Xyrus

Solar Stocks: Nine That Will Shine in a Bull Market

The amount of ignorance in regards to nuclear power on this board is truly staggering.

Let's clear some things up. Coal plants are currently pumping out more radioactive material than nuclear plants are, and that's going straight into the atmosphere. See this EPA report: www.epa.gov/ttn/caaa/t...

Modern nuclear plants are safe. Note the word "modern". Due to the populace's lack of understanding and knee jerk reactionaries from decades ago, nuclear power become so NIMBYed and cost prohibitive that the stations we have now our decades out of date. France is currently running about 70% nuclear.

The "waste" everyone sites is only a problem if you don't allow reprocessing of spent fuel. You see, in our antiquated reactors only so much fuel can be "burned". After it gets to a certain point, the rod no longer produces enough energy to be useful. However, there is still plenty of fissile material left. If the US would use breeder reactors (like France), a spent fuel rod can be reprocessed several times, greatly increasing energy yields and greatly decreasing wastes.

Next up, the limited supply of Uranium. Even with reprocessing (and better tech like pebble bed reactors) there is only a centuries left at current consumption. The better choice is thorium, of which we have thousands of years worth. Thorium reactors are impossible to melt down; they require a neutron pump for a reaction. No pump, no reaction. The by products are also much less troublesome to deal with.

But even sticking with uranium, with reprocessing the amount of waste drops significantly and is far less than the crap pumped out by coal plants.

Ideally, solar would be the answer. But there are still some problems. First, cell yields need to increase. Efficiency in the teens isn't going to cut it for the global grid. Some lab cells have gotten higher and special cells used for satellites perform better as well, but at $100k per KW that's a little much. Second, costs need to come down. I've been waiting for some time for solar to become affordable, but it is still out of reach.

Nuclear will get us there in the short term. Long term, solar and biofuels.

~X~