Reply To: would nuclear energy really be accessible to all?

[jamesr]

Breakable wrote:

Have you read the analysis done by David MacKay in his book Sustainable Energy – without the hot air

He also mentions an organization Desertec which has been promoting the idea of large solar arrays in north Africa supplying most of Europe’s needs.

No I haven’t, but I am already cautioned by his claim of “without the hot air”.
Basically there are 2 camps in energy field – renewable camp and nuclear camp and they are trying to disprove each other all the time.

It is a good book, and goes through all the numbers for each type of renewable step by step (from a UK perspective). At one point when going through the numbers for nuclear waste he says

Please don’t get me wrong: I’m not trying to be pro-nuclear. I’m just pro-arithmetic.

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But at the end when he comes up with 5 plans for the energy mix for the UK, the one where he also regards economic factors ends up with 44kWh per person per day of nuclear out of a total of 50kWh/p/d of electricity produced (see p211).