Shutting down fossil fuel electric plants

[Anomalocaris]

[Fake Messiah]

[brewer]

[Amarok]

[brewer]

Comes down to what do you/they fear more, potential global catastrophe or potential localized catastrophe.

[Rahn127]

The climate will put an end to OUR burning and manufacturing of green house gases much faster than we were expecting.

The only question that really remains is, which generation will be our last ?

I'd like to hope that my grandson will have a good life.
And of course I want him to know what it's like to be a grandfather.

We simply can't sustain this kind of lifestyle indefinitely.

We can choose to change now or we all die.

[Amarok]

Comes down to what do you/they fear more, potential global catastrophe or potential localized catastrophe.

It was far from just local as contamination has entered the Pacific ecosystem 
causing damage well beyond Japan. And an increase in plant numbers just makes that more likely .

[Anomalocaris]

[Alan V]

Ain't gonna happen until we have a replacement power source. My guess is that we'll need to step up the nuclear dance.

Fossil fuel power plants fulfill a vital need of the electrical power grid, that is for the ability to rapidly adjust power output on command in response to changes in load on the electric grid.  This is necessary for maintaining voltage and frequency stability of the lectric power grid.    If voltage and frequency stability are not maintained, bad things will happen to many heavy duty electrical equipment in commercial and industrial applications.

Nuclear does not address this need.  Nuclear power tend to be very stable and uneconomic to vary in output once the station is on-line.  So they have very limited ability to vary their output on command to compensate for rapid changes in system load.   At the moment nuclear is also far from price competitive purely from all-in cost of energy perspective.  

Existing or perspective renewable generation technologies do not address this need either.   In fact they make the need much greater because output from renewable technologies tend to fluncturate uncontrollably at the whim of wind and weather, thus increasing the need of the power grid for other resources to rapidly change in output on command to compensate.

Hydro-electric and pumped storage power plants can at times address some of this need, but they are subject to limited availability and other constraints.

At the moment, To completely replace fossil fuel fired power plants while still maintaining power grid stability requires sizeable breakthrough in other energy storage technologies.

What is your opinion about redundancy plus gravity and heat storage plus a smart distribution grid to deal with the intermittency of renewables?

[brewer]

Comes down to what do you/they fear more, potential global catastrophe or potential localized catastrophe.

It was far from just local as contamination has entered the Pacific ecosystem 
causing damage well beyond Japan. And an increase in plant numbers just makes that more likely .

Did it effect the entire planet? Did Chernobyl? Did the hundreds (500+) of bombs?

Let me put it another way, which is the planet (and the human race) more likely to recover from?

To my way of thinking we're going to have to pick. The fear of limited electric power is the greatest fear and a non option. Or maybe global warming isn't the treat I've been lead to believe. 

Read about the passive safety developments where Japan would not happen again. There is also micro reactors to take into consideration.

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I  would not be. I do long-term energy market forecast for living.  I work with Los Alamo national laboratory On economic assessment of emergent nuclear technology for utility resource planning purposes.

Then you're just the person to ask, more nuclear reactors replacing fossil fuel reactors (as many as possible understand peak demand issues) or not?