Nuclear power could solve so many problems. What are your feelings?

Perhaps we can dump the waste off the coast of a third world nation like they do in Europe.

By the year 2000 cars will be nuclear powered.

Like this one.

Nuclear power would solve so many of our problems but also create a whole bunch more. The coal industry is enormous and Nuke power would put entire states into a tail spin economically if the coal industry was replaced by nuke power. Millions of hard working Americans would be devastated by that change and so would ginormous corporations who bank roll a huge cadre of politicians. Won’t ever happen in coal country!

Plus think of all the fortunes being made in wind and solar energy right now. Problem there is the carbon footprint to make wind turbines and solar panels defeats any gain in “Clean” energy! Follow the money and you will see where our energy policies are birthed. It all is a sham scam to make the wealthy wealthier!

@mrentropy yes and by 2000 the US will have totally converted to the metric system, robots will clean our houses and make our meals, and California will have broken off from the rest of the country! ~

@UScitizen the only losers will be the people who have to live with our nuclear waste for all of eternity.

so why isnt the whole world nuclear? not using fossil fuel,wood gas etc. too much risk to have too many i think

Actually, there is a lot of fear, uncertainty, and doubt regarding nuclear power; the type of FUD that makes it impossible to build a plant anywhere. There have been more accidents at conventional plants than at nuclear ones.
Then again, there are more highway fatalities than airplane fatalities yet you hear more about plane crashes than car crashes. Perception means more than facts.

Health and safety makes the waste a pain in the arse, and in England the taxpayer picks up the bill.

As for carbon emissions…..please don’t go there, if the EPA and other global counterparts get it classified as a polutant we’re all gonna get royaly rogered by the taxman!

As for oil, if getting free of oil was top of the agenda, nuclear power stations would be the only power source you’d find. Oil is only obout dependancy because the oil cartels survival is based on us all being dependant on it.

@jerv but jerv how many chernobyl’s will it take?

There are plenty of green power sources out there that will never get patents because it will mean the end of oil dependancy.

I tell a lie, Stanley Meyer got a patent, but then he died!.................

I always used to think it was weird when I was younger, how oil companies would invest millions into R&D for battery technologies, and then I woke up.

@Pazza 10/10

@strange1 Thank you for proving my point!

The truth it that there is a reason that nobody with a brain uses the RBMK-type reactor (like Chernobyl). Sure, they are cheaper, but the pricetag is a bit higher.

@strange1
“but jerv how many chernobyl’s will it take?”
apparently just the one! lol

@Pazza – Re-read my comment.
Are you aware of why RBMK reactors are a bad idea? Do you know the difference between them and a PWR (the most common type of reactor)?
Or are you just re-proving my point?

Nuclear power creates plutonium, which has a half life of 25,000 years and is the most deadly of radioactive substances. We (in the world) don’t have a place to put this stuff. Regardless of the energy produced, until we have a safe place to store the amounts that we already have, not to mention the additional amounts we are still producing. To my mind, continuing to produce plutonium through building more nuclear power plants is unethical—we are essentially creating a poison that cannot be disposed of—and who will deal with this in the future? 25,000 is a very long time.

@skfinkel True, but considering the other ways we are poisoning the planet, it’s kind of moot in my opinion.
Besides, some reactors use Plutonium as a fuel. Hell, A CANDU reactor can get rid of Pu-239 as well! I think it’s time to do a little reading ;)

@jerv Show me where to read so that I can learn about a solution to the plutonium problem. I am not satisfied with the “we will shoot it to outer space” or “we will dump in in the seas” or we will bury it under the ground (check out the mess at Hanford WA about this brilliant idea—plutonium is leeching out to the Columbia river).

@jerv: And yes we are poisoning the planet in other ways, but this is by far the worst, longest lasting, and most outrageous.

