The UK is almost certainly going to have nuclear power sometime soon. Blair's government will introduce plans this term.

I'm undecided. Modern tech should make nuclear plants much safer than the old style ones which seemed to spend most of the time leaking or meting down. But shouldn't we[tinw] be concentrating on reducing waste of energy and reducing need for energy by increasing efficiency? Also, the whole leaving killer waste that won't be safe for thousands of years thing puts me off a bit.

Nuclear power is fantastically expensive. It'd be great if some of that money could be spent making wind/wave/solar power better.

You know, I can't say I'm surprised. It really seems like nuclear power is our best bet for the time being until some major breakthrough can bring the costs associated with other "clean" energy sources down to a realistic level. I've kind of hidden this opinion for a while since it's so "wrong" in relation to my liberal PoV - which is retarded, I know.

FWIW, we live within about 10 minutes from a nuclear power plant. People always ask me if it makes us nervous and I say "Not really. At least it's not a paper mill." In the event that there's a meltdown, at least we'll be the first to go.

The question is what do you do with the nuclear waste once it has been used.

Currently, you have to bury it somewhere, and that's the best option in the world. They need to dump money into renewable energy now, before it is too late.

i'd much rather see money go into something that'll never run out. after all, if we blow all our uranium on nuclear power how will we make more bombs?

Nuclear power makes more sense than burning dead trees and dinosaurs; sure, the byproduct is nasty, but at least it can be relatively localized. Fossil fuels fuck the entire environment up.

Besides, we need the petrochemicals for all those plastic bottles of Evian.

What we really need is to put tax money from all fossil fuel use into fusion research.

I have to chime in here. Nuclear energy is currently cheaper and more effecient than any other energy source. Current technology is on Generation IV reactors. The Breeder Reactor which puts tiny Uranium pellets inside a high strength grafite ball is virtually meltdown proof (this is a generalization of how a breeder reactor works but it's been a few years since I read about them). Three Mile Island was a Gen. I reactor. Technology has vastly improved since then. One the interesting things is coal actually does release radioactive carbons into the air, tons of it. A nuclear power plant isn't allowed to release a single atom. Clean coal ain't so clean, when you pull the carbon out of it what do you do with the tons of carbon? Nuclear energy can be used to reduce green house emmissions by up to fifty percent within twenty years (this is if we went at it full speed). Another interesting, and good, by-product of nuclear energy is the ability to produce a lot of hydrogen for fuel cell powered cars. To produce hydroge you need two things, heat and electricity. Nuclear energy can produce both of these things. France and Japan have been recycling their core rods for many years and have had few if any accidents and zero fatalities. Right now the use of fossil fuel is rising, not just here in the States, all over the world. Wind, solar and other renewable resources won't be able to help us for some time, at least at the current rate of advancement. As for the waiste, if you can build concrete pads and let things sit on them to cool off for a short period of time before storing them underground and this takes alot of the danger out of them. I know this sounds insane but it would work. Radioactivity wouldn't increase in the atmosphere enough that we'd notice (I'll have to research this more). I am also a liberal and pretty damn green I might add but I've read a lot of articles on this and right now it IS our best hope to stop global warming for the next fifty years or until a better and cleaner source of energy comes along.

In addition you use the surplus energy to break water into hydrogen, the only way to make hydrogen fueled cars efficient or practical.

Environmentalists using their brains. What next?

it's not that terrible...it's still a nimby issue though, for both the plant and waste processing.

Right-wingers using science?

Of course most greenhouse gasses are caused by people driving cars, trucks, busses, planes, and other such things that are powered by combustion engines, not nuclear reactors. (70 percent of the world's petroleum resources are used for this purpose). Also, nuclear power is “clean” only if you don’t count the radioactive waste we still don’t know how to safely store for millions of years. Yucca Mountain anyone? So yeah, nuclear power is “clean.”

How about that new Hummer?

I think we need to make better use of our existing nuclear weapons before we start building any more.

(almost a Jack Handy quote.)

The problem with nuclear reactors and storage of nuclear waste is summarized by this phrase:

Not In My Backyard.

Everyone is totally interested in nuclear power, and completely convinced that it's safe and efficient and necessary -- until you try to build a nuclear power plant in their county.

Cars currently aren't powered by nuclear reactors - but with hydrogen fuel cells, they could be.

reduce, reuse, re-nuke.

i hope at least a little bit of physics goes into making all those weapons. then again, lack of scientific prowess might explain why missile defense systems tend to fail so spectacularly... "sheeyit jeb, whyfor'd ya duct tape the rockets shut?"