Is nuclear power really the answer?

Question

There was an earthquake in Japan this morning which caused damage to a nuclear power plant there. The Associated Press article included this statement:

"The quake triggered a fire in an electrical transformer and also caused a leak of radioactive water at the Kashiwazaki Kariwa nuclear power plant, the world's largest in terms of electricity output.

The leak was not announced until the evening, many hours after the quake. That fed fresh concerns about the safety of Japan's 55 nuclear reactors, which supply 30 percent of the quake-prone country's electricity and have suffered a long string of accidents and cover-ups."

I've noticed a number of posts here and comments elsewhere saying the only answer to global warming is nuclear power. But to me that seems like leaping from the frying pan into the fire. Have people already forgotten Chernobyl and Three Mile Island? Everyone says "It's safer now." Then what happened in Japan?

Answer 1

I share your concern. The US nuclear industry also has a long history of accidents and coverups. The Department of Energy has a list of literally thousands of incidents that could have been extremely dangerous. People have been killed. One accident came within hours of making the city of Detroit permanently uninhabitable. We still have no good idea of how to store safely waste which remains radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years.

People say "There's no alternative." Maybe. We could do a tremendous amount right now with conservation, higher automobile mileage standards, mandatory fluorescent lighting, wind energy, etc. And we sometimes forget that the government spent billions of dollars developing nuclear energy, and continues to subsidize it. What if we took the $500 billion we spent in Iraq and used it for a Manhattan Project style crash program to develop better solar energy, tidal energy, geothermal and maybe some we haven't even though of. If we limit ourselves only to the approaches that are guaranteed to make a profit for large corporations, we're already doomed.

Answer 2

If an earthquake caused a radiation leak at a nuke plant in Japan or anywhere, its an inexcusable design fault (although nothing like the design fault at Chernobyl). It seems pretty obvious to me that if the US and Soviet Navies can build reactors that survive the sinkings of the Thresher, Scorpion and most recently the Kursk then there is no excuse for the Japanese designers. Think of the jolts a nuclear submarine gets everyday while at sea and during the occasional collision with another ship. Then add on the hardening their reactors get to take battle damage.

This is an example of why I think the USA should go full bore nuclear, but probably with a constitutional amendment making the operators of government run reactors "sworn" and highly trained throughout the ranks before they even get in the door for a job interview.

Answer 3

Not to minimize the issue of safety, but the amount of radioactive water leaked was about 350 gallons -not enough to cause any concern at all.

In addition, I just toured a nuclear plant a few days ago, that was design in such a way that it would be almost impossible for the water subject to radioactivity to be leaked. (And this is a 30 year old plant.)

I understand we can save at least 200 billion tons of CO2 emissions by increasing the nuclear portion of our generation supply simply to the level of nuclear generation in France.

SO, I guess the question is - what's more important, global warming or nuclear energy. I suspect there is a win/win in there somewhere. Although no matter what we do about GW or energy we will need to take advantage of every available option, especially clean coal technologies.

Answer 4

i've got faith that nuclear fusion is the respond (it somewhat is what the sunlight does. It in straightforward terms produces Helium as a with the help of-product). Nuclear Fission isn't (one in each and every of those nuclear power we've in the present day). Nuclear fission creates nuclear waste and that i purely do not see it as being sustainable. notwithstanding, on the 2nd Nuclear fusion isn't sustainable the two, because of the fact we will not save it working for a protracted time. we've become nearer and nearer primary and with a bit of luck that's going to alter into useful interior right here couple of years or greater.

Answer 5

I've been one who noted that the only technology available today than can replace fossil fuels at the current level of demand is nuclear. I've also noted that there are problems with nuclear. But, nothing else can generate as much power as inexpensively and with as little greenhouse gas emissions as nuclear. In other words, we aren't left with a good choice. Fossil fuels or nuclear? All other forms of energy available today are insignificant in terms of quantity of energy. I'm not saying we shouldn't pursue wind, hydroelectric, solar, tides, hydrogen, conservation, ethanol, etc. But, all of these combined only make up about 10-12% of the total US energy supply. And, will never be able to make up more than about 30-35%.

As far as nuclear disasters, Chernobyl was awful. But, Three Mile Island actually didn't release any radioactive material, even with everything they did wrong (I lived there at the time). And, one of the reactors there is still running to this day.

Answer 6

Well, the US certainly thinks so. Even though the US hasn't had a problem since 3 mile island, the US has not build a new nuclear reactor since the accident. That's a long time.

Purely switching to nuclear power is not the answer. It is part of the answer. Another part is to do some 'clean' coal mining. This is important b/c the U.S. and China are expanding coal mining & production.

Answer 7

It's one indispensable tool among many. The risks of nuclear power are far less than the risks of global warming, environmentalists generally agree about that.

It's possible to site nuclear power plants better than the Japanese evidently did. Chernobyl was a very bad plant, the "Yugo" of nuclear plants. We've learned a lot since 3 Mile Island, which was actually a success story, no significant contamination off site.

Answer 8

Nuclear power is only a partial solution. As mentioned in the article, the problem in Japan is that there are a lot of earthquakes there. If you build the reactors in more geologically stable areas, this isn't a problem.

However, nuclear power is always a potential threat. It's not something we should depend on for our entire power supply, but it should certainly be one component because of its small contributions to global warming as compared to burning fossil fuels. We need to rely more on renewable resources (sun, wind, geothermal, etc.), but they can only account for so much of our power supply.

Answer 9

It CAN BE. The key is building stronger nuclear plants and being able to properly dispose of nuclear wastes. Nuclear plants must be built to avoid excessie dumping of nuclear wastes into bodies of water. Our nuclear technology, though, has come a long way from all of the past accidents that you have mentioned. The BEST answer is simply to reduce how much you consume; we can prolong a gasoline disaster as long as we use less and less of it NOW.

Answer 10

no...way too much waste, too dangerous, too prone to terrorist attacks (they make good targets).

Look at Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and even all the problems Indian Point in NY has had.....

Wind, Solar, biodiesel, hydro....these are the solutions