@UScitizen Nuclear power is not a win-win. I will admit it has great energy potential but the danger factors surrounding it are just too great. One major obstacle is the obvious problem of what to do with the nuclear waste leftovers. We obviously cannot do what some european countries are doing to Somalia as @kevbo has shown. On top of that what would happen if another chernobyl incident occured? Not only that but how would we deal with terrorism against our nuclear power plants?
This is such a convoluted issue and I wish there was a solution at hand but at the moment there is not. Therefore we cannot make the gurantee or decision that nuclear power would solve our energy problems as it really only creates more. With this being said, I think its better that we look for alternatives that are reliable.

@skfinkel The first thing that pops into mind is the CANDU reactor, as well as certain types of “breeder reactor”. However, unless you want to risk frying your brain studying reactors (including chemistry, Heat Transfer and Fluid Flow, and many other related disciplines) it might be best to start simple like transmutation. This may also lend a little bit of insight.
If you want something more in-depth than that, I would have to have a better idea of what you already know about certain subjects, so for the moment I am starting basic and just giving a few “leaping off points”.

@Ailia Entirely correct. Like anything, nuclear power is a double-edged sword. E=mc^2 was thought of as a way to provide power, not to incinerate cities, yet we have done both. Nuclear power is reliable, but people are not. And so long as people are capable of making bad decisions, everything is risky.
Also, there is a slight problem in that not everywhere is suitable for certain forms of energy. For instance, some places don’t have enough wind, others can’t spare a few thousand acres for a decent “solar farm”, both of those rely on storage (batteries) when the wind speeds get low or the sun goes down, etcetera. Therefore, many alternatives are not as reliable as we really need them to be.

@jerv I do agree with your point about human fallacy, but I don’t agree entirely in the case of nuclear power. Like @skfinkel illustrated, the radioactive waste emitted from nuclear power plants is not clean and it cannot be disposed of safely. That is a giant problem in itself but it becomes even more disasterous when human flaw is entered into the equation.

Because if you add in the fact that plutionium is radioactive for 125,000 years that means that we are poisoning the next 5000 generations. Which would be totally irresponsible of us.
So as you can see nuclear power is way more toxic and deadly than anything else. This is exactly why we should be looking for alternatives.
And when I say alternatives, I do not mean solar or wind, I’m talking about the kind of alternatives that can be reliable and used just about anywhere. These alternatives will also be clean in the way they produce energy. That means they will not have any harmful effects or at least as little as can be in the case of humans.
If we could find something that did these things then the only thing we would need to do is wean everybody off of oil and gas. That would be amazing and I’m sure one day, in the near future, we will find that. We just have to work together. :)
This is what I envision and nuclear power just does not fit that picture. Hence, these are my feelings on the matter. For I believe that unless we can neutralize nuclear power’s toxic side effects then it is not a sound solution. Therefore it should not be used, period.

@Ailia And what if that Pu-239 with a half-life of many thousands of years can itself be used as fuel, leaving behind products that are less harmful and far shorter-lived?

@jerv When you say less harmful and shorter lived what exactly do you mean by that? How harmful and shorter-lived are we talking about?

@Ailia Pu-238 has a half-life of 87.5 years and is an Alpha emitter, which means that the radioactivity is gives off can be stopped by a sheet of paper. Come to think of it, Pu-239 (with a half-life of 24,100 years; still long but not nearly as long as you claim) is also an alpha-emitter. Basically, if the radioactivity from Plutonium is an issue it’s only because you spilled it since even a Dixie™ cup can stop it. (The toxicity is still an issue, but the same can be said of many non-nuclear things as well.)

Beyond that, it’s really a chemistry lesson that would take a while to lay out in detail, what with different decay chains, different modes of decay, not to count the fission products… more typing than I feel like at the moment. Hell, it took me quite a while to learn it even to the extent that I have so I can’t really think of how to explain it in an understandable way in less than a few weeks, and that assumes you already know chemistry fairly well (as opposed to forgetting most of it since high school).

