frflyer

A Natural Gas Centric Strategic Long-Term Comprehensive Energy Policy

January thaw

What are the problems with technology and costs of wind energy? The technology works and produces inexpensive electricity. It's the greenest energy of all. Spain has 12% wind power already, but in America where we have 1% or whatever, we're told that it can't work. Denmark has 20% wind power. We have a huge country with tremendous wind and solar potential.


realold

If you read the article at climate progress referenced in my first comment, you would see that what you believe about the economics and environmental impacts of running cars on electricity are not well founded. The article makes a good argument that running cars on NG has it's drawbacks too. It's more efficient to use the NG to make electricity to run cars, than to burn it in cars. About twice as efficient, which means half the emissions for the same miles driven, and half the NG used. But that doesn't necesarily mean we shouldn't build NG cars, if it will help us get off foreign oil and help transition us to the future of transportation. Even T Boone Pickens sees it as a transition facilitating choice, not a permanent solution.

There's not a perfect solution during this difficult time for personal transportation. But we do have the tools to transform the electric grid and improve efficiency.

Maybe we should pursue both NG and EVs, NG-PHEVs and HEVs, with the EVs being fine for city cars, delivery vehicles, taxis, commuting, job trucks on farms and industrial sites where long range is not a big issue, etc.
Maybe eventually we will have Plug in hybrid biofuel cars, using biofuels that work and make sense economically and environmentally and with inexpensive high performance batteries.


" I have read that as much as 2/3 of the electricity sent through power lines to your home is lost to the atmosphere and heat"

I think 2/3 is a little high. but
That's why we need HVDC transmission lines with their much lower line loss. There are other ways to cut our waste energy and make our power plants more efficient, like combined heat and power.
You are talking about running electric cars on todays grid, which by the way is already cleaner, in general,than burning gasoline in all the cars. Other's are talking about a grid with increasing inputs from wind and solar, which will develop along with the transition to EVs and PHEVs. We aren't going to replace our entire national fleet of cars next year to EV or NG, or even in ten years. By then, at least a few hundred gigawatts of solar and wind will be built.


The NREL says California has 661 GW of solar thermal (CSP) potential in it's deserts. That's their low estimate, based on the flattest land that isn't in environmentally sensitive areas. Less flat land can also be used. Compare 661 GW with California's present total generating capacity of 58 GW. There are 5 other southwest states with similar or larger potential for solar thermal.
Add to that photovoltaics as distributed rooftop etc., and utility solar PV and solar starts looking like real power. Like as much as over 300 average size nuclear plants in California alone.

This is our best renewable energy source and the one most Americans have probably never heard of.
Which is why I talk about it. Go to the Desertrec website to see what others see for CSP potential in Europe, North Africa and the Mid East and the rest of the world.

www.desertec.org/

www.trec-uk.org.uk/

www.trec-uk.org.uk/csp...
"CSP Around The World"
Worldwide CSP solar potential.

Some study found that wind power could provide enough electricity to power every car in America, using a square of land 1.2 miles on a side, if you don't count the space between turbines, which is large. Wind only uses about 2 1/2% of the land where it's sited, allowing agriculture or nature to co-exist with it.
A 2 MW turbine takes up about as much ground space as a parking space for a car.

Wind and solar will create more jobs than any other energy development. The NREL says that solar thermal plants would be a far greater economic benefit to California than new gas plants.

A Natural Gas Centric Strategic Long-Term Comprehensive Energy Policy

Mike
I'm not disagreeing with you on natural gas use and it's ability to reduce oil imports.
Transportation, particularly personal transportation, seems to be the hardest nut to crack. I'm for whatever will work to both get us off imported oil, and reduce emissions significantly. However, even given the present small percentage of power supplied by solar and wind, I still think they can be built up rapidly to be major contributors in the next decade and beyond.

