But as Finland's experience shows,

Is Finland the most important example? I'd recommend S. Korea and France as other examples at least as important, perhaps even India and China.

Gawds, Steve. Don't you ever sleep?

I don't care how expesive implementation is: Hydrogen. Want a massive infrastructure priority? The rest is a waste of time, planet and money.

oops, "expensive". If we can choke up how many billions for retarded investment strategies and financial institutions again? Hydrogen, simplest element on the table!

How about a two-fer? We can convert some of our existing nuclear weapons to nuclear fuel. By doing so, we skip the problem of turning to the world markets for uranium while at the same time slowly and steadily reducing our nuclear weapons stockpiles.

Hyrogen is a fuel, not an energy source. You still have to generate the energy to produce the hydrogen.

For roughly the cost of the Iraq war, we could go to a zero-carbon-emission electricity generation regime of solar and nuclear. But we won't have the political will to do it. Too many rich interests aligned against it.

Finland example is a bit peculiar. Finnish regulatory authorities were not experienced enough to process in reasonable time the documents they required. Hence delays and costs piling up. Plus the fact that the Finnish authorities required the use of some local (Finnish+Baltic states) sub-contractors who were clearly not competent. This could happen in the US, of course, but in all fairness France or China are indeed better models than Finland.

If nuclear is such a great idea, from a safety and cost/benefit POV, why do the utilities demand government guarantees for financing and liability?

President Eisenhower said nuclear generated electricity would be "too cheap to meter." We saw how that worked out. . .

Great idea: not solving the carbonate problem in decades - and when it's too late to develope reasonable energy sources switch to creating radio-active waste that will exist at least twice as long as the human race exists right now (and I'm not speaking of an creationism schedule here).

And the fuel comes from some of the most instable regions in the world. Sounds familiar?

In the end we have two unsolvable problems: global warming AND eternally radiating waste.

And this is the best case scenario. That only will come true if no other Harrisburg or Tchernobyl happens.

A 2008 study based on historical outcomes in the U.S. said costs for nuclear power can be expected to run $0.25-.30 per kWh. That's about six times as expensive as new wind power.

Regardless of whether nuclear power is an efficient mean of generating electricity, the prospect of cost overruns is a very weak argument against it. The question deserves to be fully vetted before a decision is made.

In the large population areas where nuclear power may be feasible, the generation function has largely been deregulated. And deregulation occured in those areas because the cost of the old nuclear plants was higher than the new combined cycle gas-fueled generators.

I do no see any nuclear generating stations being built by private companies. The lead times are really long, safety regulation is essentially on a unit-by-unit basis, and combined cycle generation is still easier to build and cheaper.

Nuclear may be an option in places like France, which has strong, govermental central planning. But not here.

The article doesn't seem to mention the biggest problem with nuclear--the fuel is, like oil or natural gas, a non-renewable resource. Sure, we get a lot more energy per unit, but there's a lot less of it, the waste is more difficult to deal with, and most importantly, we'll have traded our current problem for one just like it. We'll have pushed the problem down the road a bit, that's all.

The only real long-term strategy has to be focused on clean renewable energy. Everything else is just avoiding the issue.

Nuclear power seems like a reasonable alternative if we stick with the 20th century model of energy production -- huge power plants providing electricity to a large area. Unfortunately, Obama seems to be locked into this old-fashioned approach as he calls for a new, high tech power grid.

Instead, we should be looking at generating power at the neighborhood level.

Before we build another nuclear plant, or a theoretical "clean coal" plant, why don't we try putting solar panels on every house and building in the country where solar power is viable? And why don't we but wind turbines in every wind corridor where there is already a human footprint? After we do that, then we can see whether we need to add more power plants with last century's technology.

The economic stimulus package should contain plans to order 10 million house-sized solar units and one million commercial-sized unit, plus another 10 thousand wind turbines. The stimulus plan should include funds to provide low-interest loans for businesses that want to expand to be able to get some of those contracts and manufacture the units here in the U.S. The stimulus plan should include funding to train out-of-work factory and construction workers to install and service all those new solar and wind units. And the plan should have funding to sell those units at a subsidized cost and with long-term low interest loans so homeowners can pay for them out of what they now pay the big utilities.

That would be a real alternative energy program.

