From The Arbiter, an independent student newspaper at Boise State University:
There simply aren’t that many rivers left to dam up. Solar and wind power are prohibitively expensive, consume large swaths of landscape, and lack the reliability needed to provide energy base load – that critical amount of energy needed to power the core of civilization. America can’t simply come to a halt on cloudy or windless days. What’s left but nuclear power, which safely generates 35 percent of Europe’s electricity from 196 nuclear plants across the continent?
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Its nuclear power that is prohibitively expensive. More wind power capacity has been ordered than nuclear power. That's because the cost of wind and solar power is dramatically falling. Nukes are and will remain increasingly expensive.
Somebody send Boise the Keystone Group report from 2007.
In terms of all in costs you are looking at:
coal > nuclear > CC natural gas > Wind > SC natural gas > IGCC with sequestration >> solar.
With a moderate carbon tax this will likely still be the same, with a heavy carbon tax:
nuclear > coal > CC natural gas > Wind > IGCC with sequestration > SC natural gas > solar.
Although keep in mind that no such thing as a large scale "IGCC with sequestration" or solar plant, so its unlikely they could even be built in the scale needed in less than a decade no matter what carbon tax or incentives were offered.
Nuclear power is not "increasingly expensive" and there are innovations on the horizon in enrichment and fuel design that offer advancements and efficiencies that piddle power operators can only dream about. Nuclear power is the breakthrough - the technology that changes the game. Wind and solar are now bit players that were left behind long ago, as people found fossil fuels. As the end of the fossil fuel age is in sight, it is nuclear power that will replace fossil fuel, not the anachronisms of wind and solar power.
One could summarize the current wind status as a technology that, in spite of a century of development, is facing accelerating costs and a two year backlog of equipment supply. And it is still struggling to provide 1% of the US electrical demand. And, even with massive subsidies, it can't economically compete with nuclear and coal in most parts of the country. And every wind farm that is proposed runs up against citizen protests over the impact on the view.
Solar is more expensive by factors of two to ten.
In comparison, how is nuclear a poorer choice?
Please educate yourself. http://www.solarbuzz.com/
The most optmistic estimates I've seen indicate that we might get maybe 20% of our capacity requirements from wind sources, if fully exploited. So where do you go for the other 80%? You're building up an energy source that if fully developed will struggle to be at best a minor player in our energy picture. Talk about tripe.