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Nuclear is base load, Wind can do peak.

Geothermal can do baseload too. As can natural gas.

Wind is starting to feel the regulation and lawsuit issues Nuclear has, not to the same extent. It will, there are enough loons to oppose anything.

Unfortunately you're right. Ted Kennedy opposed Cape Wind, a plan to put wind turbines off of Cape Cod.

Look up how many "studies" are needed to put up a new reactor,

Look at Olkiluoto Nuclear Power Plant in Finland, it is 3 years behind schedule and $2.4 billion over-budget.

Falcon

Rebuilding the electrical grid would be faster, as well as allowing more generation to be added easily.

You think so?

Go to the DOE web site and look up just how much fossil fuel energy we use compared to electrical energy.

What does using more fossil fuels have to do with how fast the grid can be rebuilt?

No matter where energy comes from the grid has to be rebuilt, making it smart as well will allow the payoff to be sooner. Understanding the Cost of Power Interruptions to U.S. Electricity Consumers [pdf] estimates "the annual cost for power interruptions to U.S. electricity consumers is $79 billion." It goes on saying it can be as high as $135 billion or as low as $22 billion. In shorter form, Berkeley Lab Study Estimates $80 Billion Annual Cost of Power Interruptions.

Even with your supergrid we'll need to make hydrocarbons for the chemical and agricultural industries so we might as well get started bringing this capability online as soon as possible.

Even though I oppose his motives, which was all about water, T Boone Pickens had a plan that dealt with your concerns, the Picken's Plan. Essentially the plan was to replace natural gas fired power plants with wind turbines and use the natural gas as fuel for vehicles. Of course that would still require a rebuild of the grid, but wind turbines can continuously add capacity as the grid is built. Erect 10 5 megawatt turbines a month and you add 600 megawatts of electricity a year. The largest nuclear power plant in the US is Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station and it averaged 3.2 Gigawatts of power in 2003. It would take all of 5 years to replace the plant with wind, can another nuclear power plant that big be built in 5 years? As I linked to already the Olkiluoto Nuclear Power Plant in Finland, built by the French government owned Areva, is already 3 years behind schedule, it was originally supposed to start operation last year but isn't scheduled to before 2012 now. It's cost overruns are about $2.4 Billion too.

Falcon

Licensing costs are too expensive to justify anything but the 1600 MWe behemoths using standard fuel cycles with proven technology.

Citation needed.

Here's my own, The average non-fuel O&M cost for a nuclear power plant in 2009 was 1.46 cents / kWh. That includes licensing. Or this:

Issue #1: The New Licensing Process [ppt]

• The Mythology: The old licensing process was a major factor in the collapse of nuclear power in the U.S.
• It has now been repaired by changes in law and regulatory policy, paving the way for the renaissance.

As if that's not enough here are some more links:

1. Hooked on Subsidies...
   "How do France (and India, China and Russia) build cost-effective nuclear power plants? They don't. Governmental officials in those countries, not private investors, decide what is built. Nuclear power appeals to state planners, not market actors."
2. Is it time to press reset on nuclear?
   "Cost overruns, delays in building reactors are sapping a nuclear revival"
3. Study warns of cost overruns at proposed reactors - MarketWatch
4. Cost Overruns at Finland Reactor Hold Lessons
5. Boiling The Frog: Nuclear Optimism Hides True Costs Till It's Too Late
   "The Frog Jumps: The Ontario Story. Last week the Ontario government put plans to build 2 new next-generation reactors on hold, after it received bids "more than three times higher than what the Province expected to pay", according to a story in the Toronto Star. The only "compliant" bid -- one where the supplier would be sufficiently at risk if costs exceeded the amount quoted -- was reportedly a $26 billion quote from Atomic Energy of Canada, Ltd, equal to roughly $10,800 per kW."
6. Nuclear construction delays in Finland's Olkiluoto 3
7. Olkiluoto Nuclear Power Plant

Nuclear is actually cost competitive with coal,

So the Wall Street Journal is wrong? Even they say "The only way to handicap the field in nuclear power's favor is to put a big price tag on emissions of carbon dioxide." If however emissions of carbon dioxide had a price tag then geothermal, solar, wind, and other alternative energy sources would be more competitive as well not just nuclear power. And if nuclear is so great then why does the industry need subsidies and gets loan guaranties?

and is the only green energy source that is.