Part of the problem is that too many people don't understand the magnitude of what needs to be done to solve the energy problem and mitigate global warming. This includes some environmentally inclined people, who think that if we all just live green and improve our carbon footprint, all will be well. See the articles at Climate Progress on core climate solutions to understand the scope of the task. Even if you don't agree with the selection of solutions there, it's a good starting point for discussing what needs to be done. And an indication of how much the political will to act needs to be improved on.

climateprogress.org/20.../
They do include nuclear and natural gas.

On the other side of the argument, too many Republicans think that Drill baby drill and nuclear are the only answers, and block all attempts at developing renewables, clinging to old cannards about how solar and wind can't ever amount to much. The vast majority of Republicans and Libertarians still think they are smarter than the 97-99% of climate scientists and every single major scientific organization in the world, who agree with AGW. The vast power of the oil companies is what is perpetuating those myths, and paying big money to confuse the public on the issue. But we are supposed to believe that the entire world scientific community are the ones who are trying to fool us, in some dark conspiracy. How naive can people be?
That is what is doing the most harm and preventing us from getting off the imported oil and solving the climate problem.
You used the word ludite. Look no further.

A Natural Gas Centric Strategic Long-Term Comprehensive Energy Policy

This is what the heck I'm talking about.

www.heatisonline.org/c...

"subsidy programmes from 1918 are still in place"
"I'm not aware of any oil and gas subsidy that has ever been phased out," said Koplow, the leading expert on U.S. energy subsidies"

"in a time of skyrocketing oil prices and profits, why did the George W. Bush administration in 2005 authorise an additional 32.9 billion dollars in new subsidies over a five-year period?"

"Koplow's 2007 report to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development puts the annual U.S. subsidy at an average of 39 billion dollars a year, when the costs of guarding oil lanes in the Persian/Arab Gulf, and the Alaska Pipeline are included. This does not include any costs from the Iraq war"

"Estimating U.S. oil and gas subsidies is very challenging. Subsidies rarely involve cash payments. Instead scores of U.S. government agencies and departments create hundreds of programmes to support the U.S. energy sector. And there is no requirement for the federal government to keep track of all this."

"Energy subsidies are often simply hidden from public scrutiny. It's only recently been revealed that 40 companies granted leases between 1996 and 2000 for drilling in the Gulf of Mexico do not have to pay royalties for the publicly-owned resource. This is worth nearly a billion dollars a year in lost revenue to the federal government, according to a 2008 study by Friends of the Earth (FOE), a U.S. environmental NGO, and may ultimately total 50 billion dollars."
These production subsidies do nothing to lower the price of petrol at the pump for U.S. consumers. It simply boosts companies' bottom line, Pica said.

"This massive government intervention distorts energy markets, making it very difficult for alternative energy sources to compete without similarly massive subsidies. "And it promotes America's addiction to oil," Larsen added."

www.setamericafree.org...
This link shows even more subsidies to fossil fuels. I chose the lower numbers fro Koplow

A Natural Gas Centric Strategic Long-Term Comprehensive Energy Policy

The idea of running cars on NG or hybrid NG/electrics has a lot going for it. My initial thought, when I heard of Picken's plan, was that NG PHEVS would be a great combination, with quite low emissions.
But there are other things to at least consider

What about the argument that as far as powering cars, NG is almost twice as efficiently used in power generation to run electric cars, than using NG in cars?
climateprogress.org/20.../

Is there enough NG to run cars without shutting down gas power plants? Because shutting down gas plants and letting coal plants run makes no sense. Increasing efficiency of power plants would
save

While the article focuses on ending oil imports, which is a good thing, we should also be focusing on phasing out dirty coal plants.



Mad Hedge Fund Trader

"Wind and solar alone won’t work on still nights"

True, except for CSP with heat storage, which can run at night with valuable dispatchable power, and with far cheaper energy storage than batteries. Also, there is a lot to be said for the option of combining NG firing with solar plants, like the NREL pilot plants in the Mojave. CSP is already the cheapest solar power and will become much cheaper in the near future.


www.altenergystocks.co...

www.nrel.gov/csp/troug...


