Government backs nuclear power

[Engelsman]

Green row as Government backs nuclear power

The Government has made it clear today that some at least of Britain's ageing nuclear power stations will be replaced, sparking a huge row with "green" campaigners and some scientists.

Alistair Darling said that nuclear energy had always been part of the country’s energy mix and "should remain so". The Trade and Industry Secretary is due to publish the Government’s Energy Review later today, heralding the building of a new generation of up to six nuclear power stations.

Mr Darling said that the amount of electricity generated by nuclear power would fall from the current 20 per cent to 6 per cent in the next 20 years.

If measures were not taken now to fill the gap left by the closure of ageing nuclear power stations, Britain would become dependent on costly overseas gas imports, often from unstable parts of the world.

Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, the Green Party and other anti-nuclear groups say that there is no public support for nuclear power, and are pressing the Government to invest more in renewable energy such as wind farms.

Full story

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My opinion on this is that it is going to be one of the worst mistakes this government has made so fair, up there with going to war with Iraq. Nuclear power is just too dangerous to have when there are other options available.

Some of the options:

Nuclear Power

Advantages

* Nuclear power costs about the same as coal, so it's not expensive to make.
* Does not produce smoke or carbon dioxide, so it does not contribute to the greenhouse effect.
* Produces huge amounts of energy from small amounts of fuel.
* Produces small amounts of waste.
* Nuclear power is reliable.

Disadvantages

* Although not much waste is produced, it is very, very dangerous.
It must be sealed up and buried for many years to allow the radioactivity to die away. The half life of uranium is something like 35000 years.
* Nuclear power is reliable, but a lot of money has to be spent on safety - if it does go wrong, a nuclear accident can be a major disaster.
People are increasingly concerned about this - in the 1990's nuclear power was the fastest-growing source of power in much of the world. In 2005 it was the second slowest-growing.
* It creates new targets for terrorist groups.
* Britain's an island; we're just too small to have this sort of danger all over the country. If there's a repeat of Chernobyl then it's only a few hundred miles to the nearest major town or city.
* They have a short lifetime, 25-30 years. This makes it only a short term solution.
* Cancer risks increase for people living near the stations.

Solar Energy

Advantages

* Solar energy is free - it needs no fuel and produces no waste or pollution.
* Once it is built it doesn't require much maintenance.

Disadvantages

* Doesn't work at night.
* Very expensive to build solar power stations.
Solar cells cost a great deal compared to the amount of electricity they'll produce in their lifetime.
* Can be unreliable unless you're in a very sunny climate. In the United Kingdom, solar power isn't much use except for low-power applications, as you need a very large area of solar panels to get a decent amount of power.

Wind Power

Advantages

* Wind is free, wind farms need no fuel.
* Produces no waste or greenhouse gases.
* The land beneath can usually still be used for farming.
* Wind farms can be tourist attractions.
* A good method of supplying energy to remote areas.

Disadvantages

* The wind is not always predictable - some days have no wind.
* Suitable areas for wind farms are often near the coast, where land is expensive.
* Some people feel that covering the landscape with these towers is unsightly.

Tidal Power

This is my favourite option. One of the schemes suggested to the government is to have a 10 mile long barrier stretching from Brean near Weston Super Mare, across the Severn Estuary, to Wales. It would have locks to allow ships to pass and would cost around £15 Million to build. It is estimated that it would make 10% of our energy requirements and would be easily built and maintained with the Severn Boar giving it plenty of waves.

Advantages

* Once you've built it, tidal power is free.
* It produces no greenhouse gases or other waste.
* It needs no fuel.
* It produces electricity reliably.
* Not expensive to maintain.
* Tides are predictable.
* Offshore turbines and vertical-axis turbines are not ruinously expensive to build and do not have a large environmental impact.

Disadvantages

* A barrage across an estuary is very expensive to build, and affects a very wide area - the environment is changed for many miles upstream and downstream. Many birds rely on the tide uncovering the mud flats so that they can feed. There are few suitable sites for tidal barrages.
* Only provides power for around 10 hours each day, when the tide is actually moving in or out.

Hydro Power

Advantages

* Once the dam is built, the energy is virtually free.
* No waste or pollution produced.
* Much more reliable than wind, solar or wave power.
* Water can be stored above the dam ready to cope with peaks in demand.
* Hydro-electric power stations can increase to full power very quickly, unlike other power stations.
* Electricity can be generated constantly.

