Re:Nuclear is NOT Clean (Score 1)

It's unreasonable to say that nuclear is safest, when obviously it is not even safe period. In fact, I'd argue it is the most dangerous to our national security and public health. Anything that involves a proven carcinogen isn't safe. (Note: I said that your idea is unreasonable and not that you are unreasonable. Please attack ideas, not people. We're all nerds here -- there is no reason to resort to name calling. :)

I'm not going to argue with you whether coal or nuclear is more dangerous. It's arbitrary, because they both are dirty and they both are a threat to public health.

It is completely false to say that there are not radioactive emissions from nuclear plants during operation. It doesn't take an accident -- nuclear reactors routinely emit radioisotopes to the atmosphere and they are permitted to do so by law. The nuclear industry files their own paperwork on how much radiation they are emitting to the atmosphere and to the water effluent -- the Nuclear Regulatory Commission doesn't monitor it. Just because you can't see, smell or detect it with any human senses, the pollution from nuclear power plants is still there.

The nuclear industry is also responsible for the pollution from the uranium fuel cycle. Before fuel rods are loaded into a nuclear reactor they have to be mined, milled, enriched, pelleted, and loaded into zirconium fuel rods. There are huge piles of unprotected U-238 just sitting out on the ground venting radon gas to the atmosphere. In 2002, the Paducah uranium enrichment plant in Kentucky and the Piketon uranium enrichment plant in Ohio emitted 91% of the nation's reported CFC-114 emissions, a potent greenhouse gas and an ozone depleter. As a greenhouse gas, CFC-114 is 9,800 times more potent than C02.

"Sorry to burst your bubble, but the fact remains there is no 100% safe way of generating power." Please don't be so cynical -- there are safe and clean ways to manage our energy policy. Our only options available to us aren't natural gas, coal, oil, garbage incineration and nuclear power. Half of our federal budget is spent on the military (~$935 billion/year). If half of that were spent on clean energy research tremendous technological breakthroughs would be made. A large part of the problem with solar and wind is that it isn't being mass produced. Mass production would significantly bring the costs down.

The nuclear industry has been given its chance and it has failed miserably. They promised energy that would be safe, clean, and too cheap to meter. It is perfectly logical to say that nuclear power is not safe or clean, and it happens to be one of the most expensive methods of electrical generation available. The federal subsidies should be cut from the nuclear power industry and they should be reinvested in clean energy initiatives. We're not in the cold war anymore.

"Many studies show that particulate emission from burning carbon containing fuels is a major risk for developing vascular health problems, just as much as smoking is. Vascular diseases are the leading cause of death in the Western world