If only we could hook up the righteous indignation generated in this forum to the national grid, we would of course be sound as a pound!

In terms of nuclear power then of course there is no carbon, but the small matter of waste which takes 10,000 years to stop being radioactive. Not an attractive proposition.

Well wood is "radioactive", you are "radioactive", you can't take a black or white approach to things which are radioactive, it comes in degrees. Some nuclear waste is pretty weakly radioactive, remember the longer something is radioactive for the more weakly radioactive it is

The biggest radioactive waste worries are the waste products that are dangerously radioactive for ~1,000 years; nothing to scoff at, but perhaps not as concerning as global warming

It is concerning if there ends up being lots of the stuff or if it ends up somewhere where in 500 hundred years time people crack it open not realising what is in there... hence the competition run by the US government a few years ago to make a symbol to denote extreme deathly toxic danger which could be understood by civilisations in 10,000 years time to put on top of their weapons waste.

Windmills are much less dangerous

Croatia (where I live - pop. 5.000.000) has only 50% of one nuclear plant (we share it with Slovenia). We also use a significant chunk of our hydro-potential, and we just started installing wind-power. Yet, more than 50% is from oil and coal, and the debate is going on now whether we should go for another nuclear plant, or 2-3 giant coal&oil ones.
I'm for nuclear, here, there and everywhere (yes, including Iran).

LOL. Yes, windmills are much less dangerous. And if you want to take a simplistic approach to world affairs, then that one sentence says enough for you. If you want to talk about the practicality and feasibility of windmills as opposed to nuclear power, please share.

Windmills kill birds. When you take into account that some bird-species have only 200 surviving individuals, building 10 windmills on a nearby island can take out 3-4 of them every year, effectively stopping their ability to maintain population.

Nothing is simple :)

First. What nuclear power are we talking about? If you are talking about fission, then my opinion is negative, for various reasons:

1) It is a non-renewable source of energy.
2) While it is true that the operational cost per unit of power produced put is convenient, the connected costs, social, environmental, etc... (like storage of waste, costs related to treatment of environment and people in case of accidents, costs related to extraction of prime matter, etc...).
3) Some countries are prevented to access that technology (see the case of Iran) so it would again put the world in the same situation of have's and have not's, with associated wars, unfair distribution of richness, etc...
4) The risks associated to those are simply too big if compared to the benefit.

If you are talking about nuclear fusion, I am all in favour of keeping on the research in that direction, and I believe this source of power will have a very important role in the future.

To answer the summary question about "Where should the world get its energy from?" my answer would be:

1) by reducing its consumption (essentially via optimising its use: automotive should rely on electricity rather than internal combustion, housing should be energy-passive, bio-catalyzers should be used in industrial processess where possible, hence avoiding high-pressure and high-temperature procedures, etc...). This could cut down our energy consumption of more than 50% without changing our lifestyle (in terms of goods, facilities and services)

2) by renewable sources of energies. Among these, wind is for sure the more "democratic" as wind is aboundant all over the planet (differently for example than sun radiation or sea tides...).

@Denzel: any process of human antropisation has an environmental impact. The point is about the scale of it and what are the alternatives. The problem of birds being taken out by windmills is real, but it is on a totally different scale than - for example - having to face a tragedy like Chernobyl. Additionally, the present trend (at least in the projects I followed) is to install vertical axis windmills rather then horizontal axis ones were the impacts of the installation seriously endangers a population. [In case you are not current with present wind technology: vertical axis windmills are more compact, more silent, can operate in high winds, and do not kill birds]

@Treefarn: I don't get the point you attempted to do with Tarablus. Windmills ARE far less dangerous/harmful than nuclear power stations. While this is not the only factor to be considered, surely the hazard represented by nuclear powerplants AND their waste AND those areas that have been contaminated by past accidents are the single most important factor to be considered. Maybe I missed your point at all?

Nuclear all the way. If we want to get off oil in time to save ourselves, nuclear must be implemented.

You must consider two fundamental things about energy:
- Potential (is there enough?)
- Price

Nuclear is good on price, but is as oil, coal and gas limited by it is fuel (uranium).

