The case for nuclear generation has to be made convincingly... This can be a big winner for the Dems, we just have to get the NIMBY folks on board.

I don't expect any died "green" in the wool environmentalist will heed any message from a man the other Greenpeace leaders label as an Eco-Judas.

Moore did an admirable job in providing Bjorn Lomborg a forum in which to post his rebuttal to the Scientific American attack on him. That certainly didn't help his reputation with the environmentalist nutjobs, but for the rational conservationists it was interesting to read Lomborg's response and Moore's reports on why he took a different vector from his Greenpeace comrades.

Is there a RATIONAL case against nuclear energy?

And no, that's not a rhetorical question.

Nuclear is coming. So is additional build out of hydroelectric. So is wind, solar, hydrothermic, etc. When oil hits upwards of a hundred dollars a barrel, other alternatives will seem cheap by comparison.

We could make a good start by buying flexcars and dropping the $50 a barrel tariff that we have on Brazilian ethanol. We could also push hard for battery development instead of wasting time with the "Hydrogen economy".

One hundred years ago, people accepted constantly blackened skies from coal smoke as the price of progress. We are rapidly reaching the point where the economic benefits of nuclear energy outweigh the health risks. It may well be that one hundred years from now, people will have accepted constant exposure to low levels of radiation as the price for continued economic growth.

I suppose it's important when an opponent of nuclear power changes his mind and supports nuclear power. One more person in favor is to the good. But his isn't the most persuasive argument that has been written. Nuclear supporters here have provided plenty of links to better presentations.

Support for nuclear is in the president's energy package, passed in 2005. the real question is what policies are the best policies: direct subsidies? limits on torts? federal regulation overruling state regulation? earthquake resistance standards?

In sum, I am glad he can join us nuclear boosters. Maybe he'll persuade other Greenpeaceniks to join us.

I agree, but NIMBY.

I've agreed for years.

There's ITER. Reading the criticism, it appears a wider debate on fusion might be in order.

It's odd that the sustainable energy discussion is relegated to the blogosphere and not a major agitprop metatheme dominating everything from Superbowl ads to corporate annual reports. Think Space Race on Steroids. As Ed Wilson wrote in The Future of Life:

Armageddon...is not the cosmic war an fiery collapse of mankind foretold in sacred scripture. It is the wreckage of the planet by an exuberantly plentiful and ingenious humanity. ...The race is now on between the technoscientific forces that are destroying the living environment and that that can be harnessed to save it. We are inside a bottleneck of overpopulation and wasteful consumption. If the race is won, humanity can emerge in a far better condition than when it entered, and with most of the diversity of life intact."

How disappointing to see everyone here parroting this tired conventional wisdom. Nuclear seems to have become some kind of totem by which progressives prove themselves "reasonable." Aren't we sick of getting duped that way yet?

There are so many routes to the anti-nuclear argument, one hardly knows where to start.

How about here: The idea that wind, solar, geothermal, and hydro kinetic should, individually or collectively, "replace" coal is a straw man. What greens are proposing is a new paradigm, pairing aggressive energy efficiency and conservation (easily the cheapest "source" of energy) with distributed small-scale sources appropriate to regional context, and smart grids.

People say it will take too long to scale this up and implement appropriate policy. But a new generation of nuclear plants will take a minimum of 10 years to get going. What could efficiency + renewables do in 10 years, with comparable public subsidies and aggressive political support? We know they couldn't address the energy shortfall? How?

Let's ask the market. Investment money is streaming into small-scale, distributed power, but the nuclear industry is utterly moribund. If it were revived, it would be a Frankenstein, entirely sustained by government largess. Mining uranium is an environmental nightmare; building the plants is prohibitively costly; the risks are all but uninsurable. What we're talking about is creating a(another) huge, centralized, politically connected energy cartel forever seeking to increase its take from the public teat. We need more of those?

Do not accept the oft-repeated canard that we cannot fundamentally change our energy situation, that we must simply plug one massive, unsavory power cartel in to replace another. We can build better vehicles, better cities, better infrastructure. We can drive less, consume less, and change our food system to reduce freight distances. We can shift policy to internalize industry externalities. We can tax carbon. And we can lavish the same attention, subsidies, and tax breaks on renewables that we do now on oil, coal, and agribusiness.

Can clean energy fill the coal gap? It's got momentum, investment enthusiasm, and the arc of history on its side. Nuclear is the "least worst" option that everyone holds their nose to support. It feels wrong, because it is wrong, and a culture that remembered back when it used to have some fucking balls and ambition would throw itself behind what it knows is right.

If the nation is going to be serious about nuclear power, we need to put the entire nation on one electrical grid (at long last) in order to allow us to build large numbers of plants in geographically isolated, safe areas (away from fault lines, out of range of hurricanes, far away from population centers, easy to protect, adjacent to disposal areas, etc.).

That will minimize the NIMBY concerns that would arise for each and every plant that would otherwise be placed near a population center, and allow a much larger/faster buildup of plants.

And by the way: Patrick Moore did not just now "change his mind" about nuclear. He's been advocating for it for years.

And describing him only as "one of the founders of Greenpeace" is extraordinarily misleading. He's a notorious crank and industry shill.

As it just happens to be, I've been investigating and writing about this very topic for the past couple of months. And what I've found is that there isn't much reason to believe that Nuclear Energy is the solution to our problems.

Perhaps you are asking, why shouldn't we be promoting nuclear energy? The problem is two-fold: nuclear energy is a remarkably poor solution when thinking about the requirements for having a cheap and reliable source of power and also when considering our energy security needs.

When we look at our preparedness for handling national emergencies, one of the major problems we have is a very brittle energy infrastructure. The founder of Rocky Mountain Institute (a non-profit organization dedicated to finding efficient use of energy resources), Amory Lovins, pointed out in RMI's Spring 2006 newsletter that one of the most important aspects to deal with when thinking about national security is the resilience of our energy infrastructure. The August 2003 energy blackout experienced throughout the upper northeast was an explicit example of the problem with a large, centralized energy grid that is incapable of responding to a failure on the grid. In fact, the systems that were the most affected by that outage were the nuclear power plants. Nuclear power plants do not like abrupt shutdowns and are very slow to bring back online after a shutdown. When that blackout happened, the nuclear plants took 5 days to get back to half power and over 8 days to get up to 90% output. This hardly makes them a flexible and dependable element in a robust power grid.

