Which pretty much tells the whole story of non-nuclear alternatives.

Nah. It tells the story of the painless-in-the-short-term alternatives.

• make people pay for all the externalities in electricity production (see the EU report I have pointed to many times, from ExternE - no link, I'm on dialup);

• mandate more wind - stop doing it on a one windturbine per one windturbine basis as they've done so far.

• get serious about car energy consumption. No new cars with mpg below 50, full stop (hey, that should be good for high tech manufacturers - or are these only in France and Italy?)

• get serious about priorities re train infrastructure vs roads.

• get serious about housing insulation. No new building without top notch standards, and a crash programme to refurbish older stock (hey, that should be good for business)

The technology is there, the costs are known (and can only go down further if there is a large scale programme), as are the benefits.

Then we'll see if nuclear is actually needed. Maybe it will be; maybe not.


In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes