Ok. Perhaps lifestyle was a bad choice of words on my part because of the Western first world connotation. What the author did was take global energy consumption projections as they stand now and made calculations to meet those same consumptions growth projections with renewables in order to show that the source of the energy does not necessarily need to impact consumption growth but can meet it 100%. It is using present technology to change energy policy. He does show that energy consumption will go down because for example, electric cars are more efficient. But growth projections of miles moved by cars remains the same, etc. At one point he says that you may keep your Edison incandescent light bulb (although your next car will need to be Tesla electric car ;-) but putting in LED bulb will be help and he encourages that. It is actually a very humble presentation.

I actually don't think radioactivity is a concept. But I posted a presentation and paper for you when you asked for specific scientific calculations. At one point they talk about the "concept" that was the Yucca Mountain storage facility. Unfortunately it was only possible to certify Yucca Mountain storage for ten thousand years as stable storage, conceptually of course, because really not many structures are still around today that are ten thousand years old. This is why Yucca Mountain as a concept for storing nuclear waste was abandoned and no replacement has been proposed or seriously considered as a concept for doing so. But really the presentation and paper do not dwell on the impossibility to certify nuclear as responsible or coal as clean, but really are a positive assessment on how energy policy can move to 100% renewables TODAY without change in projections based on lifestyle, although conservation will help greatly and is encouraged by the authors.

I don't think anyone is disputing you here on the use of coal, just your implied criticism of shutting down nuclear because of coal. The difference is also that coal impact is felt immediately while nuclear impact remains a threat for three hundred thousand years. This threat has far reaching consequences on the structure of society almost like a mortgage or debt for which none of us will live long enough to assume any kind of responsibility. But it seems that energy policy carries some fascination for you as a destabilizing force. So perhaps you are not looking for policies that might improve things.

None of us who take part in the discussions on this site will live anymore in max 50 years, probably some of us will not be alive even in 10 years.

So I have just one question for all of you poor little creatures who are willing to produce radioactive waste which must be under strict control for next 100.000 years: what makes you belive you have any right to do it?

I really can't belive that anybody who really thinks can find nuclear waste and GAU risk acceptable. Nuclear plants are simply not worth it. I've lived long ago in a region which didn't have enough electrical energy, so each day there were 8 hrs without electricity. As result, many new friedships among neighbours have been created, and more kids were born year after. It wasn't so bad at all, candles are romantic (and think of all the low-light shots). I am absolutely against nuclear plants, radioactive waste and all little biological creatures who belive they can behave like gods.

I know the following is a very naive calculation and it probably contains errors, but I think it gives the idea of the order of magnitudo of what the real numbers could be:

Electric energy needed in 1 year in the world: 14000 TWh Electric energy produced in 1 year in Southern Italy by 1 mq solar panel: 250 KWh 14 000 000 000 000 000 / 250 000 = 56 000 000 000 mq Extension of Italy: 300 000 km2 = 300 000 000 000 mq

Anyway, it is a known fact that we need in total (not only for electricity) about 0,007 % of the total energy we receive from the sun. After all it is not a simple nuclear plan, it is a star!

And can you tell us all the cost of nuclear energy, included cost for keeping safe the wastes for centuries and included cost for accidents which once in a while happen?

"In theory, a 35,000-sq.-mi. (90,600 sq km) chunk of the Sahara — smaller than Portugal and a little over 1% of its total area — could yield the same amount of electricity as all the world's power plants combined. A smaller square of 6,000 sq. mi. (15,500 sq km) — about the size of Connecticut — could provide electricity for Europe's 500 million people. "I admit I was skeptical until I did the calculations myself," says Michael Pawlyn, director of Exploration Architecture, one of three British environmental companies comprising the Sahara Forest Project, which is testing solar plants in Oman and the United Arab Emirates. Pawlyn calls the Sahara's potential "staggering."

font: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1872110_1872133_1872141,00.html

Simple question: why should we get energy from atomic or coal plants, when we have a whole star, the sun, which sends to us an enormous quantity of energy constantly? It is much more than we need and it is free. We are not able to use it properly, yet, but all the other ways to get energy seem to me very primitive!

Simple calculation shows that a little portion of the Sahara desert, if covered with solar cells, could give enough energy for the whole planet... Where I live, in May 2011, during the weekends, all the electric plants where shut down except solar and wind plants. Well, the energy was more than enough. Of course it was only an experiment, because during the weekends there is much less demand of energy, but it is any way significative. On the other hand, solar cells here are not very common. Just imagine what would happen with every roof covered with them!

As for Germany, they are building a very big solar plan in Morocco and will than carry he energy to Germany through Spain and France.

It seems to me quite obvious that solar energy it is the way to go.

HAHA @Meierhans, I hope so. Are we still in love with super east-west hybrid Temelin? Or do we still love the chick that rides motorcycle hard and fast through Chernobyl lands? Germans will put passive house where personal views are now on uranium dreams. But we all like to play Halo, right ;-) Austria, Denmark, Lux, Licht, Belgium don't have this addiction. Only France is big Charles de Gaul hold out. Suisse don't count since they are constructing black holes!

There is no Uranium shortage, especially not in Germany. Read this article on the German Wismut mining company, which was closed after the reunification - but certainly not because its Uranium resources were exhausted.

Uranium 235 shortage is quite well known fact. As for remains in this mining fields. You have no idea that is cost of production of this remaining uranium. And that is cost of reestablishing whole necessary infrastructure.

Insurance companies are unwilling to insure the monetary risks of running nuclear power plants

And it is issue than you have "insurance companies" to dictate that to do.

how billions of tax payers money has to be spent on a failed attempt of storing nuclear waste

I see billions of tax payers money buried in the "green energy" instead :-)

Hmmm, irregardless where Vitailiy might be getting the data for his claim of "coal and radioactive particles" I do not believe that in the 2,000 year history of coal use, that coal has ever caused the desolation and huge scale of uninhabitable pieces of the earth for the next 20,000 years, like Tschernobyl and Fukashima have created.

As for the "dismantling" of warheads for nuclear power plants, actually it was the other way round: after all the bad PR and desolation caused by the USA atomic bombing in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Pentagon had to come up with some "positive" spin on the nuclear (weapons) industry so the invented "the friendly atom"/nuclear power; then released a class-A war-criminal in Japan, who happened to own 90% of the media, and gave him the new job to convince the Japanese that nuclear power was just fine.

The USA is not dismantling nuclear warheads for fuel, it's just business-as-usual: more money for more "bigger-and-better" weapons: http://www.publicintegrity.org/2013/04/09/12467/obama-proposes-shifting-funds-nuclear-nonproliferation-nuclear-weapons

@tetakpatak

You understand that coal is the cause of most cancer cases in the world and number one source of radioactive particles that you are exposed to in your life?

As for radioactive waste - very good tech exist that produced special brickets that can be stored for long long times.

@Meierhans

Point is: industry is preventing their success for their own good.

This is not the case.

@Mihuel Maybe you would understand more about the resistance against nuclear plants in Germany if the trains with radioactive waste would drive next to your living room, and if your balls are in that room nobody cares. It is not the technology itself, it is the nuclear waste problem that does not seem to have solution.

You don't understand the hystery about Fukushima? Go and spend your vacation there and save us of further bullshit comments about this subject.