@jerv Hell, it took me quite a while to learn it even to the extent that I have so I can’t really think of how to explain it in an understandable way in less than a few weeks, and that assumes you already know chemistry fairly well

I think that right there is a large part of your answer. The general public (including me, for sure!) does not really understand nuclear power and it would take weeks to fully explain it – which is virtually impossible. People will never back it unless they believe it is safe and that is unlikely to happen anytime soon; “nuclear” carries a very negative connotation.

@Supacase People naturally fear that which they do not understand. My education and experiences allow me to understand more about certain things (Nuclear power, electricity, cars, computers, and math to name a few) than most people so I fear those things less. Unfortunately, I do not understand people very well…

@jerv And what is your point exactly? Just because it has a shorter half-life and it is an Alpha emitter does not mean much. If someone was careless or had evil intentions radiation would still pose a threat. Just look at the Litvinenko case for example. Contamination from the polonium managed to spread to a variety of places in London and else where and yet it wasn’t even deliberate. Just imagine if someone wanted to spead radiation to kill a lot of people, Pu-238 could be spread just as easily and with far more devastating consequences. The possibilties for severe contamination are just too great to risk. We need to find safer alternatives.

@Ailia And look at what Timothy McVeigh did with diesel fuel and fertilizer. Your point?

Look at the problems we’ve had with oil; political unrest, ecological damage, etcetera. The possibilities for severe contamination are just too great to risk there too but we did it anyways. Exxon Valdez, anyone?

What we really need is to curb our human nature to destroy everything and do unkind things to each other as well out of hatred, greed, or just plain old lack of foresight. Think of it like this: is a knife a tool or a weapon? And is it safe to have knives around the house, especially if you have small children?

Now, if we could supply all of our power needs through wind, solar, geothermal, hydro, and similar alternative means then I would be more likely to agree with you. Unfortunately, once we get much beyond the energy demands of a small neighborhood, you run into other issues. How much farmland can we sacrifice? What of the massive infrastructure we’d need to transmit the power, or even collect it from a large solar/wind farm?

No matter which way we go, there are safety issues, environmental concerns, economic concerns, and all sorts of other practicalities that leave little/no room for idealism.

Well, I just got a few words from my mentor. He is a retired submariner and currently still works with nuclear reactors. He has much of the same schooling I did, a bit more, and a few decades of experience in the field, so I yield to his wisdom on such matters.

(Pity that he doesn’t want to get a Fluther account of his own, but c’est la vie.)

**********************************

@Cruiser :

You have a valid concern about the jobs involved in the coal industry. However, there is a whole industrial support system that goes into a successful nuclear power program. The jobs created by this will likely far outstrip the jobs related to the coal industry. Personally, there are a lot of things the United States can, and should, do with respect to the “cradle to grave” concept of a proficient commercial nuclear power program. Fuel reprocessing for separation of unused fissile material and separation of long and short lived radioisotopes for appropriate storage is one that I can think of that will provide not only jobs, but an actual, immediate solution to the problem of long term storage of radioactive waste. We can literally reduce the total amount of radioactive waste to a very small fraction of the existing amount requiring long term storage.

Another aspect people don’t often think of when they consider radioactive waste: radioctive waste products eventually decay away. Some in seconds or minutes, some days or months, others years or decades. And a very small fraction in centuries or millenia. Chemical waste, however DOESN’T decay away. It can only be moved from one place to another or chemically combined with something else. Like mercury, for example.

The problem with many other alternative energy sources (solar, wind, biofuels, etc) is that they are low density energy sources. Solar power, for example, provides only 1.4 KW per square meter of surface area. Even if you were able to capture and convert 100% of that to usable power, it would still only represent a tiny fraction of the power we consume. As a suplimentary source it’s great. But not at a primary source.

@strange1 :

You also have a valid concern. How many Chernobyl’s will it take? You want an honest, no shit answer to that? It doesn’t have to take ANY. What would you say if I told you we can design and build nuclear reactors that could not melt down even if you completely drained ALL the coolant out of the reactor at maximum power? I’m NOT bullshiting you on this. The technology and engineering capability has existed for years.

