Best hope to curb global warming? Nuclear power

I'm glad to finally see

I'm glad to finally see someone coming out in favor of expanding nuclear power in the US! Your discussion was right on the money. You never hear about the outstanding safety record that US nuclear power has achieved. Even 3 Mile Island was not as bad as the media made it out to be as far as radiation released to the public. Most of the release was in the form of short lived gasseous isotopes...mainly Argon 41...which are not absorbed into the body and pose minimal health risks.

As far as the waste disposal problem goes...there are new technologies that safely and permenantly encapsulate nuclear waste within ceramic type materials. This material encapsulates and binds the nuclear material such that it will not leech out for a thousand years even when buried deep underground.

I lived and worked on a floating (and submergable) nuclear power plant for 4 1/2 years. During that time I received less radiation exposure than the average person living and working in Denver CO. How do I know this for sure?...It was my job to read the personel dosimeters and record individual exposures, including my own.

Nuclear power is a safe, cost effective means of generating our electrical power for decades to come if we can get past the ignorance that exists in the general population. The media adds to the problem with their tendency to exploit people's fear, uncertainty and doubt to generate ratings. I believe that for nuclear power to progress in the US, the nuclear power industry must focus more resources to educate the average person on the science and safety of nuclear power, and dispelling the myths and half truths created the media.

My 2 cents worth...great article Alex!

One thing that hasn't been

One thing that hasn't been mentioned is that modern nuclear reactors can be built to recycle and use more efficiently the fuel sources, which would greatly reduce the amount of waste they use compared to our current reactors.

As far as using geosynchronous solar collection goes, that technology has only begun to be studied, and is no where near being useable, to quote this article, "TODAY".

Twenty years ago, Boeing

Twenty years ago, Boeing Engineers came out with a study that concluded that if Geosycronous solar collection satellites were put in orbit and the energy collected beamed back to earth by microwaves, that in twenty years the United States could be an energy EXPORTING country.
The project was crushed by Bush the senior administration, when the AEC was rolled into the Department of Energy.
Don't talk to me about best options.
We still haven't solved the waste problem, so now we have canisters of highly radio active spent fuel sitting on the shore of Lake Michigan, one of the world's largest freshwater sources.

True we haven't had an accident, ye

Private sector safety may

Private sector safety may not be all that excellent. Years ago I was friends with a programmer that was ex-military and he was the nuclear safety officer on a US submarine. When he left the service, he first interviewed for jobs in the power industry. He said that the safety practiced in the private sector is inadequate and that fact led him to abandon years of education and experience in nuclear safety and become a software developer. The other people in this thread are completely right, of course, if we can't change to electricity as a main power source or if we won't consider nuclear generation of electricity, we stand to take quite a large quality of life drop in our country.

My only comment is, perhaps, poo pooing (is that an English verb?) private sector safety concerns shouldn't be used as an pro nuclear electricity argument. Let's realistically address actual safety concerns with real solutions then move foreword as fast and as safely as possible. To echo the others in this thread, if we don't, we will certainly be in trouble at some point in the future.

Thanks for the comments,

Thanks for the comments, gents!

I don't think that transportation of the waste material poses much risk, at least based on historical accidents (there have been none that have led to release of material that I know of).

The casks that they transport the material in have been extensively tested and are extremely durable. Certainly care would need to be taken to prevent waste from getting stolen, but I think the biggest worry about terrorists getting their hands on waste material is them using it to contaminate water supplies or in dirty bombs. Not sure there is much chance that they could turn the waste into a nuclear bomb...at least not at all easily.

Storage of the waste is a bigger issue as it takes millenia for the material to decay to the point where it no longer puts out enough radiation to be harmful.

Not sure that Jerry Pournelle's idea would work, unless you could find a spot that is not above a water source, which is probably unlikely to happen.

Shipping it into space would work very well, but be very costly and potentially dangerous (rockets aren't exactly the most reliable method of transportation known to man).

And of course, I didn't address the fact that Uranium and Plutonium are also nonrenewable resources, but presumably, in far greater supply given how much it takes to run a megawatt reactor.

As an honors Physics and

As an honors Physics and chemistry student in high school back in the 70's, I am and continue to be for the use of nuclear power. (I even had a  bumper sticker on my first car that read "A Little Nukie Never Hurt Anyone"). However, there are no safe ways to store nuclear waste.  Unfortunately, current strategies for dealing with waste  are largely unreliable, unsafe and very expensive. 

Kudos on your blog!

Amen.  I took exactly one

Amen.  I took exactly one nuclear engineering course in college, almost 30 years ago, but even back then there were blindingly obvious ways to make nuclear reactors safe and cost-effective.  (Standardizing the design would be a good start -- and is one I believe has been used in some countries, such as France.).  

The one legitimate unsolved problem I know of is safeguarding the transportation of nuclear waste against terrorist attack.  But given how rarely waste has to be moved (once per reactor per year isn't even necessary), that's a solvable problem.   Other alleged problems are greatly exaggerated:

1.  Actual waste disposal?  "Permanent" solutions proposed to date are largely flaky,  But the solution suggested by Jerry Pournelle (I think it was him; if not it was some other rightwing nutcase science fiction author) works perfectly well -- pile it all in the desert, and put a big fence around the area with signs reading "Warning -- if you cross this fence you will probably die!"  I propose those big Western Air Force bases with lots of desert land for starters; they're isolated and already guarded.

2.  Terrorist attack?  Nuclear reactors are big concrete structures built in somewhat isolated areas.  There are many many other targets that are much more vulnerable -- and that would cause more harm if successfully attacked.  Containment structures are very good at containing damage ...

3.  Moral suasion in the area of proliferation?  That genie is long out of the bottle.  There's already plenty of nuclear power in the world, and the diplomats trying to stop proliferation routinely concede that nuclear electrical power generation is a legitimate aspiration for all except the VERY worst of regimes.

Antinuclear activists have great slogans:  "No Nukes", "Hell No -- We Won't Glow", and -- my favorite -- "I Survived Three Mile Island -- I Think!"  But rational analysis is on the side of nuclear power.

For more information about Curt Monash, see his bio.