re: #382 marjoriemoon

France is the size of maybe Wisconsin. How can you compare the United States to one small country in Europe and declare we should become 90% nuclear? Ridiculous argument.

If we’re going to spend the millions/billions we need for alternative energy, we should start with wind and solar, first. It just makes good sense.

Not really. Nuclear power has the tremendous advantage of being extremely well understood, and being capable of producing prodigious amounts of electricity right now, off the shelf. The same cannot be said for either solar or wind power. While attractive in many ways, they simply aren’t capable of producing the amounts of energy that will be demanded in the future without extensive development, and the way forward toward overcoming many of these shortcomings is along an unknown path.

China is aggressively pursuing nuclear power development. So are many other countries. It’s an easy step to take that produces large results quickly, without reliance on unpredictable breakthroughs that other alternatives require.

I’m not a fan of monolithic solutions to this problem, and certainly welcome investment in a number of alternative energy sources going forward. In fact, I’d prefer to see a diversified energy solution, rather than relying on a sole source. But nuclear is an enormously viable option, and dismissing it is unrealistic.