Why Sustainable Power is Unsustainable

Its not at all clear that we can build a sufficient number of nuclear power plants to replace all of the current non-nuclear baseload power on Earth, as well as all that will be needed in the next 50100 years, because of, among other things, safety considerations and the problems of nuclear waste disposal. The fact that none of the nuclear plants on the drawing board in the U.S. is now under construction underlines those problems. As one who lives near a nuclear plant which recently was forced to shut down because of the corrosion of the reactor lid which endangered the entire community, I am especially conscious of those issues. Politically, I dont believe we can build that number of nuclear plants in the U.S.

Michael

It really doesn't matter who wrote what. What matters is that it is not practical to try to replace this country's baseload power with earth-based solar panelsbecause of the amount of land that would have to be covered with them, because of the distribution problems created by the maldistribution of sunny areas throughout the U.S., and most of all because of the absence of any solar power a majority of the time, since it gets dark, and it rains.

That's why we need to build solar collector satellites to gather solar power where it is strongest, and where it can be retrieved 24 hours a day: in earth orbit.