UK's Chief Scientist Backs Nuclear Power Revival

Timbotronic writes "The UK government's chief scientific adviser has sent his clearest signal that Britain will need to revive its nuclear power industry in the face of a looming energy crisis and the threat of global warming. In an interview with the Guardian, Sir David King said there were economic as well as environmental reasons for a new generation of reactors." From the article: "His remarks come in the build-up to international talks in Montreal on how to address the threat of climate change when the Kyoto protocol expires in 2012. He denied suggestions - sparked by comments from Mr Blair that he was changing his mind on whether international treaties were the best way to tackle global warming - that Britain was moving closer to the stance of the US, which has refused to back Kyoto-style emission reductions."

Comments

Re:right....

[AuMatar]

Radioactive waste can be contained. A trick we haven't figured out with air pollution yet.

Re:Nuclear Power

[WindBourne]

Power in the future isn't going to be wind, geothermal, etc, because it doesn't produce enough power.

Even though I am a fan of nukes, I have to say that is patently false. In fact, just read some of the earlier articles here to find out that wind alone can put out more than double what we use (That is total energy, not electricity), let alone the other alternative energy (solar, geo, wave, etc).

In fact, you will find a number of companies who are creating wind energy plants all over the world and then selling the energy. More importantly, they are making LOTS of profit at it.

The real issue is how to deal with varying power. Instead of focusing on power generation, we should focus on how to store it. Right now, Colorado is testing conversion of electricity to H2 and then use the H2 to drive an internal combustion engine to drive a generator (how inefficient can you get). The one nice advantage of researching storage is that it will allow a mixture of alternative a nukes to generate electricty/other energy that is stored close to the site of usage.