Nuclear energy: for or against?

[russ_watters]

Yes they do; I include the capacity factor for http://rredc.nrel.gov/solar/pubs/redbook/PDFs/AZ.PDF: 25% or 6 kWh/m^2 out of a 24 hour day (that's measured over many years: winter/summer, night/day, sunny/cloudy). At 100% CF we'd be talking about 150 MW/km^2 (total ~2900 km^2) instead of the 20-30 MW/km^2 (~22000 km^2).* I was mostly addressing Argentum Vulpes' comment that one would have to "cover" over the southwest US to supply the US load w/ solar PV. Hardly.

Um...are you responding to the right post train there? I never mentioned or responded to any land area calcs, only solar capacity stats.

 

[russ_watters]

Did you forget the sarcasm smiley there my friend.

I was kinda wondering the same thing. It can be variable with CNN*, but there's the additional issue here of whether one should give both sides equal treatment if one side is science and the other crackpottery.

*CNN is owner/partner of "mother nature network" and "treehugger.com" and has featured some truly awful envirocrackpottery in content-sharing on cnn.com, including anti-nuclear crackpottery.

[edit] So I'm watching it now...maybe this should get its own thread...

The first segment discusses the viewpoint that there is no nuclear waste issue, a viewpoint I've been advocating for years. Key points:
1. Yucca mountain is a pointless, fantasy boondoggle. Paraphrase: 'what is this future 500 years from now it is meant to protect?' In other words, it is meant to protect something that is speculative and in the distant future. Why bother?
2. Nuclear waste is not particularly harmful and is extremely limited in volume. They showed some being stored in a parking lot at a nuclear plant. Just sitting there, harming no one. And available for recycling if we choose to do it.

Second segment is about France's nuclear power:
1. France built their nuclear society quickly.
2. France's carbon footprint is half what Germany's is per capita.
3. France's electricity is the cheapest in Europe.

And nuclear weapon non-proliferation:
1. We're buying Russia's nuclear weapons (I had no idea) to power our reactors (I did know that). 10% of our electricity/half of our nuclear power comes from Russian nuclear weapons. Some environmentalists are worried that nuclear power can lead to nuclear weapons, but currently, it is the other way around.

Wow, that was it? To call it a "documentary" is generous; was it even a half hour long? But it was short/concise, accurate and clear, so I'll have to give it some props for that!

Post-show discussion:
Environmentalist says it was one-sided because it didn't discuss "renewable" energy (duh; it wasn't about renewable energy) and claims 80% of our power can be renewable by 2050. The nuclear expert responds that that's "silly"; despite 25 years of heavy government subsidy, non-hydro renewable is only 2% of global energy production, while global energy production grows by 2% a year. Burn.

Hmm...maybe what CNN showed me was just an excerpt, because there was another clip shown that wasn't in what I saw.

They are saying that oil companies are pushing alternative energy because they know it is not a threat to them, but nuclear power is.

 

[mheslep]

Um...are you responding to the right post train there? I never mentioned or responded to any land area calcs, only solar capacity stats.

"those numbers don't consider the low capacity factor ..."

"those numbers" does not refer to area calculations above, based on capacity factor?

 

[russ_watters]

"those numbers don't consider the low capacity factor ..."

"those numbers" does not refer to area calculations above, based on capacity factor?

No, I quoted what I was responding to: post #139, which is about gross capacity only and was addressed to me (and I quoted the entire post). Your area calculations were in post #140, and were addressed to nikkkom.