http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/05/13/mccain.environment/index.html Someone needed to say it! The USA has fallen behind on nuclear energy, countries like South Africa now have the most advance, efficient, cleanest, safest nuclear power systems, and the USA is basically still running 1950's technology! I think it high time the USA got back into nuclear power!
I agree, but wish they'd put a lot more money and effort behind nuclear fusion research (for fusion power plants).
Yea, an international effort that's moving along slowwwwwwwwly. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! The profits OPEC raked in last year ( I think I heard it was over $900 billion) would be enough to buy 10+ ITERS. Of course, ITER's probably the last thing OPEC wants built. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
ITER is a joke, even if they get a tokamak of that size energy positive it will be so dam expensive to make them it will never become viable economically. Lenard's And Bussards Fusion reactors is where the money should be thrown at! If we are going to waste billions on a fusion reactor design that guaranteed to be uneconomical we can waste a few million on reactor designs which (if they work) would be economical. as for nuclear fission there is plenty more research that can be done, like making 3rd gen and 4th gen reactor design a reality. Many of these designs are passively safe (can't physically melt down) produce fractions the amount of waste and use fuels like uranium 238 and thorium which we have eons worth in supply.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdMHHIO5tQM Democrats stances: Obama: Ok with nuclear with other alternatives Clinton: Ok with nuclear as long as technology fixes the waste problem.
Everything in sequential steps. Sadly, first we need to clean up coal. In the mean time we can build new fission plants to ultimately replace existing coal. Maybe a few decades from now we can talk about fusion, but as far as I know no one has yet found a way to make it work. Here's a question for all of you about fusion: where will all of the Hydrogen come from? The oceans? Okay, well forgetting that we will be basically using up a non-sustainable resource (water), how do we get the energy to hydrolyze the water into its elemental components. Doesn't make sense. Hydrogen power doesn't make sense, either. 100 GW in, 5 GW out, or some such nonsense. It's ridiculous. Fission works. Let's use it.
Clean nuclear power, with the waste problems and the safety problems and the proliferation problems somehow handled is the most expensive source of electric power available. Clean coal, with the carbon sequestered and the mining ameliorated etc, is cheaper. Heat engine solar and concentration solar and even PV solar is cheaper. Wind power is cheaper.