Disadvantages

* The dams are very expensive to build.
However, many dams are also used for flood control or irrigation, so building costs can be shared.
* Building a large dam will flood a very large area upstream, causing problems for animals that used to live there.
* Finding a suitable site can be difficult - the impact on residents and the environment may be unacceptable.
* Water quality and quantity downstream can be affected, which can have an impact on plant life.

Wave Power

Advantages

* The energy is free - no fuel needed, no waste produced.
* Not expensive to operate and maintain.
* Can produce a great deal of energy.

Disadvantages

* Depends on the waves
* Needs a suitable site, where waves are consistently strong.
* Must be able to withstand very rough weather.

Source

So, what do you think? Is it right that the government is backing nuclear power? Should there be a balance between the options?

Discuss :)

-Engelsman

[Memorize]

Nuclear Energy is probly the best kind of energy we can have at this point. And no, it's not that dangerous.

[Jayemare]

Nuclear--it's clean, safe and powerful. The "worst" nuclear disaster of all time was Cherynobyl, which turns out wasn't nearly as bad as reactionists and the anti-living in houses and wearing shoes lobby would like you to believe. And soviets built Chery; soviets are not known for their prowess in engineering and safety. There isn't any reason to not use nuclear power. Wind, Solar, wave, all that shit doesn't work well and is extremely, extremely expensive.

[Naoki09]

Nuclear is the best solution, followed by Wind. Wind would be great if we can get bigger towers in. And to say it looks ugly is wrong. I believe the Windmills look beautiful in the distance.

[Guitarmy]

At 7/11/06 06:28 PM, Engelsman wrote: My opinion on this is that it is going to be one of the worst mistakes this government has made so fair, up there with going to war with Iraq. Nuclear power is just too dangerous to have when there are other options available.

Nuclear power is economically and ecologically more viable than what we currently use for most of our engergy, coal. Nuclear waste is, obviously, dangerous, and is also, toxic for a very long time, but Carbon Dioxide released into the atmposhere by burning coal is toxic forever.

Some of the options:

Nuclear Power

Advantages

* Nuclear power costs about the same as coal, so it's not expensive to make.
* Does not produce smoke or carbon dioxide, so it does not contribute to the greenhouse effect.
* Produces huge amounts of energy from small amounts of fuel.
* Produces small amounts of waste.
* Nuclear power is reliable.

Disadvantages

* Although not much waste is produced, it is very, very dangerous.
It must be sealed up and buried for many years to allow the radioactivity to die away.

Coal is toxic forever.

* Nuclear power is reliable, but a lot of money has to be spent on safety - if it does go wrong, a nuclear accident can be a major disaster.

Most major disasters could have been avoided provided proper procedure.

People are increasingly concerned about this - in the 1990's nuclear power was the fastest-growing source of power in much of the world. In 2005 it was the second slowest-growing.

This is irrelevant to the use of it.

* It creates new targets for terrorist groups.

Very true.

* Britain's an island; we're just too small to have this sort of danger all over the country. If there's a repeat of Chernobyl then it's only a few hundred miles to the nearest major town or city.

Chernobyl was the result of low standards in safety, and dangerous experiments on the reactor, that would never happen in America of Britain.

* They have a short lifetime, 25-30 years. This makes it only a short term solution.
* Cancer risks increase for people living near the stations.

That is compelling.

Solar Energy

This is unrealistic for the time, but can become extremely efficient with the onslaught of technology.

Wind Power

This is totally unrealistic and will remain so.

Tidal Power

This is my favourite option. One of the schemes suggested to the government is to have a 10 mile long barrier stretching from Brean near Weston Super Mare, across the Severn Estuary, to Wales. It would have locks to allow ships to pass and would cost around £15 Million to build. It is estimated that it would make 10% of our energy requirements and would be easily built and maintained with the Severn Boar giving it plenty of waves.
Disadvantages

* A barrage across an estuary is very expensive to build, and affects a very wide area - the environment is changed for many miles upstream and downstream. Many birds rely on the tide uncovering the mud flats so that they can feed. There are few suitable sites for tidal barrages.

Sounds to me as if the enviromental and economic costs would be to great.

* Only provides power for around 10 hours each day, when the tide is actually moving in or out.

Apparetly that doesn't seem to matter to much, considering the statitstics you gave above.

