We are currently processing multiple nuclear plants across the country at this very moment. The paper work has been filed and been sent to the NRC for review. The idea that we are not building any plants is prosperous. There are two major reactor companies, Mishibishi and Areva. There are global partnerships right now to build not only the reactor but the containment unit(which is built by only one company, Japanese outfit that use to make Japanese swords). Furthermore, licensing takes time to grant and you will not see any groundbreaking until mid 2015-2020.

It is sad that the author did not take the time to see how long it takes to review a nuclear plant and the first groundbreaking and when it occurs. Nuclear power will be our future, no matter what people say. Wind, solar and coal can help supplement this but nuclear will be our future.

“wind and solar are bad things being forced by the government? ”

Wind and solar are not “bad”, they are heavy and cumbersome.

They take up a lot and a lot of space and materials.

If we were to only rely on wind to power the world, we would need 100 Million 2Megawatt windmills.

Try building 100 Million windmills instead of 150 nuclear power plants, LOL !

As far as I remember in Chernobyl:
- There was old-design of buildings which haven’t prevented spreading of fault.
- One security circuit was broken.
- Second one was turned off for some unknown (experiment?) reasons

We probably will never know as Central Committee of USSR get know about Chernobyl from Polish (possibly other as well – but I don’t know) CC which get know from scientists who discovered highier radiation. At least I heard so from interview with scientist who discovered it.

As for method of getting energy – I’m indifferent as long I have to pay[1] the less.

[1] Pay not only in terms of money and “I” in meaning population. So I’m against getting cheaper enegergy if someone else is being exploited. This include polution (unless agreed with owner of polluted area).

RE: In actuality, there’s no such thing as “renewable energy”: all energy, even the sun, is limited.

Tecnically correct, but realistically wrong. Incredibly wrong. Our working environment is the earth, and more correctly, the very top layers of the earth and its atmosphere. The sun is not under our control. Sunlight is streaming down upon us continuously and is “renewed” by the day and second. Fossil fuels are not. The sun is good for a few billion more years. With regard to human existence, it will indeed last forever.

RE: T. Boone Pickens’s now-infamous plan would require 1,200 square miles for a single power plant.

A single wind generator can produce a megawatt of power. It can take less than a few dozen square yards of ground area and a few hundred yards of total space when considering the fan blades, that are quite high above the ground. Each watt of wind power is fossil fuel that is not burned.

RE: Coal is extraordinarily abundant — we’ll never run out — and pound-for-pound contains twice as much energy as wood. Coal is a concentrated storehouse of energy.

The idea that we will never run out is blatantly absurd. Its almost as absurd as saying the power from the sun is limited. We will eventually run out of economically producible coal. The author completely disregards the very serious side effect of coal, particular matter in the air and pollutants spewed out such as mercury. He also disregards the pollution caused by mining the coal and finding something to do with the huge amount of by products of extracting the coal from rock, mountain, shale, and what ever material it is mixed with or covered with.

RE: Octane molecules in gasoline, however, are even more concentrated. In fact, they’re the densest store of carbon energy we’ve ever discovered. Pound-for-pound, gas possesses four times as much energy as coal. There’s a popular misconception today that gasoline is inefficient and wasteful. Nothing could be more inaccurate.

The biggest problem is not that gasoline is inefficient. The problem is that the predominant user of it is inefficient. Look at the radiator in your car. Even with an air flow of 30 mph over it, your car needs a radiator that big to get rid of the unusable (wasted) energy. The radiator is required because of the inability of the modern combustion engine to use the energy of gasoline. Every bit of heat dissipated by the radiator is wasted energy. The modern internal combustion can get no more than about 35% of the energy from gasoline. The other 65% is wasted.

RE: Nuclear, on the other hand, is something else entirely. The public hasn’t even begun to grasp nuclear energy….