Furthermore, nuclear power stations are particularly dependent on water for cooling. In summer 2003, Europe was struck with the worst heat wave in its recorded history. A number of nuclear power stations had to be shut down because river levels fell so much they could no longer cool the plants. But that was precisely when the need for energy was greatest. We know that global warming will only make this problem worse.

Ask yourself: if nuclear energy was so cheap (as Patrick Moore claims), then why the hell do we have to subsidize it so much?

Even so, nuclear proponents continue to promote nuclear power as the answer to our future energy needs. The latest energy bill signed by Bush provided some astonishing incentives for the nuclear industry including 80 percent loan guarantees, $2 billion of public insurance against legal or regulatory delays, an additional 1.8 cent/kWh in operating subsidies, payment for late acceptance for hazardous waste, capping liability for mishaps, free offsite security and another $1.3 billion tax break for decommissioning funds. Under that bill all risk is absorbed by tax payers and the promoters don't even have to invest much of their own money. But as Lovins shows, even with all this largess, the market is far from interested in building new nuclear power stations because it is more risky, more expensive and vastly less attractive than other technologies.

What would be really smart is to invest LOTS in energy efficiency. But our current administration is freezing out energy efficiency so they can keep feeding the Nuclear industry. That's a bad tradeoff.

No nuclear is not the answer.

Let's look at his arguments

>In 2004, the average cost of producing nuclear energy in the United States was less than two cents per kilowatt-hour, comparable with coal and hydroelectric.

Nonsense. This like saying the cost of driving you car is a bit more than a penny per mile, because that is what gas cost. You have to include amortized capital cost. Grids with large amounts of nuclear in the mix cost more than those without. The cost of light water nuclear electricity is usually estimated to average around 11 cents per kWh or higher

Moreover he is advocating breeder reactors as a way to get rid of nuclear waste, though he uses the term "recycling". There is good reason for this. Uranium is a fairly common element on this planet; but if you extracted the uranium from your back yard it would require more energy than you would produce. Uranium has to be mined from rich ore, and there are limited amounts of this. There is plenty to run our current levels of nuclear production, but if you greatly increased nuclear use (as you would if you expected nuclear energy to play a serious role in greenhouse gas emission reductions) then you would hit peak uranium in five to twenty five years. So any advocate of seriously increasing nuclear power use has to support breeder reactors - which are much more expensive than light water. (Every attempt at commercial breeder reactors to date have failed; either they end up being shut down or converted to light water; breeder reactors simply are not cost competitive.)

So are there alternatives? Once you understand that the cost comparison is not coal, but breeder reactors there certainly are. Solar thermal can provide electricity for 11 cents a kWh. High temperature heat is much less expensive to store than electricty. Molten salts can currently store solar heat for the equivalent of $40 a kWh. to make a solar thermal plant full dispatchable (as reliable as a coal or nuclear plant) molten salt storage adds 4-5 cents per kWh. So you can generate fully dispatchable solar thermal electricty for 15-16 cents a kWh - lower than breeder reactor costs. Of course we should avoid this high cost where possible. We can use variable sources for up to 20% of electricity within a grid without compromising reliability, probably more. Variable wind costs about 4 cents per kWh hour to produce; so this could greatly bring the average cost of renewable power down. Hydro has been developed to 2/3rds or more if potential worldwide - so we are not going to increase that a great deal; but existing dams do provide inexpensive dispatchable electricity. Economically feasible undeveloped geothermal electricity represents a tiny percentage of projected demand, but it is inexpensive, and even more reliable than hydro - so again helps bring down your cost average. Sustainable biomass that does not compete with food production is another limited but useful source that helps provide dispatchable power, lower average costs. Low temperature solar energy in buildings to provide space heating, space cooling, and hot water can again displace a percentage of other sources used for that purpose.

However whether we go the renewable path (which I favor) or the breeder reactor path, energy supply is going to cost a great deal more than at present. If we want to avoid serious economic problems from this, we are going to have to squeeze more GDP out of each unit of energy so that higher energy prices don't mean higher percent of our GDP is used to purchase energy. So the most important energy technology, regardless of source, willl be efficiency increases.

I'm not going to deal with questions of nuclear safety, except to note that the evaluation of Chernobyl and 3-Mile Island are from associations with promotion of nuclear energy as part of their mission statement, and have been questioned by very serious sources. Given that we have less expensive renewable alternatives, I don't think this has to be main focus of debate.

The problem is not convincing NIMBYs and eco-idealists that we should switch to nuclear. The problem is saying that "nuclear should replace coal" when the entire nuclear industry is owned by coal-fired energy producers. Why is there no further investment in nuclear? There's your answer.

The political slogan, it seems to me, should be "even the French are doing it."

For sure we're going to build up our nuke base. But aren't we just trading peak-oil for peak-uranium? Nukes buy us a few years, along with a raft of new problems.

What about space-based solar power? Clean, reliable, abundant, and all the technology is available right now.

And really, shouldn't we be talking about the great human die-off? Has *that* tipping point passed us by?

This is a seductive argument ... and I've been pulled in its direction just because of the stark realities of global warming and peak oil -- but it's a non-starter.

David Roberts, Mary and Gar Lipow all covered it. To sum up, there are two major drawbacks to light water nukes:

Energy throughput and waste storage.

The first big myth is that we get more energy out of nukes than we do out of oil. Wrong. It takes an amazing amount of energy to process uranium into nuke fuel. The fuel cycle yields less energy than oil refining.

Secondly, if we're going to start building nuke plants, we have to figure out a way to store the waste long-term -- because it's going to be highly radioactive for centuries.

Third, this is all about breeders. Breeders, however, are a nightmare. They're cooled by liquid sodium (which explodes on contact with air and water) and they produce more plutonium than they consume. A plutonium economy is a nuclear terrorist's wet dream.

Fourth, centralizing nuke power away from population centers is no solution. Electricity can only be carried so far by copper wire before heat loss makes it pointless. You couldn't run New York from nuke plants in the Utah desert -- unless you wanted to produce an order of magnitude more power than New York consumes.

We need to decentralize power production. Big Daddy corporations who we pay to provide us all our needs are the problem here, not the solution.

Bob

Even assuming we continue to need a huge heat differential, boiler, turbine and condenser to generate electricity -- rather than reinventing the leaf or some other nanotech approach to moving electrons -- it always seems the plans focus on using a 'resource' because big players own it. Coal, uranium, have a market value because people expect to use them.

We have other heat differentials. We know know to drill very deep holes. It's hot down there, very hot. We know how to dive very deep. It's very cold down there, except where it's very hot.