[Naoki09]

We will be using Nuclear Power until we can get a sort of Fission Energy like the sun. Until then, deal with it. And Fission will be about 1000x more dangerous. Isn't life great?

[HighlyIllogical]

Best kind of energy as of yet? Nuclear fission. We need to work on fusion asap. In the long run, it's actually not so dangerous. Only 1 major US accident, and that was a little nothing with no real long term effects.

[Korriken]

solar energy might work better if they were to build the panels above the clouds, but that would lead to all kinds of problems.

[Altarus]

In 50 years, we'll have fusion, which will put all these other kinds of power sources to shame. It's as good as fission and has no downsides, very environmentally friendly.

[Altarus]

At 7/11/06 07:26 PM, Naoki09 wrote: We will be using Nuclear Power until we can get a sort of Fission Energy like the sun. Until then, deal with it. And Fission will be about 1000x more dangerous. Isn't life great?

The Sun uses Fusion, and it's actually fairly clean...

[rainmaker]

I don't think there's a "good" solution that can be reached at all, but nuclear energy seems the most probable idea, seeing as how mother nature impacts nuclear capability in no way.

[Draconias]

At 7/11/06 06:28 PM, Engelsman wrote: Disadvantages

* Although not much waste is produced, it is very, very dangerous.
It must be sealed up and buried for many years to allow the radioactivity to die away. The half life of uranium is something like 35000 years.

You have forgotten one major thing, though: what comes from the ground can go back into the ground. The radioactive waste of a nuclear power plant is not significantly more dangerous than uranium ore, it is just highly concentrated. If the waste products were diluted with filler material, and then stored in exhausted uranium mines, the danger of the waste products would be reduced to effectively zero.

Isn't it right to return the Earth exactly how we left it once we are finished? Return spent uranium fuel to uranium mines, filling in the mine from the bottom up as we deposit waste. When we are finished, permanently seal the mine. Where once radioactive ores dwelt, radioactive ores shall do so again.

* Nuclear power is reliable, but a lot of money has to be spent on safety - if it does go wrong, a nuclear accident can be a major disaster.

But engineering can reduce the possibility of a disaster to essentially zero. The only nuclear power plant problems (Long Island, Chernobyl) were caused by poor technology. Nuclear power plants were a new thing, and the technology of the time wasn't quite up to it.

New technology and new designs prevent any such failures from happening. Forcing everyone to rely on the 40+ year old nuclear power plants is not how you ensure safety. All of those old nuclear plants should have been replaced with new, safer ones.

People are increasingly concerned about this - in the 1990's nuclear power was the fastest-growing source of power in much of the world. In 2005 it was the second slowest-growing.

The word "nuclear" has become a boog-a-boo of sorts.

* It creates new targets for terrorist groups.

Nuclear plants don't make good targets. First of all, it is physically impossible to make a nuclear bomb out of civilian-grade uranium. A dirty bomb is possible, but there are much, much easier ways to make a dirty bomb. Like stealing the waste from any of the over-flowing old nuclear plants currently in operation.

Also, terrorists by and large rely on low-tech attack methods. Nuclear power plants have never been targets because the terrorists simply aren't equipped to take advantage of something so high-tech and complex.

* Britain's an island; we're just too small to have this sort of danger all over the country. If there's a repeat of Chernobyl then it's only a few hundred miles to the nearest major town or city.
* They have a short lifetime, 25-30 years. This makes it only a short term solution.

Not true. They have a lifetime of 40+ years. Many have been operating for nearly that long in the United States. Also, you forget that power plants are a renewable "resource" for every country.

Geologists have estimated that we have enough uranium easily accessible on Earth to handle our entire current power consumption rate and the expected increases for 1.5 billion years or so. And that's not even counting the harder-to-get stuff and the radioactive material attainable from the oceans, which would bump it up to 5 billion years-- longer than the Earth will be habitable.

* Cancer risks increase for people living near the stations.

Show proof for this. Nuclear plants do not raise the background radiation level above ambient. By law, they aren't allowed to let enough radiation leak to even raise the ambient radiation level by 2%. Thus I believe that your claim may be false.

Solar Energy
* Solar energy is free - it needs no fuel and produces no waste or pollution.

Maintenance costs. Worker costs. Solar power is not free. Also, it has been proven that solar panel fields do pollute-- besides destroying the natural habitat in the area, they produce a huge amount of heat pollution, raising the average temperature everywhere within half a mile by up to 10 degrees F.

