[Gerben42]

Quote

Contrary to popular opinion, coal power plants release more radioactive waste into the environment than nuclear power plants. In all, effective dose equivalent of the radioactive waste released into the atmosphere from one coal power plant is equivalent to the radioactive waste produced by 100 nuclear power plants.

I'd think it would be more than 100, considering how much barriers exist between the nuclear fuel and the environment. Unfortunately for coal plants, the radioactivity is the least of your problems. They pollute, coal in the form of fine dust is spread into the environment. Then the mining of the coal is extremely unhealthy. There are regions where there is no single healthy tree left due to coal mining.

Of course at this point we cannot do without coal power yet. But we will have to in the future. What I find interesting is that people are talking about "clean coal", in which the produced CO2 is stored underground. This is considered a great solution, unlike the storage of nuclear waste underground, which is considered evil. The only difference is that in 10.000 years, the nuclear waste will have mostly decayed, whereas the CO2 will have mostly escaped to the surface again. Or it is still there it is, but it will not have decayed.

[Wackojack]

The professor's figures are very useful and informative. A few things to add:

An alternative to DC power lines from solar generated electricity in North Africa direct to the UK is to put in much shorter DC links to feed into the European electricity system (say Spain). We (UK) already have a DC link across the channel connecting to France which is integral to the Euopean system. Of course as the power generated in North Africa increases, the grid infrastructure and the UK to France DC link will have to be uprated. This European solution looks like it would be much more economic (and politically better) than the professors solution. Figures please professor?

Iceland has abundant geothermal power. I would like to see some figures for Iceland supplying Europe with geothemally generated electricity via DC cables to Scotland and possibly Norway.

We must free ourselves from oil based internal combustion engines to power our transport. The problem with using electricity to power transport is that storage of electricity except possibly via the ecologically heavy pumped storage method is very expensive. Hydrogen power looks to be the best bet. We can use excess wind power to manufacture hydrogen directly through electrolysis of water. That way wind power becomes much cheaper.

Nuclear power. Yes of course.