There's no big push for technologies that don't require buying something some big player already owns.

Hell, why not just sell Big Coal the sun? You betcha we'd see solar power suddenly become commercially practical, if they could then sell sunlight to run the things.

The old nuclear plants got embrittled far faster than hoped and can't be fixed, even if we assume we know all their problems. Same problem that sank the Titanic, overly brittle metal cracking under thermal stress.

We know know to drill very deep holes.

Hank, if you really know something others don't, perhaps it's time to share. The consensus view is that deep drilling is really expensive and technically very challenging. The three most famous deep drilling exercises are probably Thomas Gold's 6km Siljan Ring hole in Sweden to look for trapped hydrocarbons deep in the earth, the ambitious US Mohole (never drilled), and the monumental Soviet Kola Hole (12km, possibly still open to 8km). More recent holes go to shallower depths; it is hard enough just to keep the hole open. Below certain depths the pressure crushes the casing before it can put it in place. I'm sure a lot of geophysicists and hard-rock drilling experts would appreciate your insights into this matter.

E.F. Schumacher "Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered".

Every energy technology seems to have its drawbacks. Is there any technology fix for peak oil or is civilization just screwed?

What are you going to do with all the spent fuel? It doesn't go away, pretty much ever in human terms. It's dangerous and will add up like compound interest over one, two, three, four, five generations. This is not about today, but about a long future.

Maybe I could be sold on nuclear, but I could be sold much easier on devices that actually shut off when you turn them off instead of sucking energy from the grid, or refrigerators that work at 90% the efficiency fo current ones, or florescent lights, or using sunlight to read by. We can reduce demand dramatically, which would lessen the need for new plants.

I could be sold much easier on distributed roof-top solar, which can produce half to 3/4 of an average home's power when conservation efforts are used even in the worst environments where it won't pay for itself but will make an ecological difference. In better environments it would produce energy that goes back to the grid. Government buildings, schools, etc with flat roofs should all have solar on them.

Maybe you can do nuclear a little, but a real effort at conservation and a distributed roof-top solar program connected to the grid (inertiae) should reduce the need for many new electric plants.

Fuel: the use of glass matrix for nuclear fuel is coming. This approach ensures that the fuel does not easily get out and eroded, and thus can make the situation much less of a problem. Easier to handle as well.

For those still opposed to nuclear: you must not merely be opposed, but rather make a positive statement. Where will our power come from ?

Let the R's advocate for nuclear power--it is the ultimate big government enterprise, impossible without massive tax subsidies.
The cost of capital for any investment does not appear to be falling just now, this is a poor time to embark on a capital intensive energy development like nukes.
The nuclear fuel cycle in the US is largely fossil-fired, from mining and milling through separation and power plant construction, all otherwise avoidable greenhouse gas producing activities to get the "carbon free" power.
The US has always scoffed (remember Cheney's remarks?) at serious energy and power demand conservation, leaving immense savings available. Obtain those savings first, then worry about high cost alternative.

Where will our power come from ?

It's going to come from coal, with a steadily increasing percentage of wind. Those are the low investment and the quickest to build. They are what's being authorized right now. Unlike nukes, there is a fair amount of construction expertise in the above two in the U.S.

Judging from the comments here, I've got some reading up to do on nuclear power. Just the 'peak uranium' discussion is enough to give me pause.

Besides that, Moore doesn't deal with the problems of transport of either live or spent uranium fuel, which was the one nuclear-power issue I was already concerned about. We transport all sorts of hazardous materials, willy-nilly, across this country, by rail and truck, and in an age of terrorism, that's freakin' crazy. We've got to come up with a better system, and AFAICT, nobody's even thinking about this issue.

At any rate, in solving both our energy problems and our greenhouse gas generation problems, conservation and energy efficiency is still the low-hanging fruit. Any serious approach to these problems starts there, then moves on to alternative fuels.

It is easy to cry "conservation" and no doubt conservation will happen as prices go up, but conservation alone doesn't get it done as folks across the planet demand improved living standards. How does the world meet world wide demands without doing unacceptable damage to the environment.

The big problem is everybody seems willing to point out the failings of the "bad" technology, which can loosely be defined as the technology the other guy is promoting, without feeling the smallest need to solve the looming world wide crisis caused by the increased demands of the Indians, Chinese and others.

This reminds me of the emergence of the automobile.

What was one of the problems of city life with horse drawn carriages?

Tons of horse shit....everywhere.

Alas....here comes the automobile! No more horse shit!

The street are clean again!

Problem solved with no problem remaining.

Oh...wait a sec.....

There aren't any other realistic alternatives for replacing coal-fired facilities, and the issues of safety, waste, and terrorism, though genuine, are manageable.

Not so fast, Kevin. I agree that issues like safety and terrorism are manageable, but I have yet to see a realistic plan for managing the nuclear waste we have on hand right now, let alone the greater quantities of waste produced by a quantum expansion of nuclear power plants. I'll admit I'm now a convert on the safety issue, but the problem of nuclear waste is the deal-breaker for me.

I absolutely agree. We need to do what France has done and have a standard design. Cut out the delay time. Global warming is an overwhelming issue, and turning coal into gasoline, or burning it for electricity will just make the problem worse.

Given the problems raised with nuclear energy, the question that comes to my mind is, how does France deal with these issues? How and where does it dispose with its nuclear wastes? How does it transport them? Why does it not seem to perceive these issues to be problems (so far as I know)?

Well, face it- the Baby Boomers were raised with the expectation that electricity would be "too cheap to meter" thanks to Mr. A-bomb. Expecting this lump in our demographic curve to come up with an alternate solution probably isn't realistic.

Fortunately, there are other people in the world who weren't brainwashed from birth by the automobile and suburban home-building industries. And there's plenty of free energy out there if you know where to look for it.

For example, if you ride a bicycle to work as a life strategy, you will not only save all the energy associated with a car, but additionally avoid many long hours in the hospital because you will be more pysically fit.

As for nuclear power, it ain't gonna fly- that's the short form. Yeah, I know- we built hundreds of Liberty ships during WW II. Well, some of them broke in half when they met a big wave.

Conservation is already cheaper than nuclear. Nuclear takes a lot of energy to build, and as oil prices rise it will become even less competitive.

This may not make a lot of difference in the U.S., which currently is operating as a sort of National Socialist state, but it does mean we will become even less competitive if we go down a nuclear path while the rest of the world focuses on conservation and sustainable energy.

