Dr. Strangelove: Alternative Energy Might be Nuclear

An atomically inspired family road trip.  Sharon Weinberger and Nathan Hodge published their book A Nuclear Family Vacation: Travels in the World of Atomic Weaponry an extension of their first book, Imaginary Weapons, on the subculture of nuclear scientists.  They aren't as pro-nuclear now as they were before this..."each trip we made eroded our confidence in that belief,mainly because we saw how each part of the nuclear weapons establishment, from the scientists who design them to the military leaders who could use them, provided different, often contradictory definitions of nuclear deterrence.  In the end, everyone was saying: you need us, and thus you need nukes." 

Whether or not you agree with Weinberger and Hodge on choice of road trip, we still need nukes not to blow ourselves off the face of the earth, but because we might be in for a jolt down the line with Peak Oil here to stay.Nuclear energy came into being in the 1970s and was considered quite exotic and far-fetched.  It became viable when oil became exorbitantly expensive then. It might be time for nuclear energy to come back especially considering there are now plug-in possibilities for hybrid cars.

The 1973 oil crisis had a huge effect on countries, especially France and Japan, which at that time, relied more heavily on oil for electric generation (39% and 73%) to invest in nuclear power. Today, nuclear power supplies about 80% and 30% of the electricity in those countries.

Protests over fear of possible contamination, effects on the environment, nuclear proliferation, and storage of waste slowed down plant projects in the U.S.  The 1979 accident at Three Mile Island and 1986 Chernobyl disaster didn't do so much to stop nuclear plant construction as much as the economic realities of falling oil prices and other fuel sources becoming cheap again.

Brookings Institution suggests that new nuclear units have not been ordered in the U.S. because the Institution's research concludes they cost 15–30% more over their lifetime than conventional coal and natural gas fired plants. Short term and long term, coal and natural gas has to rise substantially enough for it to be economically feasible to produce electricity via nuclear power. 

By 2005, 49.7% of the electricity produced in the U.S. came from coal, 19.3% from nuclear, 18.7% from natural gas, 6.5% from hydroelectricity , 3% from petroleum and the remaining 2.8% mostly coming from geothermal, solar and biomass.

The term "renewable resource" has been thrown around for nuclear power, which might be feasible, but the bigger question is what to do with waste that takes thousands of years to degrade, if ever. It might be better to have nuclear power be a stop gap measure until more clever technologies come around.