit when you are allowed to use electricity, that seems to be the prevailing alternative.
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What we should be doing is demanding we get stock in exchange for government investment.
Yeah sound strategy there. Lets think for a moment about the realistic outcomes of that. First it should go without saying the sale of stock is done to raise capital. Doing so means you lose some of your ownership, and along with that some of your rights to the profits generated and likely some control, you'll have to offer voting rights and board seats etc to attract investors who want some recourse if you start getting really stupid with THEIR money. So generally speaking if you REALLY believe in your bu
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We use grants to subsidize college education. They should be called what it is a plain old subsidy or if you must hand out.
Maybe a better analogy would be a grant to fund some research in a university. Many will ask for the money back if you don't the research, so maybe they are really forgivable loans!
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How dare that lazy power plant with it's blue hair and useless degree get a forgivable loan! That's a slap in the face to every other plant who used bootstraps to generate power.
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Government speak. Why not just call it what it is: a grant?
Because a forgivable loan implies at least a chance that the money gets paid back, even if everyone in the know is quite certain the chances of payback is for all practical purposes zero. It's easier to sell this way to voters, and looks better on the government budget.
There's also the possibility that the power plant might not take the money if it were a grant. There's rules on grants and loans, and the people running the power plant might not like the rules on what it means to accept a grant. The power
Of course they did. (Score:2)
Kick the can down the road.
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https://hardware.slashdot.org/... [slashdot.org]
Where are the shrill shreikers? (Score:1, Flamebait)
People like me who are against nuke (Score:3, Interesting)
We're not exactly thrilled about our tax dollars going free and clear to a private company in exchange for nothing but a promise to keep supplying electricity. It would seem the reasonable thing would be to get shares in the company were investing in but you k
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I do wish the left knew when to keep their damn mouth shut. I get it that it's annoying that people get upset over the concept of social justice because FOX News tells them to and people c
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If money was no object we'd have wind and solar.
If money were no object then why do you believe wind and solar would win out? If the selection criteria were not cost then what would we base our decisions to build upon? CO2 emissions perhaps? There's a number of studies to look at on this and wind does well enough, but not solar, at least not the silicon based solar that is so common. Look at Wikipedia for a summary of some of those studies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
That link takes you to the 2014 IPCC study, scroll down for the 2020 study.
If
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That's entirely my point (Score:3)
Adam fucking Smith talked about all of this a long time
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So we're all agreed now ? (Score:4, Informative)
Then work out something better.
THEN shut them down ?
And the people who fucked this up and shut them down early and left the world dependent on fucking Putin will apologise to us all ?
Good.
We already worked out something better (Score:1)
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We did it 10 years ago when wind and solar were at the point where they could supply base load power even in places with a lot of cloud cover
So never then? Because wind and solar can't make baseload power now. That is why CA has a duck curve for a pricing structure. That is why CA is restarting this NPP. That is why PG&E doesn't have enough money left over to trim trees. That is why German power is so dirty. That is why French power is so clean. Does reality even exist for you? All of those decisions that you blame on PG&E were actually made by the state regulators. Please stop posting about power generation, you have no idea wh
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Baseload is an outdated concept, so says the guy who used to run the UK's national grid: https://energypost.eu/intervie... [energypost.eu]
Think about what we could have. Over-build renewables so that you are covered 99.9% of the time, with some storage or maybe even the odd gas plant to cover the once or twice a year you need them. Now you have masses of cheap energy for everyone, and it can easily be net zero. Why would you not want that? Why insist on paying 6-7x as much for nuclear power, in 20 years time by which point
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Baseload is the reality of the world that we live in as it's running and must be taken into account. If we're going to get rid of it a sane transition plan would be required. And it looks to me like right now we are suffering from a lack of such a plan, and it seems like that will only get worse, especially in the short term. Let's wait until we get rid of it to say it's an outdated concept.
One (two?) reason that you might not want to live in your world of pure overbuilt renewables is the land use and scale
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nope, you have it the wrong order.
- Build renewables
- Extend slightly running nukes
- Shutdown nukes before the explosion.
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It's too late to build nukes, even if they were affordable. The only outfit building them in Europe is EDF, and they are quoting 20 years for one.
