Why Most Clean Energy R&D Investment is Stupid
We already have an economic, utility-scale electrical generation technology that does not produce CO2 -- nuclear power. We do not have a second choice that is anywhere close to ready. Wind is stupid, for reasons I have written about before. Solar has its uses and I am all for the march of technology on solar panels. But they are not going to keep the world's economy growing or, more importantly, prevent wholesale poverty and starvation and misery from energy shortages.
Most peoples' negative perceptions of nuclear come because the technology that is still in use is over 60 years old. It is not one generation out of date but two or three behind the capabilities that currently exist to build safe, clean reactors. I have for years made the argument that government forcing of certain endeavors (nuclear power, space flight, transcontinental railroad) ahead of their natural development curve actually tends to set back the commercial development of them, and I think this was the case with nuclear. To the extent that waste and safety problems persist with nuclear (and they really don't), R&D to solve them would be much more productive and less expensive than investments in Solyndra.
Of course we probably won't do this, because "knuckling under to the irrational fears of your Left-leaning political base" is the new definition of "following the science."
By the way, here is a way to think about the nuclear waste problem: We all pay attention to nuclear waste because it and its negative effects are concentrated in small, heavily-impacted sites. We don't pay attention to coal-burning waste, or didn't until recently, because it is distributed all around the world's atmosphere. But I would argue the nuclear waste problem is much better, because it is much easier to mitigate harmful problems in a 100-acre site, rather than in the entire Earth's atmosphere.**
**Postscript -- pretty sure I first heard this expressed way back in the late 1970s, when US energy policy (under both Ford and Carter) was to promote coal, even to the extent of banning new power plants using cleaner fuels. I wish I can remember who said it and give them credit because it really was prescient.
