Nuclear policy isn’t something people like to talk about today, especially with the radical, communist leaders in the world. I think the world should embrace nuclear power. Nuclear weapons on the other hand, should be confronted with a caring touch. I don’t think there should be a complete dis-armament of nuclear weapons/power for a few reasons:
Black Market dealings will never keep NW’s out of sight/out of mind.
It is nearly un-feasible for both weapons and power to disappear.
Activists. That explains itself.
Ignorance of population: Nuclear weapon = Hiroshima/Nagasaki
Nuclear power is synonymous with Nuclear weapons. Another misconception.
I’m very much against it.
We should not be wasting money on another source of nonrenewable energy, but instead looking towards sustainable alternatives that do not pose a threat to the environment and inhabitants by means of contamination. You can tell me how safe the technology has become until you are blue in the face and I will never accept it because there is always a threat. In the short time nuclear technology has been around there has been enough devestating accidents and threats that people should be smart enough to see that this is NOT a good thing.
and another thing, North Korea is far from communism.
North Korea tricked the world. They got the exact reaction they wanted out of Americans. They have no nuclear weapons, it’s as simple as that. We need to stop giving them so much attention and focus on real threats.
France gets 78% of its power from nuclear energy. No accidents. We (The U.S.)only get 20%. 3 mile Island was a bad accident, but how many people died? A total of zero. Chernobyl was the worst accident on record and only 36 deaths are attibuted to that. Look up the facts. The great majority of the 36 deaths were fire fighters trying to put out the fire. The Soviets also used Graphite cooled reactors which are much more dangerous. The graphite caught fire and that caused the terrible situation. Many, many more people are killed every year from being electrocuted, yet do we try to stop electricity from being used? Coal fired power plants are much more dangerous to human health than Nuclear plants. All of the nuclear waste that has been created since the inception of nuclear power in the U.S. can be stored in an area the size of a footbal field 5 feet deep.
Nuclear power is held back because coal, oil, and natural gas interests pour loads of money into negative campaigns to stop it from taking over. The nuclear industry is also held back because the U.S. government is too parinoid about looking socialist and allowing the energy industry to be heavily regulated. Our power supply is too important to the people and our economy to be left to the market…or in other words greedy CEOs and big business… to control. Government regulation has its place…even in the U.S. If approached correctly, nuclear power could be a safe, cheap, clean source of viable energy.
Well. There lies the problem. I didn’t say anything about nuclear weapons. I am talking about nuclear power. Nuclear power plants can’t produce a nuclear explosion. We don’t need a nuclear power plant to produce weapons grade plutonium. If governments are going to make nuclear weapons they will do it with or without nuclear power. I do not support nuclear weapons. In fact I don’t support war at all. It is my humble opinion that George Bush and Tony Blair should be in the same court room with Saddam Hussein and receive his same fate. (Which should be life in prison and not the death penalty.)
The problem is that most Americans tie nuclear power to nuclear weapons and the two are not synonomous. Research a little. Read a little. Don’t let the media mold your mind.
Hershey pa, 3 miles near
Empty assurance, nothing to fear
The nuke is down, poison the ground
Hush it quick, the cows are sick
ahhh
And there’s nothing like the face of a kid eating
A radioactive chocolate bar -forever and ever
Radioactive chocolate -forever and ever
Radioactive chocolate -forever and ever
Radioactive chocolate -forever and ever
Poisonous fish, poisonous rivers
Cancerous kidneys, stomachs and livers
They don’t give a fuck
Just wanna make a buck
Radioactive chocolate -forever and ever
Radioactive chocolate -forever and ever
Radioactive chocolate -forever and ever
Radioactive chocolate -forever and ever
Buy American, buy Hershey
They’ll sell you death
With no mercy
They’re gonna gain their wealth
And risk your health
Radioactive chocolate -forever and ever
Radioactive chocolate -forever and ever
Radioactive chocolate -forever and ever
Radioactive chocolate -forever and ever -MDC
If I am afraid of something I try to educate myself about it. We will often find that our fears were unwarranted. What I try not to do is to attempt to scare others about something that I know little about.
Reasons to fear nuclear weapons are obvious and need not be elaborated.
As to nuclear power, “fear” is the wrong approach. The arguments against nuclear power are:
It’s a nonrenewable resource and so unsustainable.
It produces radioactive wastes that nobody’s figured out how to store safely for the time periods required.
It presents a danger of catastrophic meltdown. For any one nuclear plant in any one year, the danger is miniscule, but the more nuclear plants are operated for the more years, the larger the danger becomes. Run enough plants for long enough, and the probability of catastrophic meltdown approaches 100%.
Chernobyl, by the way, was not a catastrophic meltdown, it was a near-miss. Bad enough, though.
It lends itself to highly centralized distribution, while most renewable forms of energy lend themselves to a more decentralized, consumer-controlled approach.
The arguments FOR nuclear power are:
It can be produced abundantly for a while, and
It produces no greenhouse gases, and, as long as there is no meltdown, fewer pollutants of any kind than fossil fuel burning.
I would put improved energy efficiency first on the list of things to develop and implement. Second would be development of renewable forms of energy such as sun, wind, and tidal. Third would be construction of nuclear plants.
Nukes aren’t that great, but they’re better than coal. Building coal plants would be fourth on the list, and I’m confident we don’t have to go there. We may not need nukes, either. If we don’t, we shouldn’t build them.
Non-renewable? How can you say that? Does a breeder reactor ring a bell?
Imagine this: You’ve got say, a metric ton of fissionable U. You split said ton through fission, creating massive amounts of energy. You take the split U and fuse it back together to have more fissionable U. Now I know the process is more complicated than that, but that is the backbone of the process. And all this jab about not being a breeder reactor if it doesn’t produce more fissile material than fertile material.