Another part of the problem with this is reactor design isn’t standardized. Well, that’s not exactly true any more. A couple standardized designs HAVE been approved for construction and licensing in the United States now. This is part of the process meant to keep development, construction, and licensing times and costs down and to allow the lessons and improvements learned to be immediately implimented to all the other reactors operating.

There are many different reactor designs out there, which operate under different conditions and nuclear cycles and for specific purposes. The Chernobyl reactor is one, and of a type not constructed in the United States for a reason, and also didn’t have the containment facilities required of commercial reactors in the United States. If you want more details on this, I’ll try to provide them if you ask.

Not aLL reactors produce significant amounts of Plutonium, either. Some burn it up about as fast as it’s produced. And reactor designs are in the works which will enable them to use various isotopes of Plutonium as part of their fuel in order to eliminate the excess weapons grade Plutonium the various nations have stockpiled. Certainly a worthy cause, I should think.

Here’s one article on this: http://www.ieer.org/ensec/no-3/main.html

We can also design and build reactors which use a Thorium cycle, which produces about 30% LESS long lived radioisotopes for waste than Uranium fueled reactors.

In addition to this, we could also utilize reactors to help reduce long lived radioisotopes by transmutation through neutron exposure in operating reactors. Converting them to shorter lived radioisotopes which will shorten their half lives from centuries or millenia to years or decades.

France has an incredible nuclear infrastructure. And as much as I’m NOT a fan of France politically, they have their shit together when it comes to their nuclear power program. Waste? They have a handle on that one.

France has a definate technocratic society in their blood. The citizens of France INSISTED that a solution to the problem of nuclear waste be implimented AS A PART of their nuclear power program. The result? They recycle their waste, reclaiming unused fuel. They don’t bury the waste: that is unacceptable for them…they STORE IT, properly inventoried and readily accessable for future reprocessing as technologies and industries are developed to do this.

And there is R&D going on looking into the possibilities of artificially inducing radioactive decay. Such a technology could reduce the amount of radioactive isotopes to near nothing, within the life times of the people who created it.

Risks are relative. I’m NOT saying that nuclear power doesn’t pose risks. I’m saying that compared to other risks THAT WE ALL TAKE FOR GRANTED, the risks posed by nuclear power is quite small. Far, FAR more radioactivity is released into the atomsphere from the burning of coal. People who smoke receive FAR more exposure to radiation than I have in my 20 years as a Reactor Operator in the Navy. A single dose of X-rays from the dentist or a chest X-ray. One chest X-ray is about one YEARS worth of occupational exposure for the time I was in the Navy. There are beaches and other places on this planet where the background radiation alone exceeds what I receive in my entire 20 year history as a Reactor Operator. Wyoming, Colorado, and South Dakota, for example, people receive in 8 years from cosmic radiation alone what I received in 20. On the beach in Guarapari, Brazil, they can exceed my total 20 year occupational exposure IN LESS THAN 2 WEEKS!

Personally, my overall exposure to radiation levels is LESS than most civilians. Why? Because my job at the time involved the operation of a nuclear reactor on a submarine…and during all those times I was underway, submerged, I was receiving essentially NO background radiation at all and my occupational exposure was LESS than that I would have received in port.

Thousands upon thousands of people die every year in the United States from other, more mundane activities. Automobile accidents, falling, muggings, surgical mistakes, smoking, and so forth. And the deaths related to nuclear power? Insignificant in comparison. Microscopic, even. Yet we think NOTHING of simply crossing the street on the way to the local grocery store, where more people get killed than with nuclear power. Or riding a bike. Or driving a car.

Are their dangers? Certainly. Are there polution and health issues to be concerned with? Absolutely. But the REAL questions are: “Can we deal with these issues?”, “Are they reasonable compared with other risks we routinely take?” And the answers to both are YES.

