Are you for or against nuclear power?

Against Fission, but for Fusion.

I don’t know enough about it to have a worthy opinion, maybe someone can break it down for me? All I’ve heard is that nuclear power causes issues of waste management.

For.

Very against.

I’m for it.

1— It does not need to be so dirty or dangerous if done properly, as explained here

2— At the rate humans are breeding, it’s either do nuclear properly, or enjoy the fammin. Solar and wind power are nice, but as far as I know its not good enough yet.

3— First we made fires, then we boiled stuff, nuclear energy if obviously the sign of a more technologically advanced species.

If you’re for vaccines for the “herd immunity”, then by that same rationale you should be for nuclear power as well.

I am against nuclear power because no one has addressed the waste storage problem.

The construction of safe generators is feasible, but very expensive. I have concerns about the proper construction being done in less developed countries that decide to build reactors to generate power, such as in Iran or India.

It’s not ideal but I think it’s necessary to drastically reduce the use of fossil fuels

i understand it is shift from the continous use of fossil fuels but about the terrible byproduct of radiation?

I’d be in favour if it was safe but it will never be safe enough.

For. Why decommission a whole bunch of nuclear subs when they could easily (and much more cost effective than letting them sit in shipyards slowly rusting away) be used as mobile nuclear batteries?

Could easily be used for disaster relief or even powering parts of the grid here in the US.

Against as I have been for 20 years or more.

For. We don’t have any other viable energy options right now.

@King_Pariah sub reactors are too specialized to re-purpose w/o the sub (water cooling) and compared to civilian power plants they are small. But if the emergency is a port and transmission lines are handy into the grid it could be handy for a limited area.

Pro fission, but I will accept fusion till we get there.
It is cleaner than coal burning. It just needs to be handled better.

I think the market should decide this. Currently, nuclear is incredibly expensive compared to other sources of power. Plants get built only with enormous government subsidies. I’m all for research on breeder reactors, cold fusion (if there is such a thing) and fusion energy. If technology can solve the problems of waste disposal and cost disparity, then I am all for nuclear. But we aren’t there yet.

@King_Pariah

The US had a floating nuclear power plant, the MH-1A, used for nine years in the Panama Canal Zone.
Wikipedia

Russia is building a fleet of seven
Wikipedia

The US had a plan for oil-burning power ships for WWII, I’m not sure if they were actually built. The story includes a description of the aircraft carrier Lexington temporarily powering the city of Tacoma in 1929.
Mechanix Illustrated, June 1941

I am for nuclear power with reservations.

Unlike many of the anti-nuclear people, I actually know how reactors operate. One of the biggest reasons to fear anything is not knowing about it; many people don’t know much about nuclear power other than radiation is bad and nuclear power involves radioactive substances. Nuclear power can be done safely, but many people don’t seem to know that, especially in the wake of Fukushima.

And therein lies my reservation; I don’t entirely trust the regulators. Japan tried to save face and downplayed the problems. While it’s not as bad as some of the anti-nuke crowd would have you believe (Seattle did not get 750 rads (a far ore than lethal dose of radiation) dumped on it a week later), there is enough danger that we cannot afford to have it run by people more concerned with ass-covering and face-saving to do the right thing.

Three Mile Island had one hell of a meltdown and yet wasn’t that bad a disaster overall.
Chernobyl was an inherently flawed design that was used mainly because it was cheaper than building a safe reactor that actually has containment.
Fukushima was more damaging in the PR sense than in the sense of radiation spilled. The misconceptions and fear-mongering surrounding it has already done more damage than all of the radioactive isotopes in all of the buildings there could ever do.

I’m for all energy sources we could muster in this planet. I maybe wrong but nearing the end of time, it could be the only power source Man will have in his possession enough to support a civilization which closely resembles what we have right now.

@filmfann I think you meant that turned around, fission until fusion gets here.
Right now there are no operational man-made fusion reactors.

I’m sorta with @jerv on this one, I think fission can be handled but have a hard time trusting regulators and operators to assure all the right things are done to assure safety.
One of the things on the insane regulatory front, in the US our current policies about spent fuel are nuts too as it’s illegal to re-process nuclear fuel so we have decades of spent fuel lying around each of our reactors. Most of that could be recycled/refreshed. That’s regulation in the wrong direction. It should be required that nuclear fuel be reprocessed.

On the green side a nuclear reactor is mostly a wash. It takes twenty years for a nuclear power plant to generate enough electricity to offset the carbon released by the construction activity to build the plant. Concrete, steel, machinery all take a lot of energy to produce usually supplied by carbon sources.

I am for the power and against the nuclear.

Against as I have been since 1986.

By the way, if people think Fukushima is over, think again. The situation gets worse every day. Only the mainstream media seem to have lost interest. The melted goo inside these containers will have to be contained for the next several hundred years.

The whole thing also shows us the dishonesty and recklessness common in large parts of the nuclear industry. How can we ever trust companies like Tepco again?

Moderately against.

It’s not a sustainable solution to our energy problem. Uranium reserves will run out a few years after our fossil fuel reserves do.

It’s non-polluting, but waste storage remains a huge problem.

Nuclear power also eats up a lot of subsidies. And I’m not sure the overall risk outweighs the benefits. I mean, you can argue that nuclear power has a better track record on average than fossil fuel power, but the worst that could happen at a traditional power plant pales in comparison to the worst case scenario at a nuke plant. And considering how corrupt the nuclear regulation tends to be, “better safe than sorry” is my policy.

@dabbler Yep, got it backwards.