America Is Getting More Power from Renewables than From Nuclear

[kristopher]

6. Let me show you how to support your claims

You wrote, "We're including ethanol added to gasoline as "renewable power", are we?"
Where did you get that? Since your link basically goes to the entire database at EIA, it is actually pretty rude to not be more specific.

Let me show you how it's done. Here is a graphic presentation of primary energy production for 2010 showing nuclear producing fractionally more than renewables.



And the data for the graph is here:
http://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/annual/showtext.cfm?t=ptb0102

The notes tell us that yes, ethanol is included.
10 Wood and wood-derived fuels, biomass waste, and total biomass inputs to the production of fuel
ethanol and biodiesel.

Perhaps you'd be courteous enough to provide that kind of support for your statements in the future?

Now two questions: the first is why you think it is somehow inappropriate to include the full range of renewable resources in the tally? Every other discussion includes all of the renewable resources, so why do you think biomass and hydro should be excluded now that the total eclipses nuclear?

Second, did you know that centralized thermal, including nuclear, requires a lot spinning reserves? When a large nuclear plant goes down suddenly it goes down completely and stays down for a prolonged period of time. Renewables "go down" in that unexpected and total fashion far less often.

Here is a specific amount that was included in Citigroup's analysis on "European Nuclear Generation" from 2 December 2008:
The UK has already provided some cost budgeting work, with National Grid estimating that should all existing nuclear power plants be replaced, an extra £1.4b of spend would be required to reinforce the transmission network. Additional spinning reserve costs would have to be considered with PB Power quoted as saying that for every new EPR build in the UK an additional 260MW of spinning reserve would be required at £1.3-2.1/MWh.