Hopefully, the new educational standards will make it possible for more people to do the math, and figure out that nuclear is not the answer.

serial catowner

Your solution is for everybody to ride a bicycle to work? That's it? That is your solution to the energy crisis? I bet the people in India who have been dying to stop riding bicycles to work will just love your solution. No doubt conservation is a big component of any solution, doing more with less is always smart, but somehow I don't think that is going to do much to help lift the standard of living of the average Mexican or Chinese.

We have to find ways to give everybody a chance to improve, not lower, their standard of living. Otherwise we are all off to the resource wars.

Hank, when you speak of embrittlement, I assume you are speaking of neutron embrittlement of the reactor vessel? There's actually a fix for that. In-situ annealing. The Russians pioneered it and I believe it's been successfully done in the US. Restores ductility to the vessel.

The only sensible objection to ramping up nuclear power is the wsste disposal problem, and although I am not an engineer, from what I've read that seems to be more of a political problem than an engineering problem.

All the "scale back, use less power, grow food locally" folks - well, go right ahead if that turns you on, but there is not a snowball's chance in hell that the American people are going to decide collectively to lower their standard of living for some Earth Mother worshipper's wet dream. The history of the last couple of hundred years demonstrates conclusively that higher energy use is one of the keys to mass properity (the other is capitalism). I don't think the American people want to return to a day when only a few rich people could travel and eat fresh food.

Folks, for a write-up on the PHYSICS limitations of renewable energy sources, please refer to the article by University of Maine professor Richard C. Hill. It's available at and he's got a lot more similar writing out there. He puts a sense of reality on the numbers. We use coal and oil because they are insanely efficient sources of energy. And we need to replace them, too. Wind, solar, and water just aren't going to make it. Sorry, but that's the plain truth.

Just thought everyone should mention, you know, FACTS. I understand the politics, but we've had enough politics without facts, haven't we?

Me, I favor mini-nukes, many of them on a standard design, housed in facilities like the indestructible AA towers that still dot Vienna and other European cities. But that's not the point of this posting...

I would like to contribute a few things to this thread.

First, besides our coal use, other countries, especially China, need to build many more power plants. China is working on cutting edge pebble bed reactor designs (pioneered by Germany). These are "walk away safe" designs, so if everyone leaves there can be no damage to the power plant nor to the surrounding area.

Second, as for the quibbling over cost per kWh, you do need to be competitive with oil to be economical, but with peak oil coming this decade the cost of oil will steadily increase. So the answer is to subsidize alternatives now and remove the subsides later as oil costs rise (an economic certainty). This is not to push out other alternatives (wind farms / solar panels & plants / hydro-electric), but in additional to other subsidized sources.

Third, conservation helps but only slows down the growth curve by a couple of years as industrialization and poplution growth continues. We want efficiency and conservation, but they are not, in themselves, sources of power.

Fourth, sourcing of nuclear material can be done a few breeder reactors (it does not take converting all of them); transport of nuclear material has never caused a problem so I think the associated risk is acceptable (keep in mind the 38000 auto accident deaths in America per year!); centralized storage is huge NIMBY policital problem that may need to be overcome.

From this Science article (and I'm sorry, but it may be behind a subscription wall), and I can't confirm or deny it, but if it's anywhere close to the truth, then nuclear, even neglecting the centralization of power, is not the way to go:

To replace fossil fuel-generated power with nuclear power would require the opening of one nuclear power plant every other day for the next 50 years.

The US has not opened a new nuclear power plant since 1973.

From the same article, some factoids which I imagine are correct, but would love corrections:

Our current civilization uses 13 trillion watts (terawatts) of power to run it. That figure is projected to be 43 terawatts by 2050. Burning fossil fuels (coal, oil, gas) currently supplies about 80% of this; as a consequence of burning fossil fuels, carbon dioxide is produced.

Placing solar panels on the roofs of all “70 million detached homes” in the US would produce 0.25 terawatts of power.

To harvest 20 terawatts of power with 10% efficient solar panels would require covering 0.16% of the earth’s land surface with solar panels.

I've no dog in this fight, other than the clear need to find some solution.

When and if the economic benefits of nuclear outweigh the environmental and health costs, we will have nuclear. That's simply how the game called capitalism works.

Nevertheless, nuclear is but another short-term fix. The real problem, as everybody knows and nobody is willing to admit, is that homosapien has been taking more out of the ecosystem than it has put back in for centuries now, and the bill is about to come due. (The other problem is that nobody can say with any certainty when that bill will come due, and people have been preaching about the end of the world for almost as long as there has been civilization.)

I have a co-worker who insists that science is on the verge of rearranging molecules into any substance we want. He says that 100 years from now we'll have Star Trek-like replicators that will turn clods of dirt into barrels of oil, or gold ingots, or T-bone steaks if you want. Others think we'll be mining the rest of the solar system for raw materials. Tinfoil hat as it may sound, that's the kind of breakthrough
necessary to sustain the lifestyles to which we have become accustomed in the last century.

Of course, none of this matters to evangelical Christians, who believe that they will all be raptured off the planet by then.

Just thought everyone should mention, you know, FACTS. I understand the politics, but we've had enough politics without facts, haven't we?

The fact is that you can build a natural gas turbine power plant in 2 years, a steam coal-fired power plant in 3-4 years, a wind farm in 2-3 years, and a nuke in 7-8 years (assuming anyone in the U.S. still remembers how to do it). The nuke has the highest investment costs by far, and the spread will only increase as materials costs go up (commodity prices have doubled or tripled in the last year). There are several nuke plants proposed in the U.S., but none have been funded to my knowledge. Installed wind power, on the other hand, increased 40% in 2005.

A big clue would be that none of the reactor vendors will actually spend their own money to build a nuke and sell the power. The nuke boat has sailed while we were waving from the dock.

"We need to decentralize power production. Big Daddy corporations who we pay to provide us all our needs are the problem here, not the solution."

Bob - this strikes home..

I live in a state (Wis) with big rivers...
I recall (a number of years back)a study carried out by the Army Corps of Engineers which concluded that the state could be, for the most part, energy independent. It was a matter of harnessing the hydroelectric potential to benefit LOCAL cities and towns. Of course this is not how things have worked out - a lot of the power production from the LOCAL hydro-electric plants is put on the 'Grid' for sale in other states.
Hydro Electric power production was 'privatized' a long time ago. This in affect has Centralized power production in the hands of a few big companys. To hear the businesses tell the tale Wisconsin's hydro electric is not enough to maintain the demand - we need coal fired / nuclear plants to supplement hydro electric..
Of course what they really mean is that THEY need the coal fired and nuclear facilities to maintain their business which only indirectly has to do with providing the people and businesses of Wisconsin with the energy production necessary.
I personally think that energy production should be 'de-privatized' (de-centralized) and possibly be returned to individual state/city local control.

