Agreed. The cost analysis stuff should be relatively cheap to undertake. I don't think people are being disingenuous when they talk about R & D technology, but I agree we need to design and build using technology that is commercially deployable and not assume that future technology will deliver on its promise.
On Tue, Jan 6, 2009 at 7:59 PM, Judah McAuley <[email protected]> wrote: > I'm cautiously a proponent of pebble-bed and thorium designs for > nuclear power as I've mentioned here before. But saying that his > analysis doesn't take into account future designs is disingenous to > say that least. Solar looks to have very inexpensive and much more > efficient technology out in 5 to 10 years, depending on how much money > is put into proof of concept development from current R&D. But we are > talking about putting money into energy systems today, so we deal with > what we have today. > > I'm still cautiously optimistic about nuclear power but I think that > the big thing the article showed, to me, is how far from reality > nuclear proponents have been with their cost claims. I agree that > similar analysis of other energy systems might show higher than > proposed costs as well. But its true that we don't know until we do > the analysis. The numbers I've seen for wind are quite good. There is > a big push here in the Northwest to do wind installs and I know people > that are doing siting, planning, etc. for commercial production > installs and its impressive. Before I go plopping down a bunch of > money on new generations of nuclear plants, however, I want to see > real solid analysis. > > Nuclear power has a huge capital outlay compared with many other > technologies and a larger downside. Therefore we owe it to ourselves > to investigate more thoroughly before we start sinking a bunch of > money into the industry. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Adobe® ColdFusion® 8 software 8 is the most important and dramatic release to date Get the Free Trial http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;207172674;29440083;f Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/message.cfm/messageid:284021 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=11502.10531.5