RE: The meltdown of the uranium core in 1979 at Three Mile Island was so overblown by antinuclear groups that it went virtually unnoticed that the containment vessel at Three Mile Island had done its job and prevented any significant release of radioactivity.
RE: Uranium is abundant, clean, and safe — in technological societies.

RE: The catastrophe at Chernobyl — which, once again, sent greens groups worldwide scurrying to their soapboxes — only happened because that state-run reactor was astonishingly unsafe: in the words of Peter Huber, “You couldn’t have operated a toaster oven out of it.”

The author does not understand nuclear energy. He is woefully ignorant of the facts of the Three Mile Island accident.

The catastrophe at Three Mile Island was, when it occurred, very much underplayed and hidden from the public. It was only later that the public learned that reactor was within 30 minutes of a full unmitigated core meltdown. That would have been a huge disaster, nationally and globally. The government and Metropolitan Edison outright lied to the public as to the severity of this accident. Indeed, when President Jimmy Carter visited the facility, the catastrophe was, at that moment, still in progress. Damage was being done while he visited. The ramifications of this event were so serious; it directly caused the halt of all construction of nuclear plants in this country. Please do you own research on this event. Here is a nice start: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident
Add this fragment found here: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/three/filmmore/description.html

Three years after the accident, a robotic camera was lowered into the Unit 2 core, providing the first look at what really had happened. Roger Mattson, a senior NRC engineer, describes what was revealed: “We had a meltdown at Three Mile Island. Fifty percent of the core was destroyed or molten and something on the order of twenty tons of uranium found its way to the bottom head of the pressure vessel. That’s a core meltdown. No question about it.”

The damaged reactor has not and will never be restored to service. It cannot be economically cleaned up. It has been sealed off and effectively abandoned in place. It will be dangerous for thousands of years. Who will accept responsibility for taking care of this reactor one hundred years from now? The answer is you, the public. Think about that for a while.

Light water reactors have a fundamental flaw that we try to cover up with layer upon layer of backup protections. Select any light water reactor that has been running for a few months and shut it down. Make that, try to. It cannot be completely shut down. The emphasis is on the word cannot. If cooling water to the core of a shut down light water reactor is interrupted in the several months following its shut down, the reactor core will very quickly generate sufficient heat to melt itself down. Let me say this a bit differently. The power output of a light water reactor can be significantly reduced, but it CANNOT be turned off. Months and years are required to reduce the power output of a “shut down” light water reactor to safe levels. The nuclear fuel must be removed piece by piece to shut it down. Even then, the material that constitutes the core remains dangerous.

When we can build nuclear reactors of a style that is inherently safe, all the evaluations will be changed.

Regarding Chernobyl, the people conducting the operations at Chernobyl when it exploded thought they were safe. They thought they knew what they were doing. Yes, that type of reactor is inherently unsafe and dangerous, but they thought they had it under control. They were human, they were subject to error, and they were wrong. We must always consider human error. Human error played a major role in the Three Mile Island accident. The consequences of human error in regard to large nuclear power plants is absolutely huge. Human error can never be completely mitigated. This topic cannot be adequately discussed here.

The engineers and companies that build light water reactors are fully aware that they are inherently unsafe. Read about the Price-Anderson Nuclear Industries Indemnity Act. It limits the responsibility of companies that build and operator nuclear reactors. There is no company in the United States, or the world, that would build reactors here in the U.S. without the protection of this act. This in itself, implicitly, if not explicitly, confirms their inherent dangers.

This topic greatly exceeds the scope of this discussion.
To continue:

RE: The most efficient solar panels currently in use (on the space station) are costly, and their conversion efficiency is about twenty percent, which is not very much.

The author neglects the point that everything in space is necessarily extraordinarily expensive because of the inaccessibility and the cost to just get there. Still, the efficiency of solar panels is quite low and does need significant improvement.

RE: Twelve miles of solar reflectors generate about 300 megawatts, a miniscule amount. Furthermore, those reflectors must be kept squeaky clean, maintained to the hilt, or they won’t work.

