Burn more coal.

I hate windfarms. I live near some in scotland sometimes

There lovely countryside all around then oh no! look ! a bloody great big rusty, noisy windfarm spolining the view

and im pro nuclear. i live near some and im ok

A funny thing is that Ireland's government is against nuclear energy being produced in Ireland, but it doesn't mind importing it in (there's a proposed link from the UK to Ireland where power will be bought and some of that's bound to come from nuclear!).

I stand in favor of the use of nuclear power. As stated, the other 'clean' energy sources aren't capable of holding the load. (I believe I saw something once stating that Solar, Wind, and Hydro together would be able to account for only a few percent of our current energy draw. And let us not forget that Hydro generally requires building dams across rivers[the poor fishies!], while Wind seems to be a bird-killer.)

Fossil fuels do have an admittedly negative impact at times, but within America, unless nuclear is permitted, they're really the only fuel source we have that can fill the current energy requirements. American energy policy regarding nuclear energy seems to have been shaped more by the movie 'The China Syndrome' than by anything available in the facts themselves.

And one last argument: One of the reasons I kept seeing in textbooks for the 'nuclear == BAD!' equation was that the waste would still be radioactive for long ages to come. Good! Despite all the alarmism, this means it's not going to cause the kind of problems everyone associates with radiation! Which one has the higher output-per-minute of radiation, the 1kg sample of a substance with a halflife measured in days, or the 1kg sample of a substance with a halflife measured in years? And from what I understand, the halflife values for most of the stuff that could be carried elsewhere is measured in millenia. I admit I'm no expert, but from what I've seen, the really nasty stuff is never supposed to leave the reactor.

>> American energy policy regarding nuclear energy seems to have been shaped more by the movie 'The China Syndrome' than by anything available in the facts themselves.

Not so. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island Three mile island was a near nuclear disaster in the late 70's. The danger is very real but complete isolation from new and developing plants was stupid too. Safety has been increased dramatically by standard since then.

>> the really nasty stuff is never supposed to leave the reactor.
See uranium 238 is what is mined commonly, but that's now what we use in the reactions. We want another isotope - U235. The half life is measured in millenia (with 238), but in the reactor the process is speeded mega-fold up by firing neutrons at the atoms which slpit up and create a chain reaction locally within the core (which is controllable), which releases power. Some stuff might be left in the core, but as I stated earlier, after about a year and a half most of the 'good stuff', has already been utilised, so what's left is useless.

Do a google for the windscale accidents in the uk

I think that existed in the past but the IRA blew it up

>> I think that existed in the past but the IRA blew it up
Haha. Correct. i'd forgotten about that. But I should have been more specific - between mainland UK at high voltage DC, not Northern Ireland. They're going to re-make that one since things between the north and republic are better now.

Oh, i know theres one between scotland and N.I, but i dunno about Ireland.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HVDC_Moyle

There is no reason why we can't ship nuclear wastes to the sun for safe destruction. Yes it will cost a lot, but probably cheaper than trying to safely store it here on earth for thousands of years.

How about mars, we could dump it there. It is a lot closer and nothing lives there, as far as we know.

Despite what most people think about nuclear waste with it pouring out of these places by the barrel loads thats not actually the case. In the average year a nuclear power plant will put out 1 ton of nuclear waste per 1 million people. For those of you who don't know 1 ton = 1m square of water. Water itself has a much lower atomic mass then that of nuclear waste meaning that you need a much smaller amount of nuclear waste then you do water to reach a ton. This means to get power to 1 million people for a year you are only looking at a reasonably small amount of waste.

For somewhere that only has a population of 20million like Australia and a massive uninhabitable area of desert nuclear power is a very realistic option for generating electricity.

The average wind turbine can produce enough energy to run about 500 homes for a year. This may sound impressive but when you think of how many turnbines you need to provide power for 1million people(assuming you have an average of 4 people to a home) you need around 500 wind turbines running constantly. That is alot of noise polution and alot more space wasted then what the nuclear waste would be taking up.

Solar power also comes up with similar figures as wind power.

I think at the very least for Australia all of these options would be more then suitable given the large amount of uninhabitable land that we have. However even if we were to put wind and solar farms in the middle of nowhere we would still have to get it to the major cities and towns somehow. With nuclear power however a power plant can be built anywhere which means that the waste simply has to be transported to where ever it is being disposed.