If you look at potential alone you have the following possibilities:
- Solar (1% of deserts is enough for the total energy supply)
- OTEC (Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion). Not really a proven technology.
- Nuclear, with uranium from seawater. Extracting from sea water is certainly challenging.
- Nuclear breeders. These power plants were extremely expensive and plagued by technical problems. Uranium from sea water is then certainly a possibility, because of the higher use of uranium.
- Nuclear fusion, still a promise.
- Algea in large salt water bassins. Not proven technology.

From the technologies that have high potential, solar is currently the most proven technology, but is still rather expensive.

Lucas

So, nuclear (not considering breeders) is just burning the next cheap fuel.

You might not consider this as a reason for objecting it.

Lucas

Fusion. Duh. Only problem is, the Swiss are keeping all their technology holed up in bunkers somewhere.

I have often thought that the issue of Nuclear Power is a matter of placement.
People were really spoked by the Three Mile Island accident in the US and of course the Chernyoble disaster.
On the one hand I remember in my youth that we actually exploded atomic bombs in places in America. So then I thought why not build atomic plants there and then run the wires with transformers etc out to where ever.
The problem with the 'waste' I naively thought could be shot into outspace and aimed at the sun, or later on we could bury it on the border between say Iraq and Iran and make a wasteland at someone else's place, but then again they would dig it up and throw it at each other or us.
Now many years later I am less squeamish about the production plant but more worried about the waste issue. I had thought that the Brits had a chemical process to break things down to a less dangerous state that was running well in Wales somewhere, but it has been a while since I develed into the subject.
The less sexy and less dangerous alternatives of Wind/Solar is attractive to me and especially appealing since it can be done on a mass scale at a low level of participation whereas the nuclear option is only available on a large corporate or national basis.
From a security point, tens of thousands of small solar and wind units are better than a single nuclear power plant. From a population involvement aspect, small scale is a more long lasting approach in that it brings a greater mass of experimentation and options for enterprising people to make improvements.

Mac's response is right on... As a current professional with an environmental organization, and with an engineering degree, I would say that Mac touched on almost all of the major concerns with nuclear power.

I'd like to expound on a few of his points...
1) Simply stated and accurate. World could only run on nuclear power for several decades (if we drew all of our power from that source.)
2) In addition to what Mac stated, nuclear power is a 'boutique' fuel source, meaning that it is only made possible by the massive amounts of energy (in shipping, refining, mining, and processing) supplied from a 'conventional' fossil fuel economy. More importantly, however, is the simple fact that there is not a single nuclear plant on the planet today which has not been both built and supported by massive government subsidies. This means that nuclear (when including the cost of direct cash infusions by the government) is not a price competitive energy source. In other words, it is more expensive than coal, hydro, natural gas, and YES, even more expensive per kw than WIND.
3) This is the best argument against hawkish nuke supporters... We cannot export nuclear technology to the developing world, but we can export wind and solar. How can we suggest to the Iran's of the world that we will wash our hands of global warming with this cute high tech solution, but they must either stay poor or burn coal? It sets a dramatically bad example and undermines any non-proliferation attempt.
4)--- Nuclear is a nerdy hi-tech issue, but it scores incredibly low on practicality.

I've studied energy extensively, and even looked into the core (while running) of a research nuclear reactor, but building more nukes is incredibly bad policy.

Oh, yes, thanks whalen... actually I realised only now that a sentence in my point "2" is missing... but you completed wonderfully. :)

Whalen

1. true only for 1970s nuclear technology, reprocessing could make it last for thousands of years. Have you heard of the integral fast reactor project? It was a very interesting research project that answered important criticisms of last centuries nuclear technologies and was axed shortly before completion, for reasons I don't understand.

2. There is no reason that the electrical power required to make nuclear possible couldn't itself be produced by nuclear energy. As for mining and shipping, that's a problem we have to solve anyway for other purposes: we can't just stop all mining and shipping!

You claim that nuclear is more expensive than wind, this is true per unit of energy produced, but have you factored in the cost of dealing with its intermittency?
There are two possible ways of dealing with this problem: storing it or transmitting it from somewhere else where the wind is blowing. Both of these are VERY expensive. There are very few technologies for storing energy on a grid scale. pumped storage hydro is possibly the most promising, but even it just doesn't enough capacity.
As for transmitting it from somewhere else, that means massively redundant amounts of generation and massively more grid at very low losses.
I actually don't think its possible for wind to replace coal at any price with current technology. The best use I can think of it is to build a lot of it, enough to replace coal when the wind is blowing at average speeds, also build a lot more gas generation to replace coal when the wind is not blowing: not a perfect green house solution, but a lot better than coal on its own. Gas has the advantage it can be turned up and down quickly, coal can't. Perhaps we'll invent a storage solution before the gas runs out.

Sure nuclear is more expensive than fossil fuel and hydro, but we have to stop using fossil fuel and we have run out of places to make more hydro.

3. If you don't trust them sell it over the border to them from somewhere you do. When they have proved trustworthy then they can build their own nuclear power stations. If they don't like those choices they stay poor.

4. Nerds seem to be as divided on the nuclear issue as the general population. Just how is anything else any more practical?

Glad you wrote Caviare.

1. Reprocessing spent uranium into fuel (plutonium or otherwise) only yields a fraction (less than 20%) of the original power of the material. Reprocessing has been brandied about as some kind of way to drastically increase energy supply, but not only is it dangerous and incredibly expensive, it also yields little energy. (and all of this is not to mention the superior weapons capability for plutonium, oh wait, I just did...)

2. You're absolutely correct in saying that transmitting would be the wrong way to go, and would not only be expensive, but also lose amazing amounts of efficiency. Storing it however, is not expensive (as you alluded.) You say mention a wonderful storage device and then change arguments to state that it doesn't have capacity, which is true right now. The whole point of this thread is to consider which energy sources are the right ones to Be Developed. The energy storage capacity for pumped hydro will continue to develop as the source continues to be developed, and this will not only be simple and safe, it will also be cheaper than developing 100 nuclear plants.

The next paragraph states your thoughts on what to do, yet they do not mention efficiency and conservation. One third of the entire US consumption of energy could be saved today simply by updating our infrastructure to current energy efficiency standards. The numbers overseas are even more promising. Combine that with clean renewable energy sources including wind with pumped storage, Solar with thermal storage, and the problem will be solved in the next 40 years. Consider the alternative... We MUST STOP emitting co2 or we will be living on a dramatically different planet which may or may not (at least at our current numbers and affluence) support our species. You seems studied enough on energy, you should study the science on climate change. It is morally bankrupt to even consider avoiding this responsibility.

3. Now you've become the arbiter sentencing a couple billion people on this planet to abject poverty? Why do you think you deserve the authority to decide the fate of a large percentage of the human species?

Simply because our country has seized power and developed un-answerable weapons? I personally think that this makes you(/the developed world/the most violent countries) peculiarly undeserving of making these decisions for other people. It's shocking to hear a 'might makes right' argument when talking about starving people.

4. I hope I've clearly laid out the practicality of something else.

I don't mean to be rude, but this is a debate concerning the future of this planet and the human species, so I'm not about to pull punches.

Solar + Wind + Biogas + Municipal Waste + Cellulosic Ethanol (small amounts for rural areas)

Diverse energy portfolios. that's the future. That's the lesson of oil.

Pebble bed nuke isn't too bad though

oh, + efficiency

"Windmills kill birds. When you take into account that some bird-species have only 200 surviving individuals, building 10 windmills on a nearby island can take out 3-4 of them every year, effectively stopping their ability to maintain population."

Windmills kill less birds then windows and house cats. if you are concerned about birds, you should be concerned about windows.

I think that Nuclear Fission is, at best, what we'll have to use to hold us over until we have something better, like fusion or cheaper and more effective versions of renewable sources we have now.