Ah, Kevin

Another lib flip flopper

you libs are so silly

The fact remains that oil is not in danger of running out, and we should forge ahead with it because our economic growth and hence standard of living depend on it.

Besides, I haven't seen anything that proves man is creating global warming, and even if we are, who cares? Do you want a job or do you want polar bears?

Ron byers: I"s there any technology fix for peak oil or is civilization just screwed?"

Desperate times demand desperate measures. Coal is not a viable substitute for oil because of global climate change: We need to replace carbon-based fossil fuels as our energy source. In that context, nuclear power, in terms of bang for buck, seems more attractive than wind or solar.

So, are we proposing that every nation in the world should develop nuclear power plants so they too can enjoy the blessings of prosperity? I'm sure that will turn out well.

Our alternative is to figure out how to live within the limitations of renewable energy sources, like solar and wind. Limiting population growth or even negative population growth would be a good idea, as well. Reduce demand rather than figure out how to double energy usage again.

Meanwhile, does anyone know if there is a way to create energy from melting ice caps and glaciers, hurricanes and drought?

You almost have to love the the florid delusions of the Baby-Boomer Cargo Cult.

Take DBL, above, who says Americans won't go back to the days when only the rich could eat fresh food. What does he mean by 'fresh food'? Well, that would be food that has been bred so it can be transported thousands of miles and stored for months and still look good.

As for food that is really fresh, as in, picked only a day or so before you eat it, this very same DBL describes that as a "Mother-Earth worshipper's wet dream". And, of course, that can never happen, because, as we all know, nothing will ever change. All Americans will always want to drive to the BurgerKing and everyone else in the world will envy us, and we must do whatever it takes to make this so.

Even if we have to live with more radiation that makes us all die of leukemia in childhood.

And this is all supposed to be the 'hard-nosed analysis' that 'proves' nuclear power will miraculously be the solution.

Sounds like Death of a Salesman to me.

Nuclear energy is immoral. It is immoral for this civilization to produce nuclear junk that will be on this earth for millions of years. It's a morale and values issue. Until we develop fusion or come up with a credible and reasoned way to deal with nuclear waste nuclear power should not ever be considered.

Meanwhile, does anyone know if there is a way to create energy from melting ice caps and glaciers, hurricanes and drought?

Yeah. They're called wind turbines.

For those looking for factual information on a way that nuclear electrical production might be accomplished more safely and economically, there was an excellent article in the December issue of Scientific American. Unfortunately you have to pay to get the full article (or you could go to your public library and read it for free), but here is an excerpt:

http://makeashorterlink.com/?W25A227FC

[quote]

Rising electricity prices and last summer's rolling blackouts in California have focused fresh attention on nuclear power's key role in keeping America's lights on. Today 103 nuclear plants crank out a fifth of the nation's total electrical output. And despite residual public misgivings over Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, the industry has learned its lessons and established a solid safety record during the past decade. Meanwhile the efficiency and reliability of nuclear plants have climbed to record levels. Now with the ongoing debate about reducing greenhouse gases to avoid the potential onset of global warming, more people are recognizing that nuclear reactors produce electricity without discharging into the air carbon dioxide or pollutants such as nitrogen oxides and smog-causing sulfur compounds. The world demand for energy is projected to rise by about 50 percent by 2030 and to nearly double by 2050. Clearly, the time seems right to reconsider the future of nuclear power [see "The Case for Nuclear Power," on page 76].

No new nuclear plant has been ordered in the U.S. since 1978, nor has a plant been finished since 1995. Resumption of large-scale nuclear plant construction requires that challenging questions be addressed regarding the achievement of economic viability, improved operating safety, efficient waste management and resource utilization, as well as weapons nonproliferation, all of which are influenced by the design of the nuclear reactor system that is chosen.

[unquote]

And from a bullet in the "Overview" section:

"The utilization of new, much more efficient nuclear fuel cycle - one based on precessing fast neutron reactors and the recycling of spent fuel by pyrometallurgical processing - would allow vastly more of the energy in the earth's readily available uranium ore to be used to produce electricity. Such a cycle would greatly reduce the creation of long-lived reactor waste and could support nuclear energy power generation indefinitely."

It is definitely worth a read if you are genuinely interested in the question of whether or not there is a more ecologically friendly way to use nuclear energy. I don't know if this is the panacea that the authors suggest it is, but up until I read this article I was sure nuclear energy was not the way to go and the authors convinced me that the approach they suggest is worth serious consideration. Unfortunately, the leadership we would need to give this technology a good honest look, and a solid plan for implementation if it were found to live up to its billing, is not likely to come from the Bush administration. Cheney and Bush would surely find a way to get their oil buddies involved and screw the whole thing up. Perhaps, as another poster suggested, this is an issue the Democrats can "scoop" the Republicans on - they could advocate the creation of a truly open minded panel made of experts representing a broad spectrum of interests to look into this technology. Or if the Democrats were to win control of the House of Representatives they could have the chairman of the Energy Committee have hearings into the desirability and feasibility of this technology.

It's not like we have a choice. The first world economies of the 23rd century will be nuclear.

>The consensus view is that deep drilling is really expensive and technically very challenging.

Unlike breeder reactors, which anybody can rig up in their back yard with some stuff from Ace Hardware.

Look guys, all the good arguments against nuclear have been made already so I won't bother repeating. I've made approx. 1/3 of my income from nuke power over the past 15 years and I'm here to tell you that it is so *not* the future.

I'll find another income stream. It's not a choice between polar bears and jobs, we will always have jobs.

You guys with your "what shall we do" arguments don't deserve an answer, eitehr. You are falling into the same trap that, alas, many of you were smart enough to avoid when the warbloggers were steamed up about Saddam: doing nothing more than waiting for another alternative is better than doing something unrevokably stupid. Always.

Those Indians aren't DYING to drive cars, for chrissake. We are dying because every minute we're in a car we aren't getting exercise.

There ARE alternatives, why the quit? Why the "we can't do anything different" wailing?

God this is like the Pittsburgh casino arguments. Somebody offers something "totally free" and everybody just falls for it.

