What do you think about nuclear power?

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It took around 1b to clean up, which was footed by tax payers. Also, TMI could have had a hydrogen explosion, thankfully it didn't. I just don't trust that our technologies are advanced enough to make nuclear power as safe as the nuclear PR firms would have us believe. The fact is nuclear accidents happen, and the effects linger for generations. I don't want the blood of future generations on my hands.

I'm in favour of nuclear power. I think the anti side blows things out of proportion, and there is a lot of nonsense and pseudoscience concerning it.

Nuclear power is an amazing human achievement, I am in favor of it.
It does amuse me to think that a nuclear power plant is just a very complicated steam engine though.

As someone with 6 years of experience in the nuclear power game and 16 years in the radiation physics field, there are a few things I would like to clear up:

There is a difference between radiation and contamination. If radiation leaks out of something, it travels until it's energy is absorbed by something, and it is not likely to be a great distance. Contamination is what gives off the radiation. Think of it like dog crap. Contamination is the crap, but radiation is the stink it gives off. If radiation leaks out, then it is only a concern to those in the immediate area while it is actively leaking out. As for contamination, there are so many regulations, inspections, safety and interlock systems, minimum qualifications, minimum ongoing education standards, monitoring requirements, and checks that the possibility is minimal in a properly run program.

And by the way, leaks aren't happening all the time, and whoever tries to sell you that one is either lying to you or didn't bother to research any factual information.

The total amount of radiaoactive waste from nuclear power plants is less than the total amount of radioactive waste generated in hospitals. No one is protesting against nuclear medicine or the highly specialized cancer treatments outside. If you are still concerned about disposal, why not just melt it down into bricks and chuck into the depths of the ocean? Water is a fantastic shielding agent.

Radiation can cause cancer. Key word being can. The amount of radiation you would need to be exposed to before you see any discernable rise in cancer risk would be very difficult to find. You are at a much much greater risk od cancer from smog, medications leaching into your drinking water, mercury and lead poisoning, asbestosis, many viruses, and a host of chemically induced cancers.

Nuclear power overall is safer, cleaner, and more affordable than fossil fuels, with the added benefit of sustainability. Nuclear power is the most efficient fuel source we have unlocked so far.

Tax money (in the US, at least) DOES NOT go toward nuclear power or radioactive waste. The government waste disposal facility at Yucca was government funded, but the project was shut down by people with more money than education. In order to be licensed in the US, you need to have proof of the ability to pay for decommissioning, dismantling, environmental study and clean up (including a financial plan for emergencies and disasters). The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is self funded; they collect their money from licensing fees and the massive penalties for even minor infractions (which are larger by orders of magnitutde than the fines for equivalent violations in the coal/gas power plants). The Three Mile Island clean up was not paid for by the government.

You are speaking for the US country, in Germany the nuclear-mafia sadly made better contracts, so its the company owners earning the money, and the taxpayers paying the loss.

@Kurgan Modern concrete has a durability of 60 years. (If there were no failures done. Yes I am engineer as well, we both now failures regularly happen.) I am not talking about fictional possibilities, I am talking about existing nuclear reactors, that now need to be maintained at horrible costs. Comparing the maintanance of an normal facility, with the maintanance cost of an nuclear reactor is laughable, as you will know yourself. Its not done by simply wrapping the windows with some plastic, to prevent dust getting out and sending in some regular low payed allround-workers from Romania. Actual examples are the reactor cores of Niederaichbach, Großwelzheim, the old testreactor Kahl or Obrigheim.

Because you cannot simply go in and play "wrecking ball" with it, but inner cores needs to be dismantled by machines/robots or workers that need to be periodically exchanged and wear sh***y expensive protection cloths. The dismantling of the inner reactor parts of one reactor (Not the office buildings, yes they are done fast, as we both know.) needs about ten years. For the facility Würgassen, which was closed 1997, they hope to be done in 2014.

Even then you cant simply deposit the average 2300 tons (!) of radioactive building material of one reactor core, because of the inner reactor parts having as much radiation, that transport is too dangerous/the cost for the needed transportation storages were so expensive, that its actually cheaper to build ultrahighsecure (=super expensive) storage facilities on the area of the old reactor itself, where they are actually resting and still being cooled down, until the radiation has lowered to an amount, that they can be transported to the deposit-facilities. Which actual scientific research hopes, will be in 40-50 years. Which means, that the packages will need to be renewed as well until then = again extra costs.

In 2011 there was an comparison done about actual energy costs, that in opposite to other comparisons INCLUDED all kind of tax fundings the energy form got until then, including tax fundings for building of reactors, energy taxes, maintenance of reactor buildings, as well as demantling of old reactor cores, that simply cannot be used anymore the way they were actually build about 5 centuries ago.

http://www.heise.de/tp/bild/37/37513/37513_1.html

The reason why the german study is that interesting, is because of germany having many different forms of reactors, while similar additional costs for loans ... So they have many nuclear reactors, as well as coal, as well as river dams, wind reactors, tide reactors, ...

When it comes to the storage facility I mentioned that they need to built secure against ALL kind of influences. Which you simply reduce to earthquakes. O_o Scandinavia seems to be a happy country, if the only form of natural influences you know (or dont know because of your geography) are earthquakes. At least in other countries there exist as well storms, floods, avalanches, non-tectonical non-earthquake caused earth movements, ... As well that not having earthquakes, does not keep the storage-packages from rotting, so the expensive repacking facility is still needed.

Why you as scandinavian are always referring about coal or actual atom-energy, I dont know. As you should know, there are already plenty of other options.

Its not about being blindly against something or pro something, but its simply about actual calculation. Something that forces on me calculation about storing garbage for 400.000 years, simply looses, even if it was only about 0,001 ct/ton. (Which it sadly is not.)

The 2300 tons of radioactive material is already the part of the deconstruction material, that has certain amounts of radiation. The total amount of the planned deconstruction garbage for reactor Obrigheim is about 275.000 tons (The number has been calculated by engineers, by the experiences they made about the already decontructed reactors Niederaichbach, Großwelzheim and test reactor Kahl.). So as you mention, the 2300 tons are already the "few parts" that were exposed to radiation. I am as well not talking about theoretical numbers, but about numbers that have been experienced by the deconstruction of actual deconstructed nuclear reactors in germany. As example the complete control area of the reactor has an slightly higher amount of radiation. Not in an great amount as the core parts itself, but sufficient, that you cannot simply deposit it at the local city garbage place. The more polluted facilities are the pressure areas, the one that refilter the cooling water, mechanical cranes that moved the core elements, air ventilation facilities... Parts of that need to be deconstructed, while the water cooling still being active.

The actual reactor Würgassen is as well not being deconstructed now for more then a decade, because of one single lazy construction worker doing his work so slowly, but simply because it simply takes so much more effort then simply wrecking an old coal facility with some explosives or an wrecking ball, and then simply recycle the garbage.

I am not in generally against atom energy, so I am curious about fusion reactors to come in the future, but according to actual numbers, the costs of actual nuclear reactors are simply incredible high if you are willing to calculate them in a whole, including all the future costs to come for the ones that will have to deal with the garbage, without ever having any single Kilowatt benefit from that reactors.

Specially when a certain amount of that energy is simply used for nonsense. If we were forced to deal with radioactive garbage of the ancient egypts, because they wanted to have some advertesiment signs seen on their pyramids during night, you´d think as well of inventing a time machine for kicking the pharaos in their nuts.

Two words: Fukushima Chernobyl.

Two words: Fukushima Chernobyl.

Two words: Fukushima Chernobyl.