After the Nuclear disaster at Fukashima Japan, many nations are pulling away from nuclear power and turning to renewable energy systems.
Besides Japan, Germany decided to eliminate all nuclear power, China has scaled back its nuclear ambitions, and the public outcry in Italy and Turkey is forcing those nations to turn away from nuclear power and to concentrate on developing Clean and Renewable energy sources.
Here in the United States the most dangerous nuclear plant, Indian Point, is built on two earthquake fault lines and has 17 million people living within 50 miles of the plant. There is very little that could be done to evacuate these people if an accident occurred. Regular traffic is usually deadlocked.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-s...While most nations have been trying to eliminate dirty power sources like coal, much of the problem of turning to cleaner renewable sources has been economic. Now because Japan and other nations are turning away from Nuclear, the demand for coal and fossil fuels is driving the prices of those fuels up dramatically. This makes renewable energy economically viable.
http://www.forbes.com/2010/11/04/energy-...Besides the cost, the other objection to renewable energy is that it is not constant. Wind power is dependent on the wind and solar power doesn't work at night.
Now G.E. has unveiled the future of energy. They are producing a hybrid power plant that utilizes solar power, wind power, and clean burning natural gas to provide clean and efficient 24 hr. constant power.
http://www.popsci.com/technology/article...The Natural gas part of the system uses a new 70% efficient turbine. Natural gas produces about 1/3rd the CO2 of coal. The solar and wind parts of the plant produce clean energy with no pollutants, and no fuel costs. There is no danger from these plants. There are no residual pollutants like the toxic slurry from coal plants, or the radioactive waste from nuclear plants that remain poisonous for millions of years.
While it takes 10 years to build a nuclear plant, G.E. will have two of these plants, one in Germany and another in Turkey, operational in 2015. After these plants become more common their construction costs and timelines will be reduced even further.
Meanwhile photovoltaic panels are expected to continue to get cheaper, and more efficient just as computers did with Moore's Law. Soon everyone should be able to afford PV panels on your roofs or even to have windows that generate electricity.
http://infogreenglobal.com/windows-as-so...Thermal Photovoltaics may soon reach efficiencies of 85%!
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/01/...Additional research is providing new power sources that may even make photovoltaics obsolete.
http://inhabitat.com/breaking-solar-powe...