Nuclear Power Output Steadily Climbing Worldwide

[oil pan 4]

Old reactor designs are built around "nothing bad will ever happen" new designs are built around lessons learned with the ones that did fail.
They include more passive safety devices and designs, less pumps, fewer valves, fewer moving parts in general, more instrumentation to warn of trouble.
The most interesting design is the reactor flood reservoir.
The idea is they build the reactor kind of under ground and build a sealed lake on top of it. If it goes bad the reactor containment dome is flooded, thus no melt down, no steam or hydrogen explosions.
All that could be avoided with molten salt reactors.

If California wants to pay 50 cents a kwh for solar power and wind power that's been transmitted half way across the country I say let them.
They are going to make west texas and eastern NM wind tycoons the next mega billionaires buying all that wind power.

[cRiPpLe_rOoStEr]

When the first Brazilian nuke powerplant was installed in Angra dos Reis, the Brazilian Navy started to plan safety measures and even set a nuclear emergency department on its main hospital in Rio de Janeiro. Despite the only serious nuclear emergency to have ever happened in Brazil being the Cesium-137 leakage in Goiânia in '87, there is still some fierce opposition to nukes in the country (plus hydro power is widespread throughout the country). But anyway, nukes would be the last option if I were the one choosing some power supply.

[oil pan 4]

We are past the point of building more dams in the US.
I like hydro power, aside from the huge death toll it has incurred over the last half century, cheap power is nice.

[NeilBlanchard]

What happened to "too cheap to meter"?

[redpoint5]

We haven't figured out how to do what the Sun does without thinking.

[gone-ot]

Originally Posted by redpoint5

We haven't figured out how to do what the Sun does without thinking.

Oh, we can do what the Sun does so easily, it's just that OUR 'moments-in-the-Sun' (Hiroshima, Nagasaki) only EXISTED for fractions of a second...and...ended in "mushroom clouds." Making it happen is easy (relatively), it's the controlling it that's troublesome.

[redpoint5]

Hiroshima and Nagasaki were fission bombs. I'm saying the sun provides useful fusion energy in just about the ideal amount for humans to benefit, and does so without thinking. We've yet to create beneficial fusion energy.

[seifrob]

If I recall correctly, nuclear fusion gives so much byproduct heat that we would boil the Earth. With global warming that bad now, I am only glad we do not produce "cheap power for everyone".
There is nothing like "zero impact power". Even hydro can be bad (say "Three Gorges Dam").

I see it from the perspective of a densely populated country in central Europe, and see that nuclear is the least impacting form for mass production of electricity. wind is fine, solar is fine, hydro is fine, but you cannot make your country rely on that. Plus, more solar farms, less fields is the equation here.

As californiacivic said, the key is to consume less, to produce more effectively.

[Ecky]

As usual, I find myself agreeing strongly with redpoint5. I can sympathize with californiacivic, but ultimately nuclear provides cheap, clean energy which has statistically been among the least harmful ways to generate electricity.

Having worked for fossil fuel plants, it was enlightening to learn that they regularly test the soil and water around the plant to ensure everything has "safe" levels of mercury, cadmium and lead, which are released from their stacks. I'd far rather live near a nuclear reactor than a coal or oil plant, or even gas turbine. Of course, I'd rather live near none of these and rely more on hydro and rooftop solar/wind...

[sendler]

Originally Posted by Ecky

Of course, I'd rather live near none of these and rely more on hydro and rooftop solar/wind...

But the density is not anywhere near the same scale especially when you throw in solar and windfarm capacity factors of 25%. Or less for rooftop. Germany's vast solar buildout averages 11%. How cost effective is that? Not including the cost of ever adding storage at TeraWatt hour scales.