Nuclear generates about 20% of our electricity today, and that share will decrease as time goes on.
Nuclear energy's capital costs are extremely high. Hell, it's the reason nuclear isn't being built in the US, along with the fact that we can't decide on a place to store the waste.
Yeah but the fuel that powers nuclear energy has such high energy density that it is inconceivable that we will ever run out of it. The same can't be said about coal, gasoline, or natural gas.
make it moveable. that would only be a problem if it were stationary. so it would float around on its own most of the time, and when necessary one of those barges op mentioned would tow it a little to keep it out to sea
not saying I agree with the whole idea though
The idea of floating an extremely expensive, intricate, and huge piece of electronic hardware in the ocean is on the highest level of handicapped. First and foremost, this entire idea is stupid from an ecological standpoint. Many forms of marine life depend on the atmosphere for their survival. While this could conceivably kill tons of mammalian marine life such as whales, manatees, seals, dolphins, and polar bears that rely on reaching the surface for air, the most dramatic consequence of covering up a massive part of the ocean's surface with a hunk of metal comes from its effect on microorganisms. One of the most important types of marine life are plankton, which are divided into two major groups, zooplankton and phytoplankton. The latter is an autotrophic plant organism that uses aqueous carbon dioxide in the ocean to perform photosynthesis. By blocking out the sun, it would create massive 'dead zones' with no plankton, which in turn
would kill basically everything in that part of the ocean that can't move fast enough to reach the edge of the panel.
Second of all, this makes no sense from an electronic standpoint. Storing all the produced energy in a bank on the panels is logistically impossible, and there's no reliable method of transferring large amounts of electric current wirelessly, so transporting it by wire is pretty much the only remaining option. So it would create an entirely new issue of finding some way to transport the energy using cables miles and miles long without them getting stuck on anything, corroded by the sea water, or tangled up by sea currents.
Third, there's no sovereign borders outside of economically exclusive waterbodies, so how would you handle when someone's trade route gets in the way of your massive solar panel raft thing, or even more likely, the massive cable system branching off of it? Since these are international waters and you're essentially forming borders that countries cannot physically pass, you're also violating the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.
As you can see, this entire idea is a complete ecological, logistical, and diplomatic nightmare and there's no reason why anyone should ever try to implement this.
Sources: Wikipedia, what I remember from HS Biology, and stuff I picked up in Model UN.
