Absolutely. It's safe, clean and plentiful. France generates over 75% its power from nuclear and has done so safely for years.
Depends on what your priorities are.
If you want to get off fossil fuels, nuclear power holds our best hope right now of doing that. Solar and wind are nice but are still decades away from being our primary energy source. Right now they're expensive and have some unmanageable limitations (e.g. "what good is solar once the sun goes down?")
Nuclear does have its pitfalls and dangers but again, this is a question about give and take. There is no perfect solution. Any choice you make will have pros and cons. The best you can hope for is to have all the information about the pros and cons about possible decisions so you can make an educated choice.
After having a college room mate that was a Nuke engineer that specialized in reactor design, I think they CAN be made safe. But most are not as safe as we are told.
If they would convert to thorium rather than radium based reactors they would be much safer. But the industry is based on the radium cycle reactors.
One of the worst things about the radium based reactors is what to do with the long life waste. Even if it can be made and use safely, long term waste disposal or even storage is still problematic.
Personally, I would rather shut in the nuke reactors. Even Yucca mountain (not that far from Las Vegas) that was built for uranium waste storage is way to small for power plant spent fuel uses and it is a VERY expensive long term storage facility.
Currently Nuke reactors are called clean only because they produce no carbon based emissions. But the waste they do generate is much more toxic than all the carbon and particulate waste that come from coal fired power plants.
We do we use it every night. We buy huge amounts of electricity from the French nuclear generating program because we have neglected our own, mostly for parochial reasons or for political bribes to the coal industry and the gas/oil industry.
No, it's too dangerous. Even if the plant itself is stable, as shown in Japan, natural disasters can cause them to meltdown. Also, the waste has to go somewhere. Usually it's buried, but what happens if there is some kind of an earthquake all of that gets released into the ground? All the sudden we have no drinking water.
We would be better off investing in more clean power like solar or wind power.
Yes. We have the material domestically, Why import energy from our enemy!
Why or why not?
