No, economic reality fixed this problem. Once the true costs of nuclear came to light - the cost of proper safety, disposal of waste, and decommissioning - investors in energy projects started backing away from nuclear.

I agree that the public is too paranoid about nuclear power, but believe it or not that's not the reason why the world isn't nuclear powered yet. The reason is because nuclear power is just insanely expensive. Even in the 70's (they heyday of 'Nuclear power is the future!', before Chernobyl and TMI and Fukushima) the rate of new reactor construction was too low to even keep up with increasing demand. And the rate is much much lower today.

> Wind and solar, while nice and clean, probably aren't going to ever be capable of delivering all the power the world needs/wants.

They are capable of delivering far more power than we'd ever need on this planet.

> Most here are science types, and realize there is only one thing that can be done with it. Burn it up.

'Burning it up' is obscenely expensive. Deep geological storage is by far the safest and most economically sound solution.

I'm the first to agree that a lot of current regulation on the nuclear industry is too choking and limiting. For instance, the constraints on getting new nuclear reactor designs approved. However, a lot of the regulation really is necessary. You need several layers of containment around your reactor and this is the main reason building a reactor is expensive. You need to dispose of your waste safely. Deep geological storage is probably the best option. Once your reactor's life ends, you can't just let it sit around. You need to decommission it carefully and this too is expensive.

Unless you're comfortable with half the population being born with birth defects, you need to do nuclear safely. Nuclear reactions being an inherently messy business, is expensive to do safely. There's no getting around that.

I've got nothing against nuclear. I think nuclear power can play an important role in our energy future. But if you think '4th gen nuclear power' is necessary OR sufficient to solve our energy problems, you are not living in reality.

There are only a handful of nuclear power technologies that have been demonstrated practically, among them PWR, CANDU, AGR, and a few others. They all have in common the fact that they are obscenely expensive ($4 billion might buy you half a power plant). They are far more expensive than wind or solar on average, even taking into account subsidies, and even taking into account intermittent generation. It's not clear at all if '4th gen' designs - by which I'm assuming you're referring to various fast reactor designs and molten salt reactors - would be any cheaper than what we currently have. In fact all indications are that they would be far MORE expensive! And this is even assuming they can be demonstrated to work, which mostly hasn't been done yet.

Nuclear power has one thing going for it, which is that it provides constant power in large amounts with relatively small space requirements. This makes it cost-effective near dense population centers that don't have ready access to wind or solar in the required quantities.

Nuclear is great but we can do without it if we have to. Solar power is sufficient to provide all our energy needs. In fact it could even happen that solar would provide us with a surplus of energy. Bill Gates is a smart guy. He's figured out that the main barrier to widespread adoption of renewables is storage. However, he's falling victim to the typical techie fallacy of putting all faith in technological miracles. We don't need a technological miracle. We need an organizational and political miracle.

In addition to my other reply, you are a perfect example of why pro-nuke nuts are dangerous individuals who should probably be kept in secure institutions.

So let's wrap up this discussion. You lack the ability to read, the ability to absorb facts and analyze them, and also completely lack knowledge of electrical power is generated around the world.

I actually want to thank you because from now on whenever I want to talk about the Dunning-Kruger effect I can refer back to this thread instead of a boring wikipedia article.

You know that Linux isn't an actual company which is competing with Microsoft, right? And putting your own software on a competing platform is very different from actually BUYING something from a competitor and using it as part of your platform. Of course in reality it's not so simple; it's possible that the AMD people figured this would be to their net advantage. And this fits in with the recent pattern of AMD conceding sectors of the market to Intel and focusing more on its core businesses.

> Name them.

Seriously? You're too lazy to google?

Look up north. Canada provides most of its base load power with hydroelectric supplemented with a smaller fraction of oil and natural gas. Coal plays a very small role. Nuclear plays a role but it's almost all around the major population centers of Ontario, consistent with my first point.

There are plenty of other countries (some of them large countries) which don't use coal and nuclear to any large extent. Norway is mostly hydro and wind. Iceland is mostly geothermal and hydro. Brazil is nearly 80% renewables.

But go on, explain to me how nuclear and coal are absolutely essential and everyone uses them. Moronic.

s/your/you're

Again, no it's not. Base load is the minimum amount of electric load over 24 hours. Base load power is the amount of power the grid can always be guaranteed (with a certain amount degree of confidence) to produce. Base load power plants aren't just coal and nuclear. They can be anything just as long as adequate spare and storage capacity exists. If you have a solar plant that produces 1 MW during the day and another plant (perhaps a gas plant) that supplements it with 1 MW during the night, plus a storage facility (perhaps pumped hydro or other type) to take over when there are clouds out, you have 1 MW of base load capacity and 3 MW of potential peak capacity. This is a greatly simplified example that illustrates how most grids around the world work - by bringing various power sources online when they are needed. Smart grids close the loop by controlling the demand side so that the difference between peak and base load capacity is reduced.

I'm sorry but saying you HAVE to have either coal or nuclear is just plain dumb - no offense - and there are many countries in the world that use neither of those to any large extent but get by just fine and rarely have blackouts.

What your describing is common sense and most people who think seriously about energy consider decentralized solar to be an important part of our energy future. It's exactly the kind of scenario that Tesla's Powerwall is designed to facilitate. And it's also the reason why there is a massive campaign of FUD (and serious opposition) against solar energy.

Arguments about nuclear power seem to often end in this way - with pro-nuke nuts blaming the failure of their technology on 'hippies'. The facts on the ground paint a different picture, though.

I'm not talking about coal.

You are using the term 'base load' incorrectly. No source of power is on all the time. The key thing is if you can predict in advance when your power plant will go offline, and how much power you have from storage and other sources when that happens. Complementing wind and solar with batteries and pumped hydro can give a pretty good base load capacity and an approximately 2x peak load capacity. Even so it still winds up being much cheaper than nuclear.

Fast breeders don't work. They're a failed idea. The 'true believers' remind me of people who still obsess over their Amigas.

LFTR is an interesting concept but it has yet to be demonstrated to work. Keep in mind that MSRE was NOT a LFTR demonstrator; the critical part of LFTR is the Actinide separation step which MSRE did not attempt because the technology did not exist at the time (and still doesn't, as far as we know). I'd give LFTR at least 30 years before the concept reaches the maturity level for widespread deployment. Meanwhile, back in the real world, we need clean power NOW.