I don't know that much about it...[but that's not going to stop me from drawing a sweeping conclusion]

Helluva a job, Ygleisie!

I don't know that much about it... [before I just jump on the bandwagon, can someone point me to some known experts?]

Sure! Try Hunter and Avory Lovins and the Rocky Mountain Institute. What seems like a bunch of wishful hippy thinking at first will soon turn out to be internationally recognized experts known for their rigorous analysis and used by the US Government itself.

Here is what they currently say about nuclear power: RMI's position on nuclear power is that:

* It's too expensive. Nuclear power has proved much more costly than projected—and more to the point, more costly than most other ways of generating or saving electricity. If utilities and governments are serious about markets, rather than propping up pet technologies at the expense of ratepayers, they should pursue the best buys first.
* Nuclear power plants are not only expensive, they're also financially extremely risky because of their long lead times, cost overruns, and open-ended liabilities.
* Contrary to an argument nuclear apologists have recently taken to making, nuclear power isn't a good way to curb climate change. True, nukes don't produce carbon dioxide—but the power they produce is so expensive that the same money invested in efficiency or even natural-gas-fired power plants would offset much more climate change.
* And of course nuclear power poses significant problems of radioactive waste disposal and the proliferation of potential nuclear weapons material. (However, RMI tends to stress the economic arguments foremost because they carry more weight with decision-makers.)

The blunt truth is that a lot of the problems with nuclear power that it's opponents cite, are problems they themselves have labored to create. The problems disposing of nuclear waste, for instance, are a result of a conscious strategy of choking the industry in it's own wastes by opposing every conceivable means of disposal, regardless of their merits.

I have to say, if the global warming people were to actually embrace nuclear power as a solution, (But not the only one, of course!) I would have to reassess my perception of them as neo-ludites using global warming as an excuse to attack technological society. Until now, it's been easy to dismiss them as fundamentally unserious, because the the close minded way they approach any solution which has the potential of not starving industrial civilization of energy.

This might be the most pathetic post I've ever read from you, Matt.

After all the discussion that's swirled around this today, you just meekly say "me too"? Why post at all?

Two points:

For the past two decades, Patrick Moore has been a notorious industry shill and environmentalist-basher. Describing him only as a "co-founder of Greenpeace" is grossly deceptive. This point has been made probably FIFTY DIFFERENT PLACES on various blogs today, which you could have discovered with a minimum of reading. Check SourceWatch on Moore.

Nulcear is NOT the only way keep generating electricity. A combination of wind, solar, geothermal, and hydrokinetic power -- combined with increased energy efficiency and improvements in the energy grid -- could do what we need to do.

The nuclear bandwagon is pernicious bullshit passed along by credulous lefties straining to be seen as "reasonable." Sound familiar? Seems like lefties got in trouble with something like that recently.

"You are aware that climate change is happening, regardless of whether or not the "global warming people" like nuclear power?"

Sure. This was a reference to the response to global warming you see in many people, who flatly reject any response that doesn't involve hugely scaling back energy usage. Global warming can be real, and still be used by some people as an excuse to demand things they wanted anyway.

"because at the rate our energy needs are increasing we'll use up all our uranium before long."

Preventing fuel reprocessing has been part of that "choke the reactors in their own waste" strategy, and that together with breeders can extend nuclear power out many thousands of years. But it's a given that eventually we have to go to a solar based energy economy. Not, however, Earth based solar, because that's too limited, and has it's own enviromental impact. Space based solar power is what we'll ultimately rely on.

Dont worry about electrical power. There is a new hydropower based solution that is going to supply all electricity within 10 years, and it doesn't require huge dams. Its very, very green, and there is an unlimited amount of it for all practical purposes. I'll be posting more here about this very, very soon, probably on my blog.

Keep this in mind.

The best argument against nuclear power is that uranium, like oil, is too valuable to burn.
The next best argument against it is that it is another centralized, big-money system.
No need to spend much effort against it, I feel, as other systems will show up (and are showing up) and draw attention away. Wind and solar will take up the slack in electric generation and alcohol production will fill needs for transport.

I can't tell if you're being ironic, since a) we don't burn uranium and b) what else would we use it for?

If you are srious, though, you're wrong.

Alcohol production probably won't fill needs for transport. Most alcohol takes more energy to produce than you get burning it. With sugar you get a ratio of 8 units of output to 1 unit of input, but with corn it's 1.5 to 1.

