This book [0] goes through math of pretty much all energy sources and one of the conclusions the author reaches is that if you want to cover all of our power needs with green energy, renewables alone ain't gonna cut it.
Making them was never the problem.
You might want to work for Areva. They need help. In western countries it is quite difficult to build a new nuclear power plant.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olkiluoto_Nuclear_Power_Plant#C...
For the next two decades it will be difficult to even keep the current number of nuclear power plants online.
We're certainly not helping ourselves by delaying/canceling more nuclear projects because of stupidly high amounts of FUD in the society regarding nuclear powers.
That said, if we stopped using fossil energy, wouldn't we find nuclear plants become much more expensive to build? They're built using fossil energy.
(Or significantly reduced fossil energy, thereby raising its price)
Only because fossil energy is currently cheaper. If it were more expensive, you would see all kinds of construction starting to use electric-powered equipment that used non-fossil-fuel electricity.
EROI is what's motivating my comments. Fossil energy has a higher EROI than other sources, currently.
Not if you use non-fossil electricity to power all the steps in the build process. I should have clarified that that's what I was envisioning.
> Fossil energy has a higher EROI than other sources, currently.
Actually, I don't think that's currently true for nuclear; the EROEI figures for nuclear that I've seen seem way off, even if breeder reactors are left out of the equation. I don't think a lot of people realize just how much energy there is in a kilogram of uranium, compared to a kilogram of fossil fuel.
I don't think so.