I just want to raise knowledge of this to people. Bush has said that we should look to Nuclear energy as a solution. Uranium is our only fuel for that form of energy and it is even harder to find/refine than oil... Seriously. He must KNOW this so why does he act like he doesn't? They were well paid to promote this nonsense?
According to researchers at MIT, just 9% of the Nevada desert could generate enough quads of electric power (using parabolic trough solar systems ) to provide the entire electical energy needs of the United States.
A fact that Oil/Gas/Coal companies don't want you to know.
Of course, the new President will need to rescind the Bush Administration's ban on solar energy facility development on public land.
It's a myth to say we don't have feasible solar systems. Photovoltaic may not be cost-efficient yet, but larger parabolic trough systems are efficient, practical, and low cost.
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The largest operational solar power system at present is one of the SEGS plants and is located at Kramer Junction in California, USA, with five fields of 33 MW generation capacity each.[2]
The 64 MW Nevada Solar One also uses this technology. In the new Spanish plant, Andasol 1 solar power station, the 'Eurotrough'-collector is used. This plant is scheduled to go online in summer 2008[3] and has a nominal output of 49.9 MW.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_parab...
Kramer Junction Solar Power Plants
The Kramer Junction Company (KJC) is the Managing General Partner of the five 30-Megawatts solar thermal electric generating facilities located in the Mojave Desert at Kramer Junction, California. The designed total combined output of the plants was to be approximately 165 Megawatts at full capacity. Together with its wholly owned subsidiary, KJC Operating Company, KJC operates and manages these facilities (SEGS III-VII).
The Kramer Junction Solar Electric Generating System (SEGS) projects are a series of utility-scale solar thermal electric power plants which were designed and developed in the mid-1980's by LUZ Industries. Solel Solar Systems has improved the efficiency of the HCE technology significantly over the last few years.
The plants operate on solar driven power, to ensure uninterrupted power during peak demand periods. On cloudy days or early evenings, an auxiliary natural gas-fired heater is available and operates to supplement sources of power (the energy supplied by natural gas is limited by regulations to 25% of the total effective annual plant energy input). Operations are constantly monitored and optimized by customized computer controls.
The Kramer Junction project has a 30 year exclusive contract to provide energy agreements to sell to the local electric utility company (Southern California Edison). The Kramer Junction SEGS projects are "peaking" facilities, or in other words, they provide the major portion (over 80%) of their output during those hours when there is the greatest demand on the utility's power supply, particulalry on hot afternoons. Solel together with KJC are working to improve the solar thermal technology and make the cost of producing solar thermal electric power increasingly competitive.
Description of Power Plants
5 fields of 33 MW each
Operational and commercially viable since 1985
Excellent reliability
Displaces over one million barrels of oil
15 additional years working life expected
http://www.solel.com/products/pgeneratio... We can produce a lot more electricity for less fuel with nuclear fission than with other forms of power. Look at this graph: http://www.world-nuclear.org/uploadedIma...
Uranium is a finite resource yes, but we are nowhere near depleting it. There's a lot of it, also we wouldn't be relying on unstable nationalized companies in parts of the world that don't like us. Biggest source of uranium in the world by far is Australia with over a third of it.
Uranium will last for at least 100 years, and by then we will long have had access to fusion. I would also point out that in the next decade we will also be seeing a safer, cheaper, more efficient and just as abundant source of nuclear fuel: Thorium. Australia also has over half of the worlds Thorium.
That is why Bush, China, India, France and the UK see nuclear as a solution. It is a safe, environmentally friendly, low-carbon, readily available. At the very least it should be a "transition source". That we rely on for the next 50 years while "alternative energies" that are currently fanciful at best become viable.
UPDATE
Greg: ", just 9% of the Nevada desert could generate enough quads of electric power (using parabolic trough solar systems ) to provide the entire electrical energy needs of the United States."
Just nine percent of the Mohave desert? The over 22000 square mile Mohave desert? That's about 2000 square miles of Solar Panels. Maybe I'm crazy, but why doesn't blanketing an entire region of the US with 2000 square miles of Solar Panels seem like a good idea?
The fact is Solar Power is not at the moment a reliable and efficient method of power generation that is capable of providing base load power. Maybe someday, but not today. Well you see, there's these things called "breeder reactors?"
They allow you to generate electricity using some form of nuclear fuel, and at the same time to "transmute" otherwise useless metal isotopes into more fuel for the reactor.
The supply of otherwise useless metal isotopes, which could not normally be burned in reactors, but which are candidates for transmutation into usable fuel in breeder reactors, is far, far, greater than the supply of immediately useful isotopes.
Using breeder reactors, it will be possible to rely on nuclear fission to produce abundant supplies of electricity for quite a long time into the future. Oddly enough and I know it sounds crazy but the French have been using nuclear energy for quite some time - approx 80% for electricity and 38% of its total energy requirement.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story...
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/... Nuclear fuel will help to reduce dependance on oil. It won't eliminate it. I don't think a solution is near where we can stop using oil. Even with the best renewable resources, there will still be some oil usage. The best we can do is to reduce demand. Uranium will help us bridge the gap between oil and whatever the next major source of energy is (corn, water, etc.) You need to go back to school buddy, I guess you missed the part about nuclear physics. The amount of Uranium we have would produce colossal amounts more energy then oil ever could. Desperate people do desperate things. Nuke fuel is tantamount to making a deal with the devil. It is sure a better solution than Obama and his magic flying carpet. It's a stop gap measure until solar technology is at a point it can take care of business and then they will sell you nuclear waste as an energy drink.....and you will buy it what, that is real,is not finite It is another source. We have to use what we can. a little lasts a long time and YES it is an Alternative fuel source.... | 
