Positive Effects of Nuclear Energy...?

Question

What are some of the Positives of Nuclear Energy...

Answer 1

Michael Moore and many other environmentalists support this.  There are many problems and issues.  The nuclear fuel degrades fairly rapidly.  Supporting even a small arsenal of nuclear weapons has proven difficult and expensive for this reason.  The nuclear material has to be replaced regularly.  The USA currently buys it's medical radioactive material from Canada.  We no longer have the capability to make it.  The reactor was declared unsafe by the person in charge of reactors because of a large number of violations that couldn't be fixed.  In response, she was fired!  The Canadian Reactors have a design lifetime the same as most of them, around 25 years tops.  It's a real number and they have more and more serious problems as they get old.  Operators like to use them after the end of their design lifetime because they become moneymakers at that point.  Sweden, and other countries that went all nuclear in the 1980's are facing this problem now.  It costs around $2 billion to "decommission" a reactor.  Since all of them were built at the same time, it involves some tough decisions.  The "breeder" reactors that make new fuel are prohibited under one of the SALT agreements.  Nuclear power is NOT pollution free, not by a long shot.  Fossil fuels are burned during the mining transportation and refining of the ore.  There is also a lot of pollution of ground water by the mining and refining.  In the USA mining is a bureaucratic nightmare with overlapping jurisdictions mandated by laws, and nobody sure of who is responsible for what.  To keep cost down we buy from Russia.  Storage of waste (including parts of old reactors) is an ongoing nightmare.  There have been many unsuccessful attempt to establish a single underground storage area, even though the technology is unproven.  Even when and if we had that, there are issues with shipping the stuff by rail through major cities.  Some town have obtained injuctions to keep it out.  The same is true of trucking.

So don't let some knucklehead try to convince you that nuclear would provide an easy solution but the evil environmentalists won't let it happen.  People who know nothing always claim to have all the answers.

Answer 2

its energy and less pollution

Answer 3

Huge amounts of cheap energy.

The fuel is simply SITTING AROUND in stockpiles left over from the cold war.  MILLENIA worth of nuclear fuel which (if the reactor is designed properly) produces no pollution whatsoever.

Answer 4

Positive aspects of nuclear energy:

- Reliability: you can't count on wind and solar power to be constantly available while you can run nuclear reactors all day long.

- Efficient packaging: high amount of potential energy in an extremely efficient package, a few tons of radioactives can produce the same amount of energy as hundreds of tons of coal, fossil fuels or natural gas. So significantly less energy is expended on its transport to reactors (coal trains, oil tankers).

- Mostly solid waste: granted the solid waste of nuclear reactors are more permanent than gaseous emissions, but as it stands less waste is dumped into the ecosystem by nuclear reactors than equivalent coal and oil run reactors. (source 1) Given global warming as a rapidly emerging concern, nuclear power can even be considered the "lesser evil."

- Increased efficiency with the usage of nuclear reprocessing (source 2): with the advancement in reprocessing technology, uranium could be reprocessed more than 60 times for more power.

Answer 5

loads of energy and it's carbon neutral.

Answer 6

I makes liberals angry just saying "nuclear".

Answer 7

The positive effect of nuclear energy is energy.  In a world that has seen demand skyrocket recently (due to the emergence of China and India, as well as the creation of energy consuming products), that energy has to come from somewhere.

In an ideal world, I would like to see that power come from sources that have no cause no pollution, radiation, or potential for disaster.  (Wind, solar, etc).  However, I do not think these sources will produce enough electricity, not to mention that they may not be economically feasible.  Nuclear will probably have to be a necessary part of the equation.