TinyTim

Six Reasons for Cloudy Skies on the Solar Energy Industry

so the point is not trouble for the solar industry, but the relative advantage of poly silicon. great. subsidies will allow increasing returns to kick in.

"Nuclear power plants smaller than a garden shed and able to power 20,000 homes will be on sale within five years, say scientists at Los Alamos"

Obviously, they haven't been on a supercarrier or in a sub lately.
Military technology like this should be spun off.
Having been thru reactors since Indian Point to Palo Verde (which is in the middle of the desert and cooled with reclaimed sewage), I wonder why there is no standardization to reduce cost. BTW every reactor I've been thru claims the containment building can withstand a direct hit from a 747 (or equivalent). Never been able to substantiate this, but looking at cross sections, it certainly seems likely.

Nuclear material (waste and otherwise) is on the rails and roads daily. Sorry if there's no DOT plaque advertising this. Much of the fuel used lately were weapons in the USSR. As mentioned above, high level waste is not really waste, just awaiting reprocessing. Breeder reactors close the fuel cycle. It's amazingly short sighted that worries about proliferation in the 70's have still prevented even one from being built 35 years later.

Most peaking plants today are fired by natural gas. We need to use all the alternatives to fossil fuels we can find in a safe and environmentally sensitive manner.