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Nuclear power is the most regulated, most studied and monitored form of power in our energy menu.  To claim that there are “more cancer in nuclear workers” is a scare tactic to solely designed to prevent use of this clean technology.  It is simply not true. Cancer rates among nuclear plant employees is the same as in the population at large. No reputable study has ever found otherwise.   As far as nuclear waste being dangerous, that is correct for a very small portion of what the federal government calls “nuclear waste.” What is dangerous is spent fuel and highly irradiated materials produced in a nuclear power plant.  All of this waste material whether dangerous or not can be safely disposed of or stored safely using current technology.  Storage in deep mines in the proposed nuclear depository at Yucca Mountain, one-hundred miles northeast of Las Vegas, Nev. has long been fought by those who oppose nuclear power, using nightmare scenarios that simply can’t happen. These opponents realize that if the Repository is commissioned, they would lose one of the chief opposition points against this technology. Spent fuel can be re-enriched and can again produce electricity.  Water used in a nuclear power plant is used for cooling and is in a closed loop and is never radiated.  Obviously, the government keeps incredibly close tabs on it.  By the way, all power plants use cooling water in exactly the same fashion as a nuclear plant.  That is why power plants are either located along rivers or along the ocean coast.  Not only is France using nuclear power as it’s main electric generating technology, but so too is Germany and Japan.  Nuclear power is clean, it is cheap ---even with all the incredibly expensive redundant safeguards required by the Federal regulators, and can free vast amounts of petroleum for vehicle fuel that would lower our costs of transporting our horses. It is safe. I personally witnessed the death of a  wind energy pioneer back in the late 1980s when he fell off a wind turbine.  That single death makes commercial wind energy more deadly than commercial U.S. nuclear industry which  has never lost a single life of any of its workers.  Indeed, when you consider the number of coal miners, petroleum workers and the general health impact of these two technologies, nuclear power is the safest form of major electric technology that we have,  One last thought, if nuclear power is so dangerous, why is it that the two Japanese towns of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are today, thriving cities.  According to the critics they should be uninhabitable for the next 500,000 years.  Sort of makes you think, doesn’t it?

 

 

In terms of nuclear power - yes there is waste but is it highly concentrated and massively contained, which is vastly different than the waste by-products of burning fossil fuels. And since we are so fond of using intl examples on RC ask the French whether they think nuclear power works - over 70% of all their power is nuclear.

 

And the water than runs through nuke plants is in the main NOT contaminated.

It is used for cooling and doesn't come in contact with anything that makes it dirty, radioactive or unusable. The towers you typically see are actually emitting steam that has cooled the reactors, not smoke. The plant I worked at in NC actually takes water in from the Cape Fear River, uses it to cool the plant, and then pumps it out into the ocean. Yes there is what the fisherman call a "hot spot" a little off shore but it's the best place to go to catch bait fish.