The author exaggerates of the importance of efficiency. First, solar cells collect energy that arrives from the sun free of charge. In that respect, inefficiency is not a problem. Compare with the 35% efficiency obtained from gasoline by internal combustion engines. Gasoline engines have been undergoing refinement for more than 100 years. In comparison, solar energy is just getting started.

The total amount of energy from solar power is about 1000 watts per square meter and noon. Even in at 40 degrees latitude we can get 300 watts of usable engergy per square meter. A single story house of 1500 square feet has 166 square meters of roof space. Multiply that out and it gets about 50,000 watts of energy. Take 30% of that and you have 15,000 watts of energy. Far more than the typical house of that size will use. (San Francisco is below 38 degrees. Vancouver, north of Washington state is only 48 degrees.) As energy storage becomes better and cheaper, each individual house can be not only energy independent, they can provide energy to the grid.

By the way, as one moves north, the amount of solar energy is reduced, but the energy available from the winds of winter storms increases significantly. Home wind generators could supply a major part of energy needs during the winter months.

While solar energy collectors do need to be kept clean, squeaky clean is quite misleading. How difficult is it to wash a window? Machines, driven from the same solar power, can easily accomplish the task.

RE: At our current level of technology, no conceivable mix of solar, wind, or wave can meet even half the demand for energy.

While much improvement is indeed needed, it can be done. Yes, we are aware than sunlight is not always available (even during the day), but over weeks and months, the average amount available is very predictable. Although it will not meet all of our needs in the immediate future, using it now can dramatically reduce the amount of fossil and nuclear fuel that must be used. If, and when, energy storage methods improve significantly, then yes, solar and wind power and other renewable energy sources can indeed provide all of our energy needs. If we humans can get our heads around the importance of our future energy needs, then it is my opinion that we can say: When energy storage methods improve, renewable energy sources can provide all of our energy.

For example, solar and wind generators installed on your house can charge your electric car. You can go to work and run local errands without ever burning any fuel.

RE: That fact alone tells you everything you need to know about them: they’re simply not good enough yet.

RE: When they are, the free market will adopt them naturally.

While the free market is the best method we have to allocate services and resources, it does have many problems. First, we the people, and consequently the free market, do not understand all the costs of energy production from fossil fuel and nuclear energy. We humans have shown that we are still not fully capable of understanding the impact our actions will have in the future. The free market responds to our immediate demands. Because it responds to human demands, because it is driven solely by human desire, and because we do not truly recognize and respond to future conditions, it is not good at representing our long term needs. This is far more important than I have space to describe here.

RE: The reason wind power still won’t get us very far is that transmitting this power is such a huge difficulty.

The author is quite correct here. Our electric transmission grid is now old and quite inefficient. Huge investments are needed to improve it. But those investments are really needed regardless of the method of generation. The author is correct, but in the context of this essay, this is a red herring.

The inefficiency of transporting is a bonus for solar and wind generators. Up to half the power generated is lost in the transmission of power from the generator to your home. According to one web site, one ton of coal is burned to produce 2,500 kilowatt hours of electricity. A one megawatt wind generate creates this amount of energy in two and a half hours. Each large wind turbine saves the burning of one ton of coal every two and a half hours. If the output of the generator is used locally, the savings is two tons of coal every two and a half hours. It also saves the energy required to mine the coal, separate from the base rock, transport to the generating station and many other incidental costs that are beyond this scope of this essay.

RE: Wind is also unpredictable; it’s therefore hard to integrate into an electrical grid, since grids have to maintain a voltage balance, or you’ll get brownouts, blackouts, and power surges that destroy equipment by the ton.

In a short term basis, yes the wind and sun are unpredictable. But over weeks and months, it is very predictable. Just because it is not completely predictable in the short term does not render it without merit. Every kilowatt hour produced by wind, solar, and other such methods is more fossil fuel that is not burned. We have far to go before we can eliminate fossil fuel entirely, but we can get started and reduce its consumption right now. As our ability to store and retrieve energy storage improves, the short term unpredictability becomes less and less important.

