Should Nuclear and Renewable Energy Supporters Stop Fighting?

Lasrick writes "A debate is happening in the pages of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists that started with their publication of 'Nuclear vs. Renewables: Divided They Fall,' an article by Dawn Stover that chides nuclear energy advocates and advocates of renewable energy for bickering over the deck chairs while climate change sinks the ship, and while the fossil fuel industry reaps the rewards of the clean energy camp's refusal to work together. Many of the clean energy folks took umbrage at the description of nuclear power as 'clean energy,' so the Civil Society Institute has responded with a detailed look at exactly why they believe nuclear power will not be needed as the world transitions to clean energy."

Comments

Re:No, because they are not compatible

[The123king]

Add to that the fact that our currently operating nuclear plants where not designed to throttle and you can understand why it's not a good idea ... Nuclear plants have longer lead times because changing power output of the nuclear core requires more engineering effort than a fossil fueled burner does which needs more effort than your hydro-electric plant. But it is *extremely* difficult to plan electrical power requirements far enough in advance to use our current 30 year old nuclear power plants which where designed to run for decades at static power outputs.

The biggest problem most countries using nuclear power have, is the plants that were built are now much older than they were originally designed to be. On top of that, many of these nuclear plants are using first generation nuclear technology. That is, technology developed not long after the second world war. These plants are inherently dangerous, and the Fukushima-Daichi nuclear disaster proved what can happen when something goes wrong. The thing is, it's not like we haven't developed much safer plant designs since, it's just that since incidents like three-mile island and chernobyl, many people have been against the building of new nuclear plants.To me, this seems crazy, because now many countries are trying to increase the operating life of some very old and unsafe reactors, where we could have built fresh new reactors, which are much safer, more energy efficient, and will most likely age much better. If the anti-nuclear protesters 20 years ago could have seen the impending peak oil crisis, and the global warming crisis, i'm pretty sure they would have shut up and we would have much safer, more flexible, and longer-lasting nuclear plants than the 30-40 year-old reactors many countries are still relying on today.