Nuclear needs three things:

1.) A nationalized energy industry. If the taxpayers are going to foot the construction costs, the regulatory process, the enforcement of the regulatory process, and the liability issue, then the taxpayers should be the sole beneficiaries of the net gains of nuclear profit---and not a bunch of "safely-disconnected" directors, corporate bureaucrats, and money-grubbing stockholders.

1.) Unlimited R&D. We've seen what America's automobile industry is like today; our domestic manufacturers complaining bitterly for years on end that they cannot produce the CAFE standards that the Chinese attained more than a decade ago, and an electric car that is only now within a year or two from small-scale production on a meaningful basis---while all-electrics are in production today on the other side of the Pacific Rim. We sent "solar vehicles" to the moon with the later Apollo missions---and yet, the Big Three still want Americans to believe that we cannot produce a reliable solar-powered vehicle,more than three decades later? Please.
(Just a thought here; nationalization would eliminate this little problem....)

3.) Regulated competition in the manufacturing marketplace. The greatest cost-factor in the production and assembly of a nuclear power plant is the unregulated monopoly of the few domestic manufacturing concerns that actually produce the parts that go into the damned finished product. If only one private company is given license to build a reactor lid, then that company can charge an astronomically-obscene price for their product (think $500 hammers and $12,000 toilet-seats for the Air Force back in the Reagan days here). A second company manufactures the containment wall, a third is the sole supplier of widget A while yet a fourth hold sway over the universal supply of widget B, and---well, if you're anybody but Rush Limbaugh, you've gotten the picture by now.
(Gosh darn it all; this looks like yet another job for---wait for it---SuperNationalizationMan!!!)

I live in the TVA area, where the nuclear program was held back for years (after the Brown's Ferry plant fire: a kid looking for air leaks with a candle set the wiring harness for the reactor's insulation on fire, and since it all ran thru the same chase, nearly had the thing meltdown..)and they are proof that if we go nuclear, we need a standardized design. Their waste is still sitting in pools around Oak Ridge and other places, and my power bill went up 15% in November (ok, gas prices were part of that).
SteveT is right that the massive centralized systems seem to be the wrong way to go in the long run.
And I remember (and can't find) a Scientific American article on building a hydrogen infrastructure beginning with using hydrogen cooled superconductors to rebuild the national grid. Is that idea still out there?

The United States for a variety of reasons, including the ability to pay retirees Social Security benefits, is committed to a model of growth that includes growing the population as a tool for growing the economy.

Is there a realistic plan for cutting energy consumption while growing the economy and the population?

If economic and immigration policies mean that the United States will need significantly larger amounts of energy there are a few choices.

1. More fossil fuel energy.
2. Create new sources of energy. This means some type of solar or discovering a good want to do fusion.
3. Expand nuclear capacity.

People like the idea of solar energy.

But there are various issues with solar.

1. It's not available consistently.
2. It's more environmentally destructive than people want to acknowledge. Batteries are made of bad stuff that is an environmental problem. And those wind turbines kill birds efficiently. Other forms of solar degrade the environment in different ways.

Let's put together a variety of national energy policies and see what the trade-offs of each scenario are. Let's create scenarios with no nuclear power, some nuclear power and lots of nuclear power. Let's see how they compare.

FWIW, nuclear fuel has been created for quite some time by weapons conversion esp in the Former Soviet Union. This was cheap enough that it led to the mothballing of a new centrifuge plant and the close down of a laser isotope separation development program

I recently drove across Kansas. Wind generators are popping up like sunflowers.

Folks, the utility companies are making buying decisions right now while we bound our fingers on our keyboards responding to the musings of the ignorant village people.

Carl Nyberg said:
People like the idea of solar energy.
But there are various issues with solar.

You're right. A comprehensive alternative energy program will need to include long-term investment in pure science research. We won't be able to have sustainable energy until we make a technological breakthrough in battery technology that is the equivalent of, say, being able to put a roomful of VHS movies onto a memory drive that is the size of a stenographer's notebook.

But to get there will take a declaration of intent on a national level. We didn't land people on the moon by making a vague declaration about "improving space travel by 50 percent over the next decade". Kennedy put forth a specific goal -- landing on the moon and returning safely within nine years -- and we did it. And along the way huge new technological breakthroughs were spun off.

And as far as wind turbines killing birds -- that should be relatively easy to fix with some scientific research. Is there a sound frequency, pitched above human hearing, that scares away birds? "Screamers" mounted on the blades of the wind turbines should solve the problem. In the mean time, how does the number of birds killed by wind turbines compare to the number that are killed by flying into glass windows?

