solar and wind are going up and projected to go up and a breakneck pace and the links in geothermal, tidal, storage, and smart grid development to make the need for baseload power from nuclear or nat gas are already available and moving forward at a fast pace as well.

the time and investment needed to make nuclear fit that gap doesn’t seem to compare.. so, while it may not be as harmful as old nuclear, it’s really not needed or time-wise or financially responsible from what i can tell

Why do we want to even start down the nuclear path when we have no need to do so?

We have the technology to provide all the electricity we want for less money than it would take to provide it with new nuclear. And we would bring about zero risk to ourselves if we go the renewable route.

We don’t have to dry cask and dig underground bunkers for used wind mill blades. No one is going to contract cancer from eating beef raised where a wind tower toppled over in a freak storm.

Plus, we don’t have workable thorium reactors. At this point they work only on paper. China says that it wants to build one, but wanting to and having done are two different ponies. China also tried building a pebble bed reactor and found that they couldn’t make it work (as an electricity producer).

We’re 20 years away from demonstrated thorium reactors, even if they would work. And we don’t have 20 years to screw around hoping that they do.

We need to get fossil fuels out of our lives right now and if we put our shoulders to the wheel we could move from fossil fuels to renewable energy in 20 years.

Eat the ice cream cone you have. Don’t watch it melt while you hope someone will come along later and buy you a different flavor. The one you’ve got tastes great and there’s a good chance that new cone won’t appear.

It is clear that at least in Japan there were scary safety faults that should be obvious even to engineers outside the field. For example needing outside electrical power to insure safety by pumping cooling fluids. It is possible to have smarter designs 50 years later. Reportedly, in some designs the physics of the materials shut off reactors with no outside intervention…from expansion of metals from heat. Some designs are reported to burn up large fraction of nuclear wastes from current generation of nuke power plants. Worth checking to see if these promises are potentially true…not the same as writing a blank check to start massive building of them just because a few champions of them with vested interests say it is good for us.

We need to balance risks. Not having electric power when needed is risky also. Even having power that is just much more expensive adds risk to the lives of many. Burning coal and oil has risks. Our industrial base, even our electrical transmission lines have caused pollution, cancer and many other dangers. But still our industrial society and high tech tools have allowed life spans and good health to extend decades compared to 150 years ago. Our wealth and tools have also allowed much clean up of pollution. Compare smog in L.A. now to 50 year ago.

As said elsewhere solar and wind can only supplement a base 24/7 supply of power and have environmental concerns of their own…some of course addressable.

We have a giant, incredibly reliable fusion reactor parked at a perfectly safe distance. It spews enough energy on us in six hours to fulfill all our power needs for a year and requires no insurance underwriters. Just glancing at the sun should make the idea of reinventing the nuclear wheel completely laughable.

The sun not only bombards us with a constant source of energy with its radiation, it imparts and stores vast amounts of usable energy in the winds, tides and waves you encourage us to recognize.

Building more fission powered teakettles in our neighborhoods and drilling holes miles below the ocean floor is akin to tripping over a thousand dollars to pick up a penny while the sun shines peacefully down on our folly.

The decision makers gambled. And the Japanese people lost.

Then, next level down, you’ve got the construction companies who build plants. Some are top notch and do great work. Others build hot piles of crap like Rancho Seco – so flawed that it got shut down after only a few years.

And you get the “Oops”, like Humboldt Bay which was built, operated, and then found to be sitting on top of a significant fault – an earthquake waiting to happen.

Finally you get the Homers. An engineer inspecting for leaks with a lit candle sets the plant on fire, safety valves remain broken for over a year without anyone noticing, entire shifts of guards sleeping on the job….

On paper nuclear plants are very safe. Problem is, we don’t leave them on the paper where they need to stay.

If I only posted on pro-nuclear sites, I wouldn’t change many minds. I think of this as missionary work. But give me a thread link or some search terms for one of the “numerous times” and I’ll be glad to take a look. Thanks.

Correct me if i’m wrong, but has cancer not increased with the advancements of our civilization? I’m sorry, some have a utopian view of the future and immortal life.. i do not.

bob has already responded to your coal fear and we have covered the topic many times. the possibility of providing our power needs 24/7 without nuclear or coal is something very possible NOW — have covered this numerous times before, so I am inclined to think you are not a regular reader.

Do you lie awake nights worrying about dying from smallpox, or the Black Death? Yet the latter killed at third of the population of Europe 750 years ago, and in India smallpox had its own goddess and killed a third of all children born up until less than 40 years ago. It wiped out the Inca civilization.

What we fear from radiation is cancer. We are still at the beginning of a biotechnology revolution every bit as big as the electronic one triggered by the discovery of the transistor. Do you really believe that two or three centuries from now, cancer will be as feared as it is today? I think our 4th or 5th generation descendants will be robotically mining our nuclear waste repositories for fuel.

Stone buildings routinely last hundreds of years. Plus, you should remember the small volume. To quote from William Tucker’s book “Terrestrial Energy”, the entire output of France’s nuclear power plants, which provide 80% of the country’s electricity, is stored in one big room.
France reprocesses its nuclear fuel, which reduces its volume immensely. We use a “once-through” fuel cycle which is a holdover from Cold War nuclear weapons production, and is hugely inefficient.

With respect to coal, China is building one new coal plant every week. Read the scribd link, and google the differences between “base load” power and intermittent sources. The power-grid technology behind our routine expectation that every wall plug supplies power at a uniform voltage as demand fluctuates is amazing. It handles fluctuations in demand with “peaking” plants, mostly natural gas, but it can only tolerate a limited fraction of highly variable sources of supply like wind and solar. Our 24/7/365 civilization needs reliable base-load power. We no longer all go to bed when the sun sets.

The only base-load generators are fossil fuels (coal, oil, gas), hydroelectric (essentially all large-scale sources in the US already tapped), and nuclear. So coal vs. nuclear is a valid comparison, because we *do* need one or the other. Don’t kid yourself.

Multiply that by a decade… and, that ain’t no grapefruit.

As far as coal, no one here is proposing we use coal or suggesting that there is any need to.

Yes, we have a better solution.

No we should not burn more coal. No, we should not seek burn more oil.

We have far more wind, solar, tidal, wave, hydro, biomas/gas and geothermal energy available than we could possibly use. Many, many times more than we need. We have the technology to transform that energy into electricity today. We are already using electricity produced by all the renewable sources except wave.

If we look at the cost of ‘new’ coal or nuclear, both are more expensive than wind, PV solar, geothermal and biomass. If we include the hidden costs of existing coal then all coal, along with new nuclear is the most expensive electricity we could use.

If you aren’t acquainted with how much renewable power we have available and what it would take to get essentially 100% of all the world’s electricity, heating, and transportation switched to non-fossil sources give this a read….

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=a-path-to-sustainable-energy-by-2030&page=5

There is a solution for radioactive waste – Yucca mountain, for which taxpayers have already spent 40 billion dollars. Also, the radioactivity comes from the earth. After most of it is used up in power plants, the spent fuel is returned to the earth.

Do you have a better solution? Should we burn more coal? Ask BP to drill some more in the Gulf?

(“We need to ‘do the best we can’, and that’s what we’re doing. Do have a solution to car pollution?”)