Slashdot Mirror

I see no one is taking global warming seriously... Yet.

I will believe that global warming is a serious problem when people start talking about building nuclear power plants again.

I hear them scream from rooftops on how we must have an "all the above" energy policy. Then when nuclear power comes up then it's everything except that. Okay then. If nuclear power is somehow a greater hazard to the world than nuclear power then I'll just wait until someone takes this problem seriously. Either global warming is in fact a real threat and we get nuclear power later, potentially after it's too late to stop it's worst effects, or global warming turns out to be a nothingburger and we all go on happily burning oil and coal.

I can wait. Until then I'll leave some reading material.
http://cmo-ripu.blogspot.com/2...
http://www.roadmaptonowhere.co...
https://www.withouthotair.com/

This spraying water in the air is a nice plan but the guy proposing it even explains that we will still need a plan to stop burning coal. I've not seen any working plans yet that do not include nuclear power. Some people claim future technology will save us but that's not a plan, that's wishful thinking. That's waiting at the port for a ship that might never come.

Whatever. Go compute the material needs, and the money it would take to buy them, then get back to me on that.

There's a reason why we dam up rivers and not just build a huge water tank in the middle of pancake flat Nebraska to store energy. That path to energy storage is a roadmap to nowhere.

http://www.roadmaptonowhere.co...

Here's a couple more.

https://www.withouthotair.com/

http://www.roadmaptonowhere.co...

They use the numbers given by the wind and solar advocates. The wind and solar industries are using numbers that don't add up to sell themselves. It only takes a bit of math to see this. It's science. If you deny the science, from the wind and solar industries themselves, then I'd like to see your "science" explain a future without nuclear power and without poverty.

Whatever, another article about how we are all doomed.

Here's what I want to see, solutions that work. Wind and solar don't work because without massive levels of storage to even out the varying load to the varying demand then it simply cannot keep the lights on. Also, add up all the resources needed to build all these windmills, solar panels, and batteries, and you will find yourself a situation that will destroy the economy and/or the environment in trying to dig up all the materials needed.

You think wind and solar don't have any environmental impact? Where do you think all that steel, aluminum, copper, concrete, rare earth elements, and so on come from? We dig it out of the ground, that's where it comes from. Same for the batteries, that stuff has to be dug up, refined, machined, molded, and transported to the construction site. This takes energy and materials. Energy and materials we cannot produce in any meaningful time frame.

We need solutions, not another restatement of the problem. Seems no one wants to speak of what that solution might be.

Oh, and I give citations on why the solutions brought up so often will not work.
http://www.roadmaptonowhere.co...
http://cmo-ripu.blogspot.com/2...
https://www.withouthotair.com/

Who wouldn't be wary of climate science being (ab)used to sell a "solution" that doesn't even work in models. Every honest climate scientist recognizes that nuclear energy will play a crucial part of any plausible decarbonization pathway, and yet traditional "environmentalists" are the ones working to kill the tool proven most effective in our efforts. Closing nuclear plants decades early, and replacing them with depleting gas plus renewable ornaments is a waste of limited resources, at a time when emissions continue to grow.

After you look at the charts, ask yourself why. China is producing an enormous amount of goods for export to countries full of ungrateful hypocrites. It is ironic that the "green" solution of "cheap" wind and solar relies on turning China into an industrial wasteland. Manufacture of solar panels and mining rare earths for wind turbine magnets are both filthy endeavors, and the pollution they produce is more effective in destroying the local environment than CO2 could ever be.

At least China is ramping production of nuclear, and developing next generation nuclear technologies. (and also leading in deployment of renewables, but that is only worth mentioning for how ineffective it has proven.) China is a mess, but their efforts are cause for hope. The west has embraced an irrational fantasy with no future. We desperately need to temper the anti-nuclear renewable-only zealotry, which only serves to cement our reliance on hydrocarbons.

You appear to be motivated to overlook some simple answers.

I did not overlook the simple answers. I've been studying the energy problem for a long time, soaking in all kinds of differing opinions for years. Solar power is simply insufficient to run a first world nation. There's nothing wrong with putting up some solar panels, and there are plenty in Israel. What they will still need is natural gas and nuclear power.

I've seen the math and there is no way to maintain a modern economy without nuclear power. Do the math yourself. Here's a website made by people that did the math and explained why nuclear power must be part of the energy policy of any nation that wants to have a modern economy: http://www.roadmaptonowhere.co...

