Quote of the Day from 1953: Why No Sun Power?
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto 
on 01. 8.09
Artist and thinker at Mechanix Illustrated Frank Tinsley asked, in 1953, why there was so much investment in nuclear and so little in solar.
The American public has been largely oversold on the possibilities of atomic power generation. As the technical difficulties and radiation dangers of nuclear power plants gradually come to light, even the experts are beginning to cool off. Solar power on the other hand presents no such headaches....
Its development problems are comparatively simple and its costs but a fraction of the tremendous atomic outlays. Moreover, the world’s supply of usable uranium is definitely limited. Sunlight, however, will last as long as our solar system. It will still be with us long after our last uranium has fissed.As former Secretary of the Interior, Julius A. Krug remarked, “Congress would do well to appropriate a few hundred million dollars to find new sources of energy.” High on the list he placed the development of power by solar heat.
Modern Mechanix
Follow @TreeHugger on Twitter & get our headlines with @TH_rss!
Thirsty for more? Check out these related articles:
- How to Use a Solar Oven: Beans and Rice Recipe
- 7 Great Weekend Solar Power Projects
- How to Use a Solar Cooker: What Works and What Doesn't
- 5 Reuses for Altoid Tins
- Green Glossary: Nature Deficit Disorder
- Got $50? 5 Big Green Improvements for Very Little Money
And yet, here we are.
It's not a mystery, today any more than in 1953, why nuclear was pushed: It allowed the power industry to keep power generation centralized and controlled, which benefitted their pocketbooks. Of course, at the time everyone believed "atomic power" would be able to provide all the power we'd ever need... no one foresaw the amounts of power we'd use today... and no one was concerned about waste products, expecting to bury themselves out of a problem.
Today we know better: We use too much power per household, we can't just bury nuclear waste, and nuclear plants are still far too complex and expensive to just roll out in every neighborhood. But power companies still want to control the grid, and make sure we can't (or don't want to) disconnect from it. And that continues to hold back alternative power, and locally-generated power, today.
Yes, because it is all a conspiracy...
Nuke power like solar power sucked pretty hard core in the 50s difference is, nuke power could provide millions if not billions of dollars worth of energy that solar could not. I may have to check my sources on this but solar power didnt really have any useful improvements until the past, I'll say, 15 years. That my friends has nothing to do with funding in the 50s.
Dumping nuke waste into a mountain is a pretty rancid idea. But you can thank Carter for not allowing re-enrichment facilities in the united states, that and no more nuke plants to be built. Otherwise we would all have enough renewable nuclear power to fit our needs.
I think if you're going to go the 'conspiracy theory' route, I think the fact that power generation can be a nice byproduct of the process to create weapons of mass destruction being the reason nuclear won out is a better place to start.
For examples worded far better than I can attempt... see arguments for use of thorium as a nuclear fuel here [proposed long ago, but bypassed due to not being weaponizable]:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHs2Ugxo7-8
personally I'd like to see money put into the late Dr. Bussard's idea of inertial electrostatic confinement fusion [which is getting some funding, but woefully small] but I'd take safer nuclear, or solar, wind, etc too ... we don't need any more enriched uranium or plutonium floating around, and tokamaks are a dead end.