Ok, we find now that we can replace - on average - 15% of the coal burned in a given plant if we retrofit it with solar thermal.

Great - now we have to go that extra step and replace *100%* of the coal burned in a given plant with small, right sized nuclear reactors like:

• hyperion power
• babcock and wilcox
• NuScale power
• sandia labs
• tsinghua university

not to mention south africa's PBMR, and the travelling wave reactor (intellectual ventures). It's simple - make a mass-producable, small, efficient reactor, use it to boil water at both the pressure and temperature of your average coal-fired power plant, and *turn off the burning of coal altogether*. And do it in scale.

That way, there isn't a horrendous capital cost (pocket nuke reactors are small and you are only replacing the boiler), the fuel is cheaper, and as a side benefit current coal plants increase their capacity factor from ~75% to above 90%.

This is really the only way to combat global warming in a way that profits everybody; it allows developing countries to leverage their experience in building coal-fired power plants to build carbon-neutral sources, and given the factory approach is comprehensively scalable, as scalable as producing fighters or bombers in WWII.

We have to do this. We have to stop dicking around with solutions that only work 15% of the way, have appallingly low capacity factors (for 53 days in a row, the windmills in denmark produced basically nada in the way of electricity, texas has an average of 8.7% capacity (ref: here ).

The stakes are too high. I encourage everyone to watch:

http://fora.tv/2009/08/18/A_REALLY_Inconvenient_Truth_Dan_Miller

which shows the true state of our affairs with regards to the climate (the person introducing Mr. Miller says, in short, "He's going to tell us all how we are really fucked".

Looking at the evidence, I agree with him.

Ed

no.. it's not 5000 nuclear power plants simply because when you compare electricity to fossil fuels you are comparing apples to oranges.

Right now, 104 nuclear reactors do 20% of our electricity. Hence, 500 nuclear reactors could supply it all.

As for transportation,40% of our energy supply is oil, mainly for use in transportation, which is at best 20% efficient. electric vehicles can approach 90% efficiency at point of the motor. Hence, the amount of true work to replace it is 40% / 4.5 or about 8% of our energy supply.

Anyways, you get the idea. When you see a 'million barrels of oil equivalent' chart it really is misleading, because they count million barrels of oil thermal in the case of coal, natural gas, etc. and million barrels of oil *electric* with nuclear, and hydro.

So all in all, less than 1000 nuclear plants could do it with a wide margin - the main trick of course is getting everything electrical which is no small trick..