Obama awards $2B for solar power

President Barack Obama, under pressure to spur job growth, said on Saturday two solar energy companies will get nearly $2 billion in U.S. loan guarantees to create as many as 5,000 green jobs.

$2,000,000,000
5000 people
$400,000 per person.

At the same time Oil production is among the most heavily subsidized businesses, with tax breaks available at virtually every stage of the exploration and extraction process.

The total electricity production in the USA is 3992 billion KWh. 44.9 % Coal, 23.4 % Natural Gas, 20.3 % Nuclear, 6.9 % Hydro, 3.6 % Renewables and 1 % Petroleum. If you do the math this is a major boondogle with the taxpayers money which would far better be spent on other sources more technologically and economically sound.

The Devil is in the details. In 2007, summer demand for electricity was 783 GW and 640 GW for winter. By 2017, North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) projects summer consumption to be 925GW for summer and 756 GW for winter. At 7 acres per MW it would take 7 billion acres of solar panels. They would require transmission system requirements with I2R losses which would be unsustainable. Renewables make up ~ 4% of our total generation and are important, however they can not replace the balance of generation. Large generation facilities with minimal transmission system is the key.

This money should be spent on tokamak research for Fusion development. The tokamak is one of several types of magnetic confinement devices, and is one of the most-researched candidates for producing controlled thermonuclear fusion power.

Tokamaks were invented in the 1950s by Soviet physicists Igor Tamm and Andrei Sakharov, inspired by an original idea of Oleg Lavrentyev.

Magnetic fields are used for confinement since no solid material could withstand the extremely high temperature of the plasma. An alternative to the tokamak is the stellarator.

A tokamak is a type of machine that uses a magnetic field to confine a plasma in the shape of a torus (donut). Achieving a stable plasma equilibrium requires magnetic field lines that move around the torus in a helical shape. Such a helical field can be generated by adding a toroidal field (traveling around the torus in circles) and a poloidal field (traveling in circles orthogonal to the toroidal field). In a tokamak, the toroidal field is produced by electromagnets that surround the torus, and the poloidal field is the result of a toroidal electric current that flows inside the plasma. This current is induced inside the plasma with a second set of electromagnets.

In an operating fusion reactor, part of the energy generated will serve to maintain the plasma temperature as fresh deuterium and tritium are introduced. However, in the startup of a reactor, either initially or after a temporary shutdown, the plasma will have to be heated to its operating temperature of greater than 10 keV (over 100 million degrees Celsius). In current tokamak (and other) magnetic fusion experiments, insufficient fusion energy is produced to maintain the plasma temperature. Additionally problems with plasma contamination with structural materials have been experienced requiring development of superconductors for more efficient containment.

If the administration really wanted to solve the energy situation, they should invest in developing Fusion Technology which is clean and has practically unlimited availability. Apparently the Golden Rule Boys own them so they play slight of hand tricks to keep the masses confused.

Snowdrop - Incompetech.com

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Obama
• awards
• $2B
• for
• solar
• power
• Tokamak
• Fusion
• PappyStu

[battlebauble]

Dang, Pappy, you've done your homework! You have earned an "A+" in science! The pres gets an "F"! Maybe we are reaching out to the muslims over energy, like NASA is reaching out to muslims for outer space.

[PappyStu]

@battlebauble Yea accountability with the budget has been a joke under many admins for decades now...

[3CoolKats]

I'd like to see more of a global effort with fusion. It almost seems too daunting a task for one nation. We've been putting $ into research for 40 years. On the one hand you have to start asking yourself "is commercial scale fusion even a viable possibility". But on the other hand we can't stop trying because the alternatives indeed are pretty dodgy. Solar actually does become more efficient year by year. But even if it were 90% efficient it would *still* take an awful lot of acreage.

[PappyStu]

@3CoolKats Considering the dollars spent elsewhere it has been a backburner project...

[guitarhaus]

...but what they don't tell you he gave Spain the contract for all this money !!! ...Thats right !!! all our taxpayers money is going to ANOTHER foreign country again !!!! HE"S NOT EVEN HIDING IT ANYMORE !!!!!!

[PappyStu]

@guitarhaus I heard this but wanted on the topic of the energy program itself...

[ellesse808]

@PappyStu I hear ya, I hear ya! It is so frustrating..it is always gonna be "unless it is.." *wink* =)

[PappyStu]

@phekwig basic stuff... vbg

[PappyStu]

@slyflight I have never heard of power generation concepts in their regard... I believe they are primarily for sub-atomic particle research...

[PappyStu]

@justwant2bhappy Nothing new about it, we have been on the verge for decades but the money doesn't want to go there...