This is a nice essay. Had not thought to connect the basic kinetic energy equation I've gleefully used to avoid the algebra in how high a ball will go to this epic equation. The analogy will keep me thinking, like my amateur interest interest in a relationship between energy and information.

The costs for light water reactors are pretty high but a lot of the money is wasted in handling the containment problems and managing hydrogen and then also dealing with the fission products

The carbon cost for building a nuclear power plant would exceed the equivalent coal fired plant. I'm speaking as a general contractor who has not built either, but I am somewhat familiar with the required construction techniques required for the nuclear plant and the methods used in building a coal fired plant.

While I don't have firm figures of the dollar cost for either plant, I do know that it can take 4-6 times as much construction time to build a nuc plant. Since the timeframe is measured in years to construct a nuc plant, the carbon footprint if it's construction is much greater.

Also while the cost of the energy produced is low compared to coal, The carbon cost for the operations of the plant, the cost of producing the nuclear fuel rods, which are replaced every year(?), cost a lot and it's all custom, one off machine work.

The two Voyager spacecraft launched in the early 70's were powered by two plutonium generators each. Although we can barely hear them anymore due to free-space attenuation at such distances, There's no reason to believe that they aren't still going strong. Pu has a half-life of 24 thousand years.

I have heard critics say that building nuclear plants and running them results in the same carbon emissions as burning fuel, BUT this does not ring true to me. I would be shocked if the scientific consensus agreed with these claims.

I am confident nuclear power will be part of the solution to the problem (it's not really a controversy) of anthropogenic climate change.

It's great. I like how it points out that chemical reactions are not immune from this; it's just the energy released equals a tiny amt of mass.

My wild guess for the energy of the future would be nuclear plants that inefficiently store their output in chemical bonds of some material that can be easily transported and released quickly when needed but not accidentally. The same nuclear energy could drive reactions to capture carbon from emissions we've made since the industrial revolution. Fossil fuels will be just a stepping stone in human history. I can't imagine a future without nuclear energy.

Thanks for posting it.

That was an informative article that will forever transform my thinking about energy, and I grew up in Los Alamos. If adapted widely enough, nuclear energy would render the whole global warming controversy moot.

That was an excellent essay, written in language that should be more easily grasped by people without background knowledge in nuclear physics. There really is no comparison between currently extractable energy density from nuclear fission versus all other available energy sources. Nuclear fusion is even better, but is still projected to require 30+ years of R&D before possibly becoming commercially available.