Plus nukes aren't ideal for developing countries. They are expensive and need a lot of infrastructure, as well as strong regulation. Not the sort of thing you can set up overnight.
We won! (Score:2, Informative)
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No, the panic over the overstressed power grid won today. The current mega-super-heat dome of doom event here plus the fact that the legislature was in get-the-f-outta-dodge mode last night is what got this done, not reason. One more plank for next-gen Govenator to hammer into place for his run for the POTUS chair.
I'm happy it got done but it just kicks the can down the road, like so many other policy decisions lately.
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New nuclear may be ok. Diablo is sort of old; construction began in 1968, with roughtly 16 years of construction for each of the two units. It cost $14 billion to construct (adjusted for inflation). And like most nuclear plants of the past it is extremely expensive to operate. The rationale to shut it down was a bit flawed - assumptions that renewables would increase and therefore the Diablo Canyon would only be needed half time, which makes it more expensive to operate than it makes in profit. Remembe
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PG&E planned to decommission, not the state
Um what? Then why was it Newsom announcing the closure of Diablo Canyon instead of a PG&E PR rep? Also, that's a decision the state regulators have final say in, not PG&E. PG&E has always argued that it needed to keep Diablo open. Not sure how you got the idea that they wanted to close it. Diablo has about 20 years left in its scheduled life and it is PG&E's only source of CO2 free baseload power. It is very profitable when you compare it to only its operational costs. In order to kil
Nuclear helps reducing carbon footprint! (Score:3, Insightful)
What's galling is California, in their relentless zeal to zero out carbon emissions, is ignoring how much nuclear power can and is contributing to their ability to decarbonize. It's nothing but stupid anti-nuclear fearmongering that has driven the shutdown schedule of these plants.
Wind, solar, and hydro make poor base load generators. Nuclear is ideal for that scenario yet it's being treated as if it's just as bad as coal, oil, and gas.
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They make poor base load but good instant 'gap fillers'
And then you have to ask where the energy to pump the water back up into the reservoir comes from...
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The technology is old though. There is new stuff, but just like the old nuclear plants the cost of construction is massive. Historically, Hydro has been the best base power, the only snag is climate change causing droughts which makes hydro less reliable than it has been in the past.
It also isn't fearmongering that lead to this shutdown, but economics. The $1.4 billion loan is to encourage PG&E to keep it open.
How much is 1.5B in renewables (Score:1)
How much capacity do you get for 1.5B or renewables? Say you give random houses a power wall and solar system and require it be completed in 3 years. How much would that offset? Say it was all utility level wind farms, how much would that generate for 1.5B. Offshore?
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How much would this money get in renewable energy? Not quite one Ivanpah Solar Power Facility.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
For comparison this same money would get about 1/10th of a Watts Bar Nuclear power plant.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Why spend ten times as much for the nuclear power plant? Because it produces more than ten times as much energy per year. And it produces energy at night.
One common complaint of nuclear power is that it takes so long to get them built. We see the US Navy buil
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If they were cheaper in the past then the private companies that build nuclear power plants would already be using them.
Private companies wanted to build nuclear power plants but we had government interference in making that happen. California has had an explicit ban on new nuclear power plants. On the federal level this ban was more implicit, with members of Congress putting up barriers to new construction and appointments to the NRC being hostile to new nuclear power plants. Sometimes the hostility to nuclear power from commissioners was quite open, sometimes they were more subtle, the outcome was still few nuclear powe
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We see the US Navy build nuclear powered aircraft carriers in four years, and this is during peacetime.
The first steel for the new USS Enterprise (CVN-80) was cut in 2017. If there are no disruptions, it won't be delivered until 2028 at the earliest, 11 years after construction began.
Reactors for naval vessels are not suitable for civilian use. They don't have the same protection mechanisms, they use highly-enriched uranium, and they have a lot of highly secret components. It is unlikely that the US government would approve their use, with objections coming from numerous departments. While the president can
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Uh oh, downmod for pure factual truth about how the government is structured. Kids, today. Take a civics class or read a book. Educate yourself, silly mod.
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The NRC's regulations are based on laws written by Congress. In order to change the regulations, there is a procedure, defined by Congress, that will take months if not years to hash out through hearings and study groups established within the existing statutory framework that is under the control of Congress, not the president. That's not including the inevitable court challenges, which would also drag on for years.
