I've Got The Power! (Poll)Follow

Vermont's state legislature just voted to not renew the license of the state's only nuclear power plant when it expires in 2012. At the same time, President Obama is working to expand the number of nuclear power plants in the United States after a thirty year drought in plant construction. To be clear, there are some real issues with the Vermont plant but having nuclear power in the news brings us to today's poll...



Edited, Feb 24th 2010 5:42pm by Jophiel

Negative. With nuclear arms you grow more arms, so you can hug more kids.

Think of the kids!

Edited, Feb 24th 2010 6:52pm by lolgaxe

You know who would want more arms to touch more kids?

Pedophiles.

Think of the children!

Totally US centric post below.

I voted for the top option. That said, my understanding is that we will run out of usable fuel soon (order of one hundred years, baring miraculous ore deposit discoveries), but that we can reprocess the fuel we have now and use it for thousands of years. That said, reprocessing is delicate. I would have no issues living within 50 miles of an actual nuclear power plant, but I'd rather not live within 300 miles of where the reprocessing occurs. And my fellow citizens have issues with the transport of nuclear fuel. Which, to me, is rather silly considering how it is stored. Weapons grade material: definitely a concern. Reactor grade: you have to be kidding. There are a thousand nasty industrial compounds hauled all over the states vastly, vastly more likely to kill you/***** up the environment then that.

Politically, the waste will have to be stored where the power is produced: meaning maybe 40 sites within the US, likely on the grounds of military bases. This will not represent any measurable increased risk to the public. Dumb terrorists won't know what they are looking for and likely rob the equivalent of a truckload of smoke detectors. Smart ones will know dozens of vastly easier ways to strike people which don't involve a first step of, essentially, robbing a military base.

Realistically we could do far, far better either with solar/wind power or by conservation. Neither will eliminate fossil fuel use, and replacing that seems to me to be the primary goal (for a couple reasons).

I happen to know something about this; feel free to ask anything.

I've had to have a fair amount of training in nuc/rad exposure. It's over-rated for the most part.

Still, it's not the best energy source. It's better than fossil fuels. If I could know that it might be used as a stop-gap until less mutating renewable sources could be further developed AND implemented - I'd say go for it. But that's silly.

So I vote "no" on nucs. Put the investment into something else.

That Vermont power plant has hideous hideous nuclear safety code breaches.

Of the top of my head issues it has had:

Tritium leaks
Water contamination
Cooling tower collapse
Security failures

I'm pretty sure it had some other issues as well though.

We could, but let's face it, we're not going to.

He should have started his own religion.

We'll ask the Russians instead.

Technically, I think they're Ukranians now.

Yes, but you can't go to wind because people like liberals on Nantucket don't like the view 30 miles out. And solar is right out because people like to turn on the lights when the sun is not out...

It is a method to produce power locally, say from natural gas or biofuels. This can be more efficient then producing it far away (at a power plant) and transporting it to your home.

As a power source, natural gas could put a dent in the foreign oil imported to the US. Biofuels...now here potentially the global warming could be reduced since rather then taking fossil fuels out of the Earth and putting carbon into the atmosphere, we are taking CO2 out into crops and essentially "burning" them to re-release CO2 back into the air. It requires energy to refine the raw plants.

http://articles.latimes.com/2010/feb/24/opinion/la-oe-mckibben25-2010feb25

edited to clarify who wrote what.



Edited, Mar 1st 2010 9:30am by yossarian