A couple of problems. First a lot of that co-gen is fossil based and has a finite time line. Second a new niche market eventually gets filled and growth slows. It's a bit like fixing up the cracks in a wall; it doesn't necessarily mean the wall can take a heavier load. It is interesting to note that both RMI and MIT have taken a set against nuclear and have to keep justifying their position.

Not only are there gona be alot more nuke plants but alot more coal plants as well. They are a done deal.

What Aussie said... and you can't accuse me of not being pro-cogeneration.

Gas is peaking now.  Oil is peaking sometime between now and 2025.  We are going to need cogeneration now, but we are also going to need solar, wind, biomass, refuse-derived fuel... and nuclear.

Stanford recently published an estimate of world-wide wind power potential.  It came out to 72 terawatts.  That's 8 kilowatts per capita for 9 billion people, and all of it would be electricity (pure work).

The USA uses about 12 kW/capita raw energy input, of which perhaps 4 kW can be converted to work.  Britain uses about 6 kW/capita.

And that's just wind.  If we get quantum-dot photovoltaics at even 50% efficiency and every hundred-square-meter bungalow can crank out 50 kW on sunny days, we are going to have an embarrassment of riches.

I see just one problem, which is that the technology is a couple of decades behind where we need to be to start relying on this in the short term.  Nuclear is a bridge, no less and no more.

distantbody posted that not me I just posted that nuke and coal plants being built in the near future was a done deal already.

Personaly I expect nuke plants to expand slowly and coal plants to expand by about 50-100 plants max here in america. I expect the rest of the energy will be made up from various other power sources.

Jack, rather than me give a bunch of links you should google words like 'energy' and 'nuclear'. To get an idea of the magnitude of the problem you could try cutting your use of fuel and electricity by 50%. If you can do it then ask whether a billion affluent consumers are prepared to do the same. I think you will conclude like wintermane that use of both coal and nukes will increase, not decrease. This will speed warming and may or may not lead to nuclear incidents. Organisations that say otherwise or push pie-in-the-sky solutions lack credibility. That's my opinion; time will tell if that's how facts turn out.

The problems with wind and Solar are of course location, reliability and availability: many good wind and Solar sites are far from users, wind does not blow constantly, and the Sun does not shine constantly (except in orbit). The delivery networks and storage systems needed to make renewables useable will be more expensive than the generation facilities. Quantum dots for PV are right up there with room-temperature superconductors: really great ideas. Call us when you have a product.

Nuclear is a bridge, true, a bridge we can start building right now. Without that bridge we cannot get from where we are to a world with plentiful clean energy.

I'm all for nuclear. Provided, that is, that they get no federal subsidies. None. No guaranteeing of bonds. No funding their spent fuel cleanup and transportation. No funding their connection to the grid. No funding their inspections. Nada. No funding their shut-down at life's end.

Of course, I also take this stance for all fossil fuels. Also, I take a different approach (subsidies A-OK) for renewable fuels.

A poster above pointed about the intermittant nature of solar and wind, which is a valid concern. There are some ways to mitigate the problem, such as variable flow hydro-dams, but it is a legit problem. Nuclear has an "equal but opposite" problem. You simply don't adjust the output for nuclear if you can at all help it. Nuclear provides baseline power, and fossil fuel plants are used to adjust the total amount of power on the grid. For this reason, just as one can't produce too much of the power needs with intermittent power, one can't produce too much power with nuclear. In fact, roughly speaking, the maximum amount of nuclear power you should be producing is the minimum power need for the grid, ie the deepest valley in immediate demand.

There are a few other problems, too. It takes many years to get through the planning and beurocracy of a nuclear plant. Many years. That doesn't mean it shouldn't be done, just that a nuclear plan does nothing to meet short term needs. Of course, there's the NIMBYism to overcome as well.

I'd gladly trade 10GW of new nuclear power for removing the dirtiest 10GW of coal power, that's for sure. Alas, that's not an allowable trade.

Forecast figures are highly questionable, paticularly when tey spike exponentially for no apparent reason (as is the case wit these #s). Nuclear's decline is mostly due to inability to get permission to make new plants, and the old plants becomming obsolte/diminished capacity. They also overlook the potential of high-energy nuclear reactors as a source for hydrogen, and many other factors.

RMI's claim overlooks too much for the sake of thier bias.

The largest problem with Nuclear is: What to do with the spent fuel? But with projections putting the first fusion power plant at 2040, I think we can find some way to deal with the spent fuel rods for the next ~40 years, we have for the past 40.

We should continue to alternatives, and co-generation, and the whole ball of wax... but not disreguard nuclear just because "it is scary"... running out of oil while still dependant is more scary.