Power Generation
I’m not an anti-nuke freak. In fact, I think they’re necessary for human expansion into space. Out past Jupiter, there’s really no other way to generate power economically. And on a kW/kg basis, nuclear is the densest power source we’ve got.
This isn’t to say, however, that we should be using nuclear power here on Earth. We get more energy from the sun in one second than we use in an entire year. We have wind and geothermal and wave energy that is still going untapped. But even those shouldn’t be used exclusively, because there are conditions where nuclear power and even fossil fuels can do things they can’t.
I think that all sources of electricity should be treated equally. A per-megawatt subsidy to companies and individuals producing power should be implemented, and the electrical grid upgraded to allow the generation methods to compete fairly. There is a societal benefit for putting a kilowatt of electricity into the grid that should be encouraged, and this encouragement should be extended equally.
Also, there are certain things that should be discouraged. Emissions from coal and natural gas power plants are bad. Nuclear waste needs to be disposed of, and nuclear proliferation should be limited as much as possible. Bird strikes should be avoided, and waste created from solar panel manufacture should be disposed of properly. These things should be given a cost and periodically audited. If you can create an economic cost for these things, people will try to avoid them, and the price paid to be “allowed” to emit CO2 or create nuclear waste would be put toward mitigating the effects of these externalities.
This would allow individual regions to produce electricity in the most efficient ways. In some places nuclear might be the most cost effective, once the total cost of construction, disposal, and security are taken into account. In a lot of places, it won’t be. The Midwest, with its small population, strong winds, and large amounts of land, would be perfectly suited to wind power. New York and Maryland would have tidal power. Arizona, Nevada, and New Mexico would use solar power.
What we should not do is provide special loans and incentives for companies to choose nuclear power, or any other specific power generation technology. The government should step in to make the true costs of generation match the price as closely as possible, and then let the market determine what power generation method to use.