You ask on what do I base my enthusiasm for nuclear?

First, it is not intermittent, but can provide power when it is not sunny and not windy. Therefore it is grid friendly – while solar and wind over a certain threshold (I think 30% ish) is not grid friendly.

Second, it does not emit CO2.

Third, it can provide power in a very compact space, compared to wind or solar, and it can be located in places where it is not windy or not very well suited to solar (like Minnesota).

Fourth, if we build a few recycling nuclear power plants we have spent fuel laying around which is considered a problem in most places, but which is free fuel which can run a bunch of nuclear power plants for a very very long time.

The downsides to nuclear is that it is more expensive than fossil fuel and there is a lot of political opposition to nuclear power. But there is nothing technical which prevents widespread deployment of nuclear power, to generate as much power as we need in the United States, should we choose to do it.

There will also be opposition to moving spent fuel around to get it to the recycling reactors – but no real technical issues to do so.

I recommend reading Terrestrial Energy: How Nuclear Energy Will Lead the Green Revolution and End America’s Energy Odyssey Sep 19, 2008 by William Tucker.

I found this book very interesting.

As for your concerns about open loop water availability and site location – there are closed loop passive cooling designs which eliminate that concern.

See http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/te_1474_web.pdf

I don’t expect RickA to know anything. Discussing with him, her or it – we don’t know – is like flogging a dead horse. The following remarks are directed to Windchaser, who recognizes the reality of climate change, but not the urgency of addressing it.

There are a number of things regarding nuclear that should be considered. The first is nuclear’s vulnerability to climate change. Most nuclear depends on water cooling. (Other forms of cooling are more expensive and raise the the price of an already overly expensive, non-competitive energy source even more. One might ask why climate septics reject wind energy based on cost, and then support nuclear, which costs considerably more. One might ask why reactionaries, who reject government regulation, support the energy form that requires the greatest degree of government involvement.) As water cooled plants need to be situated near a body of water, both flooding and droughts, both of which are consequences of climate change, are threats. If the water temperature is too hot, the intake may reduce the plant’s efficiency, and environmental problems caused by discharge could result in a shutdown.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21028138.200-the-climate-change-threat-to-nuclear- power.html?full=true
http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_energy/our-energy-choices/energy-and-water-use/infographic-energy-water-collision.html

Other than being largely incompatible with a warming climate, nuclear projects have been beset by delays that mean they could not be scaled up quickly enough to limit the threat. In addition, nuclear has been beset by cost overruns, is so economically risky that financial institutions no longer invest in it, and in every way is losing out to renewable sources.

“…the impressively resilient hopes that many people still have of a global nuclear renaissance are being trumped by a real-time revolution in efficiency-plusrenewables-plus-storage, delivering more and more solutions on the ground every year…

Every year that passes reveals a widening gap between what is happening with the nuclear industry (forensically laid bare by successive Status Reports) and how so-called alternatives become a new paradigm…

Twenty years on, not one of the Generation III reactor designs is yet in service. And the kind of reduced costs that were being talked about at that time have been proved entirely illusory: by 2013, the projected costs of Generation III designs had increased eightfold. As the WNISR authors put it: “By May 2015, there were 18 reactors of designs claimed to meet Generation III+ criteria under construction. Only two were still on time, and the rest were two to nine years late…

Undaunted by this grinding reality, the nuclear industry is now increasingly active in talking up the prospects for Generation IV reactor designs, which will (we are told) address all the same
problems that Generation III designs were supposed to address. Right now, for instance, there’s an outspoken lobby making the case for Small Modular Reactors – an idea which is readily badged as Generation IV but actually goes back to the 1960s. Then the 1980s. Then the 1990s. Then the early 2000s!..

For those who’ve now somewhat given up on Small Modular Reactors and other so-called “advanced nuclear reactors”, there’s always the promise of an entirely new nuclear value chain based not on uranium but on thorium – another proposition that has been around for more than 50 years. And what’s remarkable here is that even the keenest advocates of thorium acknowledge that it couldn’t possibly make a substantive, cost-effective contribution to the world’s need for
low-carbon energy for at least another 20 years.