Nuclear power is not clean, it is dirty from cradle to grave, oops there is no grave for nuclear waste. Ask the Navajo how clean uranium mining is. Or some First Nations in Canada, the aboriginals in Australia, or any number of other indigenous peoples throughout the world.

It's also wrong that nuclear plants need to be these massive, expensive things. We've had portable nuclear generators since the '60s, and you can build out plants of various sizes from there all the way up to the mega installations.

Is that why Finland's Olkiluoto Nuclear Power Plant has costs overruns raising it's cost from 3 billion euros to more than 4.2 billion? Or seen it's operation delayed from 2009 to 2012 at the earliest? Since you didn't like the previous CATO article you probably won't like this one either but Nuclear Energy: Risky Business says "the industry in the early 1990s asked for-and got-exactly the sort of safety regulations, permit review process, and public comment regime now in place." Further, it says "Indeed, if government were the reason why investors were saying "no" to their loan applications, I would expect that industry officials would be the first to say so. But they do not."

Solar is currently 3x - 10x more expensive than coal.

Saying that's true now, I don't know, solar is constantly dropping in costs. And coal does not pay all of it's own costs. Like other energy sources coal is subsidized. Mountaintop removal probably the safest way to mine coal is very destructive and polluting.

The only reason it can be cost effective is because the government very very heavily subsidizes solar installations.

If ethanol subsidies, most of which go to corn and there are better feed stocks than corn, are removed from alternative energy subsidies coal comes in first place in the amount of subsidies it gets. The graph on the page linked to says alternative energy got $4.875 billion in 2007. Of that though $3 billion went to ethanol. Coal on the other hand is broken down into 2 categories. Refined coal, whatever that is, got $2.370 billion and coal got $932 million. Together coal got $3.302 billion whereas goethermal, solar, wind and other alternative sources got $1.9 billion excluding ethanol. I do see that it has nuclear as getting less than alternatives though, however I wonder how it breaks down for the different types? As that page asks, "which pig wears the most lipstick?"

Geothermal will never amount to more tha

Also: "India is likely to share its nuclear technology with Sri Lanka for power generation using Thorium as the main source of energy, Science and Technology Minister Tissa Vitharana said Friday. The Daily Mirror newspaper quoted Professor Vitharana as saying India is prepared to support Sri Lanka with setting up a nuclear power plant and that he had requested IAEA support for the project. Professor Vitharana also told the paper he had invited Indian nuclear scientists to conduct a feasibility study on the use of Thorium deposits – said to be found in abundance along Sri Lanka’s southern costal belt – as a source of nuclear energy for power generation." ~ http://www.nuclearcounterfeit.com/?p=1248

WWII pulled us out of the great depression(which by the way seems to have been caused largely by over confidence in Free Market Deregulation.) The "New Deal" managed kept us from collapsing into abject anarchy.

You should do your own homework. Some economists believe the New Deal made the Great Depression worse than it would have been. FDR's policies prolonged Depression by 7 years, UCLA economists calculate. Obama repeating mistakes of Great Depression.

What we face today is a throw back to 1929. Same shit.

What we have now is different than in 1929. In 1929-30 congress passed and President Herbert Hoover signed the protectionist Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, even though more than a thousand economists warned him to veto it, which slowed international trade. When the US passed this act other nations passed their own protectionist laws. US export businesses watched as their exports shrank, they thus had to lay off workers or went out of business. This harmed other businesses such as suppliers. Like it or not international trade is necessary to a thriving economy today and has been that way for a long tyme.

As for Mr. Fusion? How about some cleaner cheaper fission first.

Nuclear power is Hooked on Subsidies. Even in countries that do not have the US's environmental regulations nuclear power isn't profitable without subsidies. "How do France (and India, China and Russia) build cost-effective nuclear power plants? They don't. Governmental officials in those countries, not private investors, decide what is built. Nuclear power appeals to state planners, not market actors."

And that's a reprint on the Free Market CATO Institute of a Forbes magazine article. Finland's Olkiluoto Nuclear Power Plant's reactor 3, being built by the French government owned Areva, was due to be compleated this year but now is not scheduled to be compleated until 2012. It is already $2.4bn dollars (1.7bn euros) over budget.