Nuclear power is NOT an infantile techonology. It’s well understood, well researched, and well developed. And it’s getting BETTER all the time.

**********************************
Okay, it’s more than a few words, and please forgive his use of ALL CAPS since he isn’t familiar with the text formatting here and I didn’t want to edit his words.

@Jery Very awesome of you to go through that effort to get your mentor! No one has ever put such concerted effort to further a conversation! Bravo! This energy debate at face value is rife with knee jerk reactions without much forethought to the real consequences of these alternatives. I work in the chemical industry and am way too familiar with the energy costs involved in producing, shipping and ideally disposal of these toxic substances that are utilized to produce some of these alternative power generating sources. Most if not all come with double, triple, quadruple the carbon footprint and cost of course nuclear power but even coal. Coal to me is our greatest enemy in that the unbridled coal output of China alone is polluting the entire world with their plumes carrying across the ocean to our soil here in the US. But hey we did our share for the last 100 years now it’s theirs and other developing countries turn right?

(whistling) ♫♪♫♪♫♪♫♫♪♫♪♫♪♫♪♫♪♫♫♪♫♪♫♪♫♪♫♪♫♫♪♫♪ BOOOM!!!

@jerv
“Are you aware of why RBMK reactors are a bad idea?”
I have no idea, I just made the coment for comedy value, but my ignorance of the reactor types kinda watered it down.

I don’t really have an interest in the types, that isn’t to say I wouldn’t find it interesting if I researched it, it just that researching that particular subject doesn’t get my tail wagging.

I’d be more interested in the politics as to why there arn’t more reactors about.

Ps. is the answer because they blow up?~ sorry couldn’t resist

I’ll tell you what I do find interesting though, the fact that the only use we seem to have found for nuclear fission is boil water, oh, an blow things up.

@Pazza “is the answer because they blow up?”
Actually, that is not far from the truth really. They are inherently slightly unstable (compared to other reactor types) and can’t be shielded/contained the way many other reactor types can. For instance, the average non-RBMK reactor can (and often is) placed in a containment structure that could probably take a direct hit from a kamikaze fighter jet and still not do much (if any) damage to the reactor itself.
Combine the slightly increased risk of an accident with a lack of safety mechanisms in case the shit does hit the fan and you have something that I wouldn’t want to be within 500 miles of. Contrast that with most other reactors that are a bit less likely to go awry and if something catastrophic does happen the damage is contained, and I think you’ll see why RMBK is not the way to go.

As for boiling water, I have two things to say about that:
1) I got in a little trouble for comparing a Naval nuclear reactor to a Mr. Coffee. It seems to me to be kind of inefficient to boil water to make steam to turn a turbine to generate electricity to transform the voltage and transmit the power to a coffeemaker to heat water when you could just tap into the (non-radioactive) secondary loop and bypass all of the thermodynamic losses involved in doing it the “normal” way

2) Many other types of powerplants burn stuff to boil water as well. Steam turbines are a very common way to turn electrical generators.

@jerv
More info would be appreciated on the ’(non-radioactive) secondary loop’.

If you have the time.

@jerv
Do you mean the secondary loop of water thats non radioactive on the other side of a heat exchanger?

(don’t ask me why I didn’t just edit the first coment!)

@Pazza Correct, thought here are many other rather warm spots in the system, at least warm enough to make a cup of coffee. I will neither confirm nor deny that some Navy ships may or may not have a still hidden in the lagging on one or more of their boilers. If such a thing were to happen, it would be in vilation of the Navy’s “no alcohol on ships” policy.

@jerv
I once went onto a reactor site that was being decommissioned and asked the stupid question ‘so how long is the primary water tank going to be on site’.......

@Pazza Not really a stupid question for somebody who hasn’t studied reactors.

In addition to solving the nuclear waste issue, like fossil fuels, uranium supply wouldn’t be able to meet growing demand mid term. We should focus on solar power and energy efficiency.

