Poll: What was your opinion of nuclear energy before Fukushima?

I was on the fence but leaning towards using it more before Fukushima. Now I think we should begin decommissioning the ones that are now in existence. Too dangerous. Too expensive. They are just not worth it. We can do better.

Although that is completely a joke, because look what happened. And, for some more nuclear disaster fun, the entombment is collapsing. It was only meant to last 20 years and time's up any second and it too will spew more radioactivity around the globe. I think that this might have been what was in Pandora's Box.

As far as I am concerned anything but renewable is a waste of time and money.

and my opinion hasn't changed at all. We must do better.

...during the transition to complete renewables.

Now I consider it total and utter insanity.

and began the see that the lies and cover-ups by the AEC and DOE were covering up the reality of
long term health issues surrounding the Nuclear industry's production, maintenance and waste containment practices.

So that would be about 40+ years.


The Tikkis

but, our master went ahead with it anyway, even though still do not have a viable solution for even it's waste, let alone safe use in production.

a solution as to how to handle the waste, yet they want to plow ahead. It's insanity.

Having seen how fucked up the control rooms are, I'm REALLY against it now.

I understand that this will be a minority opinion here but I believe that the next generation of reactors can be made safe but I would agree that we need to take a pause to access the engineering situation before proceeding.

Fukushima is unfortunate partially because it will cause us to think about this issue in irrational terms.

I'm a good driver, but I wouldn't think of driving without a seatbelt on .

The issue with nuclear is not just on one front. Storage of used material is one thing. Irradiation isn't even the real issue in comparison to the radioactive particulates that have already been released into the environment. These are the killers. There is no reason whatsoever to be using generating methods that have any chance of poisoning the environment in that way when we have alternatives. Solar, wind, tidal. It's all there.

By the way, until recently I was leaning toward nuclear.

I'm concerned about the nuclear waste issue and I think a moratorium should be in effect until at least that issue is resolved. Personally I'd be in favor of waiting a generation. I'm not convinced that the generation now planned for construction is really absolutely safe. But I think there are certainly significant advancements beyond Fukushima.

Fukushima is a poor comparison and arguments here are more related to when the early generation of reactors should be decommissioned. I'm in favor of decommissioning many of our older reactors but the problem of climate change and getting off fossil fuels is serious. It won't be solved by wishful thinking. We are going to need everything we can think of to make the break successful and significant enough to avoid major climate issues. We also face a serious issue of peak oil - and it isn't going away. I'd rather see the next generation of nuclear than coal and oil. Even given what we have learned at Fukushima.

a minimal knowledge of physics should be all you need to realize that we don't, can't dispose of the waste safely

most people are apparently happy to die of cancer and have everyone they know die of cancer as long as it's "jobs" which is why my (and others) participation in peaceful protest proved futile

the inevitable accidents are utterly predictable, any tech that requires humans to get it right 100% of the time is delusional and not based on reality based human nature

i won't shit on the japanese for using nuclear power, when they have few options, i suppose they didn't know what else they could do

i will complain, loudly, about america using this stupid-ass tech, when we do have oil and lots of it

the scare stories and gas lines of the 1970s about peak oil were bullshit to sell nuclear power plants and to raise the price of gas when it wasn't warranted...sound familiar anyone?

the amt of energy produced by a nuclear power plant is much less than the cost of fixing the bullshit it causes when it goes chernobyl on us...it is not ultimately a source of energy but a WASTE of energy...who profits? the assholes selling nuclear power, the people end up the losers as always...

The lifetime of nuclear waste can be extremely long, and I've occasionally come across stuff that talks about how are we going to protect dangerous nuclear waste for the many thousands of years it will remain dangerous, given the way civilizations have risen and fallen in the time human civilization has been around. How do we build waste sites so that many years down the road people who have no idea what is there, who no longer speak, read, or write any current languages, can be made to understand that this stuff is dangerous, very dangerous.

Obviously, things like what's happened at Chernobyl and more recently at Fukushima are more immediately worrisome, but there are long-term aspects that I'm not sure have ever been fully addressed by anyone, not governments, not the nuclear industry itself, not journalists, not anyone so far as I can tell.

I see it as simply stupid to use fission to boil water to make steam to run turbines to turn generators to make our electric. Stupid to play with something that has the potential to cause great harm to both man and beast, not to mention the planet. Accidents do and will happen and brother when one of these babies accident they do it on a big ass scale. It wouldn't be quite so bad if the all knowing nuclear engineers knew what to do in that case but this incident in Japan shows us plain for all to see they have not a clue as to what to do.
Just think where we could be today if not for the wasted money, effort and time that nuclear has eaten up.

namely, the lack of a coherent strategy to deal with the long-lived waste.


Now, I'm 100% against. I don't trust profit-driven interests to not fuck it up, and the risks are too huge.