[cb18]

Most importantly, IMHO, they completely ignore the learning curve for solar & wind. This is a proven trend, over last decades, appears to be set to continue, and completely changes the discussion.

By 'learning curve,' I guess you mean the rapidly increasing efficiency curves these technologies are on, and in the case of solar(maybe wind as well, not sure) exponentially so.

I certainly agree with you, this is the most important factor in any discussion of current and future energy generation, and carries great weight for why we should all be highly skeptical and indeed hostile towards any thing like future developments of highly destructive energy projects like fracking, or potentially highly destructive like nuclear.

Things like fracking and nuclear carry huge unaccounted for costs that are totally absent from the bottom lines of the companies developing them. It is absolutely absurd and criminal that fracking companies in particular are allowed to run roughshod over our shared environmental heritage creating negative effects that may last for generations. And it is all the more tragic when one looks at the development curve of renewables and applies a little foresight.

Fracking's huge costs in the form of negative externalities are quite apparent to anyone wanting to look for them today, but nuclear fits quite well into this line of thinking as well. Why would we want to burden our grandchildren with the hassle of nuclear waste?

If we don't clean up our act, it's hard to see how future generations aren't going to look back on us as party guests that showed up on this planet, made a huge mess, poured rum in the aquarium and killed the fish, and left without cleaning it all up.

It may sound a little pollyanna-ish, but as you say, the evidence bears it out, if everybody can just chill for a minute or two and maybe look for ways to make their current energy use more efficient, we're on the cusp of having more than enough energy supplied from sources that are harmonious with our environment rather than destructive of it.

[switchbak]

Equating nuclear (in all it's forms) and fracking is not particularly helpful. They're very different approaches, with radically different considerations, not to mention that some reactor designs can actually consume existing stockpiles of nuclear waste as fuel.

I'm as big a critic of fracking as you're going to find, but being overly emotional and applying the fallacy of equivocation isn't helping anything here - and might be hurting if the appropriate application of modern nuclear technology can actually solve many of our issues (or at least help). For that we do need solid analysis which does take into account the "huge costs in the form of negative externalities" - which is bound to come from outside the pro-nuclear industry.

[cb18]

The equivalence raised was to yazriel's point of any considerations of future energy generation methods really need to be taking into account the rapid growth of renewables, and not just rapid, but exponential. Which if your unfamiliar with can be rather unintuitive. For example the human genome project was scheduled/planned for something like 10 years, in the ninth year the project was only 50% complete, but the next year the genome was fully sequenced on schedule because the technology and methods for doing so were proceeding at an exponential pace.

So the basic point is, if the available evidence is saying that it is quite likely that renewables will be covering the large majority of our energy needs rather soon then taking any undue risks, or generating energy in ways that involve long lasting undesirable effects are really the epitome of the kind of short term thinking that has gotten us into the environmental mess we are in, and is really a huge middle finger to our descendants, and that's not very nice.

Really, it could even be argued that as long our observations are telling us what they are now about the future of renewables that any present day expenditures on energy development[0] that aren't renewable focused are a huge middle finger to our descendants, and it is immoral for us to do so.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=solar+exponential

[0]for day to day living for the majority of the planet, there is obviously worthwhile research for space travel and the like.

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some reactor designs can actually consume existing stockpiles of nuclear waste as fuel.

Are these in production? What sort of waste/byproduct do they produce? How is it different from conventional nuclear waste? Is it totally inert?

* might be hurting if the appropriate application of modern nuclear technology can actually solve many of our issues*

What issues are you referring to? The fact that much of our current energy production methods are detrimental to the planet as a whole(including us)?

Are you aware that if solar PV continues the growth curve its been on for the past ~20 years, for the next ~10 years, then the amount of solar PV produced energy in 10 years will be equal to the amount of all human produced energy today?

[pdkl95]

Why is it that solar is always sold based on what might be available in a few decades, while nuclear is judged as if 1950s technology was the only option?

Complaining about the supposed problem of nuclear "waste" (really, unused fuel) is the equivalent of someone today complaining that computers were too large to be useful outside of a few labs. Who would want a "computer" when only a handful of labs would be able to afford the high maintenance costs (replacing vacuum tubes is expensive).

> Are these in production?

No, due to the roadblocks put up by anti-nuclear activists and governments that prefer reactors that generate certain isotopes of plutonium.

> What sort of waste/byproduct do they produce?

The entire point of a breeder reactor is to burn through most of the fuel. We currently only use about 3% of the fuel we put in the reactor. Any breeder should only leave a few % of problematic fission-product waste.

This gets even better when you consider that some of that "waste" is actually useful for various purposes. However, even in the case of the old wasteful-1950s-tech reactor, the amount of waste involved is so trivial, it's hard to compare even to "renewable" technology like solar. (making PV cells has it's own waste/pollution problems

http://spectrum.ieee.org/green-tech/solar/solar-energy-isnt-...

Also, another bonus of using the decay chains of thorium's fission products is that the worst isotopes produced only last on the hundred-year scale, not thousands of years.

> How is it different from conventional nuclear waste?

You're talking a handful of grams per-person-per-year, see above.

The question you should really be asking instead is why every other form of power generation isn't held to the same standards.

> Is it totally inert?

It's far more inert than anything you will find dumped into a coal tailings pond, and I'd rather be near a tiny amount of nuclear power waste than the chemicals used to make PV cells.

> Are you aware that if solar...

Are you aware that most of these "larger" (lol) solar installations are de facto running on natural gas? I'm all for using a variety of technologies, and solar certainly should be an important part of energy generation. Unfortunately, until we find a way to store power quickly and efficiently at the TWh-scale, these unreliable technologies are not viable for base load power.