My goal is just to get people to do their research before making a decision about this one way or the other.

My concern about storage is that it is a generational project, and even if we take all necessary cautions now, it doesn’t mean that something can’t go wrong in time. If we only had to be worried about storage for ten or twenty years, that would be a completely different discussion. Probably still a heated one.

I’m also not keen on mining coal or drilling for oil – especially off of the coast. I think our use of resources should move away from dirty energies that involve tailings, radiation, pollution created in the process, and dangerous minerals, to renewable resources such as solar, water, wind. If your solar panels crack or your windmill falls over, they *likely* aren’t going to cause any permanent damage or hurt anyone. All you have to do is replace them.

In the case of Diablo Canyon … rules and regulations are great as long as they are followed. See: http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/1997/May97/220enr.htm

Nuclear power plants are built by American corporations, and I have to say, that not all corporations, especially ones that have enough money to build plants like these, are honest. Their bottom line is creating revenue, not safety, not touchy feely moments.

Diablo Canyon and PG&E have done a lot in the past that lead me to not trust the company nor the power source. I think trust is the key word, rather than fear.

Storage of spent fuel. What makes you think the waste containers would corrode or leak? The waste itself is not corrosive, and even if it were, the material the container is made of is chemically inert. Likewise, the containers are unaffected by radiation. Moreover, if we allow for nuclear reprocessing, then we can reduce the dangerous lifetime of the waste to perhaps just hundreds of years. Even at thousands of years, the waste becomes safer faster than coal byproducts like mercury and cadmium do. I think storing waste for hundreds of years is quite feasible, especially if we build the storage facility NOT on a fault line (i.e. Yucca mountain itself is a bad idea).

Transporting nuclear fuel. Yes, this is important. We don’t want terrorists stealing the fuel and making a dirty bomb, nor do we want the fuel to contaminate the populated areas it travels through. This is why some power plants do some of the fuel refinement on site. Fortunately, there isn’t much fuel to transport. A few ounces of uranium produces as much energy as a few tons of coal. Thorium fuel for breeder reactors isn’t even all that radioactive.

Water. Not all water-cooled plants dump heat back into rivers and streams; instead, some evaporate the water using cooling towers. The water vapor eventually condenses to form rain, which flows back into the river. Also, your assertion that water is consumed irregardless of environmental effects is false. In the United States, at least, there are strict regulations regarding how much waste heat can be dumped into streams and how much water can be withdrawn from streams. Nuclear reactors have to be temporarily shut down or operated below optimal power to meet these regulations if water becomes scarce; see this news story: http://planetsave.com/blog

Tectonic instabilities. Yes, building a nuclear power plant on a fault line or next to an active volcano is stupid. So let’s just not do that. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t build nuclear power plants at all.

Mining. As if mining coal, oil, or natural gas is more safe than mining uranium! In fact, coal mining also exposes miners to radioactive radon gas. And when the coal is eventually burned, it exposes you to radioactive radon gas as well as toxic mercury and cadmium. Certainly we should observe safety precautions, and one hopes we’ve come a long way since the 1950’s. Let’s make sure we mine uranium and thorium carefully and using techniques we know won’t damage the environment.

Read more on my blog: http://benkay.net/blog/2008/08/obamas-n-word/