Nuclear Power Plants ... do we need them ?

[Paul]

The "perfectly safe" thingy is bullshit. Even without earthquakes, tsunamies, plane crashes or terrorist attacks there is always a small chance of human failure in terms of planning, construction, maintainance or operation. We do need nuclear power at the moment but on the longer run we should try to get away from it. There is a risk involved with nuclear power and the waste problem can't be solved in a satisfactory manner either.

In SimCity I used to build nuclear power plants because of their advantages. I saved often and when it went boom I just loaded a save. Pretty hard to pull that off in the real world.

[IG_Saint]

The "perfectly safe" thingy is bullshit. Even without earthquakes, tsunamies, plane crashes or terrorist attacks there is always a small chance of human failure in terms of planning, construction, maintainance or operation. We do need nuclear power at the moment but on the longer run we should try to get away from it. There is a risk involved with nuclear power and the waste problem can't be solved in a satisfactory manner either.

In SimCity I used to build nuclear power plants because of their advantages. I saved often and when it went boom I just loaded a save. Pretty hard to pull that off in the real world.

Yes, you're right, perfectly safe may have been a bad choice of words. Reasonably save may be better. As in most things human error can't be prevented 100%. Still, I don't see a reason to ignore the benefits of nuclear power, especially if fusion is ever figured out.

[OoberNoob]

Nuclear power is the "cleanest" source we have right now that can supply the amount of power we need. The plant in japan was old and was going to be replaced in the near future and it still stood up to the beating it took.  These plants are designed to withstand almost anything with failsafe after failsafe to prevent human error.  My only problem is these plants produce a waste that we have no idea how to get rid of. What we do now is just contain it until it decays away for the next 200,000 years or more, but at least we can contain it. The problem with coal and and gas is that we can only contain a portion of it and the rest escapes and becomes everyone else problem.  From an environmental engineers standpoint, I say we keep going with nuclear power until we come up with something better because right now its the best option we have.

[Paul]

Two more reasons to try to get a way from nuclear power came to my mind:

Firstly, the amount of usuable ore is getting lower. To create usuable nuclear fuel out of lesser ore will take more and more effort, reducing the CO-emission advantage.

Secondly, a civil nuclear power programm can be used to keep a hidden nuclear weapon project running. Iran and Best Korea claim their right to use nuclear power plants because all the other countries are using it as well. A (utopian, lol France) world-wide consensus to abandon fission plant technology would make it harder to obtain and maintain ninja nukes in the future.

[Beauchamp]

yes we need them until somebody will come up with something better

[Lennu]

In the future we will hopefully discover new and better non-pollutive ways to produce energy for the whole world, but right now we don't have that technology. So lets wait? Can't do that, we need energy right away or there will be no future for humans.
Burning fossile fuels causes problems that effect the whole world, not to mention local problems like smog.
Another options are these "green power sources" we have now, which aren't effective enough. So the only option we can rely on in the future is nuclear power.

Nowadays the risks we take by using nuclear energy are minimal. Japan is known to have very loose grip on when it comes to safety in nuclear plants and still it took a massive earthquake and freaking tsunami to cause problems on a very old plant that was supposed be shut down in the near future.   
     And also, before we mine and use that uranium it is radioactive, right? I'm no physicist you know.
So practically we dig up radioactive stuff from the ground, nuke it up a bit in our powerplant, then put it into a huge container and put it back to ground?

Also, someone just took out the maybe-they-make-nuclear-weapons-in-there? -card.  That is very unlikely. IF someone would be stupid enough to actually launch a nuclear warhead, it wouldn't even hit it's target before russia/usa/france/uk/ect. would have made a couple of launches themselves. As a result..... Everyone loses!!! YAY!!   We are now talking about amounts of energy that can easily compete with that meteor that caused the extinction of dinosaurs. But as a bonus, everything is nice an' green of radioactivity. Aka nuclear winter.
      So, no more nuclear weapons, plz world, plz...   I don't really see the point in "haha, we're so strong we can kill us all!!"
Recently North-Korea threatened South-Korea with nuclear weapons, but I haven't heard anything about it since then. So I've made my conclusion that even their leaders were responsible enough to avoid a conflict like that.

