Poll - Nuclear plant in your town

[NeilBlanchard]

I'd be fine living right next to a wave power machine, a solar array (PV or heat), a wind farm, and even a geothermal power plant. A methane digester would be fine at a reasonable distance -- outside the range of an explosion.

[euromodder]

Originally Posted by Piwoslaw

A friend of mine once said that humanity is socially immature, meaning that civilization and technology have run away at the speed of light, but our DNA has hardly changed in the last 10.000 years.

There's no reason at all why our DNA would need to be changing to better use technology.

DNA decides what a living creature will look like and how it'll function.
It doesn't decide how that creature behaves.

[Piwoslaw]

What that friend meant was that DNA determines how fit we are (both physically and mentally) for the environment we live in, so 10.000 years ago we were built to live a not too complicated life, using not too complicated tools. Our DNA hasn't changed much at all since then, but we're living in places, using tools and doing things that "we weren't built for". Just because we (i.e. humanity as a whole) know how make a nuke bomb doesn't mean that we (i.e. certain individuals or groups of individuals) can handle that responsibility.

Just because a 2 year old who knows how to open the drawer and take a knife out doesn't imply that (s)he will handle it in a safe manner.

Well, this is heading off topic, sorry.

[Varn]

Funny thing about power plants in general. Many times do not supply power to surrounding community but to the customers of the power company.

I would want the owners of company to be local. Someone who will share the pain of any mishap. A nuclear power plant would bring a lot of technical jobs to my rural community.

[Joenavy85]

Originally Posted by Piwoslaw

A friend of mine once said that humanity is socially immature, meaning that civilization and technology have run away at the speed of light, but our DNA has hardly changed in the last 10.000 years. Genetically, we are cavemen who have iPods and nuclear warheads. We have toys and tools that our great grandparents couldn't have even dreamed about, but we are still too dumb to use them in a safe and responsible way.

"we're barely out of the jungle on this planet, what we are is semi-civilized beasts with baseball caps and automatic weapons" - George Carlin

[echomodder]

Ok I’m going to catch a lot of flack for this post, but here it is. I did not poll witch type of plant you would want in your town because well duh everyone, including me, would pick solar. If I had to pick nuclear or coal I would pick coal. At least if the coal plant had a catastrophic failure it can be cleaned up and I could still live in my town after the disaster. As far as wind power I live in Massachusetts and they have been trying to put a wind farm of the coast for the last 10 years. They have done all kinds of studies on its “impact” on the environment. They have cited that it will kill some seagulls. Now don’t get me wrong I care about the environment, but to a point. If some birds die from flying into the wind turbines so be it. Now if the plant were to kill off a keystone species, then I would have a problem with it. Other wise humans come first. Same thing goes for hydro. Some fish species will die but the lake that supplies the plant will allow other species to thrive. I also agree the conservation of energy is very important, but controlling the price to try to get people to use less. I don’t like the sound of that, only in emergencies, otherwise let the free market set the price.

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by Thymeclock

I understand. A state of reclusion is that of being marked by withdrawal from society (which essentially is what you are describing). Opting out or avoidance of it is a form of it.

Not at all the same thing. A small town or rural area is far more social than any city. Indeed, if I really wanted to avoid all meaningful human contact, I'd move to Manhattan.

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by echomodder

At least if the coal plant had a catastrophic failure it can be cleaned up and I could still live in my town after the disaster.

The difference is that nuclear plants are only a "disaster" in the very rare cases when they suffer catastrophic failure, so it comes as a surprise. The coal plant is a disaster every day it operates, so you don't notice the ongoing disaster because it has become normal.

Care to guess what's the ecologically healthiest place in Europe? The 20-mile exclusion zone around Chernobyl :-)

[echomodder]

Originally Posted by jamesqf

Care to guess what's the ecologically healthiest place in Europe? The 20-mile exclusion zone around Chernobyl :-)

Yes but there's a reason that it's an "exclusion zone". I wonder if you would move into that zone or feed your family with food grown or hunted there.

[darcane]

Originally Posted by Clev

I answered "support" with the following caveats:

1. It needs to be a safer design than the old 50 year old designs we have now. Something self-regulating, like pebble bed.

2. We need to get the political clout together to actually create reprocessing plants. We have the technology to reprocess spent fuel over and over again until there's pretty much nothing left but a tiny bit of low-grade material that's much easier to dispose of (and much less of it!)

3. The NRC needs teeth to actually enforce safety, and Congress needs to leave them the hell alone.

Oh, and I want an RTG for my basement.

I see your caveat 2 and 3 as being contradictory...

The NRC has a history of being obstructionist to nuclear energy production in general, particularly the chair Gregory Jaczko. In order to support nuclear energy in the short term, you have to have a secure place to store spent fuel. NRC has effectively killed the Yucca Mountain storage facility and redacted all their documents made public through FOIA related to it. If they are given more authority, it will likely eliminate nuclear energy in the US altogether.