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Might pebble bed reactor technology be an answer to some of the problems with nuclear? I'm told that they could be cheaper than big water-cooled plants. I'm told that they can be much much safer. I'm told that they can use a wider variety of fission fuels (not just enriched uranium, the old fan favorite). And I'm told that pebble bed reactors need not be huge, so they could be much more widely distributed. I guess the fact that they're still quite far from being ready to deploy is a big problem. I know there is a prototype at Qinghua (Tsinghua) University in Beijing, and apparently there's some interesting work going on in S Africa.

You guys know anything about pebble beds and their viability? I just got a long lecture from a very smart and long term thinking dude about nuclear, so I'm starting to wonder.

My oversimplified view of nuclear has been that since the private sector is afraid to finance it, it's obviously uneconomical and thus a stupid idea. But maybe that's not the angle from which I should be approaching it...

Good points Janne and I still vote a "nah" for an unsustainable choice in energy. Besides the fact that we should be financing and demanding- both in policy and with financial tools- energy conservation to reduce our energy demand, storing nuclear waste using intrusive, aquifer damaging (read reducing drinking water) methods still raises the same niggling ecosystem issues by conventional mining (groundwater and stream contamination, pitting mining against tourism, fishing, agriculture, water supply, other forms of industry and so on).

A Natural Resource Defense Council presentation cites the bloated pork barrel called the Department of Energy's Nuclear Power 2010 Program in which taxpayers are providing enormous subsidies without a concomitant commitment to actually build plants (http://www.nrdc.org/nuclear/pnucpwr.asp).

Communities do not want to be repositories for nuclear waste- witnesseth the Yucca Mountain debacle and EPA's insidious attempt to expand the range of acceptable contamination through drift from 3 to 11 miles...

It would be inherently more sustainable to enact a hefty carbon tax, subsidize renewable energy sources and provide incentives and where necessary, laws, to enforce conservation which doesn't have to hurt one bit. I live in a state with the highest per capita SUV ownership rate in the US, yet we claim to be the Evergreen State. I'd like to see someone- anyone- use social norms to embarrass the owners of mega-mansions, mega truck and luxury SUVs who never step outside in the great American west to hike, much less scale grandiose mountains. We are living with trade offs that are an unacceptable and ultimately, impossible to sustain or justify.

If we lived smarter and more elegantly using design principles, we could dramatically reduce our energy use while subsidizing those energy resources with the lowest internalized costs. Regrets to clean, but unsustainable, nuclear.

Janne,

The eco-question is a hard one. What generation will condemn with our problems? I live in the Netherlands, and the discussion is renewed here as well. For us there is a different aspect to add to the discussion.

We have next to none natural resources from a global perspective. In a few decades, we need to get all our power from foreign parties. We are known for our windmills, but they are not delivering enough to meet our needs. We are, after all, oil addicts.

In my opinion, we should further investigate Nuclear power, but with the limit that it can only be used when a solid waste-recycling solution is available. The search for the sustainable world has only just begun. Let's make nuclear recycling part of the bigger issues.

For now, NO-GO! But in ten years,I would expect a big YES.

I have got one word for you. Chernobil! It would be foolish to use an expensive and unwanted technology. When all you have to do is be more efficient and use solar. Why don't you live next to a nuclear powerplant or have the waste planned to be stored near a city, my city like las vegas yucca mountain.
Please do not use the fourth world Chineese as an example. They are vile evil and irresponsible. Thanks to them I have to check where my pets dogfood is made. And lets not get started on respect for life -1.000.000 on the benevolent meter.

How does nuclear cost more than others such as wind? At this time we have no economical way of storing power generated by wind to use when it's not generating enough. If you can't count on wind supplying you with power, you have to maintain duplicate capacity. That isn't cheap. Nor is firing up a natural gas plant to supply power at those times. Or do we adopt things like wind and simply deal with brownouts and blackouts? Now that would be very, very expensive. Seems to me part of green wash involves the self proclaimed greens making incorrect claims about the original green --> money.

Utilizing a technology that produces waste so toxic that it must be protected/stored/managed for a period of time longer than any other civilization has historically lasted is reckless at best.

To quote Bill McDonough, "Don't get me wrong: I love nuclear energy! It's just that I prefer fusion to fission. And it just so happens that there's an enormous fusion reactor safely banked a few million miles from us. It delivers more than we could ever use in just about 8 minutes. And it's wireless!" (the sun)

Nuclear Power can be repackaged as many ways as supporters want; however, it all comes down to nuclear waste storage and safety along with personal committment to the environment and telling the truth over Big Business Making Bigger Money. No human or country on Earth has figured out a solution to all those bottom line problems and sick greed for money.

The Alternative Powers that have no consequences like Solar Energy is taking personal committment and telling the truth and not damaging The Earth in any way, while selling power back to The Big Businesses.

The truth is there is a Sewedish city that is 100% clean, why one-reason is because they have Solar Panels every where possible. Yet, they get extremely less sun light than all USAn cities, let alone most populated cities of this world.
The other reasons are that they have Windmills, recycleable containers (for paper and plastic) and garbage cans every where. I image they need so many of the animals with wings killing Windmills because they have so little sun light.
I live in Florida, USA Floridans would never need Nuclear Power or Windmills; if we only cared enough.

As an engineer in the power industry I have never seen a perfectly clean source of power (e.g., solar requires chemical processing of semiconductors). However, nuclear waste is very low in volume and easily monitored. Also, nuclear has a much better safety record than coal. In addition, unlike renewables, nuclear energy delivers electricity 24/7. It may not be perfectly "clean and green", but nuclear is one of the better methods of generating large amounts of electricity. We will certainly need more if we want to phase out carbon fuels.