My great apologies! I gave a link and quoted an earlier article in Scientific American (though he bullet quote is correct) . The article on the technology is in the December issue of Scientific American, but the link I provided is not correct.

Please ignore the link I posted - but a look at the December article, "Smarter Use of Nuclear Waste" is worth reading.

OK,OK I know it is off topic, but I am stepping oh a little to the socialist position. Yes, if we require automobile insurance, then we can more easily justify some limited mandatory health insurace.

The simple fact is that riding a bicycle is not a solution to the energy crisis- it is a solution to your energy crisis.

It is something you can do without waiting for the government to tell you to do it. You don't need to fill out forms or apply for a grant. It provides fast fast fast relief from rising gas prices and worries about the mideast.

And, you can bet, when the inevitable nuclear boondoggle goes into effect, it will be financed in part by high taxes on gasoline. Taxes you won't be paying if you're riding a bike.

A word, to the wise, will be sufficient.

I finally found the proper link to the article I mentioned in an earlier post:

http://makeashorterlink.com/?T2D73415C

[quote]

Smarter Use of Nuclear Waste

Fast-neutron reactors could extract much more energy from recycled nuclear fuel, minimize the risks of weapons proliferation and markedly reduce the time nuclear waste must be isolated
By William H. Hannum, Gerald E. Marsh and George S. Stanford

Despite long-standing public concern about the safety of nuclear energy, more and more people are realizing that it may be the most environmentally friendly way to generate large amounts of electricity. Several nations, including Brazil, China, Egypt, Finland, India, Japan, Pakistan, Russia, South Korea and Vietnam, are building or planning nuclear plants. But this global trend has not as yet extended to the U.S., where work on the last such facility began some 30 years ago.

If developed sensibly, nuclear power could be truly sustainable and essentially inexhaustible and could operate without contributing to climate change. In particular, a relatively new form of nuclear technology could overcome the principal drawbacks of current methods--;namely, worries about reactor accidents, the potential for diversion of nuclear fuel into highly destructive weapons, the management of dangerous, long-lived radioactive waste, and the depletion of global reserves of economically available uranium. This nuclear fuel cycle would combine two innovations: pyrometallurgical processing (a high-temperature method of recycling reactor waste into fuel) and advanced fast-neutron reactors capable of burning that fuel. With this approach, the radioactivity from the generated waste could drop to safe levels in a few hundred years, thereby eliminating the need to segregate waste for tens of thousands of years....

[unquote]

BWAHAHAHA!

Oh, and BTW, it's not that hard to find heat in the earth. Coal mines spend money keeping cool.

You can even find it in your backyard if you have a half acre and a backhoe. You can build a heat exchanger that helps heat your house in winter and cool it in summer. Elaine Supkis at Culture of Life has blogged about this, I think she even has one.

We do not take in to account all of the costs of our energy system now when comparing sources. Not just direct costs, but indirect such as bases in the Mid East, oh and the Iraq War, let alone the externalities of pollution and Global warming.

We need conservation and smart development. Large boxes far from each other is not a smart way to live.

We also need a tax system that takes indirect costs and externalities into account and benefits sources of energy that has lesser external costs.

Here is an example of an idea that needs support

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2006-01-10-algae-powerplants_x.htm

There's another fundamental reason why nuclear power is a good idea: desalination. The most efficient desalination facilities would be nuclear powered. As the world runs out of drinking water, desalination is set to become a primary problem in the next two decades.

I could even take it a step further: as ocean levels rise, we need to find something to do with the excess water. I think we should desalinate it and pump it into desert regions and simply destroy the deserts.

There are a lot of people who think about teraforming Mars, but we should practice before we try something like that. Let's teraform the Sahara, from Morocco to India, the desert regions of the US and Mexico. If we propose an international plan like that, will anyone really object?

Only a few here actually 'get it'.

Number of humans X current western lifestyle = disaster.

Wattage is just the tip of a huge iceberg.

It doesn't matter what sort of power source you have. There's much more to the environmental equation than just wattage. Water, food, factories, consumable resources, loss of arable land... (yada).

No matter how effecient you make the machinery of 'civilization', the increasing population will overwhelm the planet. Simple laws of physics and biology.

Promoting the two child family should be our number 1 priority... above energy, above global warming... above everything.

Alas, the defective genetic programming that gives religon a stranglehold on humanity will be the end of it all. Shame, that.

I do not share Zarathustra's sin.

The first world economies of the 23rd century will be nuclear.

No, really, they won't be! After everything else, one of the best arguments in favor of nuclear power is that it only has to last a century or so. The way our technology is developing within that time we will all but certainly discover a much improved source of power, the like of which I'm sure I can't imagine.

And we will also, all but inevitably, find a way to deactivate nuclear waste.

So nuclear is something we need to fill the specific gap of the next century or so.

And conservation will work only if your house has a meter that shuts it off after you've reached your monthly limit.

Will electricity finally be "too cheap to meter?"

Or is it that massive government subsidy (the Price-Anderson Nuclear Subsidies Act) that freemarket libertarians are so willing to shove in their pockets?

Wayne on April 16, 2006 at 9:26 AM, I don't have access to Science right now either (also, your link doesn't work), but you appear to be citing Nathan Lewis from Caltech. Scroll down for pdf and powerpoint. For example:

"To produce 10 TW of power would require construction of 10,000 new nuclear power plants over the next 50 years, i.e., one every other day somewhere in the world for the next 50 years"

Lots of people here talking about distributed generation as a solution, without addressing what kind of fuel they are going to use. All you are doing is moving the problem around - in fact, making it worse by distributing fuel consumption and pollution generation directly into neighborhoods.

An NO, solar is not an answer. Nothing comes close to nukes for satisfying base loads.

Buford

From what I have read all over the world first world countries are witnessing population slowing or decline. The only reason it hasn't been more noticable is that first world life expectencies are still increasing. If we didn't have significant immigration, the United States would be witnessing the same population slowing or decline. As first world life expectencies stabilize the real decline will begin.

Second and third world countries are witnessing rapid population growth. I suspect there are good sociological reasons for the decline. Probably having something to do with retirement planning and the need of parents to breed little farm workers. I am sure somebody has done studies, but sociology isn't really a science anymore.

I do not believe lowering living standards to 2nd world levels will result in lowering demand or populations. The long term solution to Earth's human exess problem is probably going to be solved by raising living standards. While famine, war and disease might seem to be alternative solutions, given the way people breed, I suspect they are not going to do the job. Anyway, I don't think that the profound misery that comes from war, famine and disease is anything anybody wants to see.

