Solar and wind energy are not reliable enough to provide base-load coverage, hydro power is restricted to very specific terrain and has a devastating effect on local ecology, and really the only other option is fossil fuels.

At this point, the options literally are nuclear, or fossil fuels. And burning more and more coal for power (which puts out more radiation and kills more people than a nuclear plant, FYI) because anything less than perfection is not suitable just seems like a really, really shortsighted idea.

An alternative energy source does not need to be perfect to be worth switching to. It just needs to be better than the status quo. And nuclear power, currently, is very much better than coal.

... and isn't any safer than nuclear power. Four people died when the Japan earthquake caused a dam to fail -- that's more deaths than the Fukushima NPP has caused, but oddly enough nobody is calling for a worldwide halt to dam construction.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam

There have been a lot of other dam failures that killed people, too.

And don't get me started on coal. I've seen estimates that pollution from coal kills 24,000 people every year in the U.S. alone. That's not even from accidents, it's just normal operation.

So I'm not too concerned about the relative risk of nuclear plants. All modern plants are far safer than Chernobyl.

But people are working on ideas that would meet your specs. The liquid thorium reactor, for example, produces orders of magnitude less waste, which is only dangerous for a few centuries. The fuel is liquid, and if it starts to overheat, a plug melts and drains it into a wide basin to cool off. The reactor can also dispose of our existing nuclear wsste.

The Thorium reactor has a lot of problems. Engineering problems that are not solved.

Remember the German Thorium reactor, the HTR 300. It died with a whimper.

What we really don't need is giving nuclear engineers more money to create huge nightmares.

The first thing before ANY nuclear engineer could come back with another idea is to provide us with a safe storage technology and clean up failed attempts like in Asse II.

Believing that the next hundred billions on new nuclear technology will be better spend than the last ones, is just naive. Especially given that the basic question of storing the waste is totally unsolved. The US abandoned now Yucca. Germany has also no storage site. Instead the waste is piling up in totally inadequate places - spent fuel is stored in pools near reactors and in dry storage near reactors.

And you're talking like nuclear engineers are some sort of freaks just waiting to unleash the next horror upon the world.

The fact is that if we want to realize UN millennium goals we need more energy. If we want to help poor asians and africans, we need more energy. If we want everybody to own a Xbox, a car and a week of vacation per year - we need more energy.

Basically only obstacle in our path of increased welfare and general well being (peace also!) on the world is access to more, cheaper energy.

And newsflash - hydro, solar and wind won't cut it. They might if we build a world supergrid. But that won't happen for at least 40 years (If we had necessary tech today - it would take 20-40 years to get it built).

So what are you proposing? Or are you just washing your hands and laying off the burden from your soul?

1. I'm not from US - and I wasn't speaking about US. I was speaking about rest of the world. Which whether you like it or not wants to live american lifestyle.

2. Current american model is indeed sustainable if we manage to bring cost of energy (total cost, including intangibles) to a low enough level.

3. I also try to minimize my impact upon world by using as few resources as I can. Being economic is fine and good. But it won't solve all our problems.

4. You resorted to an ad-hominem attack upon my person you also dared to insult me by calling me fucking lazy - when all I wanted to hear from you is what kind of alternative you propose.

5. I'm not denying that substantial progress has been made in the field of renewable power sources. The problem is that its just not enough.

6. You are vehemently claiming that Germany will be completely on renewables in 40 years. Thats what green power lobies claim. Green power is also a huge industry. Never forget that.

edit: Calling an engineer technocrat just shows that you don't even understand either the meaning of the word "engineer" or either "technocrat" for that matter.

However - I have two major issues with it.

1. You assume that green technocracy is "better" than current technocracy. Or are you proposing that we let hysteric extremist (fascist?) wing of green take over?

2. The largest issue of nuclear power is that people who are declaratively for saving environment block any and all attempts to improve current situation. In this sense - the greens are at fault for Fukushima. Otherwise this plant would be probably dismantled 10 years ago and replaced with more modern and safer model. The same goes for nuclear waste - green is playing an extremely dangerous game of trying to prove that the problem of nuclear waste is insolvable, by obstructing any attempts of solution.

3. In retrospective - show me single plan created by bureaucrats that stood the test of time.

Wow, Fukushima is caused by the Greens now? And I though it was caused by a greedy and incompetent company not willing to invest into safety.

No company would invest into a newer model. These are extremely expensive. Like 5 billion Euro in western Europe. Every electricity company is talking about EXTENDING the life of the current plants. Replacing old ones which are running with new ones is the most stupid thing an electricity company can do. What they want is getting the money from the existing plants with as little effort as possible.