If John Peterson is right (series of articles at Seeking Alpha), and advanced lead acid batteries are a cost effective choice for hybrids, PHEVs etc, then we can avoid the dependence on Asian battery imports. Exide (XIDE)intends to manufacture and sell AGM batteries with activated carbon negative electrodes, developed by Axion Power International (AXPW.OB), in an agreement anounced recently. This could at least serve the transition to more advanced batteries, Li-ion or some other chemistry, that are also affordable.

seekingalpha.com/autho...

They are a big improvement over standard lead acid batteries in terms of cycling etc. They have the advantage of affordability and U.S. manufacturing already in place for lead acid batteries, as well as established recycling, marketing etc.

"i agree that the "greenies" (as you refer to them) are shooting themselves in the foot because of their lack of pragmatism wrt energy policy. their positions to back solar and wind at the expense of natural gas is, in fact, keeping us addicted to coal and oil"

That is a ridiculous statement

I do agree that some environmentalists are shortsighted in blocking solar development in the southwest, for example, and like most groups, can be wrong headed at times. However, to say that advocating for solar and wind is perpetuating our addiction to oil is absurd. And most of us who are advocating for renewables are ok with natural gas. While I hope we eventually get away from all fossil fuels, natural gas would be the last to go.
You know damn well who is perpetuating our addiction to oil. Blaming it on renewable advocates is mistaking the fox for the hens.

Wind and solar can be built 2-3 times as fast as the equivalent nuclear plants. We could have hundreds of gigawatts of cheap clean energy by the time the first nuclear plant gets built in a decade or more. By then, nuclear and "clean coal" will not be able to compete with solar and wind prices, which will all be in low to mid single digit cents/kWh, when nuclear and coal with CCS are in the mid teens cents/kWh.

The power from solar thermal (CSP) with heat storage will be as valuable if not more valuable because of it's dispatchability. See article above from alternative energy stocks.com
The NREL, while expecting the first handful of plants to be on the expensive side, thinks the costs will rapidly fall with experience and economy of scale.
There are economies of scale that come with bigger CSP plants.
Because of limited fixed costs in the main part of the plant, adding more collectors, and hence more power, has diminishing costs.


Wind energy grew by the equivalent of 2 1/2 nuclear plants just last year in the U.S.. Ever hear of 2 1/2 nuclear plants being built in one year?
And that's figuring in the 30% capacity factor for wind. 8.3 GW capacity growth.
8.3 x .30 = 2.49 And the growth is just getting started. Even at last year's rate, that's 100 GW capacity in ten years.


Alex Filonov
"No technology is sustainable if it needs constant government support."

You mean like the 90 years of subsidies that the oil industry has enjoyed? According to the leading authority on U.S. energy subsidies, not one subsidy has ever been phased out, since 1919.
Oil gets $39 billion a year. - for the most profitable industry in the history of the world, and the largest and most powerful, and the answer to the question about who is encouraging our addiction.

Fossil fuels in general get $49 billion a year. That's 3 times as much as the subsidies for all the renewables put together, that Obama wants.

Nuclear power has been subsidized fo 50 years and $$ hundreds of billions.

Subsidies are the worst argument imaginable against renewable energy. Especially at a time when our addiction to oil is also ruining our economy and has gotten us into two wars in two decades in the mid east.

Book Review: Robert Hefner's 'The Grand Energy Transition'

I'm back.... just kidding

Here are two more relevent articles on energy solutions.

climateprogress.org/20.../

climateprogress.org/20.../

Book Review: Robert Hefner's 'The Grand Energy Transition'

Other things to consider.

One of the issues with natural gas, that Joseph Romm pointed out in one of his articles, is that it's about 50% more efficient to burn NG in power plants than in cars. Whether this is outweighed by the ability to have, at least, a transitional transportation fuel for the near and intermediate term is a good question. The argument that it also helps with energy independence, compared with oil, is another factor in NG's favor.