When private industry is willing to underwrite the insurance necessary for a nuclear power plant, the technology will be economically sustainable. Until then, it's just an economic black hole for taxpayer money.

Nuclear waste will be dangerous for thousands of years. Within 40 years, used fuel has less than one-thousandth of the radioactivity it had when it was removed from the reactor.

What Moore isn't telling you is that it is still quite "hot" and will be for tens of thousands of years. Ten thousand years ago, people were hunter-gatherers Tens of thousands of years is effectively forever. Burdening future generations with waste problems that we don't know how to deal with (think: climate change and nuclear reactor waste disposal) is irresponsible.

Having said that, we are going to leave future generations with both, to some extent. But pretending that the problem doesn't exist is just stupid.

One of the above posters repeats a common falsehood in saying backyard uranium would cost more to extract than it would yield. Extraction from today's very concentrated deposits is exceedingly inexpensive, on the order of a dime per barrel-of-oil-equivalent, and hardly any of that dime is for extraction energy; so today's commercial uranium-raising operations have net energy fractions much closer to 1 than to 0.999.

So it's reasonable to think ores 100,000 times leaner, i.e. "country rock", or backyard rock, might be extractable at an energy profit too; and for a large fraction of backyards this turns out to be true. Not at a cash profit, to be sure, because you couldn't compete with large mines mining very high-grade stuff.

University of Melbourne physicists, despite their ties to the Australian government and its fossil fuel revenue, have not kept silent on this; they predict that 0.001-percent ores, only four times richer than country rock, will still have a high net energy fraction.

And one can confirm that this is reasonable two ways: by reference to the Alberta oilsands operations, which get two-thirds net energy from sands whose six percent oil content is thermally equivalent to 0.0004 percent U content, and by comparing the energy cost of crushing hard rock. It turns out that with today's reactors, a rock that is only rich enough to crush itself is 0.00005 percent, five times poorer than average.

So if, many centuries or millennia from now, our descendants have used up every uranium ore richer than ordinary rock, they'll still have access to abundant nuclear fuel for ordinary reactors like today's.

--- Graham Cowan, former hydrogen fan
B: internal combustion, nuclear cachet
---

Here is a link to a site ttp://www.overpopulation.org/older.html

It notes that a major looming first world problem is the graying of the population as there are fewer young people to support the increasing numbers of elderly. Here are some European Fertility Rate numbers:

Spain 1.15
Latvia 1.16
Czech Republic 1.18
Bulgaria 1.24
Italy 1.24

the Number represents the average number of children would have in her lifetime if the current birth rate remained constant.

Perhaps a way will be found to deactivate nuclear waste, but it isn't necessary. It will be easy enough to bury it a few hundred metres deep in sturdy containers.

The often-expressed worry that it might make its way back up can then to be seen to be insincere in the following way: if, despite the containers, it can do that, then why can't the much large amount of natural radioactivity that is at lesser depth, and uncontained, do likewise?

Good information!

If we are going to keep wasting energy at our current levels we are going need many nuclear power plants.

1)Are we going to keep wasting energy at our current levels?

Yes.

2)Are we going to need many nuclear power plants?

You'd better believe it.

[All other arguments for and against nuclear energy don't really matter. Questions 1 & 2 capture the essence of what matters.]

"To produce 10 TW of power would require construction of 10,000 new nuclear power plants over the next 50 years, i.e., one every other day somewhere in the world for the next 50 years"

Or double that number for the number of large natural gas plants required. Or times 100 for the number of cogens.

Nobody is saying that conservation shouldn't also be part of the solution.

The choice of Yucca Flats, Nevada as a nuclear waste burial site proved to me that nuclear is not an option. There are lots of tectonically stagnant places, well below the waterline, that could have been chosen. Instead, they chose one, in tectonically shakin'-and-bakin' Nevada, because it has fewer electoral votes. The decision was NOT made by serious people who have our welfare at heart. With all the money at stake, who is going to make these kinds of electorally unpopular decisions?

Kevin: There aren't any other realistic alternatives for replacing coal-fired facilities ...

Nuclear power is not a "realistic alternative for replacing coal-fired facilities".

Kevin continues: ... and the issues of safety, waste, and terrorism, though genuine, are manageable.

No, they are not, no matter how many times nuclear power supporters repeat this empty and demonstrably false assertion.

There is not one single nuclear power plant that has ever been constructed anywhere on Earth without massive taxpayer subsidies and taxpayer assumption of all the risks (e.g. disaster insurance). Private industry (a.k.a. the "free market") voted NO on nuclear power a long, long time ago because it is an economic failure -- as someone once put it, "the most expensive method of boiling water ever invented."

And to this day, private industry will not touch nuclear power unless the taxpayers absorb all the costs and all the risks. That is in fact what the nuclear so-called "industry" in the USA is clamoring for through this propaganda campaign: billions and billions of dollars in public money.

Nuclear power is NOT a solution or even particularly helpful in addressing the problem of anthropogenic global warming. When the entire nuclear fuel cycle is considered, from mining uranium to disposal of waste, it is arguable that nuclear power is a net contributor to AGW, not a mitigator.

Arguments such as those offered by Moore routinely exaggerate the supposed disadvantages and limitations of wind and solar (and often reveal ignorance of what is going on today with these technologies in the real world) and blithely sweep away the very severe dangers, risks, costs and drawbacks of nuclear power.

It is a thoroughly dishonest propaganda campaign run by those in the nuclear so-called "industry" who hope to enrich themselves on public money, and it is a damned shame to see so-called "environmentalists" buying into this scam.

I'm hoping someone else has more information at their fingertips, but I seem to recall that the biggest problem with the nuclear industry in the U.S. was that each reactor built was, essentially, a custom reactor. Canada, by contrast, standardized the design of reactors. (Please correct me if I'm wrong.) A standardized design reduces costs and makes it possible to quickly implement effective remedies if a design problem arises.

We can do this sensibly and safely.

The argument FOR nuclear power is based on the belief that we only need a couple more years (say, 50) to develop the small energy technologies that will make large energy technologies un-necessary.
That's the sum of it: we should invest brazillians of dollars now in large technologies to tide us over until the small technologies become useful.

Have I distorted anything?

France uses nuclear energy on a large scale. Likewise Japan, I believe, and perhaps Scandinavian countries.

Could someone please explain to me why our problems with it should be far worse than theirs? Or have they been having problems I don't know about?

Is American fear of nuclear power pretty much the same as European fear of irradiating food? That is, most likely little more than the stylish local hysteria?

