Total Energy consumption in the USA, 2006 = 99.5 quads

Population of the USA, 2006 = 303 million

Total Energy consumed per family of four, in USA, 2006 = 392 Mwh

Average Power consumption per family of four, in USA, 2006 = 44.8 Kw

Note, this includes all the energy inputs we take for granted, like those that go into the food we eat, the roads we drive on, the buildings we live in, the cars we drive and the wind turbines that we build.

So at 20 cents per kwh, the average cost of energy per family of four in the USA, would be $79,000 per year.

In Canada it would be higher, @ 60 kw per family of four, that would be $106,000 per year.

That is not sustainable. We can’t afford that. Our civilizations have been built upon cheap concentrated energy, stored over eons in Oil, Coal and Natural Gas. Cost of these energy sources have been in the range of 1 to 3 cents per kwh.

I think it is reasonable to say that if we don’t find energy sources that cost a maximum 5 cents per kwh, or $20,000 per year for a family of four, our civilization will collapse. The much touted alternatives, including the Gore and Pickens Solar & Wind specials, are not even close to 5 cents a kwh. They are a complete waste of money. So far only two possibilities exist, that can provide civilizations energy needs for the next 100 years, at feasible cost, that is Nuclear and Coal. And that’s not Clean Coal – no way you’re going to do that for 5 cents a kwh – that’s plain, old dirty Coal, maybe burned in higher efficiency power plants, like 40% rather than 32% efficiency. What is left is Nuclear, both fusion and fission, and that’s not an easy-as-falling-off-a-log solution. It’s going to take hard work, a lot of hard work.

Good Citizens WAKEUP! I’m talking WAR here, this is WORLD WAR THREE, and its happening right now, the WORLD GLOBAL ENERGY WAR. You’ve heard of Mega-Death, well in this case, if we loose this War, its going to be GIGA-DEATH. Whether the children born today will live or die, will depend upon the actions taken by industry and politicians here and now, and so far they are doing nothing but taking a bad situation and making it worse.

I can’t see Wind – installed – with power distribution – and sufficient backup power – ever getting even close to that 5 cent a kwh limit. Cut all subsidies, cut all funding on that, we can’t afford to throw precious, life-giving resources on a NON-SOLUTION.

Solar, the only possibility I see there, is advanced nanotechnology or biotechnology being able to develop means of producing Solar Modules with levelized power production cost, including any backup power and capital cost, installation, distribution & maintenance, within that 5 cent a kwh cost. So cut all funding, cut all subsidies for present Solar Installations, instead invest heavily in R&D to developing the most promising technologies.

Really, Nuclear is the only significant hope. We need cheap nuclear, and whatever we have to do to achieve it, WE HAVE TO DO THAT. If it means cutting through Red Tape with a machete, then WE GOT TO DO THAT. If it means accepting small risks, of minor leaks of contaminated, radioactive water, then WE GOT TO DO THAT. Bill Hannahan describes an excellent way to weed out the best methods of funding nuclear power development:

‘‘…We should increase R&D to $90 billion per year (only 2.25 cents/kWh) and push every technology as hard as possible. That would include building at least one full scale commercial size plant of every promising technology. Actual performance data would give companies and individuals confidence to make large scale investments rapidly in new and proven technology. …’’

Right now, Nuclear is still the cheapest of new Power systems, at 7.4 to 8.8 cents per kwh, levelized cost. With Nuclear Power Plants having a lifespan of 60-80 years, and Capital Cost paid in 15-20 years, the further 40-60 years of their lifespan will be well under the 5 cent a kwh limit, probably less than 2 cents a kwh. Also, especially with the smaller modular reactors, like the Hyperion, Nuscale, Fuji Molten Salt reactor and the GenIV gas-cooled high temperature reactors, they can directly supply high grade heat, for industrial process, or building heat, or CHP as it’s called, which would lower actual energy cost to < 5 cents for kwh, even for new plants. These Nuclear Power plants need to be built as-fast-as possible, and the newer designs need to be built and tested with a mindset of dire urgency. The defunct supply chain for nuclear components needs to be rebuilt, with considerable redundancy, again with the highest priority. None of this is being done, right now, and that means a Big Friggin Storm is coming and I hope all of you out there are prepared, to face the consequences. See:

Comparative cost of Modern Power Plants, Nuclear, Coal and Natural Gas

A good example of what can be done, but is not being done, is the Bussard Inertial Electrostatic Fusion Reactor. This is a device of extraordinary potential. This is the Epitome of what we need in an energy supply, if it works, at a levelized cost within that 5 cents per kwh barrier. So meanwhile Congress has not funded the research, it has proceeded at a snails pace with bargain basement hardware, working with a shoestring Navy budget. Even proponents talk about wrangling $20 million funding to build a prototype, 100 MW net energy output reactor. NO! This is how you do it, during a time of War. Ten teams working in parallel, unlimited budget, each pursuing a different angle, 24 hrs a day 7 days a week, a $100 million prize to the first team to achieve 100 MW net output.