T Boone Pickens was talking about using NG in cars instead of in power plants. It makes much more sense to phase out coal plants, which are much dirtier, and let the gas plants run at least for the foreseeable future. Even aggressive energy transition plans like the Google plan, or the Repower America plan, allow for letting NG plants run while other cleaner renewable sources are developed.

Also, Pickens wanted to replace gas plants with wind farms. The wind farms are a good idea, but not for replacing gas plants. Gas can produce power immediately on demand, something even coal or nuclear can't do, as others here noted.

We need to start turning gas fired plants into cogeneration plants. The heat that goes up the stack is an enormous waste of energy.

Gas plants can also be converted to fuel cell plants or fuel cells can augment the burning of the gas. Fuel Cell Technology (FCEL) does this.
The same fuel cells can operate on methane.
And the fuel cells are combined heat and power.
Fuel cells have much less emissions than burning the same fuel.

Some of the problems with new nuclear is that it will be expensive compared with solar or wind and will take much longer to build. Estimates for electricity from new nuclear plants are twice as much as solar and wind will be in ten years. Wind is already half the price. S0lar CSP will be half the price in ten years. So will PV solar.
And all three can be built two to three times faster than nuclear. While I don't know a lot about nuclear tech, what sounds most promising to me is thorium based nuclear. But again, it is decades away from commercialization.
It takes a decade, at minimum, to get a nuclear plant built. New nuclear technology is more likely a mid term solution, not something we should throw money at the commercialization of now. Research and eventual pilot plants sure.

My main opposition to nuclear is that it's a stepping stone to nuclear weapons. Think Iran. Now imagine thousands of more nuclear plants all over the world in many more countries than now. Nuclear fuel and waste would be spread worldwide on a massive scale. They would be much more accessable to terrorists and rogue nations.
The guy in Maine who got caught trying to build a radioactive dirty bomb yesterday is another example, and he was stockpiling thorium, which we're told is safe. Ok, I guess you can't build a real nuclear bomb with it. This individual case may not be related to the existence of nuclear power plants but that doesn't mean future attempts won't be.

Nuclear plants are dependent on enormous quantities of cooling water, which may not be so available in the future, with the exception of plants built on the seashore.

France which is held up as the example of what can be done with nuclear energy has enormous nuclear waste storage problems and has had repeated leaks and accidents. Areva, their nuclear authority, has big problems in Africa where they mine uranium.

www.beyondnuclear.org/...

www.everythingnuclear....

"France's decision to reprocess reactor fuel has contaminated the seas as far as the Artic Circle and may have led to leukemia clusters near the reprocessing plant. Its decision to try breeder reactors was an expensive failure. Its plutonium fuel program has not reduced its surplus stockpile of plutonium which is calculated at greater than 80 metric tons sitting in tens of thousands of vulnerable containers and with no disposal option. France has no radioactive waste repository."

"In the summer of 2008, France experienced a cascade of accidents at its nuclear facilities. While leaks and spills, including uranium that contaminated groundwater, caused a ban on drinking and bathing and local vintners to change the labels on their bottles, Areva downplayed the gravity of the releases. But the black summer of radioactive leaks and spills shed doubt on the nuclear industry's - and in particular Areva's - ability to uphold fundamental safety standards according to an article in the International Herald Tribune."

"Read here about Areva's 40-year uranium mining track record in the Niger and support the collective"Areva Shall Not Make the Law in Niger" of which Beyond Nuclear is a member."
www.beyondnuclear.org/...


We import 90% of our uranium and have signed up to have Russia supply 20% of our future needs.

I'm sure nuclear will be part of the energy mix but is not the silver bullet many imagine. We were promised electricity too cheap to meter about 50 years ago. After 50 years and about $500 billion in subsidies it has failed to make good on that promise. And now it will be among the most expensive sources of energy. And it isn't as green as the renewables. In fact, it only has low emissions at the final step, when the fuel rods are used in the reactor. Everything up to that point has high emissions, plus the negative effects of mining and milling uranium with it's radioactive tailings.

