Mr. Fusion says:

First, nuclear power plants are usually expected to run for 40 to 60 years, NOT 25. Although many in the US received 35 yr licenses, many of those have been extended. Remember, the plant must be as safe on the last day of operation as they are on the first. As modern plants are being designed to run for 60 years, there is little reason to expect they will not run even longer.

In America, nuclear plants are required to set aside money to pay for the decommissioning of the plants. That is not true for fossil fuel plants.

Outside of Chernobyl, nuclear plants have been very safe. The accidents that have occurred have caused very little damage and much information has been gleaned from them. For example, while Three Mile Island scared the bejeebees out of people, there is no reliable reports that anyone was actually injured.

Nuclear plants must comply with strict rules regarding the storage of spent fuel. Fossil fuel, especially coal, plants routinely dump pollutants into the atmosphere measured in TONS. Solid waste from the plant is contaminated and does pollute groundwater and sterilize soil. Currently the biggest problem with disposing of nuclear waste is the NIMBY approach.

Nuclear is subsidized. So are every other form of energy generation. Most R&D is done by the Department of Energy, not the operators and thus is owned by the government.

Partly because there is much less mined, but more so because uranium is hard rock mined, whereas coal is soft rock mined, there are very few mining deaths. Mining coal is dangerous and probably the most fatal form of mining.

Uranium mining waste is not as toxic to the environment as coal. Oil spills have caused much more damage to the environment than has all the uranium and nuclear fuel or waste. Because of Chernobyl, the death toll is different.

Hydro electric plants destroy the environment behind the dam. Some, such as the Powell Dam on the Colorado River, prevent the warm, silt and nutrient rich water from reaching the downstream levels of the river.

Wind are too dependent upon the weather. Tidal and solar are intermittent. None of these are dependable for constant energy.

While wind is non polluting, on a unit basis it costs the same as coal or nuclear.

Methane, alcohol, and regeneration are costly and dependent upon relatively expensive, low energy raw material. Refuse dump gas reclamation is too small scale to make an impact.

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So, nuclear power is not the bad guy that some like to paint it. If I could be assured of a constant wind supply, I would have a wind turbine on my roof tomorrow. But there isn’t and so I remain plugged into our local utility.

iGlobalWarmer says:

#32 – DU is slipping…they keep posting topics I agree with you on! 😉

MikeN says:

Global warming is terrible, and we must take all steps to avoid the devastation it will cause. Nuclear power should never happen.

Misanthropic Scott says:

#37 – Angel,

Um … that actually could happen. Yikes. The west coast of the U.S. did get a bunch of dust from the dust storm they had a while back that was larger than the continental U.S. If dust can drift here from their dust storms, so can radiation from their Chernobyl.

Misanthropic Scott says:

#39 – iGW,

I’m sure MikeN can answer this for himself.

However, for my taste, no. We don’t need to take all steps. We need to take all steps into consideration and consider their consequences. There are a number of problems with nuclear power that, in my mind, make it far too dangerous to consider as a solution for climate change, despite the huge risks we face from climate change.

Further, given the time for nuclear power to come online and the extremely high initial costs, I think we can spend that money on far safer and more effective technologies. Imagine how much wind power we can get and how much faster we can get it without going through all of the hurdles for nuclear power for the same $2G per plant. Ditto for solar. Ditto for tidal.

Now imagine how much we could theoretically have gotten and how far along we could already have been for the $485G already spent on the pointless war in Iraq. And, yes, I realize that might leave a few Halliburton execs a tad poorer, though still a lot wealthier than me.

Further, imagine the amount of local industry that would have been created with that level of commitment. We could have had a booming economy instead of watching the dollar collapse. And, rural areas would have been helped the most, something iGW would appreciate.

http://tinyurl.com/28eeez

Oh well. Can’t dwell too heavily on the past. But, we can try to change things going forward.