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Each of the two units at Diablo Canyon took 16 years to construct...
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Then we'd better get started real soon on building their replacements.
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Based on industry standards, about 750 MW nameplate capacity which have about 10-25% capacity factor (so 75-150 MW ideally) and that is not including the land, add to that about 2.5 acres of land per MW nameplate capacity and this will operate between 10 and 15 years before being scrapped. And also, the batteries, will probably double that cost.
But presuming energy is stored in unicorn farts, this is $20M/MW or $2M/MW/year for usable energy.
A new 1000MW Westinghouse nuclear reactor (one of the most expensiv
Re: How much is 1.5B in renewables (Score:2)
Great info. Thank you.
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It can't physically be higher than 30% and I made calculations based on 25% and industry standards. You are correct, someone wouldn't scrap an industrial PV site after 10 years, they'll do it after 5:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada... [www.cbc.ca]
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/09/0... [cnbc.com]
https://hbr.org/2021/06/the-da... [hbr.org]
It's called the Solar Trash Wave.
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How much capacity do you get for 1.5B or renewables? Say you give random houses a power wall and solar system and require it be completed in 3 years. How much would that offset? Say it was all utility level wind farms, how much would that generate for 1.5B. Offshore?
Let's see, solar is $3/watt and this is about $1.5/watt. With renewables you only get power a small fraction of the time (which is why it is unsuitable for baseload). Nuclear on the other hand is the most reliable source of power we have. So to match Diablo with renewables it would take 18x the amount of money (nuclear availability is 9x that of renewables and this plant is half the cost per watt). So to replace Diablo with renewables would cost about $27b and that is only if you ignore storage complete
Nuclear in CA (Score:2, Insightful)
Frankly, with their "Green" push to go all electric vehicles by a set date and everything else, it's crazy CA doesn't get busy building new nuclear power plants; much less a decision to keep an existing one going another 5 years.
A lot has happened with regards to improved reactor designs since all of these aging ones across America were put online. The "waste" from these could literally be the fuel for a new generation of plant.
People keep talking about the prohibitive expense, but then they turn around and
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Stop making sense, it only angers the climate crisis banshees which makes them scream louder.
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"I only do what appears popular, and do not care about actual outcomes".
Can we please stop calling gov't subsidies (Score:5, Insightful)
We give taxpayer money to private individuals all the time. Usually the top 20k families. Stop pretending we don't.
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Well shit (Score:2)
We won't shut them down. (Score:2, Insightful)
If we want to transition to a primarily electric consumer fleet, we need more nuclear power, not less.
and we need to take the time and spend the money to reprocess spent fuel to make it usable again.
Dig up all of the waste and reprocess it into fuel for more efficient modern reactor designs that can run on reprocessed spent fuel.
Move forward, not backward.
Wind and solar have been capable of Base load (Score:2)
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You want to see something eye-opening? Look at Cal-ISO's supply page: https://www.caiso.com/TodaysOu... [caiso.com]
NatGas is the largest power provider. Solar does its usual diurnal thing. Hydro ramps up a little but can't get too far (we're in a mega-drought). Fission? The supply is rock steady through the whole day....a flat line of supply of about 2GW.
Yes, hone the renewables tech. But for the love of all that is holy give us a base line we can riff off of so we can watch "Whiplash" again.
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I find it interesting that the battery line shows they charge up from about 8:00 AM to 4:00 PM then ramps up to a peak about 7:00 PM and then ramps down for some small ups and downs through the night. This night time up and down, charge and discharge, on the batteries appears to be the utilities putting everything else in a steady state and using only batteries to manage the small changes in demand. Maybe that is some kind of testing or conditioning of the batteries.
Toggle to the "stacked" chart and the "
Safety is never first. (Score:2, Insightful)
From the fine article:
"Safety cannot take a back seat in our quest to keep the lights on and reduce global warming emissions."
Safety is never first as Mike Rowe, the "Dirty Jobs" guy, likes to point out. What comes first is getting shit done. Safety comes second, maybe third after making a profit. If safety were first then nothing would get done. If there was no profit in what we do then we could not get things done for very long because we'd run out of money. Once those things are satisfied then we can worry about safety.