There are no simple answers. What I've found is that there is no solution to our future energy needs that does not include nuclear power. Distributed generation might sound nice but it destroys any economy of scale. The world will need big efficient power plants or the lights go out, this includes Israel.

Who's going to pay for the nuclear power plants?

Who's going to pay for all this wind, solar, and storage? I've seen the math on this and one source is this:
http://www.roadmaptonowhere.co...

They computed, using the numbers from the wind, water, and sun advocates, that it would cost THIRTY TRILLION DOLLARS to complete.

How much would it cost for a 100% nuclear solution? $3 Trillion â" $6.7 Trillion

The "Roadmap to Nowhere" paper is not advocating for a 100% nuclear solution to our energy problems, that is not only impractical but far from ideal. They use the 100% nuclear solution as a thought experiment to show just how impractical the 100% wind, water, and sun solution would be. You think these people didn't see their own numbers and not realize it would not work? I believe they do know it would not work. They tried to hide the inevitable in the numbers and hoped people would not look close enough to see the failure it will inevitably become.

So, to answer your question, who's going to pay for the nuclear power plants? Ultimately you, myself, and everyone that uses electricity in the world. This will happen through paying the market rates to utilities, and they use that money to buy electricity from the people that invested in nuclear power in the hope to make a profit. If we don't deploy nuclear power, again using the numbers from the wind, water, and sun advocates, we can expect our electricity rates to be double, triple, or as high as ten times what we pay now.

The Obama administration was openly hostile to nuclear power, going back to when Obama was a state senator. The Democrat party is still openly hostile to nuclear power. They allowed these nuclear power projects to proceed in Republican dominated states to buy votes, because shutting them down would have put a lot of people out of work when things were not going well for them. I have to wonder if they didn't sabotage the projects after they lost in the elections in an effort to pin this on the Trump Administration.

I'm listening to talk radio right now and I hear the Democrats fighting hard for a nuclear deal with Iran. Why would they do this? Why does Iran want this technology? The stated purpose is to build a civil nuclear power program, but everyone knows that's only cover for a weapons program. Let's assume everything is on the level and Iran is honestly trying to build a civil nuclear power program. Why is it that Iran can have nuclear power but the USA cannot? If nuclear power is good for the Iranian goose then it should be good for the American Michigander. There isn't a lot of sun in Midwest winters, and there's not a lot of hydro around here either. We have wind but without hydro, nuclear, and/or natural gas to back that up it's worthless.

It's nuclear power or the lights go out. You can cherrypick a handful of troubled nuclear power projects but there's hundreds of successful projects that show nuclear power does work.

Nuclear energy is the new oil, only it isn't scarce or geographically limited or dirty. All that is needed is the will to embrace it, and the abundance it will afford.

UBI is a good start for sharing the productivity gains that have been monopolized by a few owners, but it is only part of the solution. Virtually all wealth today is derived from fossil energy, which is not sufficient to support the idea at scale. However, affordable and abundant nuclear energy can, and with minimal impact on nature.

There is a choice at hand, between a future of abundance and a 100% renewable fantasy which is resource intensive and further chains us to scarcity. The latter maintains the status quo, and is fully backed by fossil fuel interests, as renewables pose no threat to them and only increases their value.

Why do we need nuclear? What is wrong with existing renewable and storage technology?

The problem is we can't build it fast enough. Wind, solar, hydro, and geothermal take too much material. We don't have enough capacity to create sufficient amounts of steel, concrete, and other materials to build enough renewable energy to displace coal.

Here's an article that gives just a taste of the problem:
http://cmo-ripu.blogspot.com/2...

A very comprehensive analysis was done here:
http://www.roadmaptonowhere.co...

And here:
https://www.withouthotair.com/

If you want to tell me that we can wait until we have the infrastructure to build enough cement kilns and steel mills to keep up with the closing of current coal and nuclear, as well as increased needs for these materials not just for energy generation but also other construction, then I have to wonder just how urgent this need is to hold off global warming.

Even with over-building capacity it's still much cheaper than nuclear, and one of the primary objections to doing anything about climate change is the cost.

Nuclear is as cheap as wind and solar wish they could be. Some of the math is here: http://www.roadmaptonowhere.co...

We need to do this quick, and it has to make economic sense or it won't happen, and renewables offer massive opportunities for jobs and growth.

