writerman

A few decades back we let a few anti-nuclear extremists derail our nuclear power industry in this country with their China Syndrome hysteria.

Nuclear power is not hazard free. No source of power is. Even the wind power that the greens are always talking up is hazardous to wildlife, and doesn't exactly add beauty to the landscape. But it needs to be recognized that Three Mile Island--during which no-one was injured in any way, it should be remembered--and Chernobyl are abberations. Chernobyl was the product of carelessness and antiquated technology. Today's reactors are much safer. Used with proper care, nuclear power is perhaps the safest and most environmentally friendly realistic alternative available to a power-hungry world. The french realize this, as do the japanese, andit goes without saying if any country has a reason to be paranoid about nukes, it's Japan.

We need to tell the anti-nuke extremists to take a long walk off a short pier and begin to invest heavilly in nuclear power. With nuclear power as an alternative, there is absolutely no excuse for polluting the environment with coal-powered plants, or exacerbating our dependence on foreign oil by using petroleum-based products to generate electrical energy.

Not only that, I think as nuclear technology continues to develop, it could be an answer to another looming problem--the shortage of water in the American Southwest. There is no shortage of water--the shortage is of fresh water. Economical desalinization of seawater is the answer to that, and from what I've read nuclear power to desalinize is the most promising answer to that problem.

FRYandBENDER

Agreed. We should be looking very closely at nuclear power and planning on using it more heavily.

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Brother Oz

Nuclear power is expensive, and renewables may be cheaper. But it is certainly something that needs to be looked at.

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dahermit

In order to state that no one was injured at 3 mile, you would have to do a long term study of cancer rates in those exposed during the incident.

You have not included the Russian submarine nuclear incident.

All man made machines break down. No human design is foolproof due to the human element. Welding inspectors cheat on welds, people forget to turn on the backup systems, etc. etc. Nuclear reactors for power are always going to be a safety risk.

But, the bottom line is that we really have no choice, we are in a desperate position where it comes to electricity. Unless someone comes up with cold fusion soon, we will have to embark on a massive nuclear power project...we have no choice.

Also, they were dorking around experimenting to see how the system would act while running at an unusual low output. It was running fine until the bosses screwed with it.

Sebelius for VP, not Hillary

What do we do with the nuclear waste?

Slartibartfas

The efficiency of Nuclear power is a myth.

Nuclear power plants, always have been a heavy subsidised branch that has been created not due to its efficiency, or because it might safe emissions. No, it was a pure political and strategical decission. And in fact thats the only way one can find some plausible arguments for nuclear power.

But a few things about the technology first. Its not a renewable source of energy. (Unlike the fairy tails France wants to spread). Uranium is a rare resource, and in fact, a Nulcear power plant makes you as dependant on imports as any other source, unless you have the luck of having uranium deposits in your own country (the US and Russia are one of those lucky ones I think, but Europe is not as far as I know)

Nuclear power is not cheap. Under free market circumstance, they would have never been built. No need to say, when you calculate not just on partial costs, but over the whole life cycle (that goes far beyond the life span of the power plant) its not only not cheap, its more or less the most expensive way that is used nowadays to produce energy in larger quantities.

And then regarding the emissions. I have read somewhere that Nuclear power plants are worse with their emissions than gas power stations at least. Again, its hillarious to just look at a part of the procedure, you have to look at the whole process. And Uranium exploitation and preparation is something quite environmentally unfriendly in many ways.

...

In short. Nulcear power is at best a short term credit, of a loan shark, where you dont ask, and better dont think about what you will have to pay back.

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Slartibartfas

I am not up to date, did the US find already a place for a final deposit? Until now, its all stored in provisorial ones. Those are hardly feasable however over the very long term (I am thinking about centuries or millennias here) that that wast has to be contained at very high security.

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writerman

and the requisite technology to do so will be available in the relatively near future--and disposal becomes a non-problem. Only one of many reasons why space is more important than the pitiful percentage of the budget it is getting.

We're going to be looking up one of these days, sooner than we think, at a Chinese moon...and anyone who thinks China is or ever will be our friend probably still believes in the tooth fairy as well.

As for nuke power being expensive, it's not nearly as expensive (or dangerous) as continued dependence on foreign oil. And like anything else, once the infrastructure is in place and the technology is mature, it becomes cheaper.

Back to space--there is virtually unlimited energy there waiting to be tapped. Science fiction writers have been writing for years about huge orbital mirrors collecting almost incomprehsibly vast amounts of energy from the sun to be beamed back to ground-based stations for distribution in the form of electricity. It would require a herculean effort, but the computer and other technologies to do that are on the shelf now, or soon will be.

Sebelius for VP, not Hillary

@ writerman, well I do not have the expertise to argue with either you or Slarti about the efficiency of nuclear energy, I do detect a lot of unfounded China threat ideology in your comments. There will be no "Chinese moon." China's space program (and their military program as well) are extremely backwards and primitive by our standards. I wouldn't listen to all those idiots like Bill Goertz and whatever other fear mongerers who are tying to put the US back into a new Cold War with China.


WEB

dahermit

I have recently discovered that France has begun to construct a plant that will take nuclear waste fuel rods, store them for about five years, recondition them and return them to service in reactors. It seems the problem with waste storage is solvable after all.