The consistent history of innovation in the nuclear industry is one of periodic spasms of enthusiasm for putative breakthrough technologies, leading to the commitment of untold billions of investment dollars, followed by a slow, unfolding story of disappointment caused by intractable design and cost issues. Purely from an innovation perspective, it’s hard to imagine a sorrier, costlier and more self-indulgent story of serial failure.”
http://www.worldnuclearreport.org/IMG/pdf/20151023MSC-WNISR2015-V4-LR.pdf (Foreword)
https://will.illinois.edu/nfs/RenaissanceinReverse7.18.2013.pdf
http://www.carbonbrief.org/new-nuclear-finlands-cautionary-tale-for-the-uk

The following shows what an energy policy that’s based on wind can achieve:
http://www.vox.com/2016/3/12/11210818/denmark-energy-policies

Note that onshore wind is the cheapest source of new electricity. A new report shows that wind is reliable:
http://awea.files.cms-plus.com/AWEA%20Reliability%20White%20Paper%20-%202-12-15.pdf

Finally, here’s an analysis showing how the U.S. could be completely powered by renewables, without nuclear, by 2050:
https://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/USStatesWWS.pdf

On what do you base your enthusiasm for nuclear?

I recommend that you read the advanced version of the Skeptical Science rebuttal article, “Sun & climate: moving in opposite directions” and watch the appended video from the Denial101x – Making Sense of Climate Science Denial- MOOC.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/solar-activity-sunspots-global-warming-advanced.htm

I just don’t think the evidence is there.

That’s the issue Windchaser: RickA has repeatedly demonstrated he doesn’t care about evidence, only about his “smell-test” judgement.

“that we can agree on”

You are agreeing with someone who is just as ignorant/confused about how electricity works (despite claims of being an EE as I recall) as about climate science. Not to mention the economics of the whole thing.

I disagree. The Earth had generally been cooling for the last 5,000 years or so.

http://www.realclimate.org/images//Marcott.png

The general trend was downward. Of course there were wiggles up and down within that, as solar or volcanic aerosols varied up and down. But orbital mechanics has us heading towards another glacial period.

In reality, we have a rather loose grasp on the aerosol forcings of the 19th and 20th centuries. That’s why the uncertainty is so large. And it’s part of why we have a hard time constraining ECS.

Solar activity, though, was dropping after 1950, so we would have been cooling since then. (At least, if you buy the sunspot — solar activity connection).

I look at the evidence and evaluate it and see an ECS of 1.5C ish – I am sure you guys evaluate it and see 3C or 4.5C – and that is fine.

I think you have to disregard >95% of the evidence to get to an ECS of 1.5C.

If you cherry-pick juuuuuusst a teeny-tiny amount of the evidence, and ignore the rest, you can get to an ECS that low. Ignore that humidity naturally changes with temperature, ignore that this low ECS is inconsistent with paleoclimate changes, ignore the lack of any physical basis for such a low ECS, etc., etc.

Sorry. Not trying to be rude, I just don’t think the evidence is there. Not even close.

In the meantime – lets go nuclear – that will help no matter who is correct.

Ayep. That we can agree on!

Of course it doesn’t! It is contrary to your desires and ideology!

This isn’t even DK, but outright motivated reasoning by RickA.

just makes no sense to me.

Whether due to your lack of intellectual ability or simply your desire to reject reality, the fact that it “makes no sense to you” is immaterial.

I have read the IPCC reports.

I do take them with a grain of salt.

We haven’t managed to narrow the range of CS from 1.5C to 4.5C since 1990 ish.

I also don’t buy that without human influence the Earth would have cooled slightly over the last 65 years.

Doesn’t pass the smell test (to me).

We know the sun was the most active in centuries during most of the 20th century.

We know there was great warming from 1905 to about 1945 (before the 1950 magic cut off).

We know that without human influence we would not have passed the clean air act – which provided a cooling effect – so without human influence that cooling effect disappers.

We know that without human influence we would not have emitted CO2 from 1950 to 2015 (that has a warming effect).

Netting those out – I don’t buy a net cooling effect – just makes no sense to me.

We have been warming for 20,000 years – we warmed after the LIA – we warmed from 1905 to 1945 – why should I believe we would start cooling all of the sudden (absent humans)?

Sounds like wishful thinking to me.

But believe what you like – that is ok with me.

I look at the evidence and evaluate it and see an ECS of 1.5C ish – I am sure you guys evaluate it and see 3C or 4.5C – and that is fine.

But don’t pretend you know what the answer is – nobody knows what the answer is yet.

We have to wait to see.

In the meantime – lets go nuclear – that will help no matter who is correct.