December 01 2018
Seems there is a growing list of "greens" coming out in favor of nuclear
energy these days.  People are looking at Germany's experience with trying
to replace fossil fuels and nuclear in favor of wind and photovoltaics,
which has been rather costly, hasn't actually reduced their CO2 emissions
all that much, and has bumped up electric utility bills, now the highest 
in the EU [0].  Over in France something like 70% [1] of the electricity
is generated by nuclear which, combined with hydro and renewables, has
kept down both CO2 emissions and utility rates, which are in fact the
lowest of all the EU countries.  Currently Germany emits about 11 tons
CO2 per person while the French emit around 6 tons per capita [2].

But what about safety, waste disposal or possibly "peak uranium"?  As for
the safety of nuclear energy, it actually has a pretty good track record,
even when factoring in events like the Chernobyl and Fukushima accidents.
To quote Wikipedia [3], "[i]n terms of lives lost per unit of energy
generated, nuclear power has caused fewer accidental deaths per unit of
energy generated than all other major sources of energy generation."; and
that includes the so-called green renewables like wind and photovoltaics.

To address fuel supply and disposal the French, at great expense,
reprocess the spent uranium using sodium cooled breeder reactors.
The French use the same pressurized water reactors as countries like the
US; these reactors only use about 1% of the uranium in the fuel rods.
However, by repeatedly enriching the spent fuel up to 98% of the uranium
eventually gets used up.  Even better, what is leftover to be disposed has
a greatly reduced half-life, roughly 300 years as opposed to 24,000 years
for unenriched fuel rods.  Currently the French do not have a long-term
disposal facility for their nuclear waste so they are encapsulating it in
glass and interning on-site.  Supposedly the volume of waste generated
annually per citizen is about the size of a large coin.  That doesn't
seem like much but it invariably adds up; some day soon they'll need a
long-term internment site.

I'm not really crazy about relying on nuclear but it is a technology we
have right now and more or less know how to do it at scale.  The biggest
problem with nuclear seems to be the up-front cost and time required to go
from blueprint to start-up.  Most of the depressing climate reports say
we have around a decade to make significant cuts, something like 40%, in
our GHG emissions to stave off the really bad climate weirding scenarios.
Given that, we probably should have started building new nuclear power
plants 10 years ago.  Given the debt levels in the US and its political
climate I doubt any near-term tangible progress will occur.

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Movie review:  SWITCH (2012) - a documentary film on global energy
featuring Dr. Scott Tinker, a geologist at the University of Texas.
Tinker has a long history in the oil and gas industry which made me a
bit skeptical but after watching it on YouTube (it's available for free)
I thought it did a pretty good job of taking a neutral position on the
various energy sources explored.  And they visit the French nuclear
facilities previously discussed.  I was curious as to Tinker's current
views on things and found a recent interview done by Chris Martenson
for Peak Prosperity [4].  While He doesn't seem wedded to any particular
approach to energy transition, he is definitely a member of the Church
of Progress, believing humans will always come up with technologies to
keep moving ever forward. Probably he is not a Tainter [5] fan.

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[0] http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/high-costs-and-errors-of-german-transition-to-renewable-energy-a-920288.html
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power#Safety
[4] https://youtu.be/8NBWXpaofWs
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Tainter