Saying renewables have loads of potential just doesn't cut it.

In US last nuclear power plant has been built in 1977. Something similar holds true worldwide (there haven't been that many nuclear power plants built since then). Nuclear power production is probably THE most regulated industry in the world (and probably state owned a lot). Newer better plants haven't been built since, guess who, didn't allow it. These old reactors should be shut down and replaced, but since coal power plants are also not allowed to be built (by guess whom) and there are only that many rivers you can turn into accumulation lakes (not to mention disastrous effect on environment - species are dying out due to hydro power). World is in this weird deadlock where we are forced to expand lifetimes of these old nuclear power stations, just to keep going.

And I'm accusing you of being disingenious by pretending that current renewable plans won't have adverse side effects. And by pretending that nuclear industry is in its current state due to greed of plant operators.

And you still haven't provided me with an alternative strategy for while we wait for renewables to save us. We have 40 years of burning coal to meet our demands for energy in front of us - whether you accept it or not. We could diminish some of that impact by building safer, better nuclear power plants.

To attain our conflicting goals of improving living conditions for entire human populace, without increasing power consumption the average westerner would have to forfeit 80% of his energy consumption.

So you're telling me that we as species are willing to "devolve" to a standardized standard of living that is somewhere in the ballpark of early 50's? If so I think you are either dishonest or severely lack perspective and knowledge of human species.

I honestly believe that finding additional power sources and utilizing them to satisfy and further expand our consumption of power is the most pragmatic, fair and painless way forward for our species.

To express myself poetically - I believe that god wants us to increase our power consumption up to the level where we will be able to consume entire star systems and beyond. I might be weird, but I also believe that single "purpose" of life is to increase entropy. Thus a perfect life form would expand its power consumption to the level where it would drain the whole universe of its energy potential.

Disclaimer: Proposed 80% is a number I pulled out of where the sun don't shine.

It is a fallacy to say that we cannot improve living conditions for the entire human populace without increasing power consumption. They are not conflicting goals.

It is a fallacy to say that the standard of living must devolve for all those in the western world to the 1950s era levels, to support improvement for the other 80% of the human populace.

You are drawing conclusions based on that fallacy to claim that I am dishonest and lacking in perspective. It is a fallacy to claim any percentage forfeit is necessary to improve living conditions.

You may believe that it is painless to find additional power sources, but the power sources you advocate have already been found and demonstrated as not painless.

Your poetic expression is utterly disgusting. What happens to your perfect life form after it has drained the whole universe of its energy potential? Or even before it has drained it, when the sun don't shine?

Huh? How do you propose increasing standard of living for 70% of worlds population that currently uses way less than you or me or our US cousins? ( Total Energy consumption per capita: US 87KWh, EU 40KWh, China 18KWh, India 6KWh, The World Average=6.6KWh). Unless you try to argue that standard of living has nothing to do with energy consumption or even that 3rd world people have higher standard of living than we do?

>It is a fallacy to say that the standard of living must devolve for all those in the western world to the 1950s era levels, to support improvement for the other 80% of the human populace.

It is? If we freeze the quota of produced energy - then we have turned energy market into a zero sum market. Thus any increase of consumption by one party is counterbalanced by decrease of another. The 50's and 80% is indeed wrong - since I just used them as arbitrary placeholders. Please don't expect me to go on a 10year research, just due to an internet argument.

>You are drawing conclusions based on that fallacy to claim that I am dishonest and lacking in perspective. It is a fallacy to claim any percentage forfeit is necessary to improve living conditions.

You haven't provided a single proof of your claims. You just keep spinning your make-believe story. Also I didn't say you're dishonest AND lacking in perspective. I said that you are either - but you might as well be both.

>You may believe that it is painless to find additional power sources, but the power sources you advocate have already been found and demonstrated as not painless.

Its your delusion that there are painless or negative side effect free power sources. Those used currently are used since in fact they (due to various reasons) ARE the LEAST painful of known options. Also for nuclear power we by now know very well what the negative side effects are (under what circumstances).

What you're lobbying for has only plans - like some very smart people predicted we would be on Mars in 40 years. I certainly believe that all solar, wind, water and trees society is possible. But we need to get by until we get there.

Regarding my belief regarding energy consumption of living beings... The whole universe is trying to equalize its energy potentials (the entropy) and life is just one of mechanisms that helps to dissipate them. So any life at all, now matter how green and how much it tries to not eat animals (instead eating imported papayas?) it will contribute to the untimely thermic death of the universe.

