[DennisP]

The advanced reactors I mentioned produce about a hundred times less waste, and it's back to the radioactivity of the original ore in a couple centuries. Encase in a block of glass and bury it. They can also use our existing waste stockpiles as fuel, so we'd end up with less waste than we have now. No renewable can accomplish that.

I did see a paper a couple years ago on running a section of the U.S. electric grid on wind/solar alone. They had a computer try about ten thousand scenarios, and found that the cheapest was to overproduce energy by a factor of three, and add a bit of storage. So at least for that region, wind/solar would have to be less than a third the cost of fossil per kWh to be competitive. I certainly hope it gets there.

In the meantime, we can't really afford to be picky about our non-carbon energy sources. Modern nuclear plants have excellent safety records, and more advanced reactors look even better. Let's just not build any more of the 1970's-era plants that have run into trouble. We've learned a lot since then.