I don’t think that we can approach renewable energy that way.

Solar and wind are the big look getters. Where i live, solar could provide a small amount of energy. Wind could provide a fair to great amount of energy, but the best place to put windfarms would be off shore…unfortunately, fresh water freezes so the units can’t be floating. (And since there’s only a very few places that could do off shore, fresh water wind farming i don’t expect to see a lot of research into it.) Hydrogen seems to make the most sense for us. But hydrogen makes no sense for Arizona.

So i feel left with the lesser of two evils (though coal is cheap because they need to fill the holds of the boats with something when they come to get the iron).

or do the emissions that come from manufacturing stuff for America count towards America’s (or Europe’s) totals?

I suspect, but can’t prove, that China’s emissions that are on behalf of the developed world still count against China. Which isn’t fair by any stretch.

I worry about nuclear being used by the big utilities (who know nuclear and probably have an easier time lobbying for it than for wind, solar, etc.) to squash other things as well, and that’s definitely something that activists of all stripes should be on the look-out for. And I’d rather have something other than nuclear too, but I just don’t see a short-term option at this point. I’d love to be proven wrong, though.

I’m not trying to let China off of any hooks. But every time there is an inter-governmental talk about climate there is the “rich” world argument that the “developing” world needs to cut its emissions by equal or better amounts than the “rich” world. The Chinese and the Indians have a point when they say that it is hardly fair for White people to get rich without worrying about the environment while Yellow, Brown, Red, and Black people must subsume their desire for wealth to the common good.

I think that they’d be better served arguing that a large chunk of their emissions should really belong to Whitey.

I’d like something better than nuclear, but nuclear is a far far far cry better than coal and petroleum. I do worry that the nuclear industry will work to quash other developments…as was the case with wave power in England a few decades back.

I’m a greenie, but I spent my childhood around nuclear submarines. It’s a different perspective on nuclear power when you’ve slept next to one (remember Sam, you ignore the easy shots). It’s interesting to see the tide turn within environmental groups from “all nuclear is bad” to “uh, about those nuclear power plants”.

Nuclear power isn’t scary. This is scary: I drove a nuclear submarine, I was 12.

Or, put another way, atropine is a poison that can stop your heart, but it’s also one of the few things that will keep you alive if you’re exposed to sarin nerve gas. Many toxins that kill you at high doses are useful medicinally at low levels. We’ve been conditioned to think that radiation is bad at all exposure levels when that’s not actually true.

Waste is a problem, there’s no doubt about it, but while nuclear waste is very, very dangerous, it’s so concentrated that, in some respects, it’s easier to store and dispose of than coal ash is. There’s also the fact that, if designed and operated right, new reactors will produce far less waste than the reactors we already have, and some reactor designs could actually use some of the existing waste as fuel.

That being said, there are solutions to the waste problem. My personal favorite is vitrifying waste into glass (which dissolves very, very slowly in water), encasing the glass in stainless steel and concrete drums, and then burying those drums at the bottom of an oceanic trench, preferably in a subduction zone that will suck the waste slowly down into the mantle. By the time the waste is even close to being expelled volcanically, it will have largely decayed and been diluted enough to be effectively harmless compared to the background radiation of all the other lava or ash.

But that’s just me.

. . . people in radiation-free environments actually get sick, because the mechanisms in their bodies to repair radiation damage go haywire when there’s nothing to fix.

You mean nuclear power plants as a giant immunization booster shot? Novel argument.

What to do with nuclear waste must be a precursor to any discussion of expanding nuclear power.

Would that we could discuss free energy without being dismissed as part of the tinfoil-hat crowd.

For example, radioactive waste is absolutely a problem. But not only are there a number of different ways to handle it (each with their relative strengths and weaknesses), we have to ask ourselves whether a small amount of highly radioactive waste is more or less dangerous than a comparably massive amount of coal waste, wastes that are presently much less regulated than radioactive waste. Did you know that coal ash (solid coal waste) is radioactive itself but is unregulated and so is often used as filler in gypsum wallboard (drywall) and that nuclear power plants are required to report releases of radioactivity into the environment that are much less radioactive than what is released by coal in its smoke and fly ash?

Many people have been (understandably) conditioned to fear radioactivity, yet I get more radioactivity from living at altitude (Colorado) in a state with high amounts of radium in the ground (and I have a basement) than I would if I pitched a tent and slept every night on top of a nuclear plant’s containment vessel. Not only that, but the human immune system requires some amount of radiation to stay healthy – people in radiation-free environments actually get sick, because the mechanisms in their bodies to repair radiation damage go haywire when there’s nothing to fix.

This week: China’s CO2 emissions 14% higher than U.S. emissions; IEA says 1400 new nuke plants needed by 2050;Jason 2 satellite launches Friday; more ocean heating than previously thought; sea level drives mass extinctions?…