Do you think Nuclear Power is the best way to go?

[Irish Caesar]

I'd say no.

1. They're only as safe as the seedy, low-bidding energy companies that build/maintain them.

The nuclear industry is heavily regulated by several agencies: INPO, NRC, IAEA

2. They're not particularly cost-effective. Which is why there's nobody building them.

There's a huge capital start-up cost, but once it's running, the electricity is relatively cheap. Because of this, incentives are built into President Bush's energy plan to start up a few new reactors. It's still a pretty big endorsement of fossil fuels, but there's some $ for nuclear, also.

3. We haven't figured out what to do with the waste.

We have plenty of ideas that are tied up in red tape. Still, there haven't been catastrophic problems with this as of yet.

4. Because of NIMBYists, they'd end up near poor people and/or indian reservations, what have you.

As has been mentioned by other posters, nuclear plants in general are not bad neighbors.

5. Limited resources. You can build breeders, sure. But they're way more expensive, and produce much worse waste. I'm not sure of the availibility of thorium either.

:hmmm: Breeders produce more fuel, it just happens to be of the plutonium variety rather than the uranium 235 variety.

Resources really aren't that limited, as a small amount of uranium has huge amounts of energy potential. I'll try and get those figures for you.

6. I can't think of anything benefit of nuclear reactors that you can't get with wind power. You need less land, obviously, with nuclear, but there's plenty of open land for it. Plus you don't have all of the problems.

Nuclear reactors have an efficiency rate of upwards of 80%, higher for the newer ones.

And you won't have to deal with the NIMBYists who don't want wind farms nearby.

 

[SomethingWitty]

"The nuclear industry is heavily regulated by several agencies: INPO, NRC, IAEA"

The mining industry is heavily regulated too. I'm not saying you can't build and maintain perfectly safe nuclear reactors, I'm saying you can't ignore things like human error and people cutting corners.

"There's a huge capital start-up cost, but once it's running, the electricity is relatively cheap. Because of this, incentives are built into President Bush's energy plan to start up a few new reactors. It's still a pretty big endorsement of fossil fuels, but there's some $ for nuclear, also."

Yeah, I was mostly referring to start-up. How would the cost compare to, say, windmills that produce the same amount of electricity?

"We have plenty of ideas that are tied up in red tape. Still, there haven't been catastrophic problems with this as of yet."

It depends on how you define "catastrophic." Those Hanford down-winders would certainly call in catastrophic, but you're right, it could be a lot worse. Which is why I think the problem needs to be solved before we go nuts building new reactors.

"As has been mentioned by other posters, nuclear plants in general are not bad neighbors."

What do you suppose it does for property values?

"Resources really aren't that limited, as a small amount of uranium has huge amounts of energy potential. I'll try and get those figures for you."

The numbers I've seen indicate that if we switched primarily to uranium instead of fossil fuels; we'd have something like seventy to a hundred years.

"Nuclear reactors have an efficiency rate of upwards of 80%, higher for the newer ones."

Alright, windmills are down around 50%. That's still pretty good. Especially since uranium costs a lot of money and devastes the environment when you mine it, as opposed to wind. Which is free.

 

[Irish Caesar]

So far the best figure I can find is that 7,330 tons of uranium produces the same amount of energy as 48,400,000 tons of coal or 172,000,000,000 barrels of oil.

 

[Aramazd]

To everbody who is anti-nuclear I suggest you read this and this. Do I need to post more links? I hope not. If we don't use nuclear then will be using fossil fuels until solar is viable. Nuclear waste can be reprossesed so the waste is minimal.