Nuclear Power

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Well, don't expect either political party to promote nuclear power in the near future.  90% of US coal production is used to produce 50% of our electricity.  If nuclear power were to be aggresively promoted the coal mines of the Ohio River Valley, which produce high-sulfur coal would be the first to feel the affect of this.  Can you imagine either major party conceeding an advantage in Ohio, Pensylvania, Kentucky, West Virginia, Indiiana, and Illinois?  Too many of these states are too evenly divided politically.

Despite this, on the Fantasy Election Forum, the Manifest Destiny Party will be advocating nuclear power as a major plank in its energy platform.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

There is a very limited supply of uranium in the world. There is a lot less of it than coal. Coal at projected rates of consumption could last over 100 years. Not that much can necessarily be said about nuclear power.

At a price of $50/pound, the proven reserves of uranium oxide in the US are some 890 million pounds as of 2003 according to the DOE.  Annual production over the last decade has averaged around 5 million pounds and has been declining steadily due to imports of fissile materials from the former Soviet Union. even if the US went to 100% nuclear power for electricity, we have a good 40 years of proven supply without even doing reprocessing of spent power rods, recovering uranium oxide as a byproduct from mining other ores, or discovering new deposits.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

I would be for nuclear power but for the tempting targets the plants make  for the terrorists.  Coal is safer.

Unlike the WTC, the designs for nuclear reactors consider the possibility of what woud happen if a large jetliner were to crash into them.  It would be a mess, and possibly a slight release of radioactivity from the cooling system, but the core itself would be safe. and far less people would be affected from the slight amount of radiation released in such an incident than from the chemical pollution of even a clean coal plant producing the same amount of electricity over the same period.  That said, I'm not advocating building nuclear power plants near population centers.  The risks while small are real, but thanks to the wonders of alternating current, we don't need to place power plants in densely populated areas.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

I personally like my Hydro-electric power here.    Nice, safe, and it makes for a fun summer time.

Hydropower does have some ecological impacts which while usually localized, are extremly severe in that it totally devastates the existing ecology of what will be in the lake and even without environmental considerations, there really isn't much we could do to build more capacity in the lower 48.
I don't favor undoing what has been done, but hydropower has reached its peak and can't but help to provide a declining share of total US electricity production.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Then it hasto be transported overseas at risk of it entering the sea.

Unranium oxide is not very soluble, so unless it was shipped in the form of fine dust, even in an accident, it would not pose significant contamination hazard.  Far less of a hazard than the pollution produced by burning fossil fuels to make electricity.

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Even at Chernobyl, an unsafe plant being run in an unsafe manner, no nuclear explosion occurred.  The damage that was caused was due to dispersal of radioactive elements in the smoke from the fire.  With sppropriate design, even if a core meltdown occured, the materials from the core would not be released.

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Even in Australia, this project would only produce about 3MW per square kilometer according to that article.  Even if that same level of efficiency could be obtained in the US which is at a higher latitude than Australia, we would need to cover an area equal to that of the entire state of Alabama to meet current US electricty needs using this technology. I can't this sort of plant being built anywhere east of the Mississippi as it just takes up way too much space.  Possibly in the desert southwest some could be built, but the environmental cost of destroying that much habitat does not make this a technique that I would favor using on a large scale.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

I personally like my Hydro-electric power here.    Nice, safe, and it makes for a fun summer time.

Hydropower does have some ecological impacts which while usually localized, are extremly severe in that it totally devastates the existing ecology of what will be in the lake and even without environmental considerations, there really isn't much we could do to build more capacity in the lower 48.
I don't favor undoing what has been done, but hydropower has reached its peak and can't but help to provide a declining share of total US electricity production.

And you're trying to tell me Nuclear waste is better?!  Common...

Nuclear power's main advantage and its main disadvantage is that it is concentrated so that it doesn't require much land. Renewable energy sources whether it be wind, water, solar, or biofuels all require a considerable amount of land in order to make the energy that is produced, so they hardly have zero impact.

However, my argument is not that nuclear is better than other forms of power, it is that nuclear is better than using fossil fuels which is what provides three quarters of US electricity today.  Renewable sources including hydropower  provide less than 10% of US electricity. We could sut down every hydroelectric dam in the US and it would have a negligible effect  At present fossil fuels and nuclear power are the only feasible methods of making the electricty we want.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

The problem with nuke power is that there is a lot of CO2 released from the refining and mining part of the uranium, and that would not make a difference from burning coal.

In another nuclear power thread here I asked someone (it might have been you, I can't remember) who made this same claim about lots of CO2 resulting from the production of nuclear fuel to kindly provide a source for their claim.  No such source was ever provided.  Carbon is not present in uranium ores, while it most definitely is present in coal.  Uranium requires less to be mined and transported, so the only point in the process that uranium could possibly cause more CO2 to be produced than coal would be during its refining, and I can't see how that could be.  I really would appreciate a source for your claim.