Seven Myths About Alternative Energy | Hacker News Reader

Seven Myths About Alternative Energy

foreignpolicy.com

22 pointscwan12 comments

Single page version: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/08/12/seven_myths...

Blah blah blah. I can't stand those "big picture" articles that don't back up their claims with numbers. If you're like me, you'll find this online book on sustainable energy a much more enjoyable read: http://www.withouthotair.com/ - it's all numbers from start to finish.

I second the blah's, FP has god awful and misleading articles.

The best example I could find is here: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/08/20/scenes_from... where the writing seems to be blaming oil extraction for the duckweed algae. However oil kills duckweed algae, the reason the algae is so present in the salt lake is because of sewage been dumped into it. I remember my parent's garden pond had a major outbreak of it because birds kept crapping in it, and one of the actual treatments we were referenced to for it was actually a petroleum based oil.

As the price of fuel and electricity continues to rise, the costs and delays surrounding new nuke plants will go away.

Also: the bone-headed restriction against modern reactors and reprocessing will go away.

How is this site NOT propaganda? Am I not reading this carefully enough?

Propaganda for or against whom? It seems quite balanced to me.

If it were propaganda, the people writing it would care more about getting you to read it and less about maximizing their pageviews. Hence, it would be on one page instead of seven.

He claims that nuclear power can't do anything because we can't build plants fast enough and that plant-construction costs have been rising.

The first is a red-herring. It depends a lot on climate projections and so forth. And since it's faster to expand nuclear power than any other emissions-free power, it's not actually an argument not to do it.

The second is more problematic. Cost. Maybe we've lost the ability to build cheap nuclear plants like we could in the 1960s. Maybe modern regulatory and labor problems are unsolvable. But I don't think so. They're a heck of a lot easier to solve than basic technology problems, which is what we're still running into with other forms of energy.

Nuclear plants were cheap in the 60s?

They were a lot less nuanced in the 60s, for sure.

With all modern proper safety procedures taken, I imagine they are more expensive now.

(They also produce a mere fraction of the waste, now)

It's not just safety procedures either. The whole reactor designs are safer now too.

WHOOPS not again!

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,955183-1,00...

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