Qrlx's Journal: why i'm against nuclear power.

(from http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=92692&threshold=0&commentsort=1&tid=160&mode=nested&cid=7965223

Alright, this is a great point. Allow me to try to explain myself.

Coal power is not going away. Not without a complete sea change. Something akin to World War III, except I think that after a World War III coal power would be just as prevalent, only not as much coal would be burnt because there would be so many fewer people burning it.

Nuclear power; well realistically the genie is out of the bottle, but aside from France and Japan it might be contained. A nuclear reactor is inherently dangerous for the same reason that a nuclear bomb is inherently dangerous. Maybe the so-called nuclear reactor is a part of some secret weapons program. Middle eastern countries simply aren't allowed to have nuclear power. Nuclear power adds a dangerous, potentially catastrophic new dimension.

It's really no surprise that there are tremendous negatives to burning coal. Look at graphic arts from the 30s, the black smoke pouring from the smokestack was proudly displayed as a symbol of progress and pride in industry. It's only recently, by which I mean within the last century, that society has come face to face with just how small and finite the world has become. Decisions that were made hundreds or thousands of years ago were smart then but disastrous now. There's simply no way to know that (just as an example) all the oil we're pumping out of the Earth won't lead to some horrible geologic catastrophe in a century or two. On the other hand, had we not found oil, whales might be extinct. It's tough to come up with a real cost-benefit analysis when the benefits are so obvious and the costs may remain hidden for two hundred years. Asbestos is a more modern example, and who knew in 1902 that the legal system would be able to pry so much wealth away?

Anyway, I feel like I've wandered off a bit. Here's the thrust of my argument: If you can accept that we will continue to burn coal for the forseeable future, then what's the point of nuclear? Maybe it is cleaner, but it will never eliminate coal completely. And surely it could not displace oil, which has its own problems.

Ultimately, we have the same goal, right? Clean power. I'll even grant that in the next thousand years, nuclear would be cleaner. (Though at ten thousand years, nuclear will still be a mess and coal probably won't.) However, solar, geothermal, or wind would be cleaner still. So rather than put all this R&D into nuclear power, which happens to have the negative opportunity cost called worrying about nuclear weapons proliferation, let's focus our non-fossil fuel energy program on less potentially disastrous alternatives.