The nuclear energy institute, I wonder if they have an agenda to push?

Anyway, they contridict themselves. They say we won't have a "dependence on foreign suppliers" then say it has a strong "international industry." International means foreign (opporating in multiple nations).

To be completely power independent, we would need about 2,900 more nuclear power plants in the US (29 times the amount we currently have), to fill the fuel needs of that we would have to rely on foriegn supplies and that makes us dependent.

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Set your destination with your heart, get there with your mind.

"The wisest men follow their own direction." - Euripides

I was referring to electricity, given that's what you addressed.

And solar power is grossly inefficient. 15% is pathetic. That's a factual observation. Nuclear power is incredibly efficient, safe, reliable. You'd have to stretch quite a bit to make it look ugly I'd rather not put my future in the hands of speculative technology you merely assume will continue endlessly to get more efficient. It's still more expensive, to boot. You quote sunlight downfall, which is entirely irrelevant to what you can harvest, and then compare it to what nuclear can provide. That's dishonest. I can cite the energy released by rainfall too. It's a lot. Doesn't mean much.

Not at all. It's pathetic and subject significantly to weather conditions, like wind power. Going by efficiency, the average home-based solar panels produce less than 14% of useful energy from sunlight. There are some that produce up to 22%, but that's still arse It's better to invest in nuclear.

Again, as the post-oil age hits, we will by default decrease consumption of energy total. You will never have total energy supplied by one source. No one argued nuclear will be the only source. Electricity will also probably see increases in the total energy used. Pissing into a lake while using a football field to do it.

France gets 77%!!!! oil electric from nuclear. They are getting the hint. IN fact, they get it so much, they sell a lot of the excess to the retards who don't make it themselves. Americans are retarded. They don't get it yet.

I was only making the distiction between electricity and power, as the two are very different in the numbers.

15% of what is there is actually an incredible amount, it would suck for nuclear because nuclear has such minimal potential. The numbers that matter are the TWh that can be produced, it doesn't matter how effecient something is if it can't provide a decent amount of energy. You can have something that is 100% effecient, but if it can only do 10kW, then it is worthless.

A 50 year average is not speculation, it makes for good accurate predictions, and with current studies of nano solar tech, that is running effeciency to about 40-45%, Nuclear will be left to the wayside.

That 14%, (heck even 3% will do) is more than enough to power your entire home with nothing more than the sunlight that falls on your roof. Sublight naturally has 1360 Wpm2 (Watts per Meter squared), and the average american roof is about 150 m2, so there is about 204 kW that fall on the average roof every hour. In america, the average sunhours per day is 5 (someplaces up to 7.5, some as low as 3.5, and that is average year around), so each day, the average american home gets 1,020 kWh, each month 30,600 kWh. The average american home uses 800 kWh a month, so that requires an effeciency of 2.6% to make it on just the light that falls on your roof. European families use even less energy.

What makes you think that we are going to start using less energy?

__________________
Set your destination with your heart, get there with your mind.

"The wisest men follow their own direction." - Euripides

Even though France has the highest %, you do know that america actually produces more kWh from nuclear than any other nation, including france, right?

__________________
Set your destination with your heart, get there with your mind.

"The wisest men follow their own direction." - Euripides

How and by what do you come to the conclusion that nuclear has such minimal potential. that statement's unsupported. Pound for pound, nuclear energy produces more energy than solar and is more efficient. That's undeniable. And by far more efficient. Nuclear plants DO have more than decent energy output. Moreover, which you ignore, there are several types (and new ones in the future) of plants that have far higher efficiency than what's already existing, and it's far less speculative than your nano-wanking no-limits solar power.

Even with the current efficiency weaknesses of nuclear in the process, it still biotchslaps solar, even if solar were vastly more efficient. Which it's not. Solar requires too much land and performs poorly in anything other than idyllic conditions.

Nuclear tends to have much higher operational efficiency.

The idea that nuclear will be left by the wayside for magic nano tech is a pipe dream, really. I can't take nano-wanking and broad claims like that seriously.

I never said anything about raw energy. I said percent of total. We need to increase our nuclear to far greater per cent totals. They get it. You and the rest don't yet. The US also consumes more energy too. France provides more than enough for its own needs.





Edit: physics world puts it succinctly: "The remaining sources - such as wind, solar and geothermal - account for only a few per cent of the global energy consumption. In addition, some of them are unreliable (wind and solar) or intermittent (tidal) and relatively costly. And although the energy in sunshine, wind, waves and tides is enough to satisfy our needs millions of times over, the difficulty is in harnessing these sources in a usable form. Despite continued efforts, wind and solar sources contribute less than 0.5% of our energy production."

Wind and Solar Suck. Hard. Not only are they inefficient, they are unreliable and expensive.


Oohh, but let me endlessly speculate about magcinuclear tech like you can speculate about magicsolar. That makes it even better.

According to Nuclear Physicist Dr. Peter Hodgson, nuclear power is the only practical alternative. I agree.



Edit:

"At the height of new nuclear construction in the 1980s, an average of 23 new nuclear reactors were being built each year, with a peak of 43 in 1983. A construction rate of one per week is therefore practicable."

We need to get back on track.




Do we need nuclear power? (page 2) - physicsworld.com

I am repeating myself here but back in the 1970's California wanted to build all of the nuclear power plants over earthquake fault lines with no plan at all for nuclear waste. I don't see anything new in the argument for nuclear power. And when you check out who is pushing it to the most extreme, you find out they are employees on the nuke corp time clock.

I propose we find out where the proponents of nuclear energy live and bury all nuke wastes there.

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I guess Nuclear Engineers do too. After all, it must be unreliable, which you are implying, if it has nuclear in the name. Right? The Nuclear Energy Institute is a reliable organization that studies and publishes on nuclear energy.


That's not a contradiction. X being strong internationally as an industry doesn't preclude X from helping towards energy independence. It means that the industry itself is international. Solar power can be a strong international industry too. I guess that means it can't help work toward energy independence. Right?



You seem to think this is some devastating argument against using nuclear power. I don't see why. Not one said nuclear is going to be the ONLY technology used. There's no need to replace all current energy with nuclear any more than there is to replace all current energy with solar. I am arguing that it is an important technology that ought to be used and can significantly address environmental and energy issues. And it's better than solar.

Telling us that it would require many plants to be entirely energy independent doesn't negate this argument.

In California, government and industry pushed hard for nuclear energy. Every concern about nuclear wastes was ignored and they went ahead and built the facilities. The waste problem is still and issue. Many nuke facilities are storing wastes on site. Rancho Seco was voted out of operation by Californians after issues were raised about the earthquake faults in its area. Then Diablo Canyon is another example of an issue. The sites themselves get too radioactive and have to be decommissions after a period of time (30-40 years).

These are not new issues. And once again we are being asked to ignore the issues, even when they have NOT gone away after 30-40 years.

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