Agreed that we need new nukes. We should use standardized designs (significantly cutting costs), unlike in the past. We should push the NIMBY’s out of the way so we can store whatever wastes we don’t reprocess (which we should do). Considering that 1000 or so nuclear weapons were detonated underground at Yucca Flats, NV, why not bury the waste there? It’s already loaded with radioactive nuclides, which are not glassified or contained in any way.
If we are forced to buy into the religion of CO2 reduction, then by all reason build nukes. But that utterly fails to solve transportation problems. Over half of US oil imports go into transportation.
In the medium term, here are no large scale, viable alternatives to CO2 emitting combustion mobile engines.
Biofuel fails for many reasons, and the bloom is off the rose as the price of food rises and everyone (even greenies) realizes the environmental damage of creating and watering new farmland for biofuel crops
Batteries and hydrogen, of course, are not energy producing technologies, only an alternative to gasoline as a storage technology. Hence switching to either would require vast increases in primary energy production in order to produce the electricity or hydrogen.
Batteries have way too low a specific energy density and are too expensive.
Hydrogen is hard to work with (it leaks out of almost anything, burns invisibly, and embrittles metals on contact). Both technologies require a vast infrastructural change (at enormous cost to the economy).
Batteries are not improving rapidly enough to solve the storage problem, and as they achieve higher density, they become increasingly dangerous. A high capacity battery in a collision can become a bomb. Try driving a nail into a Lithium Ion battery – NO – DON’T – It will inljure you! The best batteries today have 1/40th the specific energy density of gasoline, and a battery is a vastly more expensive energy container than a gasoline tank. Oh, and batteries do not have the temperature range tolerance of gasoline – here in Arizona they have dramatically shortened lives, and the most modern batteries lose charge (energy) very rapidly while just sitting in the heat (full discharge in a week). Furthermore, battery engineering for electric cars has been proceeding for over 100 years, with little to show for it. While there are outlier chances that new technologies such as nano-tech could make major changes, we cannot bet on it.
One good approach for mobile energy needs is goal gassification, which can produce gasoline and other POL chemicals directly from coal. And guess what… North America is the OPEC of coal – we have huge reserves.
Furthermore, we could produce coal electrical plants much faster than nuclear.
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As an aside, NIMBY has been replaced by a new word that encompases both movements: BANANA – Build Absolutely Nothing At No time Anywhere.