Nuclear power is no panacea - there is Peak Uranium as well as Peak Oil. Standardization can reduce risks - but that requires govt regulations - which the energy industry will not accept without a long fight. France can work that way, but we won't.

The most energy efficient way of living is in cities - we need to reurbanize and reduce our energy cost of living. Good luck.

Let's buy French technology. Don't waste what lttle money we have on pork barrel, absurdly cutting edge design projects that take 30 years to build and dont work.

"To produce 10 TW of power would require construction of 10,000 new nuclear power plants over the next 50 years, i.e., one every other day somewhere in the world for the next 50 years"

So that's 180 units a year. What's the big deal? We produce millions of motor vehicles, hundres of jumbo airliners, build about 2 million new houses per year, just in the U. S. Am I supposed to believe that the combined industrial might of the world can't produce 180 units a year?

Up in North London old Karl Marx must be smiling. The range of answers on this thread exposes many of the contradictions within our Capitalist system which if left to fester will lead to our downfall.

What we cannot seem to protect is the "common good" or the center of a society.
The left hypes individual rights which result in NYMBE. This has all but strangled infrastructure growth. I guess animal over human rights belongs about here

On the right is the corporate governmental and scientific governmental combines which stifles innovation.

Many of the energy plans mentioned above will make some inroads into the coming disaster. Everybody must lose something.
Some ideas in no order.
1. Subduction-zone burial of long-life waste.
2. Much home heating can be taken care of with subsurface heat exchangers. All new single home construction should have them.
3. Divide energy costs into domestic and imported sections. 10 cents/KW of imported oil and 10 cents of wind driven power are not equivalent.
4. Federal floor under oil prices. This would entail the government buying and reselling oil with the emergency reserve as a buffer. This would be the reverse of the sale of treasury notes which works well. This might extend to a floor under all energy sources.
5. Individual energy credit card based on a total energy credit per person. Easily bought and sold.
6. Energy design competitions to get new ideas into play.
7.Infrastructure "masters" who could cut through red tape and court suits to actually get things built.

California Energy Blackmail, Tax Cuts, Energy Policy, Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Katrina....

Yeah, I think we should all get behind President Bush as nuclear energy expands. I think that putting a group of enormous corporations and their lobbyists behind this is a sensible plan.

No, I will be for nuclear energy when it can be placed in the hands of an industry neutral, bipartisan, citizen controlled consortium.

Fission based power is horribly expensive. It's a non-starter.

Get back to me when they bring fusion based power out of development.
.

Consider this too, Palo Verde, the largest nuke plant in the US and online since 1988 seems to be more down than up these days.

So the nuke industry clearly needs better designs, and don't believe any shit they tell you about reliability, safety and COSTS because as any honest engineer will tell you, all of that is bullshit until you have built and operated a real and not a virtual plant.

'frankly0' : this industry site says 17 countries get a quarter or more of their electricity from nuclear. That doesn't include the USA, still the biggest producer in absolute terms. All have had troubles, but they're always minor in comparison to what equal fossil-fired generation does.

Jeffrey Davis: it is a distortion to expect nuclear power to go away after 50 years, or 500. The waste is short-term but not the resource. There's nothing particularly to be preferred about small-scale power sources over large. We don't insist on boutique steel-making.

Who ever thought a nuclear reactor could be so complicated?

And Lord, we are especially thankful for nuclear power, the cleanest, safest energy source there is. Except for solar, which is just a pipe dream.

You can never add too much water to a nuclear reactor.

Well you know boys, a nuclear reactor is a lot like women. You just have to read the manual and press the right button.

And thank you most of all for nuclear power, which is yet to cause a single proven fatality, at least in this country

Oh, meltdown. It's one of those annoying buzzwords. We prefer to call it an unrequested fission surplus.

Here's the question I have asked the pro-nukers for the past 35 years, and have yet to EVER get an answer on:

What do you do with the garbage???

The half-life of Plutonium - during which time it is the deadliest poison we know of - is 35,000 years, which is over three times longer than the entire agricultural period in human history, and a good five or six times longer than the entire time of recorded human history. So far, every time the nukers come up with a place to store the waste, they run into the problem that they are dealing with the geological time scale, and that they know ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about how to forecast ABSOLUTE SAFETY for even 1 percent of that time.

Not to mention, nuclear energy has to be operated with a ONE HUNDRED PERCENT FAILURE-FREE system. Does anyone remember Three Mile Island? Does anyone remember Chernobyl? Chernobyl was a MINOR ACCIDENT and it poisoned an area slighly smaller than the state of Connecticut.

But then, putting off the consequences of our actions and the payment for the injuries caused by them to generations as far beyond us as we are beyond Cro-Magnon Man is pretty typical for Industrial Revolution White Boys - it just takes Bush's economic theories and multiplies them a thousand-fold.

Patrick Moore is a moron. Sign that boy up in George Bush's Hallelujah Chorus.

In terms of cost of nuclear. France pays more per kWh for electricity than surrounding nations. Also, there was a scandal in France when it came out that these thing are not being done as cheaply as everyone thought. There is no significant environmentalist anti-nuke movement in France, but there are people who are not thrilled with the cost. In terms of cost of breeder. No one has built one cheaply yet. One indication that it won't be easy is the pebble bed reactor in South Africa. Pebble bed reactors have been touted for years as the path to cheap decentralized nuclear electricity. Only it turns ou the the current project cost of the South African one is $8000+ per KW of capaicity and rising.

In terms of world energy demand and "conservation". First unlike some of the bicycle riders here, I favor efficiency over conservation. Conservation is turning down your thermostat.Efficiency is insulating you attic.

And the point of efficiency is not to lower energy use in absolute terms. There is sufficient potential to do that in rich nations like the U.S., but China is still poor per capita, does not want to stay poor per capita and is going to increase energy consumption in absolute terms, as will any other poor nations thtat can manage it. With really effective efficiency measure though, world energy consumption can be 22 TW in 2050 instead of 42.

So why is efficiency important? In part of course it is a question of picking the low hanging fruit. But other reason is that *all* alternatives to coal are expensive (including "clean" decarbonized coal - which is a nightmare in terms of water use). But if can squeeze more GDP out of a unit of energy then we can use more expensive sources, whether we increase or decrease energy use, and still keep total energy costs at the same percent of world GDP (or less) than it is now.

And the only energy source that there is plenty of is solar energy.

Mind you wind, geothermal, wave power, hydroelectric, biomass an