[Zypher]

Nuclear power is the best , most efficient, cleanest and safest type of power generation. With regards to a shortage of fissile ore, there are tonnes of top scientists working on that very problem and there have been several really interesting developments in that in the last few years.

There are like one hundred nuclear power plants in the US for instance and there has never been anyone die in an accident in any of them. Not even in Three Mile Island.

Whats happening now in Japan is fucked up, But considering the damage done on the reactor buildings the containers around the cores are holding up very well.

 I think that there are alot of totally viable arguments against nuclear power but in public discussion there is considerably more non-scientific extreme-enviornmentalist fear mongering that goes on about it and because of that we have to be extra careful about what information we take on board as fact. Anyway, nuclear power is a part of the future. Long after fossil fuels become archaic and outdated , nuclear energy will still be powering our civilisation. 

[Sepelio]

Heres a good run down of what happened with the Japanese plants. Many of you should probably watch this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=-bcrLiATLq0

To be honest I think the situation in Japan could have been far worse. The reactor designs should have been updated long ago though. 40 years is a long long time to wait for something catastrophic to happen.

[Paul]

And also, before we mine and use that uranium it is radioactive, right? I'm no physicist you know.
So practically we dig up radioactive stuff from the ground, nuke it up a bit in our powerplant, then put it into a huge container and put it back to ground?

That made me laugh and sad at the same time.

[Wulzzz]

And how do you want to store the atomic waste for the next 200k years safely?
We already have to move it from one ultimate storage place to the next ultimate storage place after some decades..

We produce dangerious waste for the next hundreds of generations..that's not so ultra clean too.(besides the mining produces quite some polution too)
Imagine we still would have shit to take care about from the cavemen.

[Safavid]

With the demand of energy increasing, nuclear may be the only way to produce what the world needs, unless we can harness the power of the Sun (big nuclear explosions light years away).  Cold fusion may be another route, however with the current state of affairs Nuclear energy is important.  The dangers are worth the risks? Not sure and I personally don't like anything Nuclear, but it's almost like a necessary evil. 

Also, in regards to people mentioning God, I am a Muslim and I love God, however I don't think God was punishing the Japanese at all.  It is more of a collective issue of us abusing the harmony of nature in other places or all around the world by putting pollutants into the atmosphere and environment.  Also, I have heard that some of the world's biggest powers have been working on weather manipulation devices that can create earthquakes, storms, etc. that are supposedly going to be used for creating atmospheres on other planets in case of colonization.  So, in reality it could be the fault of governments or corporations working on weather machines as well.  Which brings me to a point, why are people like Glen Beck (idiot) and others trying to say it was "God's will" that it happened?  Well, because he is a fanatic and a crazy person. 

I think we need to invest more money on Solar energy personally.   

[Bjarky]

actually there's something called a fusion reactor, they are testing it in france, its an huge "eu+usa and some others" project, it will take some 10-20 years before they are finished thou, but if it succeds, we will be able to replicate the so called sun fusion process, this will give huge amounts of energy, much more than nuclear fission.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iter

[Casimir]

We need nuclear powered spaccraft. Then we can just dump the radioactive waste on the moon /space. If not there is always ireland.

[Patricia]

We need nuclear powered spaccraft. Then we can just dump the radioactive waste on the moon /space. If not there is always ireland.

And just get more shit into the earth's orbit.

[Sean_Drew]

We don´t need nuclear power.

Experts say , that we can change to other energies in only a few years.

So .... let´s do it. What have we to loose ? No nuclear waste ? Green power is not more expensive as nuclear power. But we don´t have nuclear waste.

In my town , when i change to green power , i must pay less , as for nuclear power. I will change in next weeks.