No, it's not like detonating a bomb. You are confusing radioactivity with an explosion.

It is unlikely that the radioactive waste we'd send to the sun would be a bomb. (And by "unlikely" I don't mean that it's a possibility, I mean we would send _nuclear waste_ and not a bomb.)

And radioactivity does not cause explosions.

Well, if those cities are secret then perhaps I hadn't heard of them.

Or I didn't consider them part of the nuclear power infrastructure.

You seem to want to add any type of weird experiment or Soviet crime to the discussion as if it had anything to do with nuclear power per se. But in that case we could also dismiss solar panels because they could be used to hit people.

What's that supposed to mean: "I guess..."? Did you really run out of points and hence had to bring up a sarcastic straw man? It's like saying that getting hair cuts is bad because Hitler got hair cuts. GENERALLY hair cuts are a good thing.

Yes, the Soviet Union did bad things with nuclear power. But they also did bad things with almost everything else they touched.

If the argument is not valid then neither is the argument that nuclear power might kill more people in the future.

So what other arguments against nuclear power do you have, now that the number of deaths caused by using or not using nuclear power is not a valid argument and that I have pointed out that Soviet experiments have nothing to do with commercial nuclear power generation?

Your entire point was about the future and now you are telling me that since I have a different vision of the future than you we cannot use what happens in the future as an argument because the balance could tip over?

I see your balance tipping over and raise you a "neither of us knows what costs or saves more lives".

So it's down to all the other arguments for or against nuclear power, I suppose.

By size you probably mean area. 695621 km² (Texas) vs 357111 km² (Germany). There is technology to transfer energy over huge distances (from Moscow to eastern Siberia for example) without losing a significant amount of energy. It is called HVDC (High-voltage direct current). See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current

Thus size is not as much of an argument. Moreover: More area means more places to put wind turbines and solar panels.

Rethinking Nuclear Power.  http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4092

Smart grids and plug in hybrids.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSdnycHfLnQ

I think we could reverse that chart inside of 20 years without even touching wind and solar, and save this country money.

Structual batteries.

http://www.physorg.com/news184585514.html

Leauki, I didn't try to be very sarcastic. I think the Sowjet Union is a good example of what can happen if one acts irresponsibly and the amount of damage that can be caused, with long term negative effects for both man and the environment. I trust that the US and most european nations are handling their nuclear waste and also the power and research plants responsibly, but I don't trust Russia nor China nor India or Pakistan to do the same. And even here, accidents do happen.

Radioactive waste that explodes would be dispersed over a large area and as such irradiate a large area. It's not a bomb, no. But I still don't want a cloud of radioactive smoke over my head. And as the accident from Kyshtym showed, nuclear waste _CAN_ explode on its own if the right conditions are there, like a failed cooling system which caused everything to overheat. Can you really guarantee that no technical malfunction, no human error will occur? Because nothing below 110% certainty is acceptable for me with nuclear waste. It is a tragedy, really, that most decisions regardng nuclear waste are political and not scientific ones. You're trying to sell it as a only positive technological means toproduce cheap and clean power as well. Long term, it is neither cheap because you have to take care of the waste which is expensive nor clean because the waste is really toxic.

And whats with your exmple of haircuts? Nuclear energy  _always_ creates nuclear waste, there is no way to avoid it. Haircuts in this case are always bad. Commercial, civilian or military use, nuclear power creates waste that is highly dangerous. I don't have to have a _better_ argument than creating waste that we can't really deal with in the sense that we can't guarantee a safe repository for the next few tenthousand years right now and which can pollute and kill the environment and everything in it is dangerous and should be avoided if other means to generate power are available, which they are.

But we are discussing whether we, the US and Europe, should use nuclear power or not. We cannot stop Russia or Pakistan using nuclear power even if we stop using it.

The point was that a good thing (or a bad thing) can be used by bad people.

That's a very good article.

That article on nuclear energy is very good.  The two nuclear accidents weren't human error per say but humans ignore error signs.  For Chernoble, the owner of the plant wasn't taking the necessary safety percautions and was just ignoring them to make more money.