Wind Power
* Wind is free, wind farms need no fuel.

Wind farms do need fuel-- wind. Wind is not universally available like sunlight, so only very specific regions are suitable for windmills.

* Wind farms can be tourist attractions.

Not an acceptable point. Too fickle.

* A good method of supplying energy to remote areas.

However, since only specific regions can effectively use turbine farms, the chances are good that remote areas will not be able to use profitable turbine farms.

Also, don't forget that turbine farms raise the bird fatality rate by over 7000%. A big field of giant spinning axes tends to mince any birds that fly through. Heavy winds also make it tough for birds to maneuver, so it is almost impossible to avoid the turbine farm.

Tidal Power
* Once you've built it, tidal power is free.

Maintenance costs. Worker costs. Ever wonder what happens when 1,000,000 barnacles attach to your power generator?

* Offshore turbines and vertical-axis turbines are not ruinously expensive to build and do not have a large environmental impact.

Not quite true. Tidal power plants are generally avoided because they completely massacre the nearby environment. They drastically alter the strength of tides, block sea creature transport, kill sea creatures in the turbines, and severely disrupt the local environment. "Wall" tidal generators are the most destructive.

Hydro Power
Disadvantages

You're totally right about hydro power. However, another disadvantage is that most countries have nearly tapped-out their potential hydro power supply with dams already. They can't handle enough of our demand.

Wave Power

I have not heard enough about wave power to judge it. However, it immediately sounds like it may have environmental impact similar to wind power-- high wild life fatalities and disruption of flow.

[TheSovereign]

Really the government should consider all of these fantastic clean energies. Use bit of Tidal there and little Wing there, know what I mean?

Also people should not be super afraid of neclear energy. The only reason why people are scared of nuclear energy is because of what happened in Russia. Though the commies were well known for building cheap and unstable neclear plants. Along with that they condected insane and dangerous tests in the middle of a city.

[ImmoralLibertarian]

A Greenpeace document:

FRIGHTENING FACTS - Nuclear Power & Terrorism

1. The UN's International Atomic Energy Agency believe it is "far more likely" post 9/11 that terrorists could target nuclear facilities worldwide.

2.The Oxford Research Group told the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee that nuclear power should not be part of the UK's energy supply because it presents a major threat to our security and increases the risk of nuclear terrorism.

3. Detailed plans of Britain's nuclear sites, including Sizewell, were found in a car linked to the July 2005 London bombings.

4. A fire in a spent fuel cooling pond at Sizewell B could result in 3,500 to 15,000 cancer deaths and large releases of radioactivity just 100 miles from London.

5. A terrorist strike on Sellafield's storage tanks of radioactive waste in west Cumbria could kill over 2 million people.

6. According to confidential reports obtained by New Scientist, and the Sunday Herald, UK authorities are not fully prepared to protect people from being exposed to radioactivity.

7. During 2005 three suspected terrorists were caught by the Lucas Heights nuclear research reactor near Sydney, Australia.

8. In October 2005 Chechen rebels were reported to have attempted to hijack five planes that could be flown into various targets, including a nuclear power station.

9. A taped interview shown on Al-Jazeera TV on September 10th 2002, contained a statement that Al Qaeda initially planned to include a nuclear plant in its 2001 attack sites.

10. To date, there have been six known direct attacks on nuclear power plants in France, South Africa, Switzerland, the Philippines, and Spain.

11. The International Policy Institute for Counter Terrorism database includes 167 terrorist incidents involving a nuclear target for the period 1970 1999.
Other reasons to oppose Nuclear Power:

Nuclear energy wont solve climate change. If the UK replaced all 23 of its nuclear reactors, we would only save 10% our carbon dioxide emissions.

Nuclear energy is expensive. Aside from the huge costs of building new nuclear reactors, initial costs of decommissioning the UKs existing reactors are calculated to be £56-70 billion.

Nuclear energy creates dangerous waste. Nuclear reactors create radioactive waste which remains dangerous for tens of thousands of years. A new set of reators would produce a massive 400ore highly radioactive spent fuel. This dangerous waste is currently transported on the public rail network and sometimes on roads.

We haven’t figured out what to do with the last 50 years of waste…so why the fuck are we building more?

But, it’s VERY unlikely that any new nuclear power plants will be build in Scotland…we can be 100% self sufficient on renewable energy...so I’m happy.

