Reply #15: Well, tell you what...

[punpirate]

... you support nuclear (the hidden costs of which are quite high, not just including the subsidies and credits you pay with your taxes via Congressional appropriations to mature industries that don't need them), and I'll support a lower-tech approach, one that requires no fuel, or renewable fuels.

Uranium stocks are finite, too, and while we could go for some time with plants designed to run on old warhead fuel, that's not likely to happen as long as the current defense situation is maintained. So, that means breeders and a long reprocessing chain--and in this country--that means industry cutting corners wherever possible, with the attendant environmental problems that implies. And, no one's yet come up with a safe disposal solution that industry doesn't scream and moan about the costs. And, remember--cheap oil offsets the costs of all the above--mining, refining, fuel processing and reprocessing and transportation of those items. Those costs go up as oil goes up. Nuclear power doesn't exist in isolation from the oil economy.

And, with nuclear, as I suggest, the constructors and operators want an economy of scale that makes the plants more, not less, difficult to operate. I've had talks about this with nuclear engineers and plant operators, and they were willing to admit that the bigger the plant, the more the problems. A good example is Consumers Power in Michigan--the Big Rock plant, at a peak power of about 190 mW, ran neck and neck with Yankee Rowe (at 310 mW) for time without incident, in the entire industry, for almost its entire time of operation. By contrast, the Palisades plant was down all the time, and when it was running, they were getting fined constantly for venting from the containment. They told me that they could run the Big Rock plant with nine people per shift and the people in the plant could tell when something wasn't right before the people in the control room could. Bigger plants will mean more problems, and more downtime (which impinges on economic operation). Add in the newest wrinkle, helium gas-cooling, and it's going to get pretty expensive.

Hell, in this country, we can't even depend upon the government to do fusion research--they end up diverting the money for weapons research (which is one of the principal reasons why fusion research is badly lagging these days).

Cheers.