I agree, we must be quick. That's why we need to build wind, solar, hydro, geothermal, AND nuclear. If nuclear is not included then the world will fail to meet any CO2 reduction goals declared by the United Nations. Nuclear power makes economic sense. Any problems of costs for nuclear power are NOT in engineering, materials, or labor. The only costs associated with nuclear power that might make it uneconomical is political and regulatory. China figured out how to make nuclear power economical. One thing they do to keep costs down is shoot any protestors that hold up construction. I'm not saying we should do that in the USA but we can keep them from filing frivolous lawsuits and imprison them for their dangerous antics that interfere with solving this problem.

I saw in another thread someone claiming (jokingly I assume) that Greenpeace is causing global warming. Well, that's not far from the truth. The science shows that nuclear power would allow for a significant reduction in CO2 production, but Greenpeace opposes this. The science shows that cutting down trees for lumber, and planting new trees in their place, would create a considerable carbon sink for the CO2 we already produced, but Greenpeace opposes this.

Science tells us we need nuclear power or we will fail to reduce our CO2 in any meaningful time frame. That's why we need nuclear power. We need to include nuclear power in our solution to reduce CO2 or we will see CO2 output grow with all the global warming that comes with.

IT'S SCIENCE!! Are you a science denier?

Why do we need nuclear? What is wrong with existing renewable and storage technology?

The problem is we can't build it fast enough. Wind, solar, hydro, and geothermal take too much material. We don't have enough capacity to create sufficient amounts of steel, concrete, and other materials to build enough renewable energy to displace coal.

Here's an article that gives just a taste of the problem:
http://cmo-ripu.blogspot.com/2...

A very comprehensive analysis was done here:
http://www.roadmaptonowhere.co...

And here:
https://www.withouthotair.com/

If you want to tell me that we can wait until we have the infrastructure to build enough cement kilns and steel mills to keep up with the closing of current coal and nuclear, as well as increased needs for these materials not just for energy generation but also other construction, then I have to wonder just how urgent this need is to hold off global warming.

Even with over-building capacity it's still much cheaper than nuclear, and one of the primary objections to doing anything about climate change is the cost.

Nuclear is as cheap as wind and solar wish they could be. Some of the math is here: http://www.roadmaptonowhere.co...

We need to do this quick, and it has to make economic sense or it won't happen, and renewables offer massive opportunities for jobs and growth.

I agree, we must be quick. That's why we need to build wind, solar, hydro, geothermal, AND nuclear. If nuclear is not included then the world will fail to meet any CO2 reduction goals declared by the United Nations. Nuclear power makes economic sense. Any problems of costs for nuclear power are NOT in engineering, materials, or labor. The only costs associated with nuclear power that might make it uneconomical is political and regulatory. China figured out how to make nuclear power economical. One thing they do to keep costs down is shoot any protestors that hold up construction. I'm not saying we should do that in the USA but we can keep them from filing frivolous lawsuits and imprison them for their dangerous antics that interfere with solving this problem.

I saw in another thread someone claiming (jokingly I assume) that Greenpeace is causing global warming. Well, that's not far from the truth. The science shows that nuclear power would allow for a significant reduction in CO2 production, but Greenpeace opposes this. The science shows that cutting down trees for lumber, and planting new trees in their place, would create a considerable carbon sink for the CO2 we already produced, but Greenpeace opposes this.

Science tells us we need nuclear power or we will fail to reduce our CO2 in any meaningful time frame. That's why we need nuclear power. We need to include nuclear power in our solution to reduce CO2 or we will see CO2 output grow with all the global warming that comes with.

IT'S SCIENCE!! Are you a science denier?

*(Oh, you didn't actually have an argument to back that up? How quaint)

Here is one solid and well supported argument, of many questioning the viability of 100% renewables. What is lacking is a single coherent proposal that the 100% renewable ideal is achievable, or even desirable. (These "green" sources are resource intensive and compete with nature. Nuclear has the smallest footprint on the natural environment, by far.)

The problem isn't finding evidence that we humans are doing plenty to fuck up our atmosphere and environment. The problem is convincing enough of the greedy fucks in charge to give up their precious money in order to do something about it. For the worlds largest polluters, revenue is all that matters, side effects be damned.

Launch all the "damn" satellites you want. Until you fix the political problem, any results will continue to fall on deaf ears.

