Dreaming of nuclear potential

[nucleardream]

Hi, I'm new to the AB network. I've had second thoughts about my username in my short infancy of AB existence. I don't live in England, per se, and am very curious as to AB'ers interpretation of Nuclear Power. Does it not hold great potential? Is it not the cleanest, most efficient method of generating power, minus the risk incurred from nuclear mis-treatment? If we knew how to handle it well, especially how to protect and safeguard it from terrorists and the like, what, if anything, is wrong with it?

[nucleardream]

Because I think its awesome. By the way, Albert Einstein, one of the greatest scientists of the 20th century, of all time perhaps? -- said that he was remorseful that his great work on nuclear energy was used in a destructive fashion to making nuclear bombs. I beleve the guy...if he lived by its power, then something about it (it's power) needs to be good.

[boobesque]

there is the question of nuclear waste but i have read somewhere that there are plans to re-use some of the waste which would make the process a lot cleaner, although it is already one of the cleanest, apart from of course wind power and solar energy. the problem is not so much the quantity of waste but the fact that it takes so long to degrade into 'safe' material. can you ensure the safe storage of anything for thousands of years? wars, climate change, natural disasters, unnatural disasters all can have an impact on the security of the waste.

[rojash]

The waste product from Nuclear power is highly toxic to all forms of life and unlike most other waste products, remains so for thousands of years. This is clean power?.

Many people think there is something wonderful and mysterious about nuclear generation, but in fact it's very primitive. Get some highly dangerous materials which get hot in concentration, bring them close together and use the heat to boil water - wow!

Every engineer knows the law variously know as Murphy's or Sod's Law - If something can go wrong, it will.

Two Mile Island and Chernobyl spring to mind, but there have been so-called "minor" leaks from power stations all over the world on a frequent basis for years.

[Clanad]

Until such time that a viable nuclear fusion process is perfected, the significant problem of waste material disposal will limit the use of the current fission technology. At this time, here in the U.S., a proposed nuclear waste disposal site at Yucca Mountain in Nevada has been proposed, partially built but still faces scientific criticism, since the half life of the radioactive waste reaches thousands of years. It's nearly impossible, as boobesque and rojash cite, to predict what can occur to such a disposal site for those time spans, yet it's absolutely neccessary to protect the future generations. As opposed to fission, the main distinction is that fusion power produces no high-level radioactive waste. I think it's entirely probable that large scale solar power cells may be developed before reaching a viable solution with fusion power... in my opinion...

[SarCaustic]

I agree with Clanad and rojash. Another thing is that sooner or later the Uranium source would run out!

[qapmoc]

Well, the available energy resources (especially oil) that we are using now are at the point of starting to run out NOW, peak oil is reliably predicted to happen within this decade, the only short term viable energy source at this time is likely to be nuclear, please do a google search for ''oil depletion'' ''energy depletion'' or ''peak oil'' and do read and understand the situation we are facing within this decade.
It would seem that the UK govt is aware of this situation and have decided that the only way out of the corner is nuclear.