Science Forums 2

[Moontanman]

Originally Posted by Reaper

Most of the time, the arguments are usually revolving around fear of nuclear weapons (completely preposterous as the uranium for weapons has to be much more enriched before it can be usable as such), or a Chernobyl-like disaster.

Overall though, less people have died from a nuclear power plant than most any other accident that takes place. And regardless, the use of nuclear power in general is on the rise everywhere else in the world.

Although, I'm still waiting for the fusion reactors to come online, then our energy problems will be solved forever.

Unless you are talking about aneutronic fusion you will have waste problems as well. New technology fission plants can be made small safe and fast and they can be built now. Thorium reactors are probably the future of fission But we do have choices and until people realize the old propaganda of the evil nuclear genie is false it will be an uphill battle. I don't think that new low intensity power sources are bad or unusable they just do not provide power in the quantities we as a civilization really need. many industries are very energy intensive, solar just won't do for these industries. I would like to see solar used as an option for people who live far from a easy source of power but big cities in hot or very cold regions would be hard pressed to use solar as it's only power source. eliminating the use of hydrocarbons would be much easier if you used nuclear and maybe used solar around the edges. It's easy to say we need to rebuild our infrastructure but that will take many years and many times as much money as developing safe nuclear power. And we can and should be changing to a more efficient infrastructure as we go anyway.