It is a political problem, not a monetary problem. Governments are free to print money, and the value of currency is artificial. The actual limiting factor is resources, and as long as those in power are deploying our limited resources in ineffective ways, the problem will continue growing. We need policy based on science and facts, not political whim and fantasy. Policy that considers energy returned on energy invested, resource efficiency, land impact, grid requirements, the potentially to rapidly scale, and so forth. Nuclear is at the top of all the metrics that matter, and there is great potential for cost reduction and efficiency improvement with molten salt reactors.

Given the solar potential of that area of the world, they could use solar thermal to power the desal plants, mine the brine for lithium and magnesium and use the sodium & potassium salts for thermal energy storage

Taking the whole area of the Middle East, the population there, the solar power available, and the drinking water that solar power could produce, then I would agree that solar thermal is possible as a solution. There's a huge problem, the people in the Middle East are a bunch of groups that don't get along very well. Politics prevent this from being feasible.

First, solar desalination is a big fat valuable target in case of war or terrorism. You can't put a solar collector in a bunker and expect it to work. Maybe you can build it from bulletproof glass and such but it's still a big target if it's to collect enough sun to matter. Second, some of these nations are small with not a lot of open area for solar collectors. To get enough sun they'd have to "import some sun" from their neighbors in the form of desalinated water, electricity, or something else of value. This means trade with people that might just rather see them dead, and also having something of value to give in return. What would these nations have to trade? Other than the oil and natural gas that we'd rather not see burned?

I could go on but I hope I've made my point. This is not a problem that can be solved with solar power given the politics. That's even assuming the physics and economics work out. To convince them to switch to solar power you'd have to show them it can make them money, or be less of a money sink than using oil, natural gas, or nuclear power. I've seen the math and even in sunny UAE they cannot rely on solar power to provide the electricity and drinking water they need. They will have to use nuclear power or revert to a stone age existence in time.

Some sources:
https://www.withouthotair.com/
http://www.roadmaptonowhere.co...
http://cmo-ripu.blogspot.com/2...

Indeed. Objecting to nukes because of safety is silly.

Objecting to nukes because of economics makes much more sense. They are far too expensive, and the cost is going up while the cost of solar, wind, and storage is falling.

I've seen the economics and here's a report that seems to get cited often:
https://www.lazard.com/media/4...

On the second page of the PDF there's a chart showing that solar is indeed quite inexpensive compared to nuclear. There is also a warning at the top of the graph that costs addressing the intermittent nature of solar and wind were not taken into account. Solar power with storage is not cheap, and neither is putting solar on rooftops. Solar power is only cheap when there is no storage (meaning reliance on things like hydro, natural gas, and internal combustion diesel engines) and when placed in large open fields close to the ground. Wind is cheap, and will likely still see some gains in getting cheaper yet, but it has problem with being intermittent as well. Wind is not considered safe enough to put near inhabited areas and, while it does not displace cropland and grazing areas like solar would, it's not something people will put on their rooftops either.

That Lazard study and articles like the following explaining the safety and resource needs of solar tells me that there is not much future in solar power.
http://cmo-ripu.blogspot.com/2...

Solar is complicated, expensive, and when compared to other energy sources available to us it's really not that great on safety and CO2 output. What really kills solar, by my estimation, is the resources needed. We'd be far better off with wind, hydro, and nuclear.

If you want to make an economic case against nuclear then I'd like to see the costs from storage. If you say that the storage costs will come down in a decade to be affordable then I'm fine with waiting. The question then is, what do we do until then? Keep burning coal? I say we build nuclear power plants. The claim has been that solar and wind prices will come down with economy of scale. Would that not also be true for nuclear? Japan, South Korea, and France, all saw costs go down by standardizing their nuclear power. In the USA we kept building a bunch of reactors by the ones and threes and so costs stayed high. Stop doing that and costs go down.

Here's a couple experts in the field that did a study on the costs of storage and it's not a pretty picture they paint. The storage alone for wind and solar would cost much more than an equivalent supply of energy from nuclear power.
http://www.roadmaptonowhere.co...

The "Roadmap To Nowhere" authors make it clear that an all nuclear power grid is not ideal or perhaps even possible, they just use that as an intellectual exercise. I recognized this as well, we'll need something other than nuclear, and to me wind and hydro are far better options in nearly every case than solar. As it is now, today, solar is a bad idea. Until that changes we'll need something that's cheap, reliable, safe, low in CO2, and something we can deploy in quantity today. Solar scores poorly on all metrics.

