First off, I accept the assertions in all of those articles that nuclear power is dangerous, I just think it’s less dangerous than continuing to emit massive amounts of carbon. Second, I absolutely agree with you that we should be developing all of those renewable sources as fast as we can. Unfortunately, nothing I’ve seen, and nothing you’ve presented, suggest that there’s a renewable source which is both capable of providing base load power and scaling to provide our power needs. (Also, I think talking about nuclear terrorism as a risk of nuclear power is just scaremongering, the real danger, and it is a great danger, is in the lack of social systems robust enough to make sure that entrenched interests actually follow safety rules.)
Of those four articles:
This one:
http://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear_power/nuclear_power_and_global_warming/nuclear-power-cost.html
says, in terms of cost " A 2011 UCS analysis of new nuclear projects in Florida and Georgia shows that the power provided by the new plants would be more expensive per kilowatt than several alternatives, including energy efficiency measures, renewable energy sources such as biomass and wind, and new natural gas plants."
Biomass doesn’t scale, wind isn’t constant enough for base load, and natural gas is part of the problem. Saying that hydrocarbon fuel is cheaper than nuclear is not really an argument against nuclear.
This one: http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/14461-ten-urgent-reasons-to-reject-nuclear-power-now
Has a lot of objections. I agree that it is dangerous, and most of the other objections it presents (lack of fuel, waste) apply much more to our current methods of nuclear power production than they do to fast breeders.
This one: http://www.psr.org/resources/nuclear-power-factsheet.html
says: “Taxpayer dollars would be better spent on increasing energy conservation, efficiency and developing renewable energy resources. In fact, numerous studies have shown that improving energy efficiency is the most cost-effective and sustainable way to concurrently reduce energy demand and curb greenhouse gas emissions. Wind power already is less expensive than nuclear power. And while photovoltaic power is currently more expensive than nuclear energy, the price of electricity produced by the sun, as with wind and other forms of renewable energy, is falling quickly. Conversely, the cost of nuclear power is rising.”
Improving energy efficiency is great, but, at best, it’s going to compensate for our increasing energy demands as more countries industrialize. Wind and PV, as I’ve said, are not good for base load.
This one, http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/society-and-culture/nuclear-its-just-too-expensive-for-us-and-the-rest-of-the-world-20100225-p4y3.html
in its only direct comparison of costs with other methods, says :
"Peter van Doren and Jerry Taylor (senior fellows, Cato Institute): for nuclear energy to be competitive with existing gas-fired generation, a carbon tax “would have to be $80 a ton” but using the nuclear industry’s historical cost over-runs “would require a $150 per ton carbon tax to induce market actors to build nuclear power plants”. They obviously aren’t happy about the idea of that carbon tax, but that might be what we need. The author goes on to suggest that Australia has access to enough renewables, which they might.
In other words, all of those sources say nuclear is too expensive in comparison to fossil fuels.
I don’t think nuclear power is great, I just haven’t seen anything with actual numbers that suggest that we could get off fossil fuels without it, and none of those articles suggest a scalable alternative for base load. I think we could wean ourselves down to having minimal base load infrastructure by finding better ways to store energy, (eg solar water splitting or using wind or solar power to make synthetic hydrocarbons from atmospheric CO2), but those are more long term R&D investments than things that we could pull off quickly.
