From ThisIsMoney:
This could definitely be great if oil companies get into the nuclear game. They have plenty of market capital to build new reactors in the first place and would be able to fund billion dollar projects without blinking.Shell and BP will have to go nuclear if they want to remain 'supermajor' leaders of the global energy industry.
That is the startling finding of a major report into the energy industry in the age of climate change by JPMorgan.
The US investment bank envisages that 'Big Oil' will play a significant role in the future redevelopment of nuclear power.
The JPMorgan report suggests that within 10 years, nuclear will be at the top of the agenda for a world preoccupied with clean, green energy and replacing diminishing global stocks of oil and gas.
Nuclear is also likely to come to be seen as the only effective future for the socalled 'hydrogen economy', when powercharged fuel cells replace oil in the global automotive industry and elsewhere.
Comments
The ideal motor fuel is the simple molecule dimethyl ether, which is now being widely commercialized in Asia.
DME can be obtained via nuclear means.
I have written about this option, albeit sloppily, elsewhere:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/11/24/195214/27
Before anyone tells me that the separation of carbon dioxide from air is energetically intense, I need to note that such separation (equilibrium driven) drives all life on earth.
-NNadir
A favorable disposition of investment banks toward nuclear energy is necessary for future major developments in the area, especially given the recent history concerning the TXU buyout and cancellation of plans for several coal-fired power plants.
The positive attitude shown in this article bodes well for the financial and legal aspects of new build.
(I see the possibility of plug-in-hybrid vehicles as technologically more feasible at this time than hydrogen fuel cells).
More at We Support Lee.
--- G. R. L. Cowan, former hydrogen-energy fan
Oxygen expands around boron fire, car goes
But in any case, just replacing coal-fired power stations will be a pretty good start :)
Personally, I think we might just see a lot of pure battery electric vehicles in the not too distant future, given the development of things like the Tesla Roadster and, even more impressive, the Phoenix electric pickup truck.
Whichever way it pans out, it seems to me that just about every option for transport fuel (except biofuels, which have severe environmental problems of their own) requires a stationary energy source that doesn't emit CO2 somewhere in the mix.
Ideally, nuclear production of a fuel hydrocarbon would take out the CO2 from the atmosphere that will be put back when the fuel burns; that's why NNadir and I were talking about the energetic cost of that extraction.
--- G. R. L. Cowan, former hydrogen-energy fan
Oxygen expands around boron fire, car goes