There's simply no contest. Solar is the clear winner. One only has to look at the immense number of private enterprises involved in all manner of ventures around this technology. By contrast, look at the relatively modest number of businesses supporting the nuclear industry. It is no coincidence that venture capital is gravitating towards solar power.
Solar power is a technology that is here now and ready to deploy immediately. There is no ugly debate needed. Little convincing or comforting of the public is needed. There are no seemingly endless permitting procedures that drag on for years and years before being able to even break ground on a project. Virgin roofs are everywhere, crying out to be clad. The space is there and waiting, not even remotely living up to its true potential as it deflects some rainwater. Instead of just sheltering its inhabitants from the sun, a house should be soaking up precious solar energy and delivering it as electricity to its inhabitants, and using it to power its appliances.
Rooftop solar power is a technology that makes every homeowner a part of the solution. A homeowner with solar is reminded every day when they look at their roof of the contribution they are making in addressing Global Warming. In contrast, nuclear energy is the sweep-it-under-the-rug solution - the not-in-our-back-yard (or not-on-our-rooftop) solution. Nuclear energy is the generational theft solution, where we leave a legacy of waste to future generations - that they are obligated to guard over, to isolate from the biosystem, and to secure from those with malevolent intent.
We have fostered a society that reduces individuals to mere consumers. Everywhere in the mainstream media, us humans, citizens, people, are referred to as no more than consumers. We have been reduced to being consumers. This, apparently, is our most important function in society - to consume. This illustrates the vulgar and distorted perspective that our society has come to have. Solar power has the capability of turning us into producers - of turning our homes into producers, rather than merely feeble parasites hooked up in desperate dependence to the central lifeline. Solar power offers a sensible alternative to this umbilical cord of dependency.
The nuclear approach perpetuates our centralized power supply system - a system that makes us vulnerable to threats from terrorists, and catastrophic accidents or natural disasters that could paralyze our entire society because of our complete dependence on a centralized system. Solar power provides a balance against this single-point-of-failure approach.
Google made a particularly notable choice when deciding upon a server design that could support massive scalability. They designed each server to have its own built-in batter back-up. We would be wise to consider similar approaches to home design, designing every home to have its own power production source and storage bank. This would reduce the urgency for costly upgrades to the grid infrastructure. Increasingly the world is going wireless. Why not enable entire new communities to spring up that are not serviced by the traditional electrical grid?
Possibly one of the most compelling advantages of solar power is the relatively short innovation cycle. Solar can iterate quickly. With dozens upon dozens of companies and institutions of scientific research - both government and university operated - making fresh breakthroughs every few months, there will be a steady stream of improvements making their way to market all the time. Every new homeowner considering installing solar power gets to choose from the very latest technological innovations. Multiple generations of solar technology could even exist on the same roof, as homeowners expand and upgrade existing installations by adding on using newer and better products.
This type of rapid iteration is best likened to the personal computer and broader consumer electronics industry, where every year brings at least one fresh wave of radical advancement in the products on offer. It is hard to imagine the nuclear industry ever being able to match this rate of iteration. Solar power, therefore, is far more nimble. Nuclear is to solar as mainframe is to personal computer. It is no coincidence that many applications that started out their lives exclusively on mainframes and supercomputers have since migrated to banks of computers employing cheaper personal computer components. Google built a search empire around this simple principle of scaling up using huge numbers of atomic server units based around run-of-the-mill computer parts.
As a society, why would we generate electricity so far from the point of need, when we have the means to generate power right where it is used? We construct massive and incredibly costly transmission lines, only to lose 7% of the electricity during transmission across hundreds of miles of power lines. This might be unavoidable for densely populated city centers, but seems unnecessary for suburban and rural areas where space is plentiful for soaking up the sun and catching the wind. This space can be turned into an asset for suburbs and farmland regions.
Rooftop solar power has the benefit of being able to be scaled up incrementally, and continuously - across neighborhoods, cities, regions. But the smallest incremental unit is not even the household. A homeowner can start with a modest array, as finances permit, and then later add on to that array - possibly even with the improved technology available at that later time. This provides a steady stream of revenue to businesses, the type of revenue stream that sane business plans can be built around. Steadily scalable revenue is a quality that appeals to investors, because it balances risk with returns, and there are many more safe points of exit than the nuclear-power-station-or-bust avenue.
In contrast, on the nuclear side, once you've finally got your nuclear plant - after a decade of arduous permitting processes, waiting on highly specialized parts manufactured by only a limited number of companies across the globe, complex construction projects, waves of safety inspections and certifications - then you will be stuck with that technology for decades to come, regardless of what innovations have occured between the time you started down the road and the time the plant comes online.
At the pace of technological innovation, nuclear plants are almost certain to be obsolete on their very first day of operation. And then we end up servicing these dinosaurs for the decades of their useful lives. And killing them isn't easy, either. Once they've lived out their lives, decommissioning them is a burden that can take five years or more and cost up to a billion dollars.
Going down the nuclear path threatens to entangle us in all manner of politically contentious wrangling, with the likes of Iran, North Korea, and their ilk. In contrast, if we send a clear signal that solar power is the road we're going down and that nuclear has no appeal to the US, we have a pretty uncomplicated and incontestable answer to nations like Iran: there is a better solution than nuclear, and if it's good enough for us, it's good enough for you. Heck, it may even be better for Iran than it is for the US. Iran's arid climate is quite favorable to solar power, and there's no reason why Iran shouldn't be a global leader in solar power production.
The US could take a constructive step towards defusing the ugly war of words over nuclear power by engaging with Iran in a partnership to help it develop a thriving solar power economy. And would it be so unthinkable for Israel to similarly become engaged with Iran, since Israel has also become an innovator in the field of solar power. It would take leaders with courage to push forward with engagement that serves the interests of the planet and helps us to tackle Global Warming and put the nuclear proliferation issue to rest. I'm not sure if the leaders of Israel, Iran, and the US are up to the challenge, but I'm willing to hold out hope. The US could broker such a landmark effort that could radically alter the political discourse.