National geographic has a flawed comparison of wind versus nuclear power that claims with 1.5 megawatt machines (not sure how they rated them) it would take about 1700 to equal a 1000 megawatt nuclear reactor that would take up 1/2 square mile.  These wind machines would  take up about 2.52 square miles.

600 of these 2.52 square mile wind installations would equal the present US generating capacity under these vastly underestimated power calculations per area for wind.

That's about 1550 square miles.  Out of a million square miles of the great plains.  Less than 1/5th of one percent of the land area, optimum wind locations out on the plains away from anyone who would reasonably be bothered by them is certainly possible.

With my example of 40 huge 1000 foot wind machines replacing a nuke and each machine taking up only about 5000 square feet at the base. Cattle, wildlife, or crops occupying all but a small footprint under the machine, then the actual land area used is under 5 square miles total.

5 square miles out of a million on the great plains... compared to 300 square miles for the nuclear power equivalent.

The 5 square miles for wind can be returned to prairie once the wind machines have produced power for a few decades and become obsolete.  They will even produce the clean energy needed to recycle them!

The 300 square miles of nuclear reactor space will be dangerous for thousands of years, as well as the 100s of square miles needed for mining, refining fuel, storing and processing waste,the thousands of square miles contaminated by  leaking radiocativity spreading exponentially into lake, groundwater, rivers, oceans....

If you continue to denigrate real solutions, the neoconman administration will go ahead with "clean" coal and nuclear power, while touting the pie-in-the-sky nuclear/hydrogen fuel economy.  And continuing continuous war for oily empire and political manipulation.

But that is alright with you?  Correct?

Yep, like bringing the sun down to earth.  Either fusion or fission.  Even solar captures some extra sunlight normally re-radiated into space.

Only wind uses solar energy already here.

But cut those greenhouse gas emmisssions with wind or solar and the balance is restored.

"the risk is preferable to the disaster looming ahead"

That is the false dilemna fallacy.  That the looming emergency makes any risk from nuclear aok.

If there were only two alternatives then and only then would that be true.

But conservation through redesign of all human energy uses and wind, wave, ocean current, solar cogeneration can stop the looming climate disaster.   Along with reproductive rights for women, which will solve the overpopulation problem at the base of the rapid rise of energy needs.

"If the lure of big science and big profits to big corporations is what spurs rapid development and adoption, count me on board."

There is plenty of that profitable "lure" in these alternatives, but it won't happen unless government of we the people gets the agenda of these corporate "citizens" back in line with reality.

Now corporatism is running government from within, that needs to change.  Forget nuclear power and the hydrogen fueled economy, it is pie-in-the-sky corporatist propaganda.

Corporations are not citizens.  They do not have rights in the same sense that humans do.  The humans who run and work for corporations have rights.  Wake up and smell the neo-libertarian propaganda, before it's too late.