Re: Re: Summary A

[KellySt@aol.com]

Timothy van der Linden

> >>Yes, I meant fusion. What kind of health problems does renewable energy
> >>have? Are solar-panels also dangerous?
> >
> >Mainly industrial accident problems.  Solar especially causes a lot of
> >induystrial accident per amount of power since its a lot of little
> >distributed systems.

> What kind of accidents should I think of? Exploding batteries,
> electrical shortcuts?

Normal stuff, falls, smashing glass, electrical shorts, etc...  Solar
requires a lot of hands on work out of doors.  It has one of the highest
labor overhead rates of major power systems.  So a lot of folks get hurt.  I
think about 10-20 times as much as coal or nukes.  Also solar has thermal
polution problems.  But no more than most old style power systems.  Well and
a very high expence, but thats not what we were talking about.

> >Renewable is a grab bag term.  So the problems would depend on the system.
> > Bio mass obviously would take up a lot of land and have ecological
impacts,
> >and polution effects from burning.  Wind and tide systems tend to chew up
> >animals that get in the way and take up a lot of relestate, and of course
> >have cronic relyabilty problems (you ever try to schedule a selected wind
> >speed?).

> Now I see what you mean, but how many animals would be 
> killed by pollution caused by dirty-energy? 

So don't use dirt, thou I suppose it (coal) is ironically the one most likly
to get past political problems.  In my old neighbor hood in Wisconson the
folks chased out a Nuke in favor of a coal plant and thought themselves real
lucky.

> I also heard that the number of birds killed by wind-mills 
> does depend very much on where those mills are. It seems
>  that birds have very distinct flying routes (downto 100 
> metres accurate).
\
I heard they like to hang out in tracks with strong favorable winds.
 unfortunatly thats the only place you can put a wind turbine.  

Figures.

Kelly