A 100 MW net power fusion reactor could be built for $20 million

A good example of what is being done, but shouldn’t be done is the Corn Ethanol boondoggle. The actual subsidy for energy negative, mega-CO2 releasing Corn Ethanol is a staggering $5.2 billion per year (Patzek) According to a leaked, secret World Bank report, Biofuels have pushed World Food Prices up 75%, causing food riots and mass starvation. Add to this is the fact that ‘‘…Corn production in the U.S. erodes soil about 12 times faster than the soil can be reformed, and irrigating corn mines groundwater 25 percent faster than the natural recharge rate of ground water. The environmental system in which corn is being produced is being rapidly degraded…’’ (Pimentel). Clearly, A CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY. See:

Alice Friedemann: Why Cellulosic ethanol and other Biofuels are Not Sustainable and a Threat to America's National Security – Part I

The enviro-alarmists have absolutely nothing to say about any of these developments – they are mired down in criticisms of a ghost technology that went out of fashion decades ago. I guess I just dont see the point in going over this old list of irrelevant complaints again and again – except that people feel better when they sing familiar songs.

There are some interesting environmental debates that should be considered in this new context. For instance, how do we get the large companies with their sunk costs in light water reactors to move toward better systems? How should thorium be used and how do we make that happen? And a nice subtle one – human fertility. Given the comfort levels that nuclear power will engender around the world, how do we keep human fertility at a replacement level?

Personally, I would like the nuclear renaissance to lead to the withdrawal of humans from the land surfaces, returning the land to the animals. Humans can live better on floating ocean platforms.

There is lots to discuss. Lets get our heads out of the sand and build our future with clear, comprehensive, computer assisted thinking.

I used to be an anti-nuclear activist, now I'm a pro-nuclear activist.

In fact, only nuclear and nuclear alone can reduce our non-transportation emissions of carbon particulate (the nasty stuff from coal plants that kill people NOW), CO2 and heavy metals. All major "Solar/Wind grand plans" are designed to work with fossil generation because no "alternative" source of generation is reliable enough provide all our generation. And, it's expensive on a KWhr-to-KWhr basis.

The Germans are seeing this now and are reconsidering their ill-advised 'phase out' of nuclear power. Actually, there was so much uproar over their Wind Power plan…because it involved, initially, building 26 coal plants, that they had to back down. Now it's "only" 8 coal plants. Italy just reversed course, threw out their anti-nuclear NIMBY laws banning nuclear energy (they RUN on French nuclear energy, but didn't want any plants in their country). The Chinese, by 2030 will be on the road to building 160 GWs(!!!!) of nuclear energy (the US has about 100GWs).

New technologies such as the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor holds much hope (and it's a proven technology) to build atomic reactors that produce only 1/100th the amount of waste (and it's limited to only 300 years of dangerous radiation) with almost unlimited fuel and can actually run on the spent fuel/waste from light water reactors. This is called "limitless energy" and we can do wonders with limitless energy, from cracking water into hydrogen, to heating whole cities to desalinate vast amounts of sea water for human need.

I'm on the FAR left politically, the opposite, so-to-speak, of the Heritage Foundation. I'm for human needs before profits but I see only nuclear energy as the material basis for advancing humanity. In this, perhaps, I can find common cause with the HF. I think HF takes a far more *progressive* position on energy technology than the so-called "leftists" on the Green side of the political spectrum.

David Walters

left-atomics.blogspot.com

For me, the most important feature about nuclear energy that needs to be understood is that it is clean enough to run inside a sealed submarine.

The second important fact is that a volume of fuel small enough to fit under my office desk can power a 9000 ton submarine for 15 years. (I was on an old sub. Modern boats achieve a full 33 year core life with just a bit more fuel.)

The third important fact about nuclear is that the fuel cost is less than 1/40th as much as petroleum and less than 1/8th as much as coal on a per unit heat basis for fully commercial fuel. The margins in the nuclear fuel fabrication business are pretty generous as well.

One facet of the nuclear debate that I rarely see discussed is the fact that our path of nuclear development in the 1970s would have resulted in almost a complete replacement of the need to burn coal and natural gas in power plants.

I firmly believe that the coal, oil and gas industries saw that trend and took a diverse set of actions to stop it.

Those actions included supporting people like Amory Lovins – who freely admits that he has worked for major oil companies for 35 years – in their efforts to convince people that we can get all the energy we need from wind, solar, waves, and geothermal. He has been writing about the "Soft Energy Path" since the early 1970s in widely read publications, but our coal consumption has increased from about 600 million tons per year to more than 1.2 billion tons per year.

We have also rather dramatically increased our consumption of natural gas for power generation, a development that has pushed a number of major employers out of the country while also increasing the cost of home heating fuel.

(Don't worry though, the increased price of natural gas is responsible for about half of ExxonMobil's profit and we all know that ExxonMobil stockholders are just people like you and me. At least that is what all of the commercials tell me.)