@mattbrowne Hard to say really. Uranium is a finite resource so I can see that end of it pretty easily. And certain reactors can use the “waste” from other reactors as fuel, lending to a certain degree of efficiency from an energy_produced/resources_consumed viewpoint. Then again, the estimates I’ve seen place our available nuclear energy resources at not less than 50 times the available oil reserves and likely far higher.

Solar does have some pretty harsh limits, and many of them are cost-related. That doesn’t count the sheer amount of land that is required to produce a reasonable amount of energy. I mean, 1,600 acres to produce 354MW? Really?

As for efficiency, I am with you there. What I find distrubing is that there were cars in the 1980s that got better MPG than many of the alleged “economy” cars we have now. Of course, most of them were VWs and the remainder were Japanese; I don’t recall seeing any American car getting >45MPG. In fact, Ford has a decent one (the diesel Fiesta) that they are intentionally preventing from hitting the US market! However, the old Diesel Rabbits got >50 MPG pretty easy and that was 30 years ago.

But the biggest barrier is the fact that the average American energy consumer couldn’t give two shits less about efficiency. Why should we think about efficiency? It costs more to be efficient (the up-front/transition costs are high and many people are unable or unwilling to look forward, to do the math, and see what is best for them) and it means that we won’;t be able to drive our Hummers, leave every light in the house on, etcetera. That means that any efficiency measure here would have to be done through stealth and guile. Look at the fuss over the California ban on certain HDTVs if you want to see what I mean.

From “Shut all four and hit the shore:Life in the Nuclear Navy”

“we learned was available in civilian textbooks at the bookstore in the mall. And we learned something that is just as available to the public: nuclear power is SAFE.
I, like just about everyone, was always suspicious of the whole idea. After the (hushed whisper) Three Mile Island incident, just about all of John Public decided that it was unsafe; that we’d all glow in the dark if we kept splitting those atoms. By the time we left nuclear power school, though, there wasn’t one of us who couldn’t refute the most adamant argument of the most whacked-out Greenpeace nut in existence. In this instance, it wasn’t navy brainwashing. They just gave us the facts, the numbers and the equations, and let us figure it out for ourselves.’

or…

”“Hah,” I snickered “I don’t build bombs. I run nuclear power plants.”
“That’s just as bad. They blow up, too. It’ll happen eventually.” He said, undaunted.
“Oh, really?” I ask “And, how much of the total core is fuel, and how much is poison?”
“Uhh. it’s all poison,” he stammers. The other fruitballs, who had been smiling up to this point, went back to staring at their plates.
“Right.” I sarcastically nod ”*Do you even know what I’m talking about?”
“No, but I know that all that radiation will kill you, so it’s like a poison.*”
“Uh-huh” I rolled my eyes, as I tend to do with such idiots “And how much exposure do you think I get? Would you like to know that you get more radiation on the beach in one day than I get all year at work?”
Now geek boy is looking around himself.
“And,” I continued “That your average coal burning power plant dumps out more radiation in a day than a nuclear power plant puts out in a year? Smoking, x-rays, even the sun give you a dose a hundred times bigger than anything you could get from a nuke plant.”

“Before you listen to one of these nature freaks, just ask him (or her):
a. Do you own a car?
b. Do you use electricity?
and, c. Do you use stuff like paper or plastics?
They will most likely answer yes to all of the above. They want us to leave nature alone, yet like their air conditioning and TV as much as anyone. Does this pass the sensibility test?”

Photovoltaics isn’t the only way to use solar energy. And as products become more widespread cost will go down.

True, there is an economy of scale as far as the economics go, but there are other costs to consider. No form of solar that we now have is good in the KW/area department, so solar will have a very hard time competing in that area until we somehow curb the demand for both power and real estate.

The latter is a bit tricky mostly because of human nature (greed) and partly for ecological reasons unless we choose areas with no native live, but most such areas are remote enough that transmission becomes an issue, and a rather costly one at that.