The writer of the nuclear article kind of hit on this with the electric cars--->  I read some where (can't remember where) if the U.S. would have kept producing nuclear plants at the rate they were producing before 3 mile island happened they would have been in line with the impotent Kyoto treaty.

TO ALL THOSE PEOPLE FOR WIND POWER:  First, someone said (I think it was utemia) that all the wind power in Germany is producing more than 4 nuclear power plants.  If this is possible those nuclear plants must be working at half capacity.  Second, it this is true, those wind turbines need a lot of land to be affective, so that must be a lot of land being used just for those wind turbines.

Wind energy needs a lot of land for it to be effective source of energy.  Then it can also be in certain areas to reach its weak effectiveness.

I don't like many things about France.  I don't think their cuisine is all that amazin (I don't know why many people think it is). I don't think French art is all that impressive COMPARED to surrounding areas.

The one thing (two actually) I do like is their (the French) reliance on Nuclear Power.  Its kind of funny that you don't see any liberals (especially in such a liberal country) protesting the fact that most of the countries (75%) power comes from it. www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf40.html  The one issue is nuclear waste.  After reusing this waste, the size of this waste for a family of 4 for 20 years is half the size of a lighter. 

The second thing France has the best of is UHC.  If the U.S did (which I am against) adapt an UHC think we should model it after the France.  Which due to anomisty between the two countries I don't think we would and that is why we are going with the two horrible models of the U.K and Canadon't.   The drag for the French's UHC system is the taxes.

Back to Nuclear energy, France has been making a killing by exporting its excess Nuclear energy.  Please refer to the article. 

The final thing is that the French did something smart and in 70s saw the oil debacle and possible mess that OPEC could cause in the future.  They cleaned up that mess BUT if Islam can't control you with oil it'll just move into your population and out populate the locales

The Skeptoid article is great!  Thanks for the link.

Windturbines do not need a lot of land to be effective. Just alot of wind. There are serious issues connected to windpower though, it is not without problems like killing birds and they make alot of noise. But you don't need a huge empty field for just one windturbine.

France - interestingly enough, most reactors are along the rhine river. If a worst case accident should occur the radioactive fallout would go down on Germany because the wind is almost always blowing from the west. Now why would they do that if it was so safe?  I don't know how much capacity the nuclear powerplants have here - all in all, they supply about 28% of the energy in Germany. In Europe, about 30% of the energy is supplied by nuclear powerplants. Alternative energy sources like wind, water, intertidal, photovoltaic, geothermic, biomass supply about 16%.

Many municipalities started to build small alternative powerplants to be independant from the big suppliers and I think that trend is upwards. Sometimes, things go wrong there as well as in the city of Staufen. The drilling to provide geothermal heating to the city hall perforated a gypsum layer and caused high-pressure groundwater to come into contact with the gypsum, which then began to expand. Currently no end to the rising process is in sight. To date, the city rose 12cm which caused many houses to have damages in the walls and floors. They're being broken apart in slow motions, so to speak - like the pitchdrop experiment, just faster. There is no way to really stop it - they poured concrete down there and slowed the process down to a standstill but I bet that sooner or later the gypsum will be stronger and break through.

You can buy so called "ecological" power - but often it is just exported excess energy from france.

I found the article from skeptoid not very noteworthy. All he did was playing down the risks, praising technological advancement and painting those who are skeptical as dumb hippies and environmentalists who don't have a clue. He didn't really adress the problem of nuclear waste, instead he waxed polemically about the stupid environmentalists who were against Yucca Mountain for no apparent reason and accused them to ideologically influenced instead of scientifically. He may have a point with the last issue - decisions regarding nuclear energy are always politically motivated and rarely scientifically sound. But he did not write about that problem adequatly.

Iraqi is better, as is Lebanese and Turkish food.

France (but mostly Belgium) produces excellent comic books.

France also used to make excellent movies in the 70s and 80s. US studios usually remade them, but a lot worse.

And dont forget Wine!  Oh wait, Napa valley beat them in 1976 and 2006.

Well, they still are best at making frenchmen.

I just read that Obama greenlighted a 8billion government loan guarantee to build 2 new reactors in Georgia. For the first time since 30 years the US will build a new reactor. I guess we'll see if they're really that much safer and better in practice.