Should we use nuclear power as energy source anymore?

SouthernDemocrat said:

Coal mining, burning, and waste disposal on any given year results in more environmental damage and human health costs than dozens of Fukushima's.

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All of which is recoverable... it won't take thousands of years for the environment to bioremediate those substances because the biosphere has natural carbon sequestration ability. Radiation is a whole different story.

I'm not saying fossil fuels are a good thing though. We need to stop using them.

skq said:

A lot of countries announced that they want to stop using nuclear power as energy source. What's your opinion?

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We should use it more.

Northern Light said:

All of which is recoverable... it won't take thousands of years for the environment to bioremediate those substances because the biosphere has natural carbon sequestration ability. Radiation is a whole different story.

I'm not saying fossil fuels are a good thing though. We need to stop using them.

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I am not talking about carbon. In the United States alone, where we at least have some nominal environmental regulations on coal use, the mining of it results in the blowing up of entire mountains - literally scaring the land for millions of years, it results in the wholesale destruction of hundreds of thousands of acres of some of the most bio-diverse temperate forests on earth, the destruction and poisoning of thousands of miles of rivers and streams, mercury contamination in animals across the globe, the acidification of entire ecosystems, deaths of millions of birds and animals,and thousands of premature deaths every year. No other form of energy is anywhere even close to it. The worst environmental disasters in this country's history were not oil spills, but rather coal slurry spills. This is just in the United States alone. Worldwide, coal burning alone results in hundreds of thousands of deaths a year. You could literally have Chernobyl level nuclear event every few years and it would not equal the level of environmental destruction that coal does on a yearly basis.

skq said:

A lot of countries announced that they want to stop using nuclear power as energy source. What's your opinion?

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That's a bad idea. Nuclear power is far cleaner than coal, especially with regard to human health.

Nuclear fusion in particular is the most viable long-term energy technology in the world, and overwhelmingly so. Humans and the habitats we rely on for food consume absolutely ridiculous quantities of energy.

If we take energy from the wind, that extracts atmospheric energy from the planet. If we take energy from geothermal vents, that extracts energy from Earth's core. What are the long term effects of those things? They could mean changes in weather, the length of the day, or the strength of Earth's magnetic field- if we lose our magnetic field, we lose our atmosphere (solar winds would blast it out into space). Even with solar, there's a fundamental limit of how much solar energy can be absorbed- how much of the planets surface area are we willing to cover with solar panels? What would the long-term effects be of, say, covering the Pacific Ocean with solar panels, blacking out the solar power that would feed algae and other CO2 sinks?

Nuclear fusion uses only hydrogen fuel. It fuses hydrogen atoms together to produce heavier elements. The outputs of hydrogen fusion are nothing like uranium-235. Huge amounts of energy can be produced, safely (no risk of meltdown); right now, the downsides are that they're ridiculously expensive and we can't leave them on for very long. Physics and engineering are likely able to solve these problems.

SouthernDemocrat said:

I am not talking about carbon. In the United States alone, where we at least have some nominal environmental regulations on coal use, the mining of it results in the blowing up of entire mountains - literally scaring the land for millions of years, it results in the wholesale destruction of hundreds of thousands of acres of some of the most bio-diverse temperate forests on earth, the destruction and poisoning of thousands of miles of rivers and streams, mercury contamination in animals across the globe, the acidification of entire ecosystems, deaths of millions of birds and animals,and thousands of premature deaths every year. No other form of energy is anywhere even close to it. The worst environmental disasters in this country's history were not oil spills, but rather coal slurry spills. This is just in the United States alone. Worldwide, coal burning alone results in hundreds of thousands of deaths a year. You could literally have Chernobyl level nuclear event every few years and it would not equal the level of environmental destruction that coal does on a yearly basis.

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I don't deny that fossil fuels have to go, and that nuclear is a cleaner option in the mean time, but we should not pretend that nuclear is so safe.