Book Review: Robert Hefner's 'The Grand Energy Transition'

Wind has the lowest carbon footprint and land footprint. It is also quick to build and inexpensive. In the U.S. wind energy increased by 8.3 GW last year, or a 50% increase year to year. That's the equivalent in kilowatt hours per year to 3 nuclear reactors of average 1 GW size, or 5-6 coal plants of average 600 MW size. Jobs from wind increased 70% to 85,000 last year.

"Wind power's ecological footprint is so small — a million times smaller than ethanol's — that if all the cars driven in the United States were battery-electric, they could be fueled by wind turbines whose total land footprint, not counting spacing in between, takes up less than 1.2 square miles, Stanford University environmental engineering professor Mark Jacobson found."

[wind turbines only use about 2 1/2% of the land where they are sited, allowing them to coexist with agriculture]

"To fuel the same number of battery-electric vehicles with cellulose ethanol would require an amount of land equivalent to eight Californias – literally a million times more land and equivalent to the amount of land harvested in the U.S. in 2003."

solveclimate.com/blog/...

As for the fears of government intrusion and massive efforts to solve the global warming problem, which is what is behind much of the denier opposition, you might want to consider the following ideas presented by Joseph Romm at Climate Progress.org. Romm is a physicist who did his doctorate on the physical oceanography of the Greenland sea and is a former assistant secretary of energy.

".....Well, if we follow the talk-much do-little climate strategy of conservatives, then we are all but certain to end up at 1000 ppm by century’s end, and that would be economically ruinous and socially destructive ."

"If you hate government intrusion into people’s lives, you’d better stop catastrophic global warming, because nothing drives a country more towards activist government than scarcity and depravation."

"Here is where the conservatives have it backwards. The solution to global warming — the strategy needed to avoid 450 ppm — does not require rationing food or energy. It primarily requires a government-led strategy to aggressively deploy clean energy technologies . That strategy preserves the energy abundance that has made modern civilization possible."

"But if we hold off today on government action that focuses for several decades on preventing catastrophe, we will almost guarantee the need for extreme and intrusive government action in the post-2030 era, perhaps lasting centuries. Only Big Government–which conservatives say they don’t want–can relocate millions of citizens, build massive levees, ration crucial resources like water and arable land, mandate harsh and rapid reductions in certain kinds of energy–all of which will be inevitable if we don’t act now."

"The scarcity and deprivation of 1000 ppm could last for hundreds of years. Conservatives can’t stop 1000 ppm by their anti-science anti-government rhetoric. But they can prevent progressives and moderates from stopping 1000 ppm by blocking aggressive climate legislation. How ironic — and tragic — it would be if conservates’ short-term quest to avoid a bigger government led to a permamently huge government."

He's being conservative. 1000 ppm would most likely end civilization and possibly the human species.
It would guarantee that all the ice in the world melts, which would mean sea levels 250 feet higher than now. And that's only one of the problems it would create. More than half the species on earth would be extinct, the ocean would be dead, and a third of the world would be in a drought for 1000 years. Temperatures in the American heartland would be 10-15 F hotter than now. One sixth of the world population would have no fresh water because there would be no snowpack or glaciers that they now depend on.
Food production would cease to exist over much of the globe. An enormous amount of food is grown in coastal areas that would be impacted by rising sea levels.

And his 450 ppm is probably too high. Many climate scientists now think it is imperative that we bring CO2 concentrations below 350 ppm by mid century. Romm uses the higher figure, mostly because he doesn't think we have the political will do do more. Based on the poll I mentioned in my previous post, he's right.

Here's an article at Scientific American on the conservative nature of the IPCC

www.sciam.com/article....

And more on the prospects for renewables/verses coal.
climateprogress.org/20.../

Romm is very knowledgable in terms of climate science as well as energy. He's a prolific writer at Climate Progress, and while you might not agree with everything he says, he has a lot of valuable insights in regard to the problems and solutions.