Prove to me that solar and storage can compete and I'll change my mind.

Get a damn clue.

Then clue me in. I asked a very honest question with sincere curiosity. Germany has stated an intent to reduce its CO2 output by closing coal fired power plants. I see that is happening. What is also happening is the construction of new coal fired power plants. What is the capacity of these old plants compared to the new? Is this just closing down two coal plants only to build a new one that's twice their size, and therefore changing nothing in how much coal is burned?

I cannot take a nation's commitment to reduce CO2 output when that same nation has a commitment to abandon nuclear power. While it may be possible to do both it will be quite difficult as shown on this web page:
http://cmo-ripu.blogspot.com/2...

And this website:
http://www.roadmaptonowhere.co...

And this website:
https://www.withouthotair.com/

And here:
https://www.brightnewworld.org...

I see plenty of people on Slashdot talking about how solar power is inexpensive today, but no one seems to actually say how much it costs. Let's see some numbers. But first I'd like to see the numbers on coal power, because that's the biggest producer of CO2. Replace coal with most anything else and CO2 output is reduced. I'm not seeing Germany even doing that, and if someone could help me find some numbers then I'd appreciate that. Numbers of plants closed and opening is meaningless without knowing the size of the plants. Put it numbers my 11 year old nephew can understand, he wants to be an engineer some day.

Let's say I concede the point, that the DOE got the materials needed for solar power off by an order of magnitude you still have on a per megawatt-hour basis....

Solar power requires 3 to 10 times the materials compared to nuclear, depending on how you want to do your math. (And it would be more like 30 times if I don't concede this point.)
Solar power causes 4 to 4000 times as many fatalities. (Here's another source for that: https://www.forbes.com/sites/j... )
Solar power has the same to 10 times the CO2 output as nuclear, depending on who you ask.
(This shows solar has about 3 times CO2 output over nuclear: https://energy.utexas.edu/news...
This shows solar and nuclear at near parity: https://www.carbonbrief.org/so... )

As for cost... I can't seem to find a straight answer. I'll search and keep finding sources from nuclear power advocacy places where they show nuclear is cheaper than solar. When I look for data from places that advocate for wind, solar, and hydro, they don't mention nuclear power at all. That in itself is quite telling. There's those studies from a place called Lazard that give wildly varied numbers on solar power based on the specific type and they include a warning not to compare intermittent energy, like wind and solar, to dispatchable energy, like nuclear and natural gas.

This warning from Lazard to compare solar power costs to nuclear become apparent when looking at the paper from Conley and Maloney where they compute that just the backup power in natural gas, or storage from pumped hydro, would cost double to 5 times the generation capacity from nuclear. Again, that's the cost to match the solar supply to the load, before the costs of the actual solar power generation is added. Again I'll give the link: http://www.roadmaptonowhere.co...

To defend your point on material needs you gave a pamphlet on a do-it-herself solar power kit that looks like something someone would prop up at a campsite, not a permanent install done by professionals.

So, if I concede the point on materials needed, and agree the DOE was off by as much as an order of magnitude, then it still doesn't look that great for solar. Would you like to go into the other points against solar now?

IOW, less than what 1/10 of what your system will cost.

No, read the study. Here's the link again:
http://www.roadmaptonowhere.co...

The STORAGE needed for a wind and solar solution would cost at least double the PRODUCTION of the nuclear solution. With wind and solar the production would cost at least what the storage costs. That's four times what nuclear costs with just storage and production. Then there are issues of needing a "smart grid" to move all this energy around to where it is needed, and the land it would take to put these windmills and solar collectors.

I'll also bring this back again, nuclear power has a lower CO2 output than wind and solar.
http://cmo-ripu.blogspot.com/2...

Why is anyone so opposed to nuclear power? It's safe, clean, inexpensive, reliable, and domestically sourced.

For the same cost we can build pumped storage plants, and let the consumer worry about the generation side.

Same costs? How? Nuclear takes the least material to produce power than any energy source available to us, and with the least CO2 produced. Did you even click on the link? Here it is again:
http://cmo-ripu.blogspot.com/2...

The ramp-up rate on homeowners choosing to go solar before Juche-Trumpism would be enough to replace a lot of the shortfall, except for the storage problem.

That "storage problem" is not trivial. That's a sixteen TRILLION dollar problem.
http://www.roadmaptonowhere.co...

