Originally Posted by Professor Peabody

They even reprocess the waste to make more energy. It makes me feel dirty to know the French Government is smarter about this than ours.

Originally Posted by Guy Fawkes

You know uranium is radioactive and is a naturally occurring element, you eat it when you consume vegetables, it's more than likely under your fingernails if you have any dirt under them. If you hug or sleep with another human being you are exposed to radiation, my watch is radioactive, heck every watch I ever owned is radioactive what are you worried about? Do you hide inside from the Sun? Oh and more people by far get cancer from exposure to the Sun and there's no hysteria about that, people are hilarious.

Originally Posted by lardbeetle

Hey, everyone has one. Mine's nukes.

I love nukes. They're the ONLY power solution at the moment we have that can supplant the horribly dirty coal power plants that us Americans use to generate most of our power that is emissions-free, can be run completely off of domestic fuel, is a long-term solution, and has enough energy potential to power the entire nation.

Therefore, I believe that the U.S. should switch at least 80% of its production to nuclear power, with the rest made up of more traditional hippie-style zero emission sources such as solar, wind, geothermal, and hydroelectric power sources.

My reasons for this:

Solar power takes up far too much space. It is prohibitively expensive when compared to even running a gasoline plant nowadays and is impractical for widespread distribution - the cost per megawatt is through the roof.

Wind power also takes up far too much space, but it IS very cheap and is a resource that I feel we should utilize, especially in areas that are not being used anyways, such as the windswept plains of North Dakota. However, it is too unreliable and too low density for us to use it as a replacement for our current energy needs.

Hydroelectric power is a clean and cheap source of power, but our rivers are already dammed. Geothermal power is out the window for a similar reason.

Biofuels are impractical due to the fact that we do not have enough food to feed everyone, let alone squander the surplus on energy.



I'd love to hear an alternative, but as of right now I just can't think of one. We only have two options, and those are coal power and nuclear power.



Here's some myths that I hear when people debate with me over nukes:

1) Nukes are unsafe.

Whenever you say "nuke" to someone, they immediately think of a huge explosion wiping out Japanese cities during a certain world war and the thought of the Soviets bombing the Americans and vice versa. It's a bit of paranoia that may indeed be justified in the nuclear arms situation, but nuclear reactors are an entirely different animal.

For one, nuclear reactors used by the Western world, are the safest type of plant we have. The only significant nuclear disaster in history happened at a flawed Soviet plant in which horribly unsafe reactor designs caused an explosion from build up of steam, spewing radioactive material everywhere. The reactors in the United States, France, Britain, Canada, and the rest of the world are much too safe to do anything like that. The only nuclear accident in the United States resulted in no deaths or injuries and released a minute amount of radiation equivalent to giving everyone within a few miles a chest x-ray. Hardly a disaster.

2) Nukes are dirty, they produce, like, waste and stuff!

Each nuclear power plant produces, give or take, 40 tons of nuclear waste per year. Nuclear waste is very, very dense stuff, denser than lead, and so when you take that into account you realize that this amount of waste would fit under a standard sized office desk. Hardly an unmanageable problem, especially when you consider that using reprocessing, we could re-use 95% of that waste and put it back into the reactor.

3) Nukes are dangerous to live by

Nuclear power plants use huge amounts of radiation shielding - lead and concrete block nearly all of the radiation that is released by the reactor. If I recall correctly, you get more radiation from watching TV for an hour than you would by living near a nuke plant for a year. I could be wrong on that, though, I haven't looked up those stats in a while.

4) Nuclear power plants are prohibitively expensive.

This is true.....


..... in our current system. Each nuclear plant that we have is individually designed and must wade through miles of red tape before being granted clearance for construction. Nuclear plants could be extremely cost effective if we used a modern, standardized reactor plan that is modular and scalable for larger and smaller plants, so that we wouldn't have to retrain technicians for each site.

Also keep in mind that the newest nuke plants in the US were constructed in the 1970's. They hardly represent the cutting edge of nuclear power and cost-efficiency.




Well, tell me what you guys think! I'm hoping to get someone to think seriously about this issue, it's something that I feel we need to address, because pipe dreams like renewable energy will never come about quick enough to get us off of fossil fuels.

Originally Posted by Tehran Tim

I agree with lardy here, nuclear power is the way to go.

Originally Posted by justabubba

yep, in addition to spent fuel you have spent facilities which remain radioactive. what is the long term solution to disposing of those wastes such that it will not impose an environmental hazard. to me, that is the singular issue which prevents nuclear power from rebounding

Originally Posted by lardbeetle

Time for me to get an avatar

It's refreshing to see so many logical people here..... makes me think that there is hope for us yet.


What are people's thoughts on nuclear fusion?

Originally Posted by Guy Fawkes

Fusion? I bet not in my lifetime. I mean to produce sustained energy for the public.