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Do You Favor Nuclear Power?

Do You Favor Nuclear Power?

  • Total voters
    93
I support nuclear power (in an armchair, totally passive sort of way). From what I've read, modern nuclear plants have a bajillion failsafe systems in place. If every technician in the plant suddenly dropped dead, the reactor would shut down on its own. Waste is still a problem, but waste is a problem with every form of power generation.

Besides, if we don't support it now, where will the impetus to discover fusion come from?
 
pbrauer said:
Given what's taking place in Japan's reactors after the earthquake, this is certainly a topical question. Not much to add.
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No, I don't - never have.

Seems futile to depend on a power production process that has the capability of wiping out the entire population it's suppose to be helping.

Seems ****ing stupid, really.
 
I fully support Nuclear Energy. It;s about time to start building new plants here in the USA. It's clean and once Yucca Mountain is done we will have a safe place to store the spent fuel. Look at France the majority of there energy comes from Nuclear Plants and they seem to be doing just find.
 
TheBook said:
I favor it, but believe it to be dangerous.

We all know how much corruption, corner-cutting and other hi-jinks goes on in normal businesses and the same would likely happen at nuclear power plants. Except when you cut corners or give the job to the lowest bidder, a hole gets blasted in the earth making the surrounding region uninhabitable.
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Cutting corners is hard to do in the nuclear industry. Too many people are watching. Been there, seen it...
Nuke power plants cannot explode like a bomb. Chernobyl was a poor design, not used by the rest of the world.
 
Moon said:
if we're ever going to get away from oil, not only do I have nuclear power, but I don't think we can survive without it.
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in order for nuclear power to replace much oil, we need a lot more electric cars...
 
DrunkenAsparagus said:
The chances of a 9.1 quake hitting anywhere in the vast majority of the country are incredibly slim. It is important to note that far more coal miners die in mine accidents each year than people die in nuclear accidents. I'm also not sure about American coal plants' effects on public health, but coal plants have led to more deaths in this country than nuclear plants (meaning that deaths from coal pollution have been higher than three since 1961).
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not counting chernobyl, a bad design, I am pretty sure that nuclear power has caused NO deaths....
 
samsmart said:
What do you think of government regulations that would
1) require multiple redundancies in order to ensure safe operations and reduce catastrophic accidents happening from disasters and
2) an automatic penalty of death sentenced upon anyone who engages in any type of corruption regarding the building, operation, and investigation of a nuclear power plant?
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Multiple redundancies are already being used, were from the start, but even more so since TMI...
Contractors are not the problem, individual people are. I have worked in the nuclear industry in the Navy, in Idaho, and AZ.
Sailors on nuclear subs take very good care of thier plant, their lives depend on it.
Civilian nukes, like the one I worked at in AZ, have a lot oversight, with huge fines at stake, but stupidity and a cavalier attitude by a few operators can cause a meltdown. TMI would have had a lot different outcome had the operators stood back and did nothing, but instead they failed to believe the instrumentation, and TURNED OFF the emergency cooling system...
And the test reactors at Idaho? I saw things that would have garnered huge fines had they been done at a civilian plant. Poorly trained operators is the most likely cause of an "incident"....
Qualifications to apply for a job at a nuke plant are an engineering or science degree, or Navy Nuclear Power School. Existing employees get trained, and retrained, repeatedly.
Nuclear power is safe, overall.
 
pbrauer said:
I do not favor nuclear power, however that is the opposite view I've taken in the past. I grew up about 3 miles south of the Indian Point power plant on the Hudson river outside NYC. Safety was never a problem with me. But

  • Nuclear plants are very expensive to build.
  • Nuclear power is very expensive.
  • Just the power to mine/process the nuclear fuel takes itself a lot of fossile fuels, so I don't think they give the benefit, that most people think they do.
  • Nobody will insure a nuclear plant, so the U.S. govenment must do it.
  • People fear them, so this a huge stumbling block.
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not that expensive per kw/hr, compared to coal....mining and processing of nuclear fuel has its very dangerous and deadly counterpart in the coal mines, coal plants have trainloads of coal coming in all the time, and trainloads of ash leaving, people fear them because they don't have the technical education to understand them, and the media plays to their fears with their own ignorant reporting.
 