That kind of expenditure does not make it impossible, I will admit that. What it does do is make the storage problem alone a greater expense in time, money, effort, and materials, than if the energy was produced with far more reliable nuclear power. Nuclear power, as it is done today, will need some storage for load following and perhaps even seasonal variation but far far less of it. That "storage problem" is many times more than the cost of building an all nuclear grid of PRODUCTION. I'll emphasize that, the storage needs alone for wind and solar exceed the cost of producing that electricity from even old style nuclear power.

Rather than building a new massive hub and spoke infrastructure, we should be investing in to a truely distributed grid with localized storage facilities to help balance the load

I agree. Let's build many "small" nuclear power plants of about 5 GW generation each (that would be probably 6 current reactors or about a dozen small modular reactors) and spread them about over 200 different sites. Add in some storage from batteries and hydro to keep the grid stable and manage for losses of grid connections, and have some on-site backup generation at vital sites like hospitals, police stations, military bases, airports, and so on. But we have such backup already, or at least we do if we're smart. There's also plenty of hydro storage too in a lot of places. Wherever we need storage for nuclear then we can draw from the same well this storage would draw from as if we did solar and wind.

There is a very important reason we use this "hub and spoke" infrastructure, economy of scale. It's this aversion to building large nuclear power plants that has driven up costs in people to run engineering, administration, security, maintenance, and so on. Put 4 or 6 reactors on a site and watch prices fall.

Nuclear is just another unsustainable tech.

Here's someone that disagrees with you.
http://cmo-ripu.blogspot.com/2...

And another.
http://environmentalprogress.o...

Here's a couple more.
http://www.roadmaptonowhere.co...

And another.
https://www.brightnewworld.org...

I assume you can cite someone to make your claim? Perhaps you have a doctorate in some relevant field that makes you an expert on this?

We're running out of options, if we haven't already. We will need nuclear power. We need it now.

If there were a viable substitute for nuclear energy, we would be using it, and not growing fossil energy. A 100% renewable fantasy may be your preferred alternative, but some of us want reliable clean energy that scales, and has already proven capable of decarbonizing large countries. Germany exemplifies foolish ideals like yours, and if there are "always alternatives", why are they missing their carbon targets and expanding coal mining?

We've known about this for centuries, and still waste money on fake solutions like overpriced nuclear power (which doesn't work well when the water heats up a lot), when the solutions even Edison knew about, wind and solar, are far far cheaper than any of the fossil fuels that are creating the problem.

Right, we should bring back cheap nuclear power, as it was before the anti-nuclear lunacy took hold. If not for their efforts to drive up prices using lawsuits, excessive regulations, and any other dirty tactics available, fossil fuels would be history by now. Thanks for that. It's ironic that the anti-nuclear "greens" are now using the problem that they caused as justification for a completely unworkable "solution". Advocating an ideology that excludes the largest reliable zero-carbon energy source exposes their fraud.

Here are your "cheap" renewables. Even if they actually were economical, they only provide for electricity, not heating, industry, and transportation, which are a much larger part of the problem.

Nuclear power.

When I see new nuclear power plants getting built then I will believe that politicians and the public are taking global warming seriously. I have read some encouraging news recently that US federal regulators are making real investments in the future of nuclear power. There's already been a shift in how nuclear power is viewed, and people are starting to embrace it again. One real reason people are embracing it is very self serving, a lot of nuclear power plants are reaching end of life and will be shut down soon and without a new reactor in its place a lot of jobs will be lost as well as a large source of electrical generation capacity in that region.

I don't much care why people are embracing nuclear power, only that people embrace it. Nuclear power is safe, low carbon, domestically sourced, and inexpensive.

Say what you will about past accidents with nuclear power, like Fukushima, Chernobyl, and Three Mile Island, all of them are irrelevant to embracing third and fourth generation nuclear power. All of those past accidents were with second generation nuclear, and as safe as second generation nuclear power has been on the aggregate we will see even safer power with third generation nuclear that is being built now. Fourth generation nuclear, such as molten salt reactors, will be safer still.

I've seen the numbers and models on a national grid based on wind, water, and sun. This is not a future with inexpensive, reliable, and safe electricity. It's quite likely not low in CO2 either. There is no future with inexpensive, plentiful, safe, clean, and "green", electricity that does not include nuclear power.