Of course this assumes one is interested in real science and analysis and cares enough to be informed.

Book Review: Robert Hefner's 'The Grand Energy Transition'

The dumbing down of America never ceases to amaze me. Judging by the responses here, I agree with the author. People are so blinded by their prejudices and political ideology that they have completely lost the ability to think.
On global warming, a recent poll of scientists found that 80% of scientists in general agree with the AGW theory, and 97% of active climate scientists agree. But a poll of Americans found that over 75% of republicans think they are smarter than the world scientific community, and what's worse they actually believe the absurd conspiracy theories concocted by the denier propaganda campaign. And they call the scientists alarmist! Even among Democrats only 59% think the theory is correct.

That means less than half of Americans agree with the scientists. Ok, how many believe the theory of gravity? According to some of these luddites, Al Gore dreamed up the whole thing. My God. I'm sure the 50,000 members of the AGU and every major scientific organization in the world, and the earth science faculty of every major university in the world are all just following Al Gore's lead.

People aren't keeping up with the science, which gets stronger every day. Climate models that were questioned ten years ago have gotten more and more accurate and in fact are proving to have been far too conservative. Without exception, every new observation or bit of scientific data shows that the IPCC's 4th Assessment Report which came out just two years ago, is proving to be far too conservative. Estimates for global temperature increase by 2100 have doubled from those estimates, based on more recent data and observations.

Those are the facts. Opinions are worthless.

Most deniers, are not what science calls skeptics, who they give a bad name. When you repeat every skeptic argument which has ever been thought of, which is typical strategy in denier land, even though they often contradict each other, you are not dealing with reality. Most of these arguments were disproven 10-20 years ago. No matter how many times scientists show that they have been disproven, deniers bring them up over and over again, hundreds if not thousands of times a day on the internet as if they were ALL true. They have become urban legends believed religiously by some. That is scientific skepticism?
Hardly.

Actually they have all been discredited in the scientific literature but deniers assume they are all true. just amazing.

The most popular myth currently, is that we are now cooling. This is another urban legend with absolutely no scientific foundation. Every bit of data says it is wrong, but deniers repeat it endlessly. Then they make up another phony argument that says scientists changed the name from global warming to climate change because the warming has stopped. Scientists actually have been using the two terms interchangably since the mid 70s. And the IPCC or (Intergovernmental Panel on CLIMATE CHANGE)
was named in 1988, twenty years ago. Somehow they missed these small details in their headlong rush into stupidity.

If you want to actually know something about climate change, rather than just cling to your false and politically motivated assumptions, then I recommend going to the websites of actual climate scientists. You could start with

www.realclimate.org

www.skepticalscience.c.../

www.logicalscience.com/

gristmill.grist.org/sk...

environment.newscienti...

greenfyre.wordpress.co.../

scienceblogs.com/delto.../

tamino.wordpress.com/

Unless of course you want to stay comfortably in your fairy land world of opinions and prejudices.

If a skeptic mentions Al Gore, you can be sure they don't have a clue what they are talking about. These are ad hominem attacks on the messenger, and have absolutely nothing to do with scientific skepticism. It's the kind of argument someone makes, who has nothing else to go on.

Others offer factually unsupported statements about how alternative energy can't do the job. More disinformation. Do your homework. These are largely empty talking points that you repeat because they fit your political ideology and prejudices about environmentalists.

We can build hundreds of gigawatts of solar and wind in the next two decades. No fuel ever, to pay for, mine, transport, store, refine, prospect for, burn, clean up the mess from, or fight wars over. In ten years, all forms of solar will be competitive with fossil fuels, and wind already is.
In five years PV solar will be directly competitive, or at grid parity, over 40% of the country.
In ten years it will be there nationwide.
Same is true for solar thermal.

Technology may solve the problem of how to produce hydrogen on a large scale, in an economically and environmentally sound way.
In the meantime we can use the tools we have to transition to cleaner energy.