As for the former, that means working on efficiency, which again runs into problems because the only way we will ever get the funds to research ways to improve efficiency is to prove a need to do so. Otherwise there will be a push to maintain the status-quo, produce lower-cost, less efficient goods with better profit margins, and spend the money on other things.

If only this issue were solely about the science and/or economics, but we have to take the politics into account too.

I recommend the following book:

http://www.amazon.com/Hot-Flat-Crowded-Revolution-America/dp/0374166854/

@mattbrowne: There is enough uranium for everyone currently on the planet to die of old age before it is exhausted (and their grandchildren). Since it is cheaper than solar we should use it instead of solar. The nuclear waste problem is only a side-effect of not allowing breeder reactors.

@jerv: KW/area is a MAJOR problem for solar. The cost of solar will NEVER go below the cost of the sky the cells block. Land in many areas is too expensive to waste on solar and the price of land is only increasing as the population goes up.

@malevolentbutticklish I’ve had a few go-rounds with people over that very thing. They like solar and wind and I always come back with how you’d need to basically pave Wyoming with those things in order to do what one nuclear plant can do.
The largest solar farm we currently have puts out less power than a nuclear fast attack submarine; 247 acres to put out 20 MW versus an Akula-class submarine at 172m by ~23m puts out 380 MW (19 times as much!) and still has space left over to put engines, ballistic missiles, and living quarters for 160 men.

@malevolentbutticklish – It’s not cheaper than solar. Do you know how much just one nuclear power plant costs? Plus all the cost storing and transporting waste.

@mattbrowne Cost is surprisingly comparable…. unless we are talking photovoltaic, in which case nuclear power wins hands down.
In general, solar costs about twice as much per KW-hour as nuclear, even when you account for the added security and waste disposal costs.

@jerv – If you research the web you will find varying estimates, often cooked or faked by either the green technology lobby or the nuclear lobby. However if you look at projected costs over the next 5 – 10 years solar thermal, wind (and even photovoltaics) wins over nuclear. 10 – 20 years it’s almost like a home run.

There’s a reason for the

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desertec

project focusing on solar thermal. Or would you rather build 100–500 nuclear reactors in the Sahara?

My point is that you wouldn’t need that many reactors.

Would you rather turn the majority of the surface area of our planet into a power generator that can’t be used for either habitation or crops?

But as long as we are going to Wikipedia then maybe you might look at the page in my link. Here is an excerpt:

Energy source Costs of electricity production €/MWh
Nuclear Energy ........107.0 – 124.0
Brown Coal…..............88.0 – 97.0
Black Coal…............104.0 – 107.0
Domestic Gas….......106.0 – 118.0
Wind Energy Onshore 49.7 – 96.1
Wind Energy Offshore 35.0 – 150.0
Hydropower….............34.7 – 126.7
Biomass….................77.1 – 115.5
Solar Electricity….....284.3 – 391.4

That means that the cheapest estimate for solar electricity is more than double the highest estimate for nuclear. And those estimates include initial capital, fuel if required maintenance, and everything else; the total cost.

Hmm… $400 billion Euros and 6,500 square miles to produce 15% of the energy for Europe. That is as much as 40+ nuclear plants, but with less energy output. And how do the costs look after 40 years?

I remain unconvinced unless/until we make a few more pretty big leaps in technology and make them in a way that is truly cost-comparable.

FAQ: Aren’t the land areas required for the solar-thermal power plants enormous and an environmental threat?

