Nuclear power presents the only viable option for reducing CO2 output

I perhaps should have put "Nuclear power presents the only currently viable option for reducing CO2 output" You have quoted two different sources: http://www.eia.gov... http://www.world-nuclear.org... The second of these also produced an economic study of various power generation technologies where nuclear power is cheaper than other alternatives. http://www.world-nuclear.org... Even in your cited source the cost of nuclear power is competitive and its cost range from max-min is narrower than wind power meaning more predictable cost. When also considering that nuclear is always on when wind is variable it is fair to say that in terms of output reliability nuclear power offers a high degree of confidence in price and capacity. If you read the article to the end: http://www.scientificamerican.com... You will see that at current levels with current methods 200 years is a good approximation but if you take into account new technologies and already understood but not widely used methods you will see that terrestrial supplies would last upwards of 30000 years. That is slightly beside the point though we need CO2 reduction and we need it yesterday wind and nuclear offer the only two currently competitively priced methods for power generation. Large areas of land suitable for wind generation have already been developed and from your own source offshore wind is uneconomical. Put that with the fact that wind is intermittent and not predictable beyond extremely short time-scales(days possibly weeks) and the fact there is no tested grid level storage solution available yet and nuclear power has an obvious advantage. I am not saying that the world needs to be all nuclear in fact a mix of generation methods is better and in the future I, like you, hope that solar will become cheaper and fill the gap but we need change now and we have a proven technology that can fill the role. Even in a future where solar is the dominant method of generation I believe there is a place for nuclear as a base load power source. I hope in the form of fusion currently moving towards positive energy output at ITER. I would also look at LFTR's which breed fuel, have a small actinide footprint and are inherently safe as they operate at low pressures and have fail safes that operate even with power failures. http://www.the-weinberg-foundation.org... http://www.iter.org... The storage is cost effective and is taken into account in when calculating the total cost per kW. It is also incredibly safe, there is a misconception that radioactive waste is "dangerous" for tens of thousands of years. In reality the radioactivity of stored waste falls to within safe levels in a relatively short time after this point the major risk is form heavy metals not from radioactivity. Considering the locations and methods used for waste disposal and the time scales involved in geological processes the threat of an dangerous accident at a disposal site on a probability scale is approaching zero. The cost of $140billion is tiny compared to the cost of irreversible climate change in 2013 the GWP was approximately $75trillion the predicted cost of 4degC temperature change is 1-5% of GWP I will be optimistic and say 2% that would have been $1.5trillion lost in 2013 alone assuming the global economy will grow this figure will be even greater by the time we reach 4degC. Another way of looking at it would be to divide the cost across all the operating nuclear power plants for the rest of their lifetime and again this would result in a rather small number. Taking figures out of context is not representative of the industry as a whole, another good example of this is with radiation leaks even. Taking into account all of the nuclear accidents and tests there have been; coal fired power plants have still released more radiation into the environment than the nuclear industry has over its lifetime. hhtp://www.ipcc.ch... http://en.wikipedia.org... "Disaster" is another exaggeration of what happened at Fukushima yes a large amount of radioactive material was released but aside from some mature freshwater fish most areas and foodstuffs have already dropped back to close to levels where any effects would not be statistically separable from the effects of background radiation. A study has even shown that animals living in and around the town of Chernobyl experience a lower incidence of cancer than those from areas with lower levels of radiation. The work, I think, is ongoing but the theory is that low level radiation induces the turning on of more DNA proof reading enzymes in the animal affected thus resulting in higher fidelity during DNA transcription. So low level radiation may not be harmful it may in fact be beneficial. http://en.wikipedia.org... One final note if ITER is energy positive it will be proof of concept and scaling up will have a huge energy output also it will breed some of its own fuel and the rest can be relatively easily extracted from water this would last us for the foreseeable future whilst having an extremely low waste footprint and reliable energy output.