Is nuclear power safe? What happens if it overloads? What about the waste? These are questions I've heard often about nuclear power personally i think its quite safe but what do you think?
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Post by Pompadoodle on Jul 16, 2010 6:43:16 GMT -5
Its safe enough, although the possibility of a terrorist attack on a nuclear facility is pretty grim. I really really hope that those facilities are very well protected.
Storing nuclear waste safely is for sure a big problem, and were it not for global warming I'd be inclined to oppose nuclear power because of this.
However, the threat of global warming is such that nuclear power has become an unfortunate necessity.
I don't think it's safe for a simple reason. Energy is a business and as long as it is, it won't be safe.
BP is the best example at the moment. We use those oilthingies (sry don't know the English word atm) since 1975 I think and after 35 years they still have no real working emergency plans and are so much at a loss as what to do and how to deal with something like that?
Following that I severely doubt nuclear plants are as safe and as modern as they could be, simply because upgrading them would be very expensive. So as long as money is the main concern, there always will be problems, risks and dangers involved. Which seeing what happened in Tschernobyl isn't something I really think we should take so lightly. The fact that we have no idea what to do with the waste, apart from dumping it in remote locations and hoping for the best doesn't really help.
Is it a viable alternative to our energy and climate problems? Well kind of.. the supply of radioactive material is very limited and in the end we have to change to solar/water whatever sources, if we want to or not. So I think although we should consider nuclear as a help for the transition period (albeit a very dangerous one), the main focus should be in optimizing and extending our knowledge about regenerative energy sources and building the necessary stations/tools to make the change as soon as possible.
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