nuclear really isn't the way at all, as noseall says we should all use less for a start but long term it's got to be renewables.
http://www.nirs.org/neconomics/risks_of_nuclear_investment_published.pdf[/QUOTE]
I'm only reading the executive summery, but that is full of holes.
Market risk. By the time any new nuclear plant could be built in the UK (2020 or later), the market for its electricity will be disappearing, regardless of any possible increase in the overall demand for electricity. The rapidly-declining cost of photovoltaics (PV) with the falling costs of other renewables, and the likely completion of the European internal market for electricity with the strengthening of the European transmission grid, will be transforming the market for electricity in the UK, and throughout the rest of Europe and beyond. Consumers, large and small, will be empowered to generate much of their own electricity (on their own sites or elsewhere) or to buy it from anywhere in Europe, and this without the need for subsidies. Explosive growth of PV is likely to take much of the profitable peak-time market for electricity. And there will be stiff competition to fill in the gaps left by PV, from a range of renewable sources, many of which are better suited to the gap-filling roll than is nuclear power.
So basically...
1. we don't need nuclear because we can just buy our electricity from Europe
2. other renewable will fill the gap from solar (which has an obvious fatal flaw), cept what are they? wind doesn't work (still needs gas turbine backup), wave power is still a new tech, no one knows yet if the price will come down to competitive levels.
• Cost risk. There is good evidence that, contrary to the often-repeated claims that nuclear power is cheap
The cloths that people wear in nuke stations is treated as extremely hazardous waste, it isn't.
Of course nuclear power is expensive, the safety measures are insane.....
The introduction of new safety measures after the Fukushima disaster will push up prices further
Case in point. The Fukushima plant "survived" an earthquake just over it's design (new plants at the time already had higher standards), the radiation leaked was minimal
http://xkcd.com/radiation/
But now all nuke plants have to be built to withstand earthquakes on the same scale as Fukishima, even if they are no-where near a fault zone.
• Subsidy risk. Although nuclear power is a long-established industry which should be commercially viable without support, it depends heavily on subsidies.
Insane safety requirements = expensive = needs subsidy.
Now I may actually agree with the safety requirements, but that's the price.
Reliable electricity is just as important as cheap electricity, renewable can be used as part of a strategy, but with present tech, it aint gonna be the only solution.
• Construction risk. The delays and cost overruns in the Olkiluoto and Flamanville nuclear projects are just recent examples of nuclear projects where actual build times and actual costs greatly exceed
There are 400+ reactors worldwide, I can't be arsed to read the rest of the report to see if it can name more than 2.
Sorry, whilst I am not exactly jumping with joy at the prospect of nuclear, I like living in a modern industrial world, and have no desire to lead "the good life".
