The 30-year itch America’s nuclear industry struggles to get off the floor

[longship]

29. These are my view of the facts. Tell me where I am mistaken.

Fact: solar energy provides power only when the sun shines, and only when there is no overcast. All other times there has to be another form of energy generation.

Fact: wind power is dependent on the wind blowing. There are areas where this happens a lot. But outside Palm Springs the wind generators cover the landscape on almost every hilltop. I've been by there on the highway many times, rarely are the wind generators spinning. That's anecdotal evidence but still, it illustrates that wind power ain't what it's marketed to be.

In order to supply energy 24/7 to the planet we need sources that are not subject to the vagaries of the sunset or the local weather patterns. Obviously we need sources which will supply power regardless of these variances.

Solar and wind can obviously contribute a huge amount to our nation's energy needs. In fact, theoretically they can easily supply all of it. Unfortunately, neither one is 24/7. That's a problem. The current electrical grid has no way to store electricity during off peak times for use when it is needed at peak times. If I am wrong about that I would gladly recant.

Therefore, the only conclusion one can come to is that either one has to have additional generating power (hopefully non-carbon emitting), or one has to have the ability to store the energy during off peak hours for use later.

It's a fucking zero sum game which you can not argue against.

You choose. How are you going to solve the problem? Okay, you don't like nuclear power -- I don't either. But either you're going to generate the power or you're going to be able to store it for later. There really is no alternative. I never claimed that we have to have nuclear, I only claim that it's a carbon neutral source that is useful now. New reactors will be safer than Fukushima, Three Mile Island, and certainly Chernoble. There is plenty of research that will provide safer nuclear sources. The big problem is what the fuck do you do with the waste??? But if that can be solved we have an energy future that is carbon neutral, a goal which we all can agree on.

I am not so much of a nuke power advocate as I am an advocate to do whatever we can to stop the spiral of global climate change, which (if you haven't been paying attention) will have a far more profound effect on the planet than nuclear power. But, again, I don't like nuclear. I just don't see any alternatives that don't screw up the climate, which is a much larger problem. I would welcome a discussion on that, as well.