2007-02-03 20:20:22 · 8 answers · asked by Anonymous in Environment
Despite the risks we're going to need it to fight global warming. It's the only proven way to make very large amounts of energy without greenhouse gases. Other alternatives will also be important in the fight, and we need to push them as much as possible, but they simply cannot do the whole job right now. Maybe in 50 years, but that's too late.
We can make it safer. Waste disposal technology is quite good, it's simply politics that are why we cannot get a specific disposal area approved. Operations at the best nuclear power plants are quite good and safe, we need to be sure they're all run like the best. As a terrorist target the heavily defended and reinforced reactors are by far not the best target.
2007-02-04 01:54:01 · answer #1 · answered by Bob 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Nuclear power offers many benefits (cleaner air, less reliance on foreign energy sources), but nuclear power generates a lot of nuclear waste, both high-level and low-level. It's not just a matter of where to make a repository for nuclear waste, but it also involves HOW the nuclear waste will be taken to the safe place for long term storage. The maps I have seen show waste traveling along highways and railroads where we all live. In fact, the railroad through my town is one of the main arteries for nuclear waste, and it is within sight of the high school where I teach. We don't have a good plan for dealing with the waste yet.
2007-02-04 04:29:53 · answer #2 · answered by ecolink 7 · 2⤊ 0⤋
Why would anyone this day & age pick nuclear power knowing how deadly dangerous it is to store & also making it easy for terrorists to get hold of a deadly weapon!!!
IT IS OUT OF THE ARK THINKING
man needs to think of the future hundreds of years down the track & leave a very safe world for other people to live not a dangerous place because
there will always be accidents & then that land can't be touched 4 hundreds of years & people get cancers & illness & deformities etc etc so clean coal is much better for the earth
2007-02-04 05:00:14 · answer #3 · answered by ausblue 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Do you mean you want to irradiate me like Dr. Bruce Banner? Cool, I can be the Hulk Jr.
On a more serious note, although it does not add to the global warming problem, it does create a safety and waste disposal problem. Rather than narrow the choices to "Well, we have to use something that will bring down our greenhouse gas emissions, and 'alternative energies' are so unreliable" re-evaluate your parameters.
Conservation is still the best way to reduce greenhouse gases. That can be done by (shudder!) taxing people/companies to reflect all the extra costs they don't now pay for when they offload those emissions to the environment (which includes us people!) Further, with higher costs for conventional fuels, alternative energy and its R&D becomes a lot more affordable (especially if those 'emissions taxes' are diverted towards energy conservation and R&D and infrastructure).
Nuclear is just trading off one set of problems for others of equal gravity.
Peace
2007-02-04 04:37:36 · answer #4 · answered by zingis 6 · 1⤊ 0⤋
As long as the powerplant makers are good. If the goverment can fund it and also take care of it, its pretty safe energy with not a lot of waste. But i have to stress that professional inspectors must be linked to the Goverment so they can remain safe. Chernobyl disaster only happened because the Goverment held secrets and it was poorly desinged, the roof was Flamable, i have visited Chernobyl tour for about $360 US its awesome especially Pripiyat.
2007-02-04 05:13:01 · answer #5 · answered by kalloggs40 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
The waste from nuclear has to be stored somewhere for 20,000 years. How about small river boat type paddle wheels along rivers? They will turn generators around the clock, they are clean, and can be placed all around the country.
2007-02-04 04:26:40 · answer #6 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 1⤋
It seems many in the United States have forgotten about 3-mile island....
Wind and solar power are probably the smartest, followed by water (so long as doing so doesn't kill off any fish species). Yes, I know...the wind doesn't always blow, and the sun doesn't always shine...but if we could create even just 25% of the energy we use from these sources, we reduce our dependency upon fossil fuels, and even foreign power sources, by that much.
2007-02-04 09:18:19 · answer #7 · answered by mamasquirrel 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
I am against it if the current government is going to draw up the plans for it, every thing they have done is half baked and not thought through properly while they present themselves as oh so great to the rest of the world.
They'll (the liberal party) go ahead with it if they want regardless of what the Australian people say, they can't even stand up to Hilali trying to take our country from us.
2007-02-04 05:18:13 · answer #8 · answered by polynesiachick 4 · 1⤊ 0⤋