Originally Posted By: Shannow
Originally Posted By: ShiningArcanine
That is not true if you have a nuclear power plant near you. As more nuclear power plants are built, this will become a thing of the past, but even coal power plants (oil based power plants are primarily used for backup electrical power) are more efficient than the little petroleum engines we use in our cars and they are also much more easily replaced.
The oil based plants used for "back-up" and peaking are about the same efficiency as an IC engine. Throw in some transmission and conversion losses and you either break even, or lose.
There is a limited amount of Uranium in the world. India is playing with thorium breeders, which will extend that somewhat, but it's not limitless.
Nukes built with traditional cooling systems will evaporate inordinate amounts of water if they are supplying our transport needs. If they build them dry cooled (possible), they will be 15% efficient at best.
Originally Posted By: ShiningArcanine
There is no downside to drawing energy from the grid, as all of the costs (such as upgrading the grid with wires that have thicker insulators to handle higher electrical loads while maintaining the same efficiency) are already part of the cost of electricity.
Load has nothing to do with insulation. Insulation is rated according to voltage, not current (load).
Spent nuclear fuel rods still contain 99% fissible uranium. It is the 1% that is composed of products of the fission reaction that prevents further fission. Given that only 1% of the uranium in nuclear fuel rods is consumed, that nuclear fuel rods are replaced every three years on average and that we have a large supply of uranium beyond what is currently used in nuclear reactors, what would be used in additional nuclear reactors and what could be recovered by reprocessing existing "waste," I believe that nuclear reprocessing will ensure that we have enough energy for centuries (perhaps even millennia) and when the supply becomes an issue, cold-fusion reactors, fusion reactors and/or antimatter-matter reactors will have been an option for a long time, assuming that we wait until we run out of uranium to switch.
By the way, no energy source is truly renewable. Energy sources are only called renewable when they will last such a long period of time that discussion of when they will be depleted is pointless. E.g. Solar power will become useless in approximately 5.4 billion years when the earth's biosphere will cease to exist. It also becomes useless when you travel out of our solar system, at which point there is too little of it to collect.
