Fissile Thorium Reactor

[kandrathe]

Very much research is done on organic solar cells. The cost data you mentioned are all for single crystal silicon solar cells which indeed is very expensive.
Organic solar cells still have their problems, and are not as efficient as the silicon ones but they cost far less. And when you think about it (from a physical chemical point) possibilities are endless. We absolutely need to start a working solar power industry and research funding scheme, it might take a few years but I am confident we will be able to get a nice part of our energy from solar power.

Ok, take my example, "Thinking about this another way, at 10-watts per square-foot solar collection to replace the electrical energy generation of New York (12,133,000 MW or 12,133,000,000,000 watts) with solar cells would cover 1,213,300,000,000 square feet, or 43,521 square miles, while the actual land mass of New York State is only 49,112 square miles."

Make the solar collectors 5x more efficient. The theoretically impossible 100%! You are still using 1/5th the land mass of New York State for power generation, not to mention maintaining the infrastructure that covers 1/5th the land mass of New York State. A global effort to use solar to replace just 1/5th of global energy demand would make the Great Wall of China look like a toothpick sculpture. There are many places where the populations are more dense than New York.

I'm saying to people like you eppie, that you have blinders on, and are focusing money, effort, time on technologies that are too dilute to make a difference. On the one hand you claim to be driven by science and evidence, on the other hand you refuse to look reality in the face. DO THE MATH! Does it work? I say no. This has been the problem for 30 years, meanwhile more COAL gets burnt, more OIL gets burnt.

We might instead look at recent successful work in Finland at Olkiluoto and Loviisa (source).