Reply #230: Wind tends to drop at night too. And widespread calms are not unheard of.

[TheMadMonk]

Wind also makes a poor neighbour. It is not quiet. Aircraft warning strobes are intrusive. It also generates subsonics and pressure waves that can cause effects varying from disturbing to causing physical illness. They also carve up the landscape with service roads.

Offshore installation has its own problems. But these are surmountable.

Systems that harness energy from the sea's movement actually hold the most promise of renewables, if we can only manage to build something Gaia can't break when the whim takes her. The one we can build right now with any reasonable expectation of it surviving long enough to pay for itself, tidal barages, is limited by geography and much further limited by ecological considerations.

Storage: Right now the most economical form of domestic power storage is a ton or more of lead for each house. Or possibly, if space permits, NiFe cells. These can be refurbished on site with a simple change of electrolyte. Lead acid, NiCd and other forms of Ni-Metal hydride, as well as lithium, all require replacement after about five years of use and of course safe disposal or recycling of the old. Yes there are promising experimental results that might give us a true ten hour laptop battery in five or ten years, but I very much doubt it for true bulk storage.

Materials shortage in some cases is an absolute thing. Such as there are litterally not enough platinum group metals on the planet to make enough fuel cells to replace every infernal combustion engine on the planet. The same goes for the materials needed to make the highest efficiency solar cells. These will be forever limited to niche applications.

Uranium shortage is a complete furphy. Yes the supply is limited, but so is the need if the old style reactors could be replaced with a liquid salt fueled thorium burner. The potential thorium supply is good for about ten thousand years. One beauty of this style of reactor is that it is self regulating, thermal expansion moves part of the fuel suply out of the core and the reaction automatically slows down without any outside intervention. The second and probably most desireable feature is that if you build the reactor vessel to rupture at it's lowest point, the whole fuel supply immediately falls out into an array of holes that separate the fuel into small portions that canot react with each other to sustain the reaction. Just those two features make all the secondary, tertiary and so forth layers of safety and control pretty much unnecessary from a human safety (and error) point of view. Worst case scenario is a loss of revenue and a big cleanup bill for the operators.