Reply #8: On a slightly more serious note

[GliderGuider]

The anti-nuclear meme has been extremely successful, and the opposition has a lot of inertia. I think the only thing that will change Western opinions on the subject is a truly catastrophic energy crisis. Then there will be a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth when we discover that it takes 15 years to get significant generating capacity on line, but we need the energy now.

Even as an informed Peak Oiler I was a devoted anti-nuke until quite recently. I bought James Lovelock's "Revenge of Gaia" early in the summer, and agreed with everything he said except his pro-nuclear stance. My subsequent investigation into the question of what our realistic options are in the face of climate change and oil depletion have caused me to do a 180 on the subject. Lovelock is right - if we don't use nuclear we will use coal. The more difficult we make it to use nuclear, the more likely we will be to use coal. That will be catastrophic for our civilization, and possibly for our species (not to mention the other species who share the planet).

As natural gas becomes too expensive, more and more home heating will be switched ad hoc to electrical resistance heating. This will pose a major risk to the grid stability if sufficient base load capacity is not available. Given the fact that most good hydro sites are already in use in the developed world, the only two remaining options for base load generation are nuclear and coal. Nuclear power in fact has a good safety profile (certainly relative to coal) and its waste problem is local, unlike the CO2 waste problem of coal which is global. IMO it's the only safe and sane choice if our global civilization (not just America) wants to maintain any semblance of Business As Usual.

CO2 sequestration is a chimera. Wind, solar, biomass and biofuels can't do the job in the time we have left, especially given the global political environment. IMO we have less than 5 years left to get our shit together before large disruptions hit, starting from the marginal nations and working their in towards Washington, DC.

I know nuclear power has a lot of problems, ranging from the threat of material theft and terrorist attacks to ground water pollution and all the coziness and corruption problems that come with large industrial endeavors. I just don't see any other safe option that can give us the power we need in the time we have left.