Life of the Mind wrote:

Lifeofthemind wrote:
“James did get something right, although I don’t think he meant to.”

Oh, I got more than one thing right. I’d ask you to do some research on solar energy, the discoveries that have been made there, and the amounts of capital that are flowing into that industry.

Can solar solve all of our energy problems? Absolutely not. But the rates of progress in the industry in terms of price/performance are undeniable. Check out the funding received by and the personnel recruited by Nanosolar, as just one example.

Solar has tremendous potential for the United States due to the amount of sunlight falls on vast square miles of rather currently useless land in our southwest. It’s a resource that none of the other northern hemisphere industrial powers have in as much abundance as we do.

“The problems facing us in rolling out nuclear power are not technical but legal. The party of the trial lawyers have waged a 30 year campaign to obfuscate the issues, delay implementation and inflate the costs of nuclear power.”

This is true, but it’s much deeper than that. We DO lack technical skills in nuclear power compared to the French or the Japanese. French reactors are more advanced than ours. And secondly, and this is very important, because our nuclear industry has been neglected for so long we are REALLY lacking in skilled people for the industry. All kinds of nuclear engineering programs in our universities have been completely shut down. I worked for a number of years for a guy with a degree in nuclear energy, and his career in that field was destroyed by this and he never wasted an opportunity to describe to me what has been lost by our country in that field.

Fully developing our nuclear capacity in a cost effective manner won’t come easy. We can no more pass a law and have a bunch of nuclear power plants than the Chinese can pass a law and field Nimitz Class aircraft carriers.

And then there are the legal and political costs involved, as well, which you very clearly pointed out.

I’m for nuclear power, I’m for developing this capacity. But it’s silly to think we can develop massive capabilities quickly.

As to those who complain about the strain on the grid to our electrical system if electric cars come online, this is very much true. We will need to make up some deficit. However most people issuing this complaint entire avoid the most important fact about electric cars: they are vastly, vastly more energy efficient than gasoline powered cars.