Until fusion is discovered nuclear power isn’t as an attractive idea as they’d like you to think.

[Draconias]

At 7/11/06 08:10 PM, o_r_i_g_i_n_a_l wrote: A Greenpeace document:
4. A fire in a spent fuel cooling pond at Sizewell B could result in 3,500 to 15,000 cancer deaths and large releases of radioactivity just 100 miles from London.

Some researchers discovered the Cure for Cancer a couple months ago. Those cancer deaths can be struck off your list soon...

(totally serious & truthful)

[ImmoralLibertarian]

At 7/11/06 10:10 PM, Draconias wrote: Some researchers discovered the Cure for Cancer a couple months ago. Those cancer deaths can be struck off your list soon...

It’s not my list buddy. Email Greenpeace and tell them of the miracle.

[A-Carrot-By-Dr-Riot]

Nuclear is a great source of power. A lot of people forget that we constantly make our technologies better. There have been some incredible advances in breeder reactors that bump up the efficiency from 5% to 90% which also reduces the amount of hazardous radioactive waste.

Fusion is only a few decades away, it's such an amazing source of problems that the problems it brings will boggle our minds. Power will become so inexpensive that getting rid of heat will be a bigger problem than finding energy to fuel our country.

[ImmoralLibertarian]

At 7/11/06 10:45 PM, A_Carrot_By_Dr_Riot wrote: Fusion is only a few decades away, it's such an amazing source of problems that the problems it brings will boggle our minds. Power will become so inexpensive that getting rid of heat will be a bigger problem than finding energy to fuel our country.

That’s one of my points. It costs an estimated £50-70 billion to decommission a nuclear power plant, that‘s like $100 billion. When fusion is discovered all the plants they are building now will be useless.

[MortalWound]

At 7/11/06 06:28 PM, Engelsman wrote:
Nuclear Power
It must be sealed up and buried for many years to allow the radioactivity to die away. The half life of uranium is something like 35000 years.

Then use the waste for good. Uraniums end product after it is used is plutonium, if i remember correctly. make somb big bombs!

People are increasingly concerned about this - in the 1990's nuclear power was the fastest-growing source of power in much of the world. In 2005 it was the second slowest-growing.

Well after a few meltdowns and accidents, would you want to build a nuclear reactor?

* It creates new targets for terrorist groups.

But what doesn't now-a-days? To be truthful i'm surprised that terrorist haven't used a crop duster plain to spread anthrax of a farming community. Not everyone washes their food. (I acctually came up with this idea back when the anthrax scare happened...)

* Britain's an island; we're just too small to have this sort of danger all over the country. If there's a repeat of Chernobyl then it's only a few hundred miles to the nearest major town or city.

Your whole nation would be screwed. depending on air currents or whatever radiation could cover your whole county.

* They have a short lifetime, 25-30 years. This makes it only a short term solution.

But in 25-30 years, we may a lot better power sources

Solar Energy

Disadvantages

* Doesn't work at night.

The use power cells or whatever those are called to store energy so it can be used at night.

Wind Power
Disadvantages

You can't forget that you need a lot of them to power even a small city

Also, i was reading in a PopSci mag that they are devoping a type of wind generator that would be like a giant kite or helecoptor blades. it would get launched into a high orbit and as it picked up on high altitude winds, the blade would spin turn a generator which would send it down a wire attatched to a power holding cell on the ground. Yes i know it kinda sounds fake but people are tryin to do this...

Tidal Power

I thought that this concept was still in the design phase...

Hydro Power

Disadvantages
* Building a large dam will flood a very large area upstream, causing problems for animals that used to live there.

Like the 3 gorges dam (i think that's what it's called) in China. It will flood the surrounding area with upto i think 500 feet of water covering up countless climates, ecosystems, and ancient archiological sites and buildings, not to mention getting any sediment out of the flood gates will be hell.

[Naoki09]

At 7/11/06 08:10 PM, o_r_i_g_i_n_a_l wrote: A Greenpeace document:

Why the hell do you believe Greenpeace?

[Engelsman]

At 7/11/06 07:57 PM, Wyrlum wrote: In 50 years, we'll have fusion,

then why are we spending billions of pounds of nuclear power when a better option will come available in 50 years?

[JohnnyWang]

At 7/11/06 06:53 PM, AccessCode wrote: Nuclear Energy is probly the best kind of energy we can have at this point. And no, it's not that dangerous.