According to a TRANS-CSP study, 17% of Europe’s energy requirements may be met by solar imports by 2050. This would involve 2,500 sq km of desert surface for the solar power plants and 3,500 sq km for the high-voltage direct-current transmission lines throughout the entire EU-MENA region (Europe – Middle East – North Africa). This total surface area of 6,000 sq km is as large as the Nasser reservoir near Aswan in Egypt. However, this reservoir provides only 3 Gigawatts (GW) of electric power, whereas the solar power plants would deliver 100 GW of electric power. Solar power is actually the most compact and efficient renewable energy source worldwide. The MENA region amounts to 12 million square kilometers, of which only 2,500 sq km (0.02% of the total area) will be required for the export power plants.

http://www.desertec.org/en/concept/faq/

A positive side effect: it would create many, many jobs in the Arab world. Young people would be motivated to learn about science and technology and this can help reduce fanaticism.

@mattbrowne Lets see…
Assume 6KW per day per m^2 for a desert That is how much solar energy there is available at 100% efficiency. Multiply that to km^2 and you get 6 GW.

Unfortunately, we are nowhere near that degree of efficiency; “For example, a one square meter solar electric panel with an efficiency of 15 percent would produce about one kilowatt-hour of electricity per day in Arizona. ” Multiply that out and you get 1 GW-hr/day per km^2.

You have to realize that, at present, the US consumes a shitload of energy as well. Nearly 3.9 billion KWH last year and that is just electricity. That’s 3,900 GW-hrs, which equates to 3900 km^2 just for generation alone.That would be the entire state of Rhode Island. Then you add in the distribution, and you’re talking a lot of real estate. May not be an issue in the African desert, but it’d be a problem here. Not an insurmountable one I don’t think but I bet that the red tape would at least postpone it until the year 2525.

Plus one other factor. Do you realize how much it would cost for us to change our current infrastructure to be more efficient? I think it’s something we have to do, but you have to factor those costs in as well when you are discussing cost efficiency. If you are against nuclear power for the high initial cost then you are also against lowering our energy consumption. I know you are intelligent enough to have other, more valid reasons for your opposition, but I mention it for others following along.

Sure, solar is considered renewable, but so are U-238 breeder reactors.

I agree with you on your last point, but that sort of thing would require a major cultural change here. It would also mean that we’d have to start funding our schools and rasing our academic standards… though I would like to see our kids here know more about technology than how to access Facebook from behind their school’s firewall, and I think we both agree that this country could do with less fanaticism.

@jerv – Yes, but green technology does not just mean green energy production like solar. It also means energy efficiency, above all building insulation. The US is still a developing country in this area.

@mattbrowne And in many others as well, but that is a topic for another time/place.

One thing that many other places have over us is that they either lack an infrastructure to have to replace or they got the dogshit blown out of their infrastructure in WWII. What that means is that while we have old machines that were designed/built in an era where everything was thought to be infinitely plentiful, many other places have newer, more efficient stuff.

Also, other places are used to having limited resources of one type or another. For instance, how much real estate does Japan have? Anything they do has to be space-efficient. Look at how many cars in Europe get 45+ MPG without hybrid technology; just gas or more often diesel.

As for us, we still have yet to get out of the old “the solution to pollution is dilution” mindset where oil will be around for a million years, we can just build more power plants when our demand grows, and we are entitled to be wasteful. It’s a God-given right to do what we want. I mean, how many other countries in teh world would bother with monster trucks?

@jerv – Good point. Actually, there’s the more recent case of the same phenomenon in East Germany. New good stuff wherever you look!

@mattbrowne @jerv: Not only is nuclear cheaper but the cost of a nuclear plant is artificially high and could be brought way down. China is doing it! They are looking at building new plants for $1000/kW of generation capacity.

@malevolentbutticklish I hope that they aren’t RMBK-type reactors.

Been working for a company in the UK specialising in nuclear waste cleanup for the last year. Anyway, started to get interested in how much waste there is, and whether there were indeed nuclear power plants that don’t ruin the sites they inhabit and found this.

LFTR (or lifter) – liquid fluoride thorium reactor
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9M__yYbsZ4
http://www.ted.com/talks/kirk_sorensen_thorium_an_alternative_nuclear_fuel.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_fluoride_thorium_reactor

The TED talk is probably the best one to start off with.