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Quote by: Grogybear  Heres an interesting statistic... To power the world, if it was operating at full capacity all the time, you would need to cover an area nearly the size of Texas with solar panels 
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I don't know whether the incredibility of this statistic, or the vagueness to which side of the solar power argument it defends is more troubling. If you could power THE WORLD .... AT FULL CAPACITY ... with an area as (relatively) small as the great state of Texas, with a 100% percent renewable, environmentally neuteral, dependable energy source, You'd do it in a heartbeat. I don't know if we're taking the storage and distribution into account, but you could easily build facilities the size of texas in the Sahara, Austrailia, and even antartica and the artic if we could harness more of the ultra-violet spectrum of light for power conversion.
Anyway, the point is that solar, wind, and any alternate power source should be examined and invested in if there is a reasonable chance to produce relatively efficient energy. My local power company has just announced plans to build 200 very high-tech windmills across N America ... with things like automatic clutching mechanisms to better control turbine velocity and elaborite electronic airfoil control of the 'blades' ... we're not talking about dutch windmills made of cloth and wood. Many of the windmills will also act as cell phone towers and have other uses (like water pumping stations) and pay fair leases to landowners.
It's seems like Groggybear has s zealous desire in nuclear-only energy ... you Iranian? ... Seriously, there are drawbacks to nuclear ... 'just burrying waste' is not as easy as you propose, and the dangers and risks are real ... doesn't mean nuclear shouldn't be an option, it should be part of the equation ... just like wind and solar. Lots of people in my neck of the woods use solar efficiently to heat water.