RE: In fact, there’s really no such thing as “nuclear waste”: a nuclear reactor is refueled by its waste. In other words, almost all “waste” can be recycled.
…
RE: After twenty-five years, the French store all their so-called waste in one room, under La Hague, which is about the size of a basketball gymnasium.
…
RE: Nuclear energy is the cleanest, most efficient energy we have — by light years. Anyone who tells you differently, is flat-out wrong.

The author is flat out wrong. Nuclear waste can be divided into two categories, high level waste and low level. High level waste is the material that is directly radioactive such as spent fuel. Low level waste consists of items that become radioactive because of exposure to a radioactive environment, or contamination with small amounts of high level waste.

Regarding high level waste, the French are having difficulties. A rather unsophisticated google search on the phrase “nuclear waste in france” turns up these references:
http://energypriorities.com/entries/2005/03/france_nuke_was.php
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/readings/french.html
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12837958
http://www.ocrwm.doe.gov/factsheets/doeymp0411.shtml
A more detailed search will turn up much more.

Nuclear reactors, and the work and repairs necessary to maintain them generate significant amounts of what is called low level waste. Protective clothing that people wear becomes contaminated. Motors, valves, metals, liquids, broken and worn out parts, and other items become contaminated with radioactivity. This kind of radioactive material cannot be refined such that it can become a source of energy. It is and remains dangerous to human life for extraordinarily long periods of time. We already have large amounts of low level waste. So does France. It must be put somewhere.

When a nuclear reactor reaches the end of its economic lifetime, there are thousands of tons of material than cannot be recycled and cannot be re-used. The steel cannot be melted and turned into other products because it is radioactive. We can only abandon the old reactor in place and leave it for future generations to deal with. There are many major problems with nuclear power.

Do some research on our currently existing problem with nuclear waste. Read about the controversy over Yucca Mountain. The storage and control of nuclear wastes is a huge problem.

Personally, I think the cost of Yucca Mountain has been quite unnecessarily driven into the stratosphere by people that refuse to realize that we have huge amounts of nuclear waste spread about the country and oozing into our environment right now, as I write, and as you read. We can leave it where it is clearly unsafe and indeed quite dangerous, or we can store it where it, while not perfectly safe, is far safer that it is now. Despite all known flaws, putting the waste in Yucca Mountain would be much better than leaving it where it is now, but that’s another story.

In summary, nuclear power should be a major component of our power in the near and long term future, but it has very significant problems that must be overcome. Until them, nuclear power is a dangerous resource.

Wind and solar power can and should play a major role and can immediately be productive to the point that they can reduce our oil consumption. A problem with wind and solar power is that we, the general public, do not yet recognize the importance of reducing our oil consumption. Until them, petroleum and its products will remain significantly under valued because of its relative ease of acquisition.

It is sort of like the diamond water paradox. Water is so much more valuable and useful, but diamonds are difficult to acquire so the price, with respect to each other, is far out of proportion to their usefulness. This is a major problem and we have yet to recognize its significance.

Nuclear Energy squeezed in the UK

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/02/03/huhne_nuclear_liability/

Energy and Climate Change minister Christopher Huhne last week made nuclear energy a whole lot less attractive. The liability for clean-up in case of a nuclear accident is currently limited to £140m. The EU has proposed increasing this to €600m (£507m). But Huhne wants to raise it to £1bn (€1.2bn).

“We’ve already set out how operators will be required to put aside money from day one for their eventual clean up and waste storage, and now we’re increasing substantially the liability to be taken on by operators,” said Huhne. Higher liabilities mean finding insurance will be harder, and more expensive.

The 2008 Energy Act requires nuclear operators to pay into a Funding Decommissioning Programme (FDP), requiring them to set aside funds for clean-up. The government will acquire the spent fuel at a fixed unit price.