LONDON (Reuters) - The increasingly urgent need to combat climate change will probably spawn U.S. policies to impose fossil fuel charges and so dramatically favor nuclear power, Citigroup said in a research note on Wednesday.... more
Renewable nuclear power is already a winner. Fusion (the sun) is cost-effective, has few or no hazardous wastes and works everywhere. We will see increasing use of decentralized solar "power plants" on the roof of every home, school, church, business, parking structure, highways and railroad right-of-ways. Nonrenewable nuclear power is a consistent loser. Fission (splitting atoms) is not cost-effective without massive government subsidies, has multiple long-term hazardous waste issues and requires 500,000 years of care taking. Using fission to produce electricity, to quote Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute (www.rmi.org), "is like using a chainsaw to cut butter" (very expensive, messy and inefficient).
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(skruse @ Sep 13 2006, 11:43 AM) [snapback]319045[/snapback]</div> Interesting you state solar is cost-effective. I'm not against it by any means (have considered it for my house). But I've never heard it claimed to be "cost-effective". It too requires massive subsidies to make sense (as in the CA million roof initiative). But I will allow that perhaps you know otherwise on the cost-effectiveness, in which case I'd be interested in what this is based on.
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(TimBikes @ Sep 14 2006, 12:54 AM) [snapback]319345[/snapback]</div> Yeah - the energy density of Solar (W/m2) is too low esp. considering that we also have to use it to grow stuff (photosynthesis) etc. Also PV has horrible efficiencies and requires some very nasty chemicals in manufacture. No, Thorium & Uranium fission reactors are very definitely going to be part of the equation. Not the only part, but certainly can be relied on for base load. Wind, Solar, Biomass, Tide, Hydro, etc, etc are all needed, all together. We must not build another coal fired plant, not ever. I am completely with Lovelock on this.
The main problem with renewables is storage. Solar could provide for all of our energy needs easily (assuming we could actually produce the panels in a timely fashion) but there's not good way to store excess. Nukes are the best short term solution for carbon reduction. It's not a perfect solutions by any means. But frankly, we don't have time to wait around for perfect solutions. We need to start agressively reducing our carbon foot print now. Nuclear can help with that. It does have its own issues and really shouldn't be a long term solution, but for base load it's the got the lowest GHG footprint including hydroelectric.
