Re: Re: Summary A

[KellySt@aol.com]

Kevin C Houston

> Kelly:
> > > >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

> This is not fair comparison at all! >:-(  
> Kelly, you are comparing apples and oranges.  Plus I think you have 
> mis-stated the accident rate by a factor of at least 10.
> you can't compare solar collectors (PV) with a coal or nuclear power 
> plant, unless you also consider the accident rate from transmission 
> lines, substations, PCBs (in the transformers) etc


Those were the general overall injury rates per power cycle (minning,
generation, transmission, clean up, etc..), per given amount of power
generated.  This also included public injury potential.  For example
hydroelectric dams have low injuries, but in case of a dam failure they could
whipe out hundreds of thousands of people.

I did a reaserch paper on this in collage.

>>>>snip <<<<
>  I even helped with the installation on one house.  
> according to your 10-20 times higher accident rate, 
>  I should have fallen off that roof at least once.  out 
>  of five people (yes, it is a labor intensive tech) 
>  not one accident occured (discounting one guy who hit his 
>  thumb with a 

Are you kidding?  You m,ake it sound like I suggested everyone standing next
to the things will drop dead.  I said the injury rates are a lot higher for
solar.  Do you know how low comercial injury rates are?  A solar home subburb
couldn't run the secondary support system in a big power plant, much less act
like a fraction of its output stream.  Yet a big plant figures it kills a
couple people a year internally and downwind.  (Try matching those rates for
a county sized field of solar collectors and associated industries.)  


>  Falling off a roof is nothing compared to being killed in a 
> mine collapse, or getting cancer because the power company
> decides that paying the health and court costs of the two
> guys who get cancer is far cheaper than paying for adequate
> safety equipment-----

Actually policy decisions are made by the utility commisions.  I.E. by your
elected representatives.  Don't be so quick to blame a they.  Especially when
the they is us.

> > > >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

> Where in Wisconsin are you from?

Kenosha (more corectly Pleasent Prarie just to the west) in the South East
corner of the state.

> Kevin

> P.S. Sorry for the confrontational tone, but I see you 
> repeating the standard power company line, and i know 
> that it is false.  

Sounds like your repeating the standard ecology assumptions and public
prejudice.  How do you know its wrong?  Or is it that you beleave its wrong
cause everybody assumes it is?

> Solar may not be the safest, the cheapest, or the cleanest, 
> but the reasons for this have nothing to do with the 
> technology, only with the politics and regulations.  -----

No it has more to do with the extreamly high labor and maintenence rates per
amount of power generated.  When you have far more people involved in mining,
manufacturing, maintaining, etc... per amount of power (especially if more of
them are home owners), you have higher accident and injury rates.


> It is not the cheapest because the true costs of coal and 
> oil are not being accounted for (resource depletion and 
> pollution) it is not the cleanest, because making the solar 
> cells themselves require many dangerous chemicals, but 
> once the cells are made, they are clean.  so all the 
> pollution can be confined to the factory that made the 
> cells, where it can be treated and disposed of by 
> professionals, not just blown into the air for the next 
> country/state to deal with.

Solar cels don't have polution effects?  You hang a lot of rusty metal around
they have an effect.  So do the mines, factories, the dumps that take the
disposed of cells, etc...

For polution obviously coal is the worst. A big plant puts out 30 tons of
carcinogens a day out its stack.  The same amount is draged out of the bottom
of its furnaces, and of course their are the mines!  All in all that will
kill (mines, trains, industrial, electrocution, downwind cancer) about a
50-100 (?) people a year (depending on stip mines vs deep mines).  But it
will be producing enough power for 3,000,000 homes, and the jobs to sustain
those people.  In the long run they no doubt save more lives than they cause.
 

Obviously we can do a lot better.  In comparison a nuke kills 1/10th a person
a year (safer hardrock mines and lower transport and polution numbers).  But
given that practical, safer, cleaner, systems are not politically very
popular at the moment were stuck with them.