clean nuclear power

[ladydi]

OK maybe this is just a bit of a rant and i may be Im out of touch.

But
Anyone else remember when people were opposed to nuclear power? I seem to remember arguments about how they would store waste material back when the idea was put it in concrete lined drums and drop it in the sea(great til they rust).
Oh and that nuclear power is very very safe.
That Chernobyl was more an issue or it being a "soviet" design and that it couldnt happen here.

It seems now we are told that it is clean energy , very safe and almost like solar and wind so lets close down those dirty coal plants and so on.

Whats changed are we just numbed by growing hydro bills? so we want to believe nuclear is clean cheap power?

As I said maybe im out of touch, but I have friends who were evacuated during chernobyl and much of the land around there is still contaminated, and now we see the troubles in Japan. Lets hope they get that under control with a out it turning into a worse disaster. But if they are really pumping sea water in to cool the reactor, they must be running short of ideas.

end rant

 

[Linkin Park is my Heart]

Its perfectly clean and safe unless something fucks up. Pretty much true about anything. However when you consider the sheer "tonnage" of waste that some generating methods generate and/or the effect of diverting rivers etc that hydro has on the environment it is surprisingly clean.
Just risky.

 

[Yohan]

Good rant that I have no answer to.

Anyone?

 

[Annie R.]

All I can say is that nuclear power is better in a reactor than in a bomb.

 

[feelingless]

JUST A LITTLE UPDATE

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/nuke-opera...ydrogen-risky-better-20110312-144848-694.html


AND A FEW HILIGHTS

Robert Alvarez, senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies and former senior policy adviser to the U.S. secretary of energy, said in a briefing for reporters that the seawater was a desperate measure.
"It's a Hail Mary pass," he said.
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It turned out that officials were aware that the steam contained hydrogen, acknowledged Shinji Kinjo, spokesman for the government Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency. More importantly, they also were aware they were risking an explosion by deciding to vent the steam.
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If the reactor core became exposed to the external environment, officials would likely began pouring cement and sand over the entire facility, as was done at the 1986 Chornobyl nuclear accident in the Ukraine, Peter Bradford, a former commissioner of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said in a briefing for reporters.
Another expert on the call, Ken Bergeron, a physicist and former Sandia scientist, added that as a result of such a meltdown the surrounding land would be off-limits for a considerable period of time, and "a lot of first responders would die."

---------------


I have always thought nuclear power had a place, but are we just greedy to put reactors near fault lines, rather than put the research into finding a safer form of energy, or simply paying to run natural gas and fossil fuels as they are "safer"? Tidal/solar/wind/reduced consumption....I have no idea what the solution should have been and honestly I wasnt complaining about nuclear either, despite 3 mile and chernobyl, until this week. Hindsite is 20/20 as they say.

Maybe it boils down to the old adage "Just cause we can, doesn't mean we should"