By Larry Kinney
The Camera’s front-page article on Cool Nuclear Energy on Monday, Oct. 13, “Is nuclear power becoming cool in Colorado?” gave short shrift to Solar Energy. Our solar system’s star is a very reliable nuclear power plant that’s been functional for five billion years. Its wide range of radiation produces heat, natural light, and is a key cause of the growth of a multitude of plants, animals and other life forms. The sun also drives weather phenomena from wind, lightning, snow and rain to sunrises and sunsets that paint the sky, animate poets and scientists, and enchant the souls of many mammals, Democrats and Republicans alike.
Our planet has been running on solar nuclear power since well before humanoids appeared. In the last several ticks of the cosmic clock, people have harvested fuels from the fossils of dinosaurs and other herbivores. We burned the fossil fuels to produce high-pressure steam to turn dynamos that generate electricity. Concentrating direct beam solar radiation can also supply high-pressure steam to turn generators. More recently, scientists have developed photovoltaic (PV) technologies and associated electronics that yield direct current electric energy for charging batteries and alternating current for supplying household needs. Early versions powered space-ship electronics, lighting and controls. Recently, PV systems that are more than twice as efficient as earlier versions are being installed all around the world for a fraction of the cost and time of systems that use heat engines powered by fossil fuels or uranium mined and enriched on earth.
Ecologist Bill McKibben, author of 20 books, recently published “Here Comes the Sun.” The book documents recent developments in the production and installation of large- and small-scale PV systems and windmills around the world.
Most of the best are being produced and installed in massive quantities by the Chinese, who are also manufacturing efficient batteries, wind machines and electric vehicles. Some Chinese-developed EVs claim batteries can be charged in five minutes and have a range of 1,800 miles!
The electrification of much of Africa is likely to feature hundreds of mini grids with PV arrays and perhaps windmills (if local microclimates allow them) with simple back-up batteries. The result is low cost of equipment, installation and maintenance, zero fuel cost, and high reliability.
The sun is Mother Nature’s nuclear power plant that doesn’t require human beings to mine and enrich uranium into what can become very dangerous weapons of mass destruction. Unlike utility companies, the sun never invoices for the life-supporting range of services it renders. Coupled with more efficient buildings, new and retrofit, and all forms of transportation, embracing elegantly simple solar and wind energy systems represents sane energy policy and sound economics.
Battery backups for periods of low wind or solar availability are excellent, widely available and recyclable at the end of their lifetimes. The result is much lower economic and environmental costs, more and better jobs, and system reliability that far outstrips energy grids, small or large, that employ fossil-fueled or uranium-fueled power plants.
Nonetheless, President Donald Trump is propping up the inefficient and highly polluting fossil fuel industry with tax dollars to further enrichen the power elite, himself included. He’s also trying hard to monkey-wrench the clean wind and PV industries that have largely mastered the craft of harvesting abundant, free solar radiation and turning it into high-quality electric energy.
In these moments when we must work to ensure there are no kings or tyrants to threaten our precious constitutional democracy, it is comforting to know that fully developed appropriate technologies are available that meet the criteria of sound economics as if people mattered.
Larry Kinney lives in Erie.
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