What is the downside to nuclear energy?

Question

What is the downside to nuclear energy?

Answer 1

At the present time ,risk of leaks,but far worse (at the present knowledge base) what to do with the byproduct until we can use it.

Answer 2

well the only one we should be concerned about is that it will kill every living thing in a 150 mile radius!  Wind and solar are the only safe and non harming ways of the future!  We all need to push for these to be available

Answer 3

If you have a engineering flaw in a coal-fired plant, you lose power to where ever it's supplying. If you have a flaw in a nuclear plant you have a crisis on your hands. Basically the room for error is much much smaller when dealing with nuclear energy. That said, we're much more competent than 1980's Soviets but nuclear energy has never been able to shake the stigma of the plant being a "bomb".

Answer 4

Let's get into "lifespan."  Everything man-made has a "life-span."  Even nuclear energy plants.  Their lifespan is about 50 years.  They are NOT recycleable, in any way, shape or form.  Once torn down, everything, even the concrete must be stored somewhere at titanic expence.  Every tool, from a screwdriver, to a huge bulldozer, once it is used in the decomissioning of a nuclear plant is concidered contaminated.  Those tool are also sent away and stored...forever.

Of course the tax payers pay for all of this.  

Most nuclear plants charge $.14 cents a kilowatt hour for their energy.  

Did you know that once you factor in the cost of building, running, AND decomissioning a plant and storing all of that "stuff" the cost actually comes to $66 DOLLARS a kilowatt hour for their energy output?  Of course the actual cost of nuclear plants is hidden.  

The tax payers pay for the decomissing, and storage of them, not just the people using their power.  

Yes the ACTUAL spent rods can be stored in a fairly small area.  However the ACTUAL amount of waste produced by nuclear plants once they are decomissioned is simply stagering.

How do I know so much about it?  My husbands best friend has worked decomissioning two of them so far.  He makes $45 an hour strait time doing the work...that's not even when they start getting into overtime, which happens frequently.  

Imagine what the pay is for several hundred men.  You can see why decomissioning a nuclear plant is the true "hidden" cost.  For that reason alone, they shouldn't be built.  

What do you think it is going to cost to decomission these plants in another 50-60 years?  

So all talks about leaks, and melt-downs aside, they simply do NOT make financial sence!

~Garnet

Homesteading/Farming over 20 years

Answer 5

There are none.

Even the incompetent French have run their country on Nuclear Power for the past 40 years, without incident.

Idiot cracks about Chernobyl are just that, idiotic.  Chernobyl was a tilnkertoys opoeration that was 50 years out of date.

We could run the US completely on Nuclear power for 100 years and the waste could be stored in a single building, 5 stories tall and 120 yards on a side.

Even Hiroshima and Nagasaki had people that never left the radiation area.  Not that I recommend it, but even for them, it's not fatal.

With basic safeguards, we could have power for our forseeable future, that would consume NO resources.

But, those are facts, and, to the Left, they have no value.

Answer 6

Nuclear waste.

Answer 7

The biggest downside.....a nuclear reactor meltdown...bad, bad, bad.  Like the one in Chernoble Russia.  People are still dying from radiation poisoning. No one can live in that area anymore.

Answer 8

Terrorism.    Don't you know you should be terrified of the bad boogy man from the east?   At least that's what the current regime in Washington tells us.

Answer 9

Disposal of nuclear waste. Possibility of an accident like Chernebo. Diverting to military use and its falling in wrong hands.

Answer 10

Ask the survivors of the Chrenobyl incident.  You could ask those who were killed but they don't answer.