I took care of this in the other thread. Your cite was out of date, so I found you a newer version of your report. I showed that the survey you cited does not say nuclear is cheaper. It compares various energy sources and concludes that no one technology is cheaper than others, until you take a WHOLE BUNCH of political, economic, and geographic factors into consideration and then make your own best choice under your own circumstances. That’s not really news to me. Your study also admits it excludes the largest markets for renewables from the study when estimating out much renewables will cost. Wha???
Do these new designs include spent nuclear fuel? No? Where are they going to store the spent nuclear fuel? In pools? That’s not safe, no matter how “safe” the designs are.
You’ll have to be clearer. There’s more than enough wind off the coast of New England and sun hitting the southwest to power the US, and probably the whole world. The problem isn’t availability of energy or generating it, it’s about which technologies are going to make the most sense right now, and then on to the future.
I’d also like some cites about what are future energy demands are actually supposed to be, and what those guesses are based on. I keep hearing over and over about our growing, future energy demands but it seems like something everybody just keeps repeating without much of a source.
I’m not as confident as you stating what NG is going to be doing in 30-50 years. First it’s running out, then it’s in so much abundance nuclear plant designers start jumping out corporate windows. I dunno. Keep in mind nuke is at a disadvantage regarding future energy prices. It has to charge a certain minimum amount to recoup its costs and make a profit, and if for some reason energy prices don’t climb as fast as they think, they are big-time screwed and you’re looking at bailouts, bankruptcies and really expensive shut downs and closures.
As for oil, there are lots of unused sites the oil companies could already be exploiting, but aren’t. The oil industry is in a position to spike oil prices or send them plunging and there’s only so much we can do about it. I really don’t believe much of what they say about future availability. I think it’s really important to wean ourselves off oil, and take back more control over our energy costs, and sources.
Coal for sure, for the foreseeable future. Nuclear doesn’t contribute that much at the moment, and I don’t see any compelling reasons it should contribute more in the future. If you’re talking 100 or 200 years from now sure, maybe small ultra-safe nuke plants will be built right into office buildings and large industrial plants or something. That’s too far in the future to really speculate.
Coal and cars. They both gotta go, in there present forms at least. I don’t have a good answer for that. Decentralized, distributed power generation using as large a variety of energy sources as we can is about the best we can do. Germany’s feed-in tariff plan is something I seriously think we should emulate. The big power companies hate it and fight it like you’re rarely seen them fight, but that’s not surprising. Tell people if they generate power and feed it back to the grid, they will get a nice, fair guaranteed price the big power companies can’t manipulate for 10 or 15 years. Overnight you’ll see individuals and communities teaming up and making more power than they consume. I think we’ll be really surprised at how efficiency-minded people become when they are the power company, and wasteful energy use is money directly out of their pocket.
If the world gets really crappy weather-wise, China is going to have to suffer too. If they don’t care about environment concerns, I’m terrified at the idea they are eventually going to have 100s of nuke plants. China seems to largely follow the US, so in terms of taking the lead, setting an example etc, it would be great for us to tell Westinghouse to fuck off with their stupid nuclear power and show China how to meet its energy needs with much safer, easier to handle energy sources.
Nuclear made its promises 50 years ago. Now it’s 50+ years out. We are that 50+ years out. Nuke hasn’t delivered on any promises other than yes, you can generate electricity with fission. That’s about it. It hasn’t solved any problems at all and instead has become more complicated and expensive than ever. I’m not falling for that again. We’ve got spent fuel rods piling up at nuke plants all over Japan and the US. That was never going to be a problem “in 50 years” yet here we are, up to our necks in fuel rods. I don’t believe nuclear is capable of actually carrying out any of its promises. The whole scam is based on “don’t worry, in 50 years… we’ll all have flying cars!” I’m too old to fall for that crap again.