Re:Nuclear Power is Safest Way to Make Electricity
by Lost_BiomedE on Sunday April 03, 2011 @11:05AM
(#2402860)
Look a bit more into the different alternative nuclear designs. We have enough stored 'waste' to use it as fuel for a long time, not requiring much if any mining. Nuclear weapons can not be produced from these reactors. They use the material so storage is not an issue. They can use passive cooling which does not depend on computers that could be infected.
There are much cleaner modern coal plants with filters. Still coal is dirty and dangerous.
In the nuclear industry you have new designs. But this does not solve the basic problems:
* mining of Uranium is dirty
* you need to transport dangerous material
* nuclear weapons can be produced
* reprocessing is extremely dirty
* storage is unsolved
* it promotes large corporations with all problems (corruption, ...)
* a society needs to be sufficiently advanced to handle the risk (i.e. better than Japan, the Soviet Union, or the US)
* the capital costs are large, needs to financed by the government
Plus with the new reactors you get interesting new dangers. Ever heard of 'stuxnet'? There are now viruses and attacks against nuclear facilities based on computer viruses.