Nuclear Power Plants ... do we need them ?

[Siiem]

If only japan had the techonolgy to take advantage of wave power... Tasteless?

[Zoidberg]

THE POWER OF PRAY!
  use it!

[Ronish]

Nuclear power is needed. It'd be great if we could all rely on solar/wind/etc. for our power, but our power needs are too high.

What happened in Japan is about the worst possible situation for the reactors. They were hit with the worst earthquake known to have hit Japan, they lost most of their equipment, and are without power in the facilities. Yet, no nuclear catastrophe. This with 40+ year-old reactors made from designs even older than that. Modern designs are even better (as far as building new plants).

The only nuclear reactor that had a meltdown was at Chernobyl and that was because the staff disengaged safety systems for a 'test' or because the reactor was designed poorly. There are reports to back up both views (probably caused by all the above though). 

[Sharky]

Well since nuclear plans produces radioactive wastes that has to be stored for thousands of years, i wouldn't call it green energy.
Also don't know about other countries but here in italy there are many reports of a rise of deformities and diseases near nuclear power plants in the '80, and after cernobyl we shutted all down.
We had a lot of incidents (even in japans) this years, luckly not bad as this, and now all north eastern japan is contamined (in tokyo, very far from the plant is already 10 times natural values). And we all know this could and still can get much worse then that.

Yes,  we put shitloads of shit everyday in the atmosphere, but i think we can all agree nothing is nearly as bad as nuclear fallout.
Also nuclear plants consumes a lot of precious water (and you can't use sea water) uranium prices are going up more then oil prices, and is really hard to get insurance companies to cover nuclear plants, guess why.  .
In fact without state subsides nobody would build nuclear plants and that tells a lot over nuclear power safety and profitabilty. Ofc they have the best safety measures compares to other eletric plants, if a refinery explode is a disaster, but if a nuclear power plant explode the risks are much much worse.

Also, nobody thinks about terrorist attacks? wars? How bad could be a 9/11 strike with an airplane over a nuclear power plant for example?

[Sharky]

Nuclear power is needed. It'd be great if we could all rely on solar/wind/etc. for our power, but our power needs are too high.

What happened in Japan is about the worst possible situation for the reactors. They were hit with the worst earthquake known to have hit Japan, they lost most of their equipment, and are without power in the facilities. Yet, no nuclear catastrophe. This with 40+ year-old reactors made from designs even older than that. Modern designs are even better (as far as building new plants).

The only nuclear reactor that had a meltdown was at Chernobyl and that was because the staff disengaged safety systems for a 'test' or because the reactor was designed poorly. There are reports to back up both views (probably caused by all the above though).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_and_radiation_accidents plus much more not mentioned there. Cernobyl was just the worst but surely not the only.

[Siiem]

Also, nobody thinks about terrorist attacks? wars? How bad could be a 9/11 strike with an airplane over a nuclear power plant for example?

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[tony]

This isn't the first tmie Japan was involved in a nuclear incident lols

[Sharky]

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Whoa that's enlighting,  the response you would expect from a merc indeed.

In reality, nuclear plants are the first targets in case of a serious war, togheter with dikes and nuclear silos. Also it's ovious that they are in danger of terrorism, are you really sure a nuclear plant can't get to fusion point after a 747 crashes at full speed on it?

[burakx]

in turkey edirne citty they build 17 windmills.now they can give electricity 65.000 house and 5 glass factorys.

[Siiem]

So your solution to a country with little to no resources to produce electricity is... "weeeell we can't build a nuclear powerplant because someone MGIHT do a terrorist attack" if you let terrorists decide your infastructure, you have basicly lost and the terrorists have won.

[Patricia]

in turkey edirne citty they build 17 windmills.now they can give electricity 65.000 house and 5 glass factorys.

And let me guess, 1 glass factory is getting electricity and the 4 other with the 65,000 houses are getting nothing?

Also I call bullshit, 1 mill can produce about 2MW.

[ShadowofWoe]

And let me guess, 1 glass factory is getting electricity and the 4 other with the 65,000 houses are getting nothing?

Depends on the wind.

[Sharky]

So your solution to a country with little to no resources to produce electricity is... "weeeell we can't build a nuclear powerplant because someone MGIHT do a terrorist attack" if you let terrorists decide your infastructure, you have basicly lost and the terrorists have won.

Well japan is one of the bigger waster of energy in the world, if you go in tokyo on night is like day. Maybe starting to save energy might be a good idea (not only for the japaneses).
I'm not saying all nuclear plants must be stopped tomorrow, but we should start to invest more in other energy sources and stop building new plants.
Since they are one of the most sysmic countries of the world doesn't seems so smart to place nuclear plants everywhere.
I really hope that this disaster will push the japanese to invest more in new energy sources, maybe with their tecnology they can speed up technological advancement in that field.

Also living in a nation like italy, with a lot of energy request and really little fossil energy sources but no power plants (we shutted all down after cernobyl) i can say human life is possible without nuclear.
Yes we burn a lot of imported fossil fuel, but we also have a lot of geotermal and Hydropower facilities, sun and wind. On night we save fuel by buying power at really low costs from France, since their nuclear reactors can't be shut down on night so they have free energy. It's not perfect but at least we don't have to worry so much about a reactor meltdown and i hope we will move much more on renewable energy when they will become more profitable.

[Patricia]

Depends on the wind.

Depending on the wind, a mill produce more or less 2MW, so I doubt 34MW is enough to power up 5 glass factories and 65,000 houses.


Oh also, you need space for wind farms, something japanese doesn't have.

Having a shitload of huge ass wind mills also looks ugly as hell.

[IG_Saint]

Whoa that's enlighting,  the response you would expect from a merc indeed.

In reality, nuclear plants are the first targets in case of a serious war, togheter with dikes and nuclear silos. Also it's ovious that they are in danger of terrorism, are you really sure a nuclear plant can't get to fusion point after a 747 crashes at full speed on it?

Yes, I'm sure, first of all because fusion point makes no sense, since there is no nuclear fusion going on in a nuclear power plant. Secondly nuclear power plants are build like bunkers with an extensive amount of safety features. Take a look at that list of accidents you yourself linked, only one of those accidents had a deathtoll above 5 and again only one of those accidents released a serious amount of radiation. Nuclear power is perfectly save. It does have drawbacks in that its waste takes a long time to reach save radiation levels and that it requires fuel with a large fissile atomic nucleus.

Go read this if you're worried about terrorist attacks on nuclear power plants:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_safety#Vulnerability_of_nuclear_plants_to_attack