I have often argued that nuclear power is the way to go. The issues associated with Nuclear power are legitimate; waste and disaster. However; there seems to be a divide erupting within the broader environmental movement. The fundamental tension stems from whether nuclear waste and disaster outweigh the deleterious impacts of carbon emissions on the environment. I predict, that as new technologies (which have existed for some time) such as pebble bed reactors gain traction in the media in conjunction with increasing fears of runaway global warming the public and policy makers will become markedly more receptive towards nuclear.
The following is a simple yet salient policy endorsement of Nuclear Energy.:
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/editorial/outl...
Nuclear "disaster" is highly
Nuclear "disaster" is highly improbable, especially in reference to such examples of Chernobyl and Three Mile Island. Chernobyl was horribly unsafe to begin with, and had no countermeasures to protect against any kind of screwup or accident.
Nuclear power has become a lot safer over the last few decades, and United States and its fears aside, much of the western world runs on it. It releases only steam into the air and relatively small amounts of waste, much of which can actually be re-harvested for energy, thus reducing the amount even more. The Canadians have had much success in getting more energy out of their waste once it's already become "waste".
I, for one, look forward to a nuclear future. In the highly unlikely event that we "run out of space" for nuclear waste, (we'll run out of space for landfills centuries earlier) there is a simple solution: every once every few years, gather up all the nuclear waste and shoot it into space, or the moon - whichever's better.
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