Carnival of Nuclear Energy 238

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The Carnival of Nuclear Energy 238 is up at Neutron Bytes

Brave New Climate – If the world was to almost triple nuclear power capacity from 337 GW today to 983 GW by 2030, as estimated by WNA assuming all planned and proposed plants were operable by then, this would only reduce coal consumption by about half. This still leaves a gigantic challenge for other low-carbon energy sources.

It is clear that we need to consider all low-carbon energy sources for the future. Nuclear power can clearly do the heavy lifting to reduce CO2 emissions and it must not be ignored or unfairly vilified. When we consider the current very small energy contribution from renewable energy sources, about 1 percent, then the task of substantially growing that contribution 30 fold by 2030 to replace coal would be enormous.

World Nuclear Association Estimates

Next Big Future- Nuclear power in Ontario

Nuclear power was key to Ontario successfully getting off of coal for power generation in April of 2014. Ontario is the most populous province of Canada, with a population of approximately 13.5 million permanent residents in 2013. It is Canada’s leading manufacturing province, accounting for 46% of the manufacturing GDP in 2012. Ontario has a GDP of about $700 billion. This is about the level of Switzerland and Saudi Arabia. Which would be about the 20th size economy in the world if Ontario were a country.

Nextbigfuture has an updated review of nuclear fusion projects.

Current efforts to harness the power of the sun on earth. It turns out a number of technology developers think it can be done, and for less than billions of euros over many decades. This report details the status of their efforts.