You ask about cheaper energy, the cheapest and cleanest energy is the negawatt. Unfortunately that depends on people conserving power and most Americans will not do that.

Falcon

Nuclear power is an amazing technology that would solve many of the world's power problems

In a free market Wall Street would not finance nuclear power, the Nuclear Power Industry is "Hooked on Subsidies". Notice what that article even says of other nations "How do France (and India, China and Russia) build cost-effective nuclear power plants? They don't. Governmental officials in those countries, not private investors, decide what is built. Nuclear power appeals to state planners, not market actors." In Finland Olkiluoto 3, being built by the French government owned Areva and Siemens so there is no lack of experience, is 3 year behind schedule and "about $2.4bn dollars (1.7bn euros) over budget."

"In Flamanville, France, a clone of the Finnish reactor now under construction is also behind schedule and overbudget."

"In the United States, Florida and Georgia have changed state laws to raise electricity rates so that consumers will foot some of the bill for new nuclear plants in advance, before construction even begins."

In a free market you don't pay for what you don't use, and it would give you choices as to who supplies you. I'd rather pay a little extra for electricity from a solar or wind farm than I would to be forced to pay for nuclear power.

Oh and solar as well as wind can provide a lot of energy, in the US and Canada, with geothermal serving as a baseload.

They're fighting it because the morons of the world will think that irradiation makes the food dangerous.

Some people are quite rationally concerned because there have been no long term studies on the effects of microwaves on plants, or people, yet studies have shown microwaves can alter DNA.

Falcon

And that's not even all of it. There was a plan a few years ago (when I stopped reporting on these things - no idea what the status of it is now) to bring some HVDC lines down from Alberta into the US down through MT, WY, etc, into California, connecting wind and other power plants on the way. Then California enacted a ban on importation of fossil-fuel generated power, and that plan went by the wayside. The people wanting to make the HVDC line didn't think the project would suceed with _just_ connecting new (unbuilt) wind farms to the grid.

I did address that, politics, in one of my posts you replied to.

There is cheap and there is relatively cheap. Neither of those implies easy, btw.

I agree, but as I also said before technically it is easy, the hard part is politics.

Not higher than building new reactors, but higher than are usually understood, since it's not the total picture, and higher than people attempting to do a direct comparison to what is actually building new reactors

You're right. You yourself said "ots of opposition from the locals who don't want large turbines 'spoiling' (personal opinion) their view, or making noise 24/7... Then when you also add in heavy transmission line costs, you also get to deal with rights of way and environmental impact studies for that entire transmission line route, etc, etc." You talk about cost related to wind but not nuclear. For instance you say how people don't want turbines in view but you don't say people don't want nuclear power plants near them either. You also talk about how people don't like the noise from them, without acknowledging modern turbines are quiet. Then again you talk about how impact studies for transmission line routes have to be done without saying they also need to be done with nuclear, and every other large scale power source.

You keep attributing cost to wind without acknowledging those same costs exist for other power sources. When I pointed that out previously you shrugged it off.

Also, scaling up a wind farm to the same power output as even one nuclear reactor in the 1000MW range is going to be interesting

How many years does it take to build a nuclear reactor? Years and years. Even in Finland it takes years. Finland's Olkiluoto 3 the third reactor at Olkiluoto, being built by the French government owned Areva, has experienced cost overruns and construction delays. Olkiluoto 3 is already 3 year behind and "about $2.4bn dollars (1.7bn euros) over budget". They still don't know when it will start operations, the easiest expected is 2012.

Oh, and neither Finland nor France has the US's regulations. So compound their problems with those from building in the US.

Like the wind power industry isn't? Dude, you need to do some reading!

Sorry I already have. Not one energy source does not get subsidies. However all alternative energy sources only get a fraction of the subsidies coal, natural gas, nuclear, and petroleum get individually. Alternative energies all together only get a couple of hundred million dollars. Individually the others get more than a billion each. Here's a video of Rep Edward Markey enumerating what subsidies different industries get. He starts with saying over the years the nuclear industry has gotten $125 Billion. Altogether all the potential alternative energy sources, be it biofuel and biomass, geotherm