Reply #40: The nuclear forecast page you link to is quite remarkable. [View All]

[hunter]

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/nuclear/page/forecast/gencap.html

Basically nuclear generating capacity in North America, Western Europe, and the former Soviet Union declines as older nuclear plants are taken offline, and no new nuclear plants are built.

Nuclear generating capacity in Asia, the Middle East, Central and South America, and Africa increases.

The basic assumption of this "forecast" is that the so-called Western cultures will not build new nuclear power plants except in Central and South America. This chart is merely a quantification of that assumption. I could poll some random people around the world about the safety of nuclear power plants and come up with numbers that would be just as meaningless towards any discussions about the actual safety of nuclear power plants.

In any case, 2020 is less than 15 years from now. It's sort of sad when we think of this very short time span as "long term" planning.