Here's a couple websites that do the numbers:
http://www.roadmaptonowhere.co...
http://withouthotair.com/

Being more precise in language: Marxism, with it's ban on private ownership of means of production isn't active anywhere in Europe. Europe is full of capitalist welfare states.

Allowing the 1% to move the means of production overseas where slave labor is available is of course much better than public ownership. For a few anyway.

Marxism is irretrievably broken. It had the 20th century to work. Killed more people than religion has, and religion had eons longer to do it.

The idea was okay; the implementation was broken. Just as capitalism is today in the US, and the end result may be just as bad. The increases in productivity from automation have been staggering, and will continue until human labor has almost no value whatsoever. Call it whatever you want, but we need to be preparing a more equitable means of wealth distribution and social welfare, preferably before heads roll and society is plunged into chaos, and we suffer a different sort of redistribution.

However, it is critical to recognize that wealth is not zero-sum. It is necessary to encourage abundant and affordable clean energy and policies supporting the creation of wealth, because wealth redistribution alone won't cut it, and existing sources are derived from dwindling fossil fuels. That means making nuclear cheap (again), not building out massively huge, expensive, unreliable, and inefficient stochastic energy capture systems.

Personally, I like the idea of nuclear energy powered cooperatives, with a currency based on energy, not fiat. Nuclear energy allows truly distributed energy systems to be built, anywhere, without any resource conflicts, and with minimal environmental footprint. The 100% renewable fantasy is dependent upon interconnected continent-scale super-grids, each of which comprises a single extraordinarily complex and fragile system--which is ironically exactly the opposite of the distributed local generation ideal that greens advocate. The nuclear option makes use of loosely connected micro-grids; as in the grid infrastructure already in place, only it could even be simplified further over time.

The 12 years that Methane stays in the atmosphere are negligible compared to the hundreds to thousands of years that CO2 stays in the atmosphere.

No, methane is far worse. Methane is 30 times more potent as a greenhouse gas. By using it as fuel we inevitably see leakage into the air. That said natural gas is still better than coal as fuel because of the double CO2 that coal produces per energy unit, the methane leakage we see along with the CO2 produced from burning natural gas still means lower greenhouse effect.

Wind, water, and sun cannot provide a stable electrical supply without far greater emissions of greenhouse gasses from the mining of materials, and the natural gas needed for backup power. Wind, water, and sun, with natural gas backup, is no better than coal in greenhouse gasses from the concrete needed to build it all, water evaporation, etc. Wind, water, and sun, is a roadmap to nowhere.

http://www.roadmaptonowhere.co...

We need nuclear power as part of the mix or we will fail to reduce our CO2 output.

Ocean Warming & Acidification - Dr. Alex Cannara

Gradually rising temperatures and seas are but a mere inconvenience next to the impending mass extinctions in the oceans and disruption of ocean currents. It is happening now, and there are already large dead zones that are now incapable of supporting life. To prevent global catastrophe will require enormous amounts of clean energy, not the symbolic non-solutions that are in vogue today.

I have little doubt that most climate scientists are acting in good faith, but the many zealots hawking "solutions" to the problem are not doing the cause any favors. Their primary goal appears to be killing nuclear plants, and inhibiting growth of this invaluable zero-carbon energy source. Working to replace nuclear with gas and limit our available tools exposes the hypocrisy of these self-styled "environmentalists", and calls into question their motivations.

They keep the focus on installing "renewable" capacity, and selling us on the 100% "renewable" dream; never on their progress in lowering carbon emissions, which has been uninspiring. We should be objectively examining the results of our efforts, and not asking "can it be done", but "what is the most effective strategy". Few places have sustained large-scale efforts, but the facts speak for themselves. See the real-time electric power and carbon intensity of Germany, France, Ontario, and Sweden.

Mark Z. Jacobson's bare-bones Roadmap will cost more than $15T, even without sufficient backup and storage. In reality it would be substantially more expensive, and you will find the details at that link.

On the other hand, $5T would cover a Gen IV nuclear grid, likely with a couple trillion to spare.

Jacobson's work has been thoroughly debunked. After failing to argue his position based on sound science, he sued the journal which published both his work and the extensively peer-reviewed response.

It is understandable that many people want to be believe, but the 100% renewable road-map is a dangerous myth.

Whatever. I'll listen to the people that ran the numbers.

https://blogs.scientificameric...

http://www.roadmaptonowhere.co...

Where did you get your numbers from?