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Germany’s solar panels produce more power than Japan’s entire Fukushima complex

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http://www.grist.org/list/2011-03-22-germanys-solar-panels-produce-...

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Permalink Reply by Johnsky on May 31, 2011 at 2:32pm

lol, I'm sorry, as soon as I saw the output rating on that image, I couldn't help but laugh at the coincidental hidden reference to Back to the Future.

(carry the decimal one space left)Yeah... find the right sequence of numbers, and I become a useless giggling moron.

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Permalink Reply by Lorryslorrys on June 4, 2011 at 5:04pm

Entire country's solar panels produce energy comparable to one power plant... Great!

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Permalink Reply by Grace Fitzpatrick on June 4, 2011 at 5:27pm

True, but if they break or for some reason melt, no one gets killed and there's no dangerous radiation leaking all over the place. I wish I could afford these for my house. *sigh*

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Permalink Reply by Silverevilchao on June 5, 2011 at 1:34pm

Yeah, I was about to say...Germany as is is powered by MULTIPLE nuclear power plants. Not only are solar panels entirely dependent on the weather (if they get as much snow as we do up here, it's going to be constantly cloudy in winter), but if covering the entire country in very costly solar arrays only provides as much power as ONE...brownouts, anyone? Have fun with that in your very cold winters.

Furthermore, why does everyone have to forget that Fukushima was hit by an earthquake and then a tsunami right afterwards? It's not like the plant was like "LOL, TIME TO BLOW UP NAO", it got hit with multiple natural disasters and still didn't cause a huge Chernobyl incident.

And then there's the fact that, say, France for instance (and Germany, for that matter) have been getting power from nuclear power plants for YEARS and have never had any problems. All this crap about switching to highly costly and unreliable green energy is all caused by fearmongering about a single plant that was hit with one of the worst natural disasters to ever hit Japan.

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Permalink Reply by Forrest Green (VorlonGuyverOss) on June 5, 2011 at 2:01pm

Germany is planning to shut down all of their nuclear power plants around the year 2022 and rely on alternative power sources.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-13592208

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/30/germany-nuclear-power-plan...

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Permalink Reply by Scott on June 5, 2011 at 11:27pm

http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2008/03/the-ugly-side-o.html

Not so flattering assessment of solar panels.

http://www.ecotopia.com/apollo2/pvepbtoz.htm

More flattering assessment.

They are saying that the largest detriment is the amount of waste created while producing the cells.

I remember reading a study that stated the amount of energy going into the creation of a solar cell was more than the cell could produce in its life time. I can't seem to find that study, and this may have changed with new technology as it was some time ago that I read it.