Sure, the risks are inprobable, but when they happen, then it's hell.

And the nuclear waste. Milleniums sealed inside a rock. Good luck maiking that happen.

We need to cut our electricity usage, period.

[Makaio]

what ever happened to hydrogen?
i rarely hear it being discussed anymore and it seems to be a very good solution, it's the most abundant element in the universe so i doubt the US will have to bomb countries for it.
Although it is explosive if a plant was to expload after the explosion he damage is done, the area isn't irradiated for years and years to come. asdd

[Memorize]

At 7/12/06 07:44 AM, JohnnyWang wrote:

Sure, the risks are inprobable, but when they happen, then it's hell.

Sure, but there's a very very very very (how ever many more you want to put there, go ahead) small chance of that ever happening.

We need to cut our electricity usage, period.

As long as i'm paying for electricity, i'll use however much I want.

[losiglow]

At 7/11/06 11:15 PM, Naoki09 wrote:

At 7/11/06 08:10 PM, o_r_i_g_i_n_a_l wrote: A Greenpeace document:

Why the hell do you believe Greenpeace?

Amen. Greenpeace is so full of crap, if it were up to them we'd all go back to living in caves. From what I understand they don't even advocate wind power due to disruption in bird migratory patterns. Well maintained nuclear power is probably our best bet right now, as said earlier, until nuclear fusion can be perfected.

[losiglow]

At 7/12/06 09:35 AM, Makaio wrote: what ever happened to hydrogen?
i rarely hear it being discussed anymore and it seems to be a very good solution, it's the most abundant element in the universe so i doubt the US will have to bomb countries for it.
Although it is explosive if a plant was to expload after the explosion he damage is done, the area isn't irradiated for years and years to come. asdd

With current technology, it takes more energy to isolate hydrogen than the amount of energy the hydrogen provides EXCEPT..........with a nuclear power plant. Once again, nuclear power rocks the party. It would provide us with a great source of power and provide hydrogen so we could seriously look in to an alternative fuel for our gas-hungry cars.

[AdamRice]

Wow! Environmentalist groups are stupid if they are against nuclear power. It isn't nearly as dangerous as all the fake hsyteria these groups put out. Plus it emits no green house gasses other then those from the construction work of builidng the plant. I mean I would rather have a little bit of nuclear waste laying around then fucking rising sea levels.

[Korriken]

At 7/12/06 09:42 AM, losiglow wrote:

At 7/11/06 11:15 PM, Naoki09 wrote:

At 7/11/06 08:10 PM, o_r_i_g_i_n_a_l wrote: A Greenpeace document:

Why the hell do you believe Greenpeace?

Amen. Greenpeace is so full of crap, if it were up to them we'd all go back to living in caves. From what I understand they don't even advocate wind power due to disruption in bird migratory patterns. Well maintained nuclear power is probably our best bet right now, as said earlier, until nuclear fusion can be perfected.

I'll have to second or third this. Greenpeace is not worried about their environment, they're looking to make themselves look good by going against anything they can. They are against genetically engineered food, like Golden rice, which has no known drawbacks to it. if it was KILLING people i could see them going against it, but to go against something that is going to be beneficial and not harmful, I don't see a point.

[Gunter45]

At 7/11/06 06:28 PM, Engelsman wrote: * Britain's an island; we're just too small to have this sort of danger all over the country. If there's a repeat of Chernobyl then it's only a few hundred miles to the nearest major town or city.

This is a big reason why people are hesitant about nuclear energy. It's asinine and it proves that the majority of people have no clue about nuclear energy. Chernobyl was a 1970s Soviet nuclear power plant that was also being used to create weapons-grade fissile material and you're going to compare it to a modern day nuclear power plant. Modern nuclear plants are incredibly safe, especially pebble bed reactors.

[Hyperwave]

in nuclears defence 1. the lifespan is FAR longer than 30 years i recantly visited one that had been in opperation since 1956.
2. nuclear waste realy is not that big a problem (if you arent a idiot).
3. the containment dome for some of these reactors can take a 737 flying at full speed into it with no radiation leakage.
4. at chernobyle the "senior" scientist for the facility was 26 year old and had mediorce training plus the safe gaurd were shut down for tests.
5. Dont even bring up three mile island yeah we had a small problem but the problem was contained.