I recommend the new book "The Carbon Age"
by Eric Roston. It puts what we are doing with fossil fuels in the larger perspective of the history of the earth and it's atmosphere and lifeforms, and the delicate balance of the carbon cycle that makes life as we know it possible. Read it, and then come back here and explain how global warming is just a natural cycle.

Six Reasons for Cloudy Skies on the Solar Energy Industry

Nuclear plants the size of a garden shed spread all over the world.
Yeah, I want a few of those in my back yard. Let's spread the availability of fissionable materials and nuclear waste around the world where everyone who wants some can get their hands on it.
Will we have curbside pick up of the radioactive waste too?
Are you nuts?

Nuclear power does NOT have a small carbon footprint. The only time that is true is after the fuel rods are in place and producing power. Every single step in the process is carbon intensive.

Read the Lean Guide to Nuclear Energy.
www.theleaneconomyconn...
and this:
www.cleanwisconsin.org...

It isn't sustainable in any way. How about peak uranium in ten years or so.
Nuclear power requires enormous amounts of water for cooling. In a world facing water problems in the future, we don't need that.

Nuclear power doesn't give us energy independence. We import 65% of our oil and 90% of our uranium. And now Russia is being lined up as a future source of 20% of our uranium.

Nuclear power is not safe. According to Argonne National Laboratory, an airliner crashing into a nuclear power plant could cause a complete meltdown, even if the containment building isn't compromised. Think the twin towers disaster was bad?

The transportation of radioactive waste from all over the country to Yucca Mt. is potentially dangerous, as well as expensive

There is no accountability with nuclear power. The Price-Anderson Act places most of the liability for nuclear accidents on the backs of taxpayers, not the nuclear power industry.

A nuclear power plant costs about $4,000 per kilowatt hour to build, compared with $1,400 per KWH for wind energy.

Wind and solar are much quicker to get up and running than nuclear or coal. And both can start generating power before large wind or solar farms are completed, because they are modular in design

Nuclear power is heavily subsidized. According to Earthtrack, Federal subsidies to new nuclear power plants are likely between 4 and 8 cents per kWh (levelized).

Every nuclear power plant will require at least $500 million to dismantlet, when it has outlived it's useful life. This adds to the nuclear waste disposal problem.

from the Lean Guide to Nuclear Energy
""The world’s endowment of uranium ore is now so depleted that the nuclear industry will never, from its own resources, be able to generate the energy it needs to clear up its own backlog of waste."
"Shortages of uranium – and the lack of realistic alternatives –leading to interruptions in supply, can be expected to start in the middle years of the decade 2010-2019, and to deepen thereafter."
"Every stage in the nuclear process, except fission, produces carbon dioxide. As the richest ores are used up, emissions will rise."

"Nuclear energy certainly has disadvantages, quite apart from the clincher problem of the depletion of its fuel. It is a source of low-level radiation which may be more dangerous than was previously thought. It is a source of high-level waste which has to be sequestered. Every stage in the process produces lethal waste, including the mining and leaching processes, the milling, the enrichment and the decommissioning. It is very expensive. It is a terrorist target and its enrichment processes are stepping stones to the production of nuclear weapons."

And the more we use up the low hanging fruit, the more radioactive tailings there will be as we try to squeeze a few ounces out of more and more tons of earth.

Now they tell us we can get uranium from sea water. sounds good until you find out we would have to filter 40,000 cubic miles of sea water every year to supply 200 reactors. How much energy would that take, if it were possible?

And nowhere do you mention solar thermal power plants which should be the kingpin of a clean energy grid. They can operate day and night and be used as base load, follow on, or peaker plants, exactly fitting their output to the daily energy demand cycle.
We could power the whole country with these, using less land than we now use for coal plants and coal mines. And they will compete head on with fossil fuel plants cost wise.
www.salon.com/news/fea...
Excellent article on solar thermal.