The Pros and Cons of Nuclear Power and Renewable Sources

Comments

• Anonymous - 1st Sep 2011 at 9:19am:
  Nice way to to lay out alternatives. A few points regarding taxonomy, though:1. This discussion mixes apples and organges - for example, energy sources and storage media. Solar, nuclear and fossil energy are sources; hydrogen is a storage medium.2. In a related issue, the comparison fails to address dispatchability of various energy sources. Fuel provides an inherent storage capabilty but some technologies, such as PV or wind, tend to be captured as electrical energy, which requres some other technology for storage.3. The comparison promotes an implication that energy technologies are an "either/or" proposition. Solar/wind + batteries may be well-suited to distributed rural demands; nuclear may make more sense for a concentrated urban/industrial electrical/heating demand. Even more thoughtful analyses suggest the best approaches tend to involve technology combinations, or "hybrid energy systems."
• Anonymous - 1st Sep 2011 at 10:31am:
  Wind and solar are neither dispatchable nore baseload power. They increase the need for coal and natural gas power plant backup, due to their inherent unreliability.Government mandates requiring utilities to buy wind and solar distort natural allocation of assets and production, leading to gross inefficiencies and expenses. These expenses must either be passed on to the consumer, or the entities involved go out of business or are taken over by government.Promoters of "green energy" are not practical people as a rule. They are not responsible people, in the sense that if their ideas cause severe problems, they are not responsible for all the misery and destruction they have brought about.Green activists are impractical and irresponsible in the manner of academics, journalists, attorneys, and government bureaucrats. No matter how much devastation they cause, someone else will have to clean it up.
• Anonymous - 2nd Sep 2011 at 3:28am:
  Intrigued at your average cost per kWh for fusion - in the absence of any commercial power plant that figure is at best speculative.Amazing that you don't mention as a negative feature of nuclear fission, the potential for large-scale off-site contamination following an accident; yet you cite, for example,a 'negative impact on fish' as a downside of hydrooelectric generation. In egenral I think you have over.simplified the comparisons to teh extent that they are unhelpful.
• Anonymous - 2nd Sep 2011 at 8:32am:
  too bad they didn't include geothermal in the cost comparison. its a profitable business without gov't subsidies. just got to get access to the hot spots...