Perhaps it has been addressed, but I have a related question: How many reactors COULD we have by 2030? Building a reactor is a specialized task, you can't just ask Joe Bloggs, the builder from down the road, to knock one up for you. Assuming that all objections are removed and everyone agrees to plough full stream ahead with nuclear fission, what limits are there to the rate at which reactors can be added? Adding an average of 280 per year (or 500 per year, assuming a 10 year lead time) does not sound practical in any reality I understand.

Thanks for the link to DeAnander's post.  To be able to answer the question I'd like to have the following information:

a) Global output today
b) Maximum possible global output if everyone gets as much electricity as, say, me
c) Minimum global output necessary to provide, say, lights in the evening, cooking, heating, refrigeration and maybe a computer (or other--one other, I mean--electrical device) running 24 hours a day per person.  I know it's not a good list, but I think some minimum figure is needed so that with
d) Total global output possible from all renewables using current technology (incl. wave which I think is about to come online big time)

Then, following Jerome's list:

1. Conservation + smart usage
   
2. Renewables
   
3. Nuclear
   
4. Coal, oil, gas

we get:

c) gives us 1)
d) gives us 2)

and if nuclear fills the remaining gap, then that will be the number of nuclear power stations needed, which I still think would become zero as renewables have all kinds of knock on effects...all the greater to the extent that they are widely distributed--the local wind turbine(s) etc...--because they influence c) and also because new tech always creates even more new tech (cf. computers 1948-the present.)

My tuppenceworth.

Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.

Just to be contrarian..why do we need more nukes at all? Is it really the best way to go?

"Once in awhile we get shown the light, in the strangest of places, if we look at it right" - Hunter/Garcia

From today's news:

Nuclear energy 'not the solution to global warming'

Environment ministers from Austria, Iceland, Ireland and Norway said Monday that nuclear power was not the solution to global warming.

Policies not Politics
---- Daily Landscape

Should have or will have?

Two very differnt questions. But as you asked "should" that's what I'll vote for.

Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.

By the way, as A swedish kind of death made this diary, I'll just like to repost what I just wrote at the Oil Drum.

Tonight our very own Magnus Redin will be debating nuclear power on Swedish national television with one anti-nuclear politician, one anti-nuclear NGO person and one pro-nuclear politician. I believe he was chosen due to being the most productive poster in the nuclear power section of the state TV forum. He is also a member of the NGO Environmental Friends for Nuclear Power.

I'll be watching, good luck Magnus!

It's at 22.00 in a program called Argument on channel 1.

Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.