Dolph is proud of the efforts of "ladies, gentlemen, students, veterans, hippies and YMCA law students took on the massive Tennessee Valley Authority army of lawyers which tried to build the Hartsville Nuclear Plant 37 miles from the source of our tap water."

How does he feel about the 14,000 MW of coal fired electricity in the TVA system that currently spews about 650,000 tons of CO2 into the atmosphere every single day? Oh yeah, there is a minor matter of also releasing SOx, NOx, mercury and fly ash into the air and water over a much wider territory.

If we had simply continued building the plants that were planned by about 1973, we would have reduced coal burning to nearly zero. If we had continued building at the rate that we achieved in 1974 and 1975, we would have pushed all fossil fuels out of the electrical power market by 2000.

If we had not run into excessive political opposition led by the petroleum industry and its friends, we could also have kept building nuclear powered ships of all kinds, both naval and commercial and reduced our country's oil consumption in another important market.

Again, don't worry – the US Navy is instead spending about $2 billion a year to buy fuel for its remaining conventional surface ships and helping to prop up the profits of companies like ExxonMobil, Shell, and Aramaco.

The waste issue is not only solved, it's extremely solved.

Even completely irresponsible dumping of spent fuel elements at random locations in the ocean will cause a lower death toll(using the LNT hypothesis, which is an overestimate at such low doserates) than dumping of dangerous fossil fuel wastes into our atmosphere. The fact that we know how to keep this material separated from human contact for millions of years at a cost of less than 0.5 US cents per kWh is gravy.

And yes, I'd be perfectly happy to live near a geologocial respository for spent fuel. Can you coal humpers say the same about the mercury(stays toxic forever, unlike nuclear "waste"), cadmium, SOx, NOx, fly ash, uranium, thorium, CO2 etc. output of a coal plant?

(See Germany, which is planing 26 new coal plants to replace their nuclear plants and provide spinning reserve for their massive wind power boondoggle, if you have any doubts as to what the alternative to nuclear is.)

Many of my engineering colleagues feel it is impossible to reason with certain people who have an irrational fear of anything labeled "nuclear", and who are clearly unable to ever concede they could be misinformed and wrong. My colleagues refuse to even argue with them, and I should perhaps have done the same. But when it comes to issues that might threaten the future welfare of my children and grandchildren, I must speak out. Contrary to allegations of the previous comment writers, I have always tried to understand what bothers those that have anti-nuclear phobia.

Yes, Madame Curie died of cancer most likely because she was overexposed to radiation during her pioneering discoveries of nuclear decay. What does that have to do with generating electricity from nuclear fission to rescue our civilization? We now know how to protect ourselves against excessive radiation, just like we learned to protect ourselves from use of electricity that can kill.

I am glad some anti-nuclear gurus were mentioned by name. I have known about most of them, but had forgotten their names. Dr Helen Caldicutt and Dr Arjun Mahkijani have made a comfortable living for opposing the development of nuclear power for many years. But it should be remembered that these doctored contrarians are a very small minority (Bobby Kennedy once remarked that for every issue there are always some nay-sayers). The vast majority of engineers, scientists, and others who studied nuclear and other energy extraction methods seriously (not emotionally), and who have hands-on experience with electric power generation, conclude like I do: nuclear power is essential for the survival of our civilization beyond 2050. Solar and wind power is fine but only a band-aid for what will be needed.

And Sir Jeffery Eerkens, don't pick on Lady Jeannine. She's my wife. Back in the mid-1970s, she and a bunch of other ladies, gentlemen, students, veterans, hippies and YMCA law students took on the massive Tennessee Valley Authority army of lawyers which tried to build the Hartsville Nuclear Plant 37 miles from the source of our tap water.

It was to have been the world's largest nuclear plant and to have come in at a $2.5 billion price tag. After four years of court battle, after seeing TVA workers pour ton after ton of concrete into the underground streams that farmers had told them about, TVA wound up with one cooling tower, a $2.5 billion piece of work looking like a giant beer can, almost as tall and wide as a football field, in the middle of once pristine dairy land.

So, Sir Jeffery, beware of little old ladies in tennis shoes.

"Ladies and gents" around the country are deeply aware and concerned about our future energy needs and the rate at which the Arctic Ice is melting. But we see more than one solution.

Mr. Eerkens, you seem to loathe those of differing viewpoints using cynicism and insults to try to strengthen your position. It's unproductive, polarizing and childish.

Is that your desire?

Perhaps you might want to revisit the work of Dr. Alice Stewart and her epidemiological studies in addition to the dedicated precautionary work of Dr Helen Caldicott.

And tell us how Dr. Marie Curie died.

In the spirit of sharing alternative approaches and positive information, I encourage you to take a look at Dr. Arjun Mahkijani's book entitled Carbon Free Nuclear Free: A Road Map for US Energy Policy; or Brice Smith's book entitled Insurmountable Risks: The Dangers of Using Nuclear Power to Combat Global Climate Change.