Engineers use the word "burn" colloquially referring to fission. There will, in the future, be important uses for nuclear explosives for engineering in the asteroid belt and for propulsion.
That alcohol is not energy-effective here is due to the distortions caused by the subsidy structure. You're probably aware of Brazil's alcohol production. They have full-flex-fuel cars that run on any mix, and they produce ethanol from sugar cane. Even at 1.5:1 corn is a net positive, and if a farmer is sensible he doesn't burn oil to make ethanol, he burns his own ethanol. The only problem with the low number is the larger acreage needed.
The holy grail of ethanol is cellulose reduction, either through enzyme action or genetically modified yeasts, which latter Shell reportedly has (don't hold your breath for that showing up soon). When this is achieved, all plant trash is fuel, ditto paper trash.
Alternate routes to a shift include replacing coal-fired electricity with sun-derived and making liquid or gaseous fuels from coal. Less efficient than simply burning it, but still an overall reduction in carbon output if sun is making electricity.
The only limit on replacing fossil-fuel electricity is how fast silicon panels and wind turbines can be manufactured. The availability of sun and wind is not a limiting factor. The intermittent nature is not a big issue, either. As the amount of installed intermittent power grows so does the market for storage systems. This market has not been major until now, since there was no need for it, except for compact applications like communications and computing, easily satisfied by batteries, which have obvious drawbacks for large scale installations.
An example of a storage-enhanced renewable system would be to use either sun or wind to make electricity, use most of that to split hydrogen from water, react that with atmospheric carbon (CO2) by the Sabatier process to make methane (natural gas), which is easily packaged. A solar system might be a floating photovoltaic farm on the ocean. A wind system might be installed in an Arctic region with plenty of wind and water.
Right now there is enough private-home roof area to supply all private-home power needs. Someone calculated that even at only 20% efficiency a solar installation of about ten square miles would produce enough electricity to supply the whole country. My favorite statistic is that enough power falls as sunlight on the whole planet that one day's total flux equals one year's worth of power usage at current demand.

RogerGathman
Actually, instead of welcoming a white elephant nuclear power plant to a state near you (NIMBY takes on a whole new meaning when you receive the notice in the mail of the proposal to build a nuclear power plant down the block), we should really be worried about the fact that Russia has continued to turn out nuclear power plants with the Chernobyl design, the RBMK-1000. Of the huge and pending threats to the planet's health, that has to be in the top ten.

For those interested in what happens when there is a nuclear power plant accident -- I don't know, it might be a consideration -- I'd urge reading Voices of Chernobyl, by Svetlana Alexievich. Interestingly, as she made the book and came near the affected area, she got sick. And -- an interesting fact for you nuclear power plant fans about Belarus. During the second world war, the Nazis destroyed 619 Belarussian villages, along with their inhabitants. As a result of fallout from Chernobyl, the country lost 485 villages and settlements.

But what the hell, it is just the planet, man. Why not build plants with the potential to make the place unliveable for megamillions of years? And why save things like land, water and air for our descendents, when we need to use it now? Besides, dead planets are sorta cute.

If you want to see the immediate environmental results of our current system of energy production, go to google maps (set on satellite) or google earth, and zoom in on the area around southern West Virginia and eastern Kentucky. Scroll around for a while and you can clearly see the destruction caused by mountaintop removal coal mining. The ecosystems in these areas are obliterated beyond repair (far worse than clearcutting), and the people living in them are at risk of the collapse of slurry impounments that are higher than the Hoover Dam and built over unmapped mineshafts. Not even taking into account the implications on the air and water of mining and burning coal, I'd be inclined to believe there is value to decreasing demand for coal and reducing mining activity by building additional nuclear plants.

Price-Anderson is a "subsidy" that did not use any of the tax-payers money, unlike, say, deposit insurance. I say that it is a better deal than the deposit insurance -- and I am not an opponent of the latter.

Here's the thing: no other energy industry has a Price-Anderson Act, because no other energy industry needs it in order to do business.  The consequences of a nuclear accident are exponentially more disastrous than the consequences of accidents resulting from other kinds of power.  That is one of the hidden costs of nuclear -- and only nuclear -- energy.

Is that solar farm "about ten square miles" or about ten miles square?

Don't hold me to it, but it's a ten-mile square, not ten square miles. In any case, it's a long way from an unreasonably large area.

Right now there is enough private-home roof area to supply all private-home power needs. Someone calculated that even at only 20% efficiency a solar installation of about ten square miles would produce enough electricity to supply the whole country.

I have long thought that I-5 from Lebec to Red Bluff, and I-10 from Indio to El Paso should be lined with solar panels. That would provide about 3000 linear miles of easy highway access to a solar farm about 20' wide on each side of the freeway.

If I did the calculations correctly, that's a little over 11 square miles of federally owned, (with easy access and easements) solar farm built on environmentally non-sensitive land. Just by using the rural desert parts of two highways.

So if all that is needed is 10 sq miles or even 100 sq miles, land is simply not an issue.

so how is it with deposit insurance for customers of banks and saving and loans?

There is a hidden subsidy there which, once upon a time, necessitated expenditures in hundreds of billions of dollars. May I say, it happen during times when a trillion dollars still represented a big chunk of money, e.g. more than the yearly federal budget.

Then there are hidden subsidies in implicit guarantees given to mortgage backed securities.

The requirement for steady electric current can be decreased two ways: excess on-site generation capacity takes up supply slack, or an on-site storage system holds excess current for use when needed. With enough local generators there is a pool of flexible supply, an electical "wetlands".
When the power is free (only the equipment costs money) the inconvenient intermittent supply will be addressed with storage systems.
Intermittent generation is not a crucial problem. Essentially every natural process is fluctuating and episodic, from food supplies to earned income. Steady electricity is an anomaly.
The thermodynamic efficiencies of a large system are offset by the inefficiency of adjusting output. Since electric use will always involve losses, through the difficulty of matching output to demand (with peak generators) or transmission losses, losses in local generation are not an issue. A wind turbine adjusts output easily, ditto solar, and local generation saves significantly in transmission.
There will be uses for both local and cenntralized npower, just like some people use taxis and some own cars. Likely that power will become like cars, with most people owning their generating capacity. Solar appeals specially because of low (near-zero) maintenance needs.