How many sailors have died as a direct result of the nuclear power plants on these vessels?
There are many forms of energy generation that can be developed. Putting development money into one basket doesn't appeal to me. Especially when that means government funds going to an already developed industry such as nuclear.
The waste from nuclear plants remains radioactive for thousands of years. Where do you want to put it? How about in a landfill near your hometown?
BMW just announced a hydrogen powered car in America
The people who don't like the idea have spread a tremendous amount of misinformation and misleading information to keep it from being used to any great extent in the U.S. Nuclear waste is not a problem for Europe, why should it be more of a problem here in the U.S.?
A basic decision is whether or not to reprocess the spent fuel. The most ambitious reprocessing proposals call for extracting all actinides from the spent fuel and returning them to a fast reactor where they are “burned up,” primarily in fission. This is the goal of pyroprocessing, currently under development. A less ambitious approach, in which only plutonium and uranium are removed, has been used for spent fuel from commercial reactors in France, the United Kingdom, and Russia, as well as for plutonium weapons programs. The remaining radioactive residues then become the wastes.
The United States decided in the 1970s against commercial reprocessing, primarily out of concern that separated plutonium might be diverted by terrorists or used by governments elsewhere to inaugurate nuclear weapons programs. Further, with uranium in ample supply it was less expensive to dispose directly of the spent fuel. However, Congress in November 2005 moved to appropriate funds for the development of technologies to recycle existing spent fuel---an initiative that, if pursued, may lead to major changes in the U.S. waste disposal program and revive proliferation concerns.
Wuluf said:I have a question and i respect the posters (most of you ) with whom i disagree politically. It seems obvious to me that the country needs to promote nuclear power as a way of reducing our dependence on oil. France now produces 80% of its electricity with nuclear power. I heard today that even increasing the number of electric cars on the road is counter-productive, since more electricity means more coal fired plants. So, why is the left, the party of global warming, still so anti-nuke? (note to Bush-haters, if typing "nukular" makes you happy, go for it!)
That will have a secondary benefit of lowering natural gas prices to those consumers and encouraging additional natural gas pipelines to increase customer numbers over what we have now.