Re: Nuclear energy is expensive
Chernobyl no problem, 56 dead people? You gotta be kidding.
Ask the people of Buffalo Creek, West Virginia and Stava, Italy. Two towns who lost well over 56 people each due to tailings dam failures. Tailings dams are a pretty-much-standard feature of coal mines.
"On the i5 next to LA right on the coast, there is a nuclear power plan that has been shut down by the government.
How come?"
You must be referring to the San Onofre Plant, which was shut down due to shoddy maintenance (a human factor). Thankfully, the American standards on inspections and so on are pretty tight. They CAUGHT the shoddy maintenance before serious problems emerged (also, the initial shutdown came as per protocol after a leak was detected--as per design). Nuclear is risky, yes, but good oversight is helping to MITIGATE the risk. We can further mitigate the risk by using better reactor designs that take such risks into consideration.
"Nuclear energy still has to be developed quite a bit."
So do wind and solar. Neither are ready for prime time. At least with nuclear, we have deployable designs that CAN fulfil current and near-future energy needs.
"There are new concepts like the TWR and others but they are far away."
Only due to regulatory foot-dragging. What's needed is political pressure to let the new designs go ahead.
"Fusion energy could be a great source of energy, once it does work. There are new scientific findings that may help plasma physics finding ways to control the fusion process much better and make sure the fusion process does not break down*. Maybe fusion one day is a great solution. Fission still is an unsolved problem."
It's more solved than fusion. We have viable reactors already in active use and plenty of new designs in the works. That's a whole lot more developed than ITER, and even if that works out (it's only .5GWT, your average fission plant runs several GWT), it'll be plenty of years before they're rolled out commercially. We need an answer RIGHT BLANKING NOW. And the answer needs to keep us going for about a half-century or so (and according to estimates, global electricity usage in 50 years will approach a YOTTAwatt). Got any other immediate options besides fission reactors?