Uh, no

Archangel M

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Old American Tech and Soviet Nuke plants are not the standard to measure the new nuclear technology on. There have been HUGE advances in nuke tech. Far safer..far smaller footprint.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/13/AR2010091304026.html

Believe it or not, living near a nuclear reactor may be safer than living near a coal-fired plant, which spews a host of dangerous chemicals into the air. The only visible emissions from a reactor is steam; the spent fuel is more of a byproduct. (More on that later.).

What about radiation, you ask? The ash coming from a typical coal plant carries plenty of radiation: According to some estimates, it carries 100 times more radiation into the surrounding area than a nuclear reactor producing the same amount of energy.

France supplies 75% of their electricity by nuclear power.
 

Bill Mattocks

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The issue was touched upon in this thread - the ability to ramp up to meet spikes in demand. There is more on that, however.

Energy demand is never a constant. Grids are an attempt to smooth that out somewhat, and they do; somewhat. But people still tend to demand more or less energy depending upon circumstances which sometimes can be anticipated and sometimes cannot.

So here's the problem. Either you produce energy on demand (near-instant ramp-up) or you store it. There are only a few technologies that will produce energy on demand, and most of them involve burning things (there are exceptions). If you can't produce it on demand, you have to store it and produce that on demand. Energy storage on a massive scale simply is not technologically feasible at this time. Every storage system for energy is hugely inefficient and gives away a monstrous proportion of energy the longer it is stored.

This storage problem may eventually be solved. But that the moment, it's our sticking point, and a dirty little secret that clean-energy proponents don't like to talk about.

If you use clean energy; a wind farm, or solar panels, for example, you must provide both for the spikes in demand and the storage of surplus energy with the ability to retrieve it on demand. That means building turbines, for example, or solar panels enough to meet the anticipated maximum sustained need or within a high percentage of it; most of that energy will either have to go into storage (inefficient and lossy) or the equipment must simply sit idle. This is unlike a traditional power plant, which must also be built to anticipate demand. When it isn't burning something at the highest capacity, it can burn less of it (adjusting the throttle).

There are renewable or green or clean (depending on what terminology one wants to use) forms of energy that can be ramped up to meet demand. One of them has been exploited for over a hundred years; hydroelectric power from dammed water reservoirs. These have their own safety risks and ecological concerns, but they can generally produce power on demand, so long as nature continues to replenish the water supply it depends upon. One cannot, of course, build a dam where there is no water to dam up; so dams are highly location-dependent, and in the USA, we've already done much of the damming that can be done. China has recognized the unique capability of hydroelectric power, and is in the final stages of building the largest hydroelectric dam in the world, the Three Gorges Dam. In this case, they have the advantages of national centralized planning, huge financial resources, and few if any private property rights to contend with.

Another that has not been thoroughly exploited is geothermal. Anywhere there is a dependable temperature differential, power can be produced (at a cost). Since the earth's core won't cool down for a very long time, this is an energy source that, while not 'renewable' in the strictest sense, won't run out on us in any meaningful sense. Geothermal should be exploited more fully, since it is very cheap over a long period of time; investment in drilling and tapping heat sources amortizes and very little new expenditure is required; even cheaper than building dams which have to be maintained.

In my opinion, all alternatives for producing power must be explored, and used where they make sense. As supplements to traditional power sources, wind, solar, and even wave power can be cost-effective and useful; it's not an either/or situation in most cases. However, the ecologists and tree-huggers must also realize that traditional energy sources such as coal, liquid hydrocarbons, and nuclear power are viable too, and will be with us for a long time yet, like it or not.

Frankly, I believe we should be drilling like crazy. For oil, for gas, but also for heat. Geothermal is perhaps the only long-term energy supply that does not inherently introduce pollutants into the atmosphere and can be ramped up and down to meet supply and can be introduced even where there is no large-scale water reservoir already. It introduces heat into the atmosphere, of course; but not the so-called greenhouse gases to any large extent.

Geothermal power is already in use; it is not a new or developing technology in that sense; we know how to harness it, and there isn't any new technology that must be invented to put it to use. We know how to drill, and we know how to turn heat into electricity. Economics until now have dictated that it did not make economic sense to build geothermal power plants except in a few places that bring heat to the surface of the earth naturally and did not require extensive drilling. However, rising energy costs may soon change that equation.

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

This, by the way, is one of the very few areas where I think 'big government' can do a better job than free enterprise. By this I mean that free enterprise will eventually exploit geothermal energy, but not until the cost/profit model favors it. This will mean that there will be a significant lag between the time traditional energy sources become scarce and very expensive and the time the first large-scale geothermal plants are built. This is normal and natural; private enterprise does not care if prices to consumer spike, it only cares about profit margins; and energy is not something that people stop using to a huge extent when prices go up. Government can provide a useful role by providing incentives in the form of tax breaks, land grants, patent use and cooperative investment with private industry to encourage the building of geothermal plants now, before the huge run up in prices as traditional sources become scarce or less available. It can even (God help me for saying this) assist free enterprise by intentionally raising taxes on current energy sources to force the investment of private funds into other sources (I prefer that solution the least, but it does exist).

In any case, I'm a geothermal energy fan. There is nothing else that makes economic long-term sense for power generation on this planet at this time. Everything else is more dangerous, less renewable, less dependable, or cannot be ramped up to meet demand spikes.

Drill, baby, drill; for heat.
 

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