Nuclear Power - your thoughts? (survey)

I think that nuclear power will recover in the U.S. only if political corruption wastes taxpayer dollars in subsidizing it and glossing over the intractable problems with waste. Conservatives always promote free markets, but are quick to create distorted markets if rich people look like they will suffer.

Bottom line even if the waste problem is solved: nuclear power is the riskiest and most expensive way to obtain new sources of electricity. With all the financial problems we have, why would want to go with the most expensive solution?

 

Produces the most power with the most stable source of fuel with near no emissions. Renewable forms of energy are expensive and produce little power while the other forms belch out emissions.

 

I guess not everybody shares your opinion.

 

Regarding the partial meltdowns being reported from Japan: I'm wondering if their desperate use of sea water to cool the cores will mean the reactors will never be used again. I'm hearing different opinions.

 

In the cost-benefit analysis to build those Japanese nuke plants, it was considered most unlikely that there would be a 9.0 earthquake followed by a tsunami. Just goes to show how limited our knowledge is and how we need to be very very conservative with such inherently dangerous technology. With the proper safeguards, nuclear power would be too expensive, so corners are cut based on poor assumptions.

 

Yup, it was already all or nothing. The energy crisis is such an awful thing. People just keep using utilities like they were going out of style; then it might be that they're coming back into the vogue of improved meditation.:mickey: Renewable Energy can easily be cheaper if we don't waste it. I think.

 

We have a new, powerful reason to be against nuclear power. Our ability to predict earthquake risks is much worse than I thought. This is from today's New York Times

We are told that nuclear power is safe, that the plants are designed to withstand earthquakes. But what magnitude quake are they basing their designs on? They are using cost-benefit analyses that assume that really big ones are unlikely. Not a great assumption.

 

Using statistics to decide that an unlikely event is unlikely? what absolute bastards!

 

My statistics is right instead of yours is the next stage of the dispute over what technology NOT TO USE. By Baysian probability reasoning I concluded that I suddenly knew something; but it was based on the worth of believing I was good at the choice of what nobody else realized how little we knew about the sociology of the business of it.:sifone:

I conclude that we can now know who to VOTE for in the government. (n/t)

 

Nuclear power is safe . While I do believe we should switch to less POTENTIALLY harmful greener energy generators . It's only unsafe in floods or nuclear bomb attack . These plants are secure , safe and can withstand earthquakes and natural disasters . Their Achilles heel is floods , like Japan .

The problem to me is not with nuclear energy generation , it's with the waste that's produced as a bi-product . As in disposal/ burial and containment of spent fuel rods . This is where the danger lies .

However , don't think for a second that fossil fuels are being replenished . No such thing as replenishing fossil fuels . And COAL fired nuke plants are one of the worst contributors to green house gases and global warming . As well as fossil fuel depletion .

But to answer your question yes I think nuclear power is viable source of long term power if need be .

 

Health, health' the meaning of nuclear nature and radioactivity for the progress of humanity is at this point in time a matter of telling the body from the futurist complex of the sub-atomic physics. THe nuclear generations has not showed an ability to do that. It basically just regards the world as full of human PILONS. Radiation would be more practically applied to medical field and maybe spiritualism. This is an eighties view by the way.

 

From the latest Time magazine

 

Lets debunk some of the bullshit scaremongering and general ignorance surrounding Fukushima shall we...

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/25/fukushima_scaremongering_debunk/

 

That article starts off this way

Do you really think that is credible?

 

In reality the situation at Fukushima is desperate- the reactors are destroyed, there are nuclear fires out of control, the site is more and more contaminated, the workers cant approach the sites any more because of enormous amounts of radiation and the catastrophy is just about to really get started. When the wind turns towards TOKYO, there will be a huge problem...this will go on for a very long time.

 

Nice to see you didn't let facts and / or science, you know the stuff with actual figures and ratios rather than "OMG water 10,000 more radioactive than normal" (Protip: water isn't very radioactive) get in the way of your combined anti nuclear circle jerk / wind turbine love-in.

God knows what you'll do when you find out one of mother earth's own bananas contains about 50 μg of radioactive potassium-40. If I were a betting man my money would be on blaming "radioactive chinese pesticides contaminated with Chernobyl fallout."

 

Hate to break it to you, but many of us with science degrees are strongly against nuclear power. You are very arrogant to dismiss opinions that are different from yours. That article you posted is crap.

 

To be perfectly honest you've done very little to indicate to me that you are a science grad, infact you seem to be openly hostile to any sort of evidence based or well quantified argument. A picture of said degree certificate obviously make me look like a complete tool so it may be prudent of you to post one.

 

Sorry, man ...

 

fair enough