I'm sorry, safety must take a back seat on keeping the lights on. In fact reducing
Exactly, lights on is minimum case (Score:2)
In fact reducing the global warming emissions is going to have to take a back seat to keeping the lights on.
This is what is happening all over, the reason why coal and gas use is surging to all time highs. Because the world needs power for lights and heat and industry, and if any of those go away for too long you no longer have civilization.
Better we start building lots of nculear plants now, so we can actually get away from coal and gas in a reasonable timeframe. It is not possible to do that with solar
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If safety were first then nothing would get done. If there was no profit in what we do then we could not get things done for very long because we'd run out of money.
Have you ever set foot in a nuclear plant? I have on several occasions to calibrate equipment that was slightly contaminated and was not able to leave the premises. Safety is taken very seriously.
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I didn't claim that safety means nothing. I'm pointing out that safety is never a higher priority than getting work done. The safest power plant is having no power plant. But we need that power plant to get work done. So we have to balance safety with getting things done. Safety comes in second, maybe third. Always.
These people screaming over nuclear power safety don't realize just how safe nuclear power has become over the many years we've been using it. Safety is taken seriously at a nuclear power
Re: Safety is never first. (Score:1)
A bit too serious, I had one of those exposure indicators tripped without even setting foot in a facility. They are notoriously unreliable.
Re: Safety is never first. (Score:2)
You are misinterpreting the comment you replied to. Your experience actually supports what they said.
The nuclear plants you've been in actually exist, right? They were built, and they were operating?
Arguably, it would have been safer not to build them. But they built them anyway, because we need power. They took some safety risks in order to get electricity. Therefore, because they built the plant in the first place, that's putting providing power ahead of perfect safety.
First, provide power. Second, do so
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In fact reducing the global warming emissions is going to have to take a back seat to keeping the lights on.
This is what a lot of the climate change alarmists don't understand. They want to make radical changes to how the world works with no thought as to the consequences of such actions; if you destroy a society's ability to keep functioning, then your green policies won't mean anything as they're tossed along with everything else in order to turn the lights/water back on.
In fact, you do more damage to your agenda the more radical your policies.
Ultimately any climate change policies need to be economically feas
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Running the pumps is something that can be done during the day when the sun is out producing electricity. Pump the water to a high place, perhaps a giant elevated water tank [wikipedia.org], and you'll have water pressure 24/7 even when the power goes out due to a wildfire or something.
mr burns is to cheap to fix his plant and bribes (Score:2)
mr burns is to cheap to fix his plant and bribes his way out stuff.
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Safety in nuke is absolutely first (Score:2)
As for your points about safety I would rather survive a week without power then have to flee my city like the people of Fukushima did. I don't trust my government and my businessmen enough to let them build and run nuclear power plants even if it wasn't a stupid econ
Re: Safety in nuke is absolutely first (Score:1)
Nuclear is about 5-10 times cheaper still per MW produced and provides at full capacity over 90% of its lifetime.
It’s unusual but (Score:2, Insightful)
common sense actually won for once in California.
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Give it a minute.
Some asshat group will sue and get an injunction to go ahead and close the plant.
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Oh look another five years for the big one (Score:2)
We all know that California is going to come to a bad end with either a MAJOR earthquake or a mega flood. And now the nukes are there to make the outcome of either more 'interesting'...
Here's hoping I'm wrong!
Build more (Score:1)
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Silly mod down votes simply economic fact. Solar is not free. You kids! Makes me laugh every time.
If the editors cared about this site (they clearly don't) you'd have your mod points stripped. But that's why Slashdot has gone from front page posts commonly getting over 1000 comments to rarely breaking 100 and "first post!" is no longer even a thing.
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By the same logic of "free" solar power we have "free" gasoline. All that oil is in the ground, all we have to do is dig up this "free" energy and distill it down to "free" gasoline. Right?
Solar power is far from free. It costs a lot of money in land, labor, and materials to collect that solar power and turn it into useful work. You can make an argument that solar power is lower cost, but you can't call it free. If solar power is free then gasoline must also be free. It's all energy that's just there
A nuclear plant named after the Devil? (Score:2)