May I adjust the sentence “The clinging-for-life claim that we need nuclear is just that, a claim — & a well-sold one I would add.” to read: “The clinging-for-life claim that we need nuclear is just that, a claim — & a well-paid-for and well-sold one, I would add.”

Second, the amount of high radiation waste is indeed RELATIVELY small, but is correspondingly highly, highly toxic and radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years. And the amount of mid-level and low-level radiation released into the environment is far, far greater.

Zach makes the very good point that when we watch day by day, year by year, we see little danger with nuclear power. But people died as a result of Chernobyl, Three Mile Island due to radiation, and now in Japan. If we start a vigorous campaign of more nuclear plants, over time we will have more and more abandoned areas like the one around Chernobyl. We do not need to do this to the planet and ourselves. Renewable energy is much greater than the needs of the planet now, and can be built by our combined efforts. It is not a question of cost, but is a question of will power, because the distributed nature of wind and other sources allows grass roots development of renewable sources, given a bit of education and support by governments.

Just some thoughts, based on years of reviewing literature on these topics.

I wrote the deaths per TWh article.

I also wrote lifetime deaths per TWh
http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/lifetime-deaths-per-twh-from-energy.html

Plutonium in perspective
http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/plutonium-in-perspective.html

Your talk about specks of nuclear material related to nuclear power assumes that there will be deaths caused by those specs. The body can recover from minor damage. Also, there was 10 tons of plutonium in the atmosphere from the 500 above ground nuclear tests. That has been settling out and becoming part of the crust again. When it is in the crust it is about as safe as uranium of which there are trillions of tons in the crust and 4 billion tons in the ocean.

Mercury and arsenic have no half life and are waste from coal. Along with toxic metals. The mercury is why they have the warnings about eating tuna for pregnant women and children.

In terms of future deaths, by killing 2 million people this year, fossils fuels were killing their potential decendents too in the cases where they were killed before having children. The scale of deaths from air pollution is comparable to the combat deaths from world war 2. I fail to see how some statistical death or two thousands or millions of years from now is relevant. Plus the statistical future deaths from coal, oil and natural gas will still be thousands of times more.

Brian Wang
nextbigfuture.com

And yet subsidies clearly exist.

The solution to this conundrum, I believe, is that the net of subsidies and special tax revenues is about -99 on the scale where the subsidies are 1. That is say, excise taxes and royalties on oil (and natural gas) so greatly exceed the subsidies that, net, governments are the largest profit-takers on these commodities.

Nuclear energy is not subsidized, but people who are sensitive to taps on the public purse — perhaps because they are, themselves, just such taps — can perhaps be excused for perceiving the loss of fossil fuel income that nuclear energy inflicts on governments with money going out. That is to say, confusing a stoppage of money coming in to an outflow.

I have zero doubt that “renewables (can) supply a reliable constant stream of energy 34-7, 365 days a year”.

In the November, 2009 issue of Scientific America Mark Jacobson and Mark Delucchi published an article titled A Plan for a Sustainable Future: How to get all energy from wind, water, and solar power by 2030

Jacobson and Delucchi present a blueprint for getting almost 100% of the world’s energy needs (electricity, transportation and heat) from renewables.

They used population projections and increased standard of living projections to determine the amount of power for both electricity and transportation needed in 2030.
Result: 10.5 terawatts (TW).

They surveyed the world’s available energy sites to determine how much power was available.
They report that:
1) Solar power in sunny locations can power the entire world for all purposes 30 times over.
2) Wind in windy locations on or near land can power the world 6 to 15 times over.
3) Only 0.4% of the entire planet’s physical land would be needed to power everyone, everywhere with wind, water and sunlight.

Roughly sources of power break down in the following proportions:
1.1 TW tidal, geothermal, and hydro (9%)
5.8 TW wind and wave (51%)
4.6 TW solar (PV and CSP) (40%)

At this point in time we have about 70% of the hydro installed, about 2% of the wind generation, and less than 1% of each of the others.

They acknowledge that some liquid fuel will likely be need for some types of transportation.

They calculate the amount of each technology we would have to install each year in order to reach the goal of essentially 100% renewable in 20 years.

They calculate the amount of materials needed to build renewable systems and find no significant problems meeting the need.

Here’s the entire article.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=a-path-to-sustainable-energy-by-2030