@eric.n.whalen: I greately appreciated your answer to Caviare, as it saved a lot of typing to me! :)

I would just comment on the following:

1) Pumped storage hydro has a number of BIG problems when scrutinised under the lenses of environmental impact. Artificial basins typically used for this kind of operations on large scale (so not for a local domestic plant) have a lasting and dramatic impact on the hydro-geological balance of entire regions. It would be environmentally (and economically) more convenient to store energy next to where it needed. The most promising new technologies under these aspects are those related to hydrolysis (and thus storing H as a fuel for electric cells). In some cases the advancements have been incredible (for example: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/oxygen-0731.html)

2) In fact, how we produce energy is only part of the problem. The other one is exactly how we re-distribute it. If we want to really go for local production and storage with proxy redistribution (the greenest model so far conceived) "grids" will be to redesigned. At the moment in facts they are more like "trees" than networks and - while they work fairly well for what they have been designed to do (bring power from the power station to the users) they are very ineffective and inefficient in transferring energy from an end user/producer to another one.

3) Biomimicry can teach us a lot in the field of energy production and usage. Just think to how the plants extract energy from light 3 times more efficiently than we do, and they do it without rare metals and high technology, but with the most abundant and common materials ever. Or just think to how fish can extract fresh water out of sea water at environmental pressure and temperature without much energy... Luckily, some research is tapping exactly on these kind of ideas, take for example this one from the MIT: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/oxygen-0731.html

3) About the comments on staying poor and being trustworthy: the point maid of Caviare was bordering racism and it was surely past the border of stupidity. I will however limit myself to remark that if there is a country that champions irresponsibility in the use of nuclear technology, that country is USA... as they drop 2 nuke bombs for no other reason than to "check them out", tried a few more out in the New Mexico desert, destroyed an entire archipelago with their experiments, contributed to the nuclear escalation with CCCP, tested nuclear-operated airplanes (just imagine what would have happened if one of those would have crashed), etc, etc...

4) When evaluating the costs of a large-scale technology, ALL costs should be accounted for (including environmental, social, etc...) before you can say it is viable. Some time ago I read a study (unluckily on paper and can't therefore provide a link) that was trying to estimate the FULL cost of a can operated by CFC gases. Well, once the costs generated by the ozone depletion were taken in account (environmental damages, costs of UV protections, cancer skin cancer treatment costs, etc...), it turned out that a single can - purchased maybe for 1 or 2 dollars - had in reality a true cost of various hundreds of US$.

4) About the Nerds being divided, well... that's does not count, as science does not go by counting the number of nerds supporting their favourite team, but by reviewing conclusions of scientific experiments and validating them. "Nerds" were divided over whether tobacco had or had not a negative impact on health. "Nerds" were divided until very recently on whether climate change was human-generated or not.... Fortunately the scientific community was not.

Sorry, here is 5 am, I am a bit tired and I realised I did a few typos. Also, the first link was meant to be to an article explaining how carbon nanotubes can be used to storage big amounts of hydrogen at relatively low pressures. Sorry for the mistakes.

I'm not sure if anyone has commented about this already on this thread, but what if we "individualized" energy production? By putting solar panels on rooftops, electric cars that can be recharged, etc....It would certainly solve the dilemma of where energy comes from.

i realize that this is a radical idea, completely unnecessary, horribly inefficient in almost any way you look at it, and probably would be the most expensive undertaking in world history should any country try to implement it.

But ignoring all that, would it work?

There would be many advantages of such a system. For on thing by decentralizing power production you would reduce the risk of your power supply being destroyed in the event of a war, terrorist attack or a natural disaster. Some people do put solar panels on their roofs, and produce enough power to meet their own needs and are able to sell the surplus power to the grid. The main disadvantage is cost.

Interesting topic, especially given that my community is considering building a nuclear plant in our backyard. Excelon has an option on a large ranch/farm on the edge of our county. One of our biggest concerns with the plant is not so much the risk/dangers of nuclear energy but the use of resources to run a plant....namely the amount of water needed to cool the reactors. We have had concerns that we would not have enough water as our community grows for years prior to considering a nuclear plant. We are still in the early stages of discussion though.

What about this: Artificial photosynthesis. We could make hydrogen and oxygen from our water, which could be used for electricity generation. That's what plants have been doing for 4.5 billion years, why can't we...that's the thing we should research.

Morally bankrupt, stupid, racist, cool it guys! Lets brainstorm, not abuse. I'm sure we are all trying to save the planet!
I'd love to see a practical storage technology in preference to nuclear energy, I think almost everyone would. mac's link not withstanding I'm just not convinced there is one on the horizon. Show me some figures, that's all it will take.