Nuclear must and will be a part of the mix in weaning ourselves from coal and oil. More research is necessary but will only be done if there is progress on making nuclear a bigger part of the energy mix. As someone stated above, a standardized design is needed to get around some of the bureaucratic and litigation based delays in getting plants made.

Once I learned the science, I found that much of the left's objections to nuclear were unfounded. And I say that as a bona fide lefty in favor of single payer health care, a minimum income, and other things considered too far to the left for passage.

As for how long the nuclear waste lasts, the heavy metals and carcinogens generated by the tons daily from burning coal have a half-life of forever. It's not enough to say what's wrong with nuclear; you have to compare it to the incredibly destructive alternatives we're already doing on a planet killing scale today.

We can and I beleive we will get past the downsides of nuclear. It will provide a base supply that can be supplemented by solar and wind, which cannot by themselves be the entire basis of our power generation because the wind doesn't always blow and the sun doesn't always shine, and as mentioned above, batteries also have their downsides even if we were to be able to store the energy from solar and wind for their downtimes.

JPS' comment was far more informative than the article being commented on.

Wind in Kansas - Except for his failure to land Bill Self for O-State, T Boone Pickens has a lot of influence.

I consider myself to be a radical tree-hugging occasional monkey-wrenching-supporting environmentalist. And I would like to see:
1. nuclear fission used as part of a stopgap solution to our energy problems. Of course solar, wind, etc. need to be pushed too.
2. a Manhattan Project-like effort to get fusion power up and commercially viable in a generation.

The underlying problems with nuclear energy haven't changed. They were serious 30 years ago when Three Mile Island melted down, and twenty-three years ago when Chernobyl blew up. They are just as serious today if not even more so.

In a world frightened to death over terrorism, the last thing that is needed is more enriched Uranium. While nuclear reactor fuel is only 3-4% enriched, the process that makes that fuel can also make bomb-grade material. Civilian nuclear energy, and nuclear weapons are joined at the hip.

The American model for civilian nuclear reactors has been an expensive disaster. Unlike the French and the Chinese, our reactors are all one of a kind custom designs lacking interchangeability, and requiring crews that are capable of operating only a specific reactor. Admiral Hyman Rickover, the father of the nuclear navy, insisted on a standardized design for submarines such that parts and crews were interchangeable, but that concept did not make it into the much larger civilian reactors, which were, however, greatly enlarged versions of those used on submarines and aircraft carriers.

The hazards of high level radioactive waste have not gone away, nor has the problem of how to store them safely been solved. Despite the national government saying that it would assume the responsibility for this crucial disposal element in the 1950s, it still hasn't happened. Yucca Mountain in Nevada is still not on line, and isn't likely to be.

Last, the insurance industry has absolved itself of any liability for nuclear accidents. Every homeowner's policy has a specific exclusion for damage caused by an accident at a nuclear power plant. Once again the government, in its haste and zeal to promote nuclear power, took responsibility, and Congress passed the Price-Anderson Act to provide a pool of money, from the companies that operate reactors, to mitigate the damage of an accident. The amount of money involved is laughable in its insufficiency despite changes in the law over the years.

Last, the amount of U-235, nuclear fuel, is limited. A major shift to nuclear power will create a demand that can only be met for a finite, and short, period. A sustainable nuclear fuel cycle requires spent fuel to be reprocessed, and the construction of breeder reactors to produce Plutonium-239, a very dangerous alternative to U-235. Efforts at both reprocessing and constructing breeder reactors were monumental failures in the 1970s and 80s, and ultimately abandoned.

Reliance on low-tech solar and wind makes a whole lot more sense economically, and for security reasons. I hope Obama doesn't drink the nuclear kool-aid.

But what about the waste? What about the waste?

I have to go with Eclectic on this one. I would rather have other forms of renewable energy, and hope we continue working towards that, however, we have to get off coal now! It is horribly destructive to our planer. If we can use nuclear power to bridge to other forms of power- away from coal and gas- we need to. Yes, the byproduct is not good, but it is much less than the disaster of coal- mining or burning.

Can we shoot the used fuel into space or something?

gttim asked:
Can we shoot the used fuel into space or something?

And if the rocket malfunctions and crashes, or explodes in mid-air . . . .?

Liberal opinion makers, such as New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman...

Liberal Thomas Friedman?!? WTF?