I never stated that there were painless or negative side effect free power sources, you are the one who stated it was the most painless way forward. The additional power sources you are advocating are nuclear. I said nothing about eating animals. The whole universe isn't trying to do anything. When the power sources you speak of are consumed by your ideal life form, is it going to consume itself? Have you ever heard that energy is neither created nor destroyed, it just changes form? Contributing to as animals do, against directly causing like you advocate your ideal form doing, are different notions.

As far as my hypothetical uber life form goes - its an thought experiment. It was never meant to go and devour all there is.

I'm well aware of conservation of energy and I wasn't talking about it. I was talking about equalization of potentials. Thats what entropy means. The tendency that our universe has to equalize energy potentials. Thats what wind is. And thats why stars shine, the ice melts etc... Because if an more stable (read equal) energy state is available - the universe will find a way to achieve it.

Just as all elements heavier the iron try to (and will eventually) fission into lighter particles and just as elements lighter than iron try to (and again will eventually) fuse together, until eventually whole universe will consist of nothing but iron atoms. That would be so called thermic death of the universe, which is valid only in some end of universe scenarios, which depend upon shape of spacetime.

For current production reactors, that's enough to buy time but not enough to completely prevent meltdown. Some more advanced reactors can't melt down, due to this effect. Pebble beds are one. Another is the Integral Fast Breeder, which we had working at the Argonne national laboratory back in the 90s. It was so safe, they shut down the cooling system entirely, twice, and each time the reaction just quietly stopped. The reactor was also designed to be proliferation-resistant.

If you're concerned about nuclear waste, fast breeders are the way to go. Instead of using one percent of the potential of the fuel, like current reactors do, they use it all. They eat nuclear waste and depleted uranium. Clinton was anti-nuclear and shut the project down, so now instead of using depleted uranium for fuel, we shoot it at people to secure oil supplies.

Personally, I'm not that concerned about the waste. From the book Physics for Future Presidents, page 176:

"Colorado, where much of the uranium is obtained, is a geologically active region, full of faults and fissures and mountains rising out of the prairie, and its surface rock contains about a billion tons of uranium. The radioactivity in this uranium is 20 times greater than the legal limit for Yucca Mountain, and it will take more than 13 billion years--not just a few hundred--for the radioactivity to drop by a factor of 10. Yet water that runs through, around, and over this radioactive rock is the source of the Colorado River, which is used for drinking water in much of the Wst, including Los Angeles and San Diego. And unlike the glass pellets that store the waste in Yucca Mountain, most of the uranium in the Colorado ground is water-soluble. Here is the absurd-sounding conclusion: if the Yucca Mountain facility were at full capacity and all the waste leaked out of its glass containment immediately and managed to reach groundwater, the danger would still be 20 times less than that currently posed by natural uranium leaching into the Colorado River."

Of course we're actually storing wastes on site. I'm not sure why the anti-nuclear people who shut down Yucca thought that was better. But it does have the advantage of leaving the fuel available for fast breeders.

[citation needed] I live in (western) Europe, and remember neither of these; neither does Wikipedia. Some milk and vegetables were destroyed as precautionary measures, but that is about it.

The Fukushima NPP is very old. Reactor 1 was already scheduled to be decommissioned at the end of March, in fact.

Does the chain reaction stop when everything fails? No? Then it's not fail-safe. Obviously.

At the Fukushima NPP, the chain reactions in reactors 1, 2, and 3 stopped about 5 seconds after the earthquake hit, due to the automatic SCRAM triggered by the detection of abnormal ground acceleration.

In the case the (very old) reactor design used at Fukushima, this was an active insertion; modern power plants use passive SCRAM (usually relying only on gravity) so that even if everything fails the chain reaction will still be shut down.

What we need to do with both nuclear and conventional power facilities is close everything from pre-1985 or so. The pollution coming from the dirty, grandfathered-in (to higher pollution) coal plants in the South, for example, are very likely to kill and sicken a lot more people than nuclear power.

I don't like commenting on things I know only a little about, however, one thing is getting overlooked when people make this argument.

The newer designs are usually PWRs which are stable by design as loss of water or power slows down the reaction. Unfortunately, they are expensive to build (billions of dollars) and have a limited life due to the challenges of containing pressure with metals exposed to radiation. This makes them barely economic over their lifetime at todays energy prices.

The UK has allowed the planning and building of new PWRs. Unfortunately, the companies involved are reluctant to go ahead without some sort of subsidy or carbon tax.

If any of the above is wrong, I'd like to be corrected. However, I feel this is a valid point that is rarely made.