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Rick Manner

Oct 21, 2015
12:19

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Why the emphasis on replacing transportation fuels?  Eliminating coal fired power plants would be a more effective way to reduce ghg and other emissions.


John Carlin

Nov 27, 2015
10:28

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I am glad to see I am not the only one to favor nuclear power plants.  These have fallen out of favor as Politically Incorrect (Non-PC.)  The lawyers, politicians and luddites have done a good job of selling the general public on the supposed dangers of nuclear power. We in the technical professions have done a poor job of explaining the advantages of this generation mode.  No soot, no sulfur, no carbon or any other oxides.  Of course there are costs to disposing of spent nuclear waste.  There are also costs to disposing of coal waste, but these are not measured, since most of this is blown into the air as smoke and therefore does not show up in our electric bills.  Better cost accounting would help.


Hugh Byers

Dec 15, 2015
05:38

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Where will all the cooling water come from?


Steve Pittman

Jan 21, 2016
01:32

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I agree that nuclear power should be considered as one component of a plan to mitigate the risk of disastrous climate change.  Influential people (see for example https://www.ted.com/talks/stewart_brand_proclaims_4_environmental_heresies) are coming around to that view.

Open courseware to guide leaders and influencers (and, more important their staff and constituents) through the global warming controversy can play a very important part in any attempt to influence world opinion.  I hope you will vote to support that proposal.

But nuclear fission power plants must be reengineered from the ground up with safety as the primary design consideration.  That will inevitably reduce the efficiency of such power plants, but that's okay given the potential energy bound up in U-235 and plutonium.

And it has become pretty obvious that we can not simply sequester, bury, and abandon nuclear waste.  Governments must take responsibility for long-term custodial care of nuclear waste before nuclear power will be practical.

And the US must embrace reprocessing of nuclear fuel (as France and Russia have done) to reduce the volume of nuclear waste and to exploit much more of the energy potential in supplies of U-235 and plutonium.

We must consider breeder reactors as an option, too.

And the US should consider a global initiative (something along the lines of the Marshall Plan for Europe after World War II) to provide nuclear power to developing nations at as low a cost as possible.


James Lau

Feb 3, 2016
12:41

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It is interesting this proposal have recent comment. Nuclear energy is a reasonable proposal for people that fail to recognize a more profitable and higher capacity renewable OTEC energy solution. Nuclear energy has serious waste disposal concern (safety). Ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) use already stored ocean thermal energy resource to convert sufficient amount into electricity. OTEC electricity when matured can be as low as 2 cents per kwh. Read the OTEC entry in this contest to get more information. Use the information in the contest to contact me by email and get even more information and analysis. The ocean already stored more than two years of solar energy delivered to earth in thermal form. This the the most abundant energy resource on earth, even higher that all reasonable recoverable fossil fuel.