Archive for the ‘duncan currie’ tag

The Nuclear Resurgence #

January 20th, 2008 | In Worth Knowing 

 Nuclear power’s — I hope — coming back. In The American Duncan Currie says so. And though this isn’t new news (The Economist put it on the cover months ago), Currie does a good job rounding up opinions and facts on the issue. That does not, however, make the piece a breeze to read.

The Whitman-Moore coalition supports fur­ther research into renewable energy sources such as solar, wind, and geothermal power. But it counsels a realistic assessment: geothermal is often impractical and capital-intensive, while wind and solar remain “intermittent and unre­liable.” According to CASEnergy, “A wind farm would need 235 square miles to produce the same amount of electricity as a 1,000-megawatt nuclear power plant. The nuclear plant would occupy less than one-half of 1 percent of that area. A 1,000-megawatt power plant can meet the needs of a city the size of Boston or Seattle.”