Is nuclear power the best way to solve manmade global warming?

Question

Is nuclear power the best way to solve manmade global warming?

Answer 1

No, it has its own problems.  It is just one piece of a larger puzzle.

Answer 2

No Way!

Besides the fact that we would just be pushing our pollution problems to future generations, nuclear power is not the magic pill.

If you consider all of the energy that goes into building the plant, enriching the nuclear material, moving and storing the waste etc, it is not a net gain in energy.

Nuclear power promised that energy would be so cheap they would be giving it away. That never happened.

Safety concerns. I believe that power plants are as safe as they can be, but accidents happen. And a Nuclear power plant accident is never small. I'll take an exploding gas refinery any day over that. (of course, I don't want that neither.)

Ask yourself, why won't any insurance agency cover a power plant? Think they know something we don't? Like, the cost of an accident is beyond anything they could ever cover?

Answer 3

Nuclear energy is much cleaner than the alternatives. Chernobyl killed about 50 people outright. Coal mines kill about 1500 people EVERY year. The antiquated technology and human error that caused Chernobyl has been overcome. We are crazy to discourage it.

Answer 4

A Chernobyl-style accident would render an area as large as Pennsylvania uninhabitable.  With each plant built, you increase the chance of that happening a little bit.  

Before we start plowing the rest of our grasslands to plant corn for ethanol and dotting the landscape with nuke plants, maybe we better consider whether we think man is really causing a global warming problem.

Below is a link that positively refutes the claim that there is a scientific consensus that man is influencing the climate in a negative way.

Answer 5

absolutely, especially pebble reactors.

Answer 6

YES, a Nuclear winter should cure that right up!

Answer 7

Nuclear power is the best way to produce power in humongous amounts without producing carbon dioxide.  All other non-CO2 producing methods (wind, solar, water, tides, etc.) will never be able to produce power in the amounts needed at an acceptable cost - economically or environmentally.  

Contrary to the hand-wringer's assertions and cries of havoc nuclear power can be safely produced:  

Chernobyl was not the killing disaster that was originally predicted (one million extra deaths within 25 years) and the other major nuclear incident (Three Mile Island) produced no radiation leakage.  The other reactors at Three Mile Island continue to operate today.

Answer 8

It's one important tool of many.  This is a huge problem.  Some people have their favorite "solution".  I think we'll need all the tools we can get to help.

The next IPCC report, due out shortly, will talk extensively about all the tools.

Two points.  We can build nuclear power plants that are better engineered now, both safe and secure from terrorists.  The waste issue is a political one, not a technical one.  We know how to bury the waste safely, we just need to select a location.

One post above claims there is no consensus.  I think these views represent reality better.

"Regardless of these spats, the fact that the community overwhelmingly supports the consensus is evidenced by picking up any copy of Journal of Climate or similar, any scientific program at the AGU or EGU meetings, or simply going to talk to scientists (not the famous ones, the ones at your local university or federal lab). I challenge you, if you think there is some un-reported division, show me the hundreds of abstracts at the Fall meeting (the biggest confernce in the US on this topic) that support your view - you won't be able to. You can argue whether the consensus is correct, or what it really implies, but you can't credibly argue it doesn't exist."

Dr. James Baker - NOAA

"There's a better scientific consensus on this [climate change] than on any issue I know - except maybe Newton's second law of dynamics.

Global warming is almost a no-brainer at this point,You really can't find intelligent, quantitative arguments to make it go away."

Jerry Mahlman, NOAA

and:

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/fu...