Chappy said:
You may be right but I do know Yellowstone, albeit in northern Wyoming, is in fact a massive caldera, one of the largest volcanoes in the world.

And, of course, the problem with positioning power plants in Montana or North Dakota is that a significant cost of electricity has a lot to do with transmission distances. Not a lot demand in the immediate vicinity of Montana and North Dakota.
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correct, if Yellowstone blows, we don't want to be there....
 
SirPwn4lot said:
I support a solar, wind, geothermal, hydro and tide supported energy economy.

In the long term, a few decades down the road we'll perfect nuclear fusion, which uses heavy water, and doesn't pollute to a large extent either. Plus it's overwhelmingly efficient. It's just a matter of getting us to that point. Therefore, I'd prefer if large rebates were given to people to buy solar panels for their own home, while the government can exploit the other methods I listed.

It's not perfect, but the US has such amazing renewable energy resources.
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I read in Popular Science back in the 70's that Fusion was right around the corner....it has issues of its own. A few decades won't cut it.
 
UtahBill said:
not counting chernobyl, a bad design, I am pretty sure that nuclear power has caused NO deaths....
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Nuclear power is pretty safe. Chernobyl was a bad design and have pretty stupid management that caused the Explosion. But just to inform you Bill there was been other Deaths. Look up the SL-1 incident though if i remember correctly that too was bad design.
 
Chappy said:
And Tokyo wasn't suppose to be subject to such severe earthquakes. Just sayin'.
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yes, it was, which is why the Japanese build using the most restrictive building codes in the world....some reporters say that this quake is the worst ever for Japan, and they are wrong unless they say in the last century.
 
Aunt Spiker said:
No, I don't - never have.

Seems futile to depend on a power production process that has the capability of wiping out the entire population it's suppose to be helping.

Seems ****ing stupid, really.
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how would that happen? considering that there have been no deaths so far, discounting Chernobyl's bad design....
 
cpgrad08 said:
I fully support Nuclear Energy. It;s about time to start building new plants here in the USA. It's clean and once Yucca Mountain is done we will have a safe place to store the spent fuel. Look at France the majority of there energy comes from Nuclear Plants and they seem to be doing just find.
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Yucca Mt. is done, a fork has been stuck in it. NV doesn't want the fuel stored there, so it remains a problem.
 
cpgrad08 said:
Nuclear power is pretty safe. Chernobyl was a bad design and have pretty stupid management that caused the Explosion. But just to inform you Bill there was been other Deaths. Look up the SL-1 incident though if i remember correctly that too was bad design.
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SL1 was a small test reactor from the very early days of nuclear design, not a commercial nuke...
Rods were manually adjusted, the explosion was a steam explosion due to a rod being pulled up too far, too fast...
Why the operator did it? who knows?
 
Yucca has accepted some waste but the facility won't be completed for another decade.
 
UtahBill said:
SL1 was a small test reactor from the very early days of nuclear design, not a commercial nuke...
Rods were manually adjusted, the explosion was a steam explosion due to a rod being pulled up too far, too fast...
Why the operator did it? who knows?
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I know. Like I said bad design. I was trying make the point that most Nuclear Plant death have been from Bad Design. Also glad to see some one else knows about SL-1. =)
 
I support nuclear power and the creation of nuclear power plants.
 
My home receives power from a ComEd nuclear reactor, and I also have my own solar panels.

I support both methods of power generation.
 
As an avid scifi fan and technology nut, I support nuclear power in theory. However, I do not trust private enterprise to operate nuclear power plants in the safest manner possible. Including dealing with the waste.

Last years BP debacle illustrates this well.

However, I don't have much more confidence in the govt. either. For other reasons.

If someone like the Dalai Lama, or whoever, took over operation of nuclear power, some group who took their safe operation as some kind of "sacred mission", I think that might work. I think Heinlein wrote a story along these lines.

Nuclear power could save us all, if corporate greed or govt bureaucratic incompetency didn't kill us all first.

Therefore I voted other.

Nuclear Jedi, anyone?
 
pbrauer said:
I wonder if you and the others who support it are NIMBY's.
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I do have a nuclear powerplant about 30 miles down wind. I would not want one any closer.
 
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