One comment. What do you do with the waste? When there isn't even a theory other than bury it and wait longer than man has been around. Not a plan but even a theory on how to dispose of the waste. This is like shooting a gun and trying to figure out how to stop the bullet as it travels to its target.

The techonology to deal with the waste is already in place. We can seal the waste in glass that is surrounded by stainless steel canisters that have been tested by dropping them from a crane onto a steel spike without cracking. These can be buried. Again I say that when talking about the long half-life of the waste, we have to first understand that the entire waste that we have to date doesn't match the amount of toxic waste that we put into the air and soil from coal in ONE DAY. Yes, it's toxic but the volume is very small. The alternatives that we have used for decades, fooolishly in my opinion, is to put heavy metals and dozens of known carcinogens into the air, soil, and water. These toxins don't decay, they are there forever. And as we've seen from the recent TVA coal ash sludge spill, there are greater threats waiting for us doing what we've always done before. We get half our power from burning coal. Before we snipe at nuclear we have to get our heads around how we replace that super giant weight hanging over our heads. In comparison, the downsides of nuclear are swattting at gnats.

"Wind generators are popping up like sunflowers....the utility companies are making buying decisions right now"
" costs for nuclear power can be expected to run $0.25-.30 per kWh."

I live in MO where the local utility has a program that let's users purchase wind energy credits in the amount of energy they use every month. My bill is only about 20-25% higher. MO has low residential rates by national norms $.04-.06 KWH in winter $.08 KWH in summer. So I buy wind energy at 7-10 cents per kilowatt hour. I suppose Missouri is in or near the "wind corridor" but 10 cents per kwh seems a lot cheaper than going nuclear (at least in the mid west).

But what about the waste?

That's easy. Dump it in Marler's basement.

Thanks for yet another [strike]well-sourced and reasoned argument[/strike] bad faith argument-by-unsupported-assertion post, Marler. It's always delightful to see you continuing to undermine the credibility of the right wing.

Come clean, Marler -- you have a hard-on for nuclear power just because you know it annoys liberals, don't you? Just like refusing to argue in good faith. Then again, since you argue in support of failure, incompetence and corruption, I suppose that's all you can do.

Jackass.

Our Neo-Confederate Industrial Policy

The problem of nuclear plant costs is the generic one of financial regulation and of political accountability. Since the late 1950's, when the GOP unleashed its red-baiting attack on the nuclear ordnance establishment and TVA, all things nuclear, save Naval Reactors, have been (a) secretive, (b) bi-partisan, and (c) government-owned, contractor-operated, also (d) lawyer-ridden, hence, "legal".

As a result, we have nuclear "options" in the sense of turn-key project "deals", mostly arms-barter "offsets", being peddled to our gullible politicians -- federal, state, and local -- rapped in complex "public/private partnership" arrangements that are profoundly corrupt but very, very legal.

All these deals do not add up to a plan. They do not reflect industrial policy or engineering standards. They are process-ritual manifest as "projects" with huge, front-loaded promotional and professional fees as well as with a risk-premium where risk-management should be.

Specifically, here in Texas obsolete coal-fired and nuclear boilers are being "dumped" on our Enron-grade public utilities by German and Japanese firms that cannot build those models for their well regulated home-markets.

But, with politically-connected merchant banking and consulting firms engaged, the foreign firms can lay off such junk in Texas, Mexico, and other Third World countries.

In fact, the political establishment in Austin, liberal to conservative, both parties, even key conservation lobbies, in Texas support these deals: They are all in on the "action". And, in any case, deals -- land speculation, paper-hanging, and flim-flam, even Ponzi schemes, with the lucrative litigation that eventually entails are all our ruling elite today are actually "competent" at.

This "Grisham novel" paradigm of government used to be set exclusively in Mississippi.

But, today, deal-mongery is all Neo-Confederate government knows how to do.

I am not reminded of my work on Gemini and Apollo in the 1960's so much as of the CSA artillery at Vicksburg -- the "Gibralter of the South" during the 1860's. The CSA guns were "high-tech", "state of the art", and ... imported from Britain.

They broke and ran out of ammunition. The CSA had invented the "torpedo". But, they just invented it, they never developed or produced it in war-winning series.

We really have not done anything signficant in the nature of development and series production, military or civil, since Rickover and Boyd. That is less a matter of competence than of clearly unpatriotic professions and unaccountable politicians.

We should not let Third World contries mess with nuclear ordnance or reactors, certainly not the most retrograde elements of our own country and government.

And if the rocket malfunctions and crashes, or explodes in mid-air . . . .?

Launch from Texas. You would hardly notice the extra pollution down there.

One problem with nuclear I rarely hear about is the need for massive amounts for water to cool the reactors. In the last couple of years, with the droughts that are happening, reactors have had to be shut down because there was not enough water for cooling.

Granted, coal, oil and wood fired power plants need a lot of water for operation, however, even a shut down nuclear plant requires a lot of cooling water.

The only real long-term strategy has to be focused on clean renewable energy. Everything else is just avoiding the issue.

That's a remarkably clear statement of our inability to think in terms beyond a generation or so. If we were to focus on policies that are sustainable for a thousand years, rather than ten, we'd be much better served.

The main point is that there are many new types of nuclear reactors, and some old types which are both safe and don't pose a threat to proliferation.

One company is now offering a "sealed" reactor that can power about 20,000 homes. It has no moving parts and can be buried underground. It is built in a factory and shipped to the final location in one piece.

The technology for this reactor is the same used for research reactors run in the basements of university physics buildings across the country.

One thing must be required for any new nuclear power plants: they must be intrinsically safe, that is, they should not need an active cooling system or control-rod system to shut them down.

A nuclear power plant is potentially thousands or millions of times more dangerous than a nuclear weapon. Nuclear weapons consume most of the nuclear fuel, and only have a little bit of it, whereas a reactor explosion just spreads long-lived radioactive waste everywhere, high in iodine and cesium. So we need plant designs that have zero potential to reach critical.

I have heard much about these new 'safer', sealed, reactors, but I'm unaware of any installation to begin with, let alone one that has operated long enough to have a track record. HUckster pie-in-the-sky nonsense is probably what this is.

If all the subsidies that nuclear power, oil, and coal get were removed, and a real level playing field for energy sources were created, the fossil fuels would be out and so would nuclear. Solar and wind are competitive under those circumstances, and they certainly are where I live since we pay about $0.22/kWh now.

I said it 35 years ago, I'll say it again: when they can tell me where they are SAFELY going to put the most poisonous materials in existence in storage for FOUR TIMES LONGER THAN THE ENTIRE OF HUMAN HISTORY SINCE THE AGRICULTURAL REVOLUTION, places where it cannot be gotten at by humans for the next 40,000 years, I'll be happy to support nuclear power.

People, the area around Chernobyl is still uninhabitable!!!! It will be for the next 500 years, at least.

Unlike any other technology, nuclear power requires 100 percent no-fault operation. Nothing made by humans has ever met that standard.

Of course, when the waste gets out of wherever it is we're conned into believing is safe (which isn't Yucca Mountain) 10,000 years from now and poisons the planet, it won't be our problem, right?

Homo Sap Boobus Americanus strikes again.

Oh, and that 40,000 years I mentioned is the HALF-LIFE of the waste. Total safety of the waste is 80,000 years, which is about as long as Homo Sapiens has existed on the planet.

With the slightest knowledge of human history - just the part that shows that throughout our history we always make the worst use of whatever we have available - do we really want this stuff all over the planet?

Mariah Blake writes: "But no other energy source can deliver vast quantities of low- or zero-carbon energy at a price that rivals natural gas and coal, as the industry has promised the new breed of reactors will do."

That is simply and blatantly false. Wind power is cheaper than nuclear, and even without putting a price on carbon (via carbon tax or cap-and-trade), wind is competitive with gas and coal fired power plants. And the commercially exploitable wind energy resources of the USA are sufficient to generate twice as much electricity as the entire country uses.

Funny that an article critical of nuclear power would begin by asserting a blatantly false premise.

And by the way, the "new breed of reactors" does not exist, nor have the designs (e.g. the Westinghouse AP1000) been approved for construction by the NRC.

Also, "industry promises" don't generate any electricity. Just hot air.

So, when are we building Solar Updraft Towers around the country? Those are awesome!

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

Just a note on nuclear safety. As a graphite moderated reactor, Chernobyl is not relevant to the discussion of pressurized water reactor safety. A graphite moderated reactor (and a poorly designed one at that) by its very nature has serious control issues. When a PWR looses its coolant it also looses its moderator, reducing its reactivity. When a graphite moderated reactor starts to lose (or vaporize) its water coolant, the reactivity increases, and can run away and produce a steam explosion, as demonstrated by Chernobyl. As a curious sidelight, the closed reservation around Chernobyl has become a de facto wildlife preserve. It seems wildlife thrive in the absence of people, even when the area is seriously irradiated.

Three Mile Island represents a worst case accident for pressurized water reactors. Improperly situated in a populated area, the reactor lost coolant due to a stuck valve. The operators then mistakenly shut off the emergency back up cooling and melted the core. Yet after all this the melted core was contained and the radiation release minimal. Both the technology and the human interface of computerized control systems have come a long ways since 1979, when the automatic systems functioned correctly but failed to provide the operators the information they needed to react correctly.

On the waste issue, eternal storage for chemical wastes such as dioxin and PCB, which have essentially an infinite half life, is defined as .06 inches of vinyl and 6 feet of clay. I know many solar/wind fans will flame me, but the actual quantity of nuclear waste is not that large, and providing storage over near geologic time scales should be possible. Opponents like to obsess about the long lived transuranics, but these show little tendency to bioconcentrate up the food chain. The shorter lived more active fission products, with their proclivity for concentrating up the food chain, probably constitute the bigger problem.

The US Navy can, through contractors, keep building and deploying good nuclear reactors with no accidents in decades. I think we could adapt that process to commercial power generation.

tyrannogenius

There is no need to argue about the problems of expanding nuclear power, because there is no need to deal with those problems, because there is no need for nuclear power. The USA has vast commercially exploitable wind and solar energy resources that are sufficient to produce several times as much electricity as the entire country uses.

Wind and solar are already growing rapidly, at double-digit annual rates, all over the world. Nuclear is hardly growing at all.

The argument is over. The market has spoken. Nuclear power is an obsolete dinosaur technology, like fossil fuels. It has no future except to be phased out. Nuclear proponents are just beating a dead horse -- a very expensive, very dangerous, very toxic dead horse.

The US Navy record is good, but they use a more labor intensive approach(both in quantity and quality) than most commercial operaters would be willing/able to sign up for.

Nuclear waste, that's just energy waiting to be recycled. Other countries know that, but this country made Nuclear Recycling Illegal.

And running out of resources? We do only have a couple thousand years worth, and GASP tons of it is locked up in that evil Socialist Country, Canada!

Of course we're about to have Thorium based reactors, hope you don't mind recycling all that coal ash into electricity. Sadly we didn't push Thorium based Nuclear till recently, since it couldn't be used to build weapons grade materials.

Conservation is still the most practical route at this time as a stopgap energy measure, but Americans aren't willing to face the reality of tradeoffs. Is it realistic, for ex., to explode the population as we are doing and manage resources and CO2 output at the same time? I am at the point of just accepting that this country is going down.

Hey Steve, I think it's maybe time for you to let me write that guest piece on nuclear power I've talked to you about in the past. What say you? It'd be a chance for you and your commenters to get updated beyond the level of the piece you've referenced here. Just say the word. You can reach me via my web site (where, by the by, you can read the intro and first chapter of my book online).

The linked article didn't do much to convince me to "rethink again". The upshot seemed to be that "nuclear construction projects can be bungled (and/or poorly regulated)". Two very short answers: 1) Ok, so don't do that. 2) So can massive solar and wind projects.

Look, I understand that there are lots of other reasons why you might not want to go nuclear. But this article wasn't too convincing.

It seems to me that the best thing to do is just put in place carbon taxation and let the market go wild. Be sure costs for all options (including nuclear waste disposal) are internalized, and we should get the optimum solution. It's likely to be some wind, some solar, and yes, some nuclear.

Sean Peters wrote: "It seems to me that the best thing to do is just put in place carbon taxation and let the market go wild. Be sure costs for all options (including nuclear waste disposal) are internalized, and we should get the optimum solution. It's likely to be some wind, some solar, and yes, some nuclear."

The "market" has already decided about nuclear: it is a proven market failure. Private capital won't touch nuclear -- unless the taxpayers are forced to absorb all the costs up front and underwrite all the risks. And not only the risks of catastrophic accidents (per the Price Anderson Act) but the risks of economic loss.

Nuclear power has always and everywhere been a creation of government mandates. Not one single nuclear power plant anywhere in the world has been built by "the market" or is operated as a genuine market enterprise.

If you like Soviet Stalinist command and control economies, then you'll love nuclear power.

I was going to respond to the other commenters, but there is so much misinformation/disinformation here that it would take a really long time. It goes to show how little nuclear power (especially 4th generation nuclear power, which isn't mentioned once) is understood even by normally informed people. I'd love to be able to do a live chat with this group. If any of you are interested and want to discuss it on the radio, I'll be on Coast to Coast on Feb 1 for the first two hours (10-midnite PST). Or if you read my book you can learn a lot about the realities of nuclear power as well as the limitations of wind and solar. Ask your library to order it if you don't want to pop for it on Amazon. I'm more interested in helping people find out the facts about energy than making a few bucks.

We have to be able (as a society) to know what's real and unreal, because energy issues are going to mean the difference between war and peace for a long time. Think water wars as tropical glaciers that supply billions with their fresh water melt away, while population is expected to rise 50%. We're going to need massive amounts of energy for desalination, not to mention all our other needs. We can have all we need if we just make the right decisions, but they can't be based on fantasy. And acting as if everything will be fixed if Americans just do the right thing is fatally myopic. We need a world program that works.

To invest in a power that could destroy the entire earth should accidents occur (nature can be surprising) is a paranoid endeavor. There must be better, safer ways to achieve the same results. I don't want to wake up one day and find out there were side effects they never mentioned happening in nature and seeping into our children.

The article, and most of the comments, are about nuclear's economics, so I'll address that issue.

Many claim to have studies and data saying that renewables are cheaper than nuclear. Well, there are a lot of studies, data and articles which suggest the exact opposite, including these two that I've come across just today...

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/01/26/london_array_finance_worries/

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/03/wind_power_needs_dirty_pricey_gas_backup_report/page3.html

How do we figure out who is right? The good news is that we don't have to. Instead of trying to convince government to choose what energy sources to pursue, based on economic and other arguments, why not just let the market decide? Tax or limit air pollution, CO2 emissions, and fuel imports from unstable/unfriendly countries and then let the market decide how to respond.

High cost is simply not a reason to have govt. block the development of nuclear power. If the costs are anything like what these (supposed) studies say, than they simply will not be built. Nobody will come forward to do so. The question that nuclear critics have to answer is why (in the face of CO2 limits) are so many countries and utilities coming forward with plans to build new nuclear plants (almost 100, worldwide).

It equally (if not more) true to say that "private money" will not touch renewables, as it is to say that about nuclear. Renewables have been recieving subsidies far higher than anything nuclear gets, in addition to outright government mandates for their use (regardless of cost or practicality). This is the reason for all the renewables projects that we've seen.

If renewalbes supporters (and/or nuclear critics) really believe their studies which show that renewables are cheaper, then they should be happy to allow a free and fair market competition between the two. They should support the policy suggestions that I gave above, and abandon their support of govt. mandates (i.e., renewable portfolio standards) and enormous govt. programs/largesse specifically directed towards renewables.

I, like most nuclear supporters, am willing to have such a fair competition, and would be happy to abide by the result. It is nuclear critics, who always insist on nothing less than an outright decision, by govt., to persue renewables and nothing else.

Many commenters on this article are simply stuck in perceptions that have been foisted upon them by purveyors of fossil fuels. Nuclear fission reactors are the ONLY alternative energy source that have taken a significant market share from the fossil fuel industry during the past 10 decades. The rapid rise in nuclear power from discovery to commercial operation to significant market share (that entire process took less than 30 years) makes the wind, solar, and geothermal industry outrageously jealous since all of those energy sources have been know to man for thousands of years and their market share continues to meander along at 1-3% depending on market mandates.

That rapid rise in nuclear, especially when combined with the projections that were common during the 1970s was a call to action by the establishment - who were smart enough to enlist the efforts of idealistic young people who had no idea what caused the electricity to flow out of the sockets in their homes.
People - get a clue. The law of supply and demand should be basic knowledge so ask yourself a hard question - who stands to benefit the most if a large new supply can be kept out of an important commodity market by spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD). Where did the money that supports anti-nuclear activities come from? Why do you think it keeps flowing?

Why do you think you have been taught to be afraid of a power source that has a rather impressive safety record, provides terrific, lifelong jobs, and does not produce any CO2, mercury, fly ash or acid rain.

Sure, I have financial interests in helping people understand more about atomic energy. At least I am open about it.

Rod Adams
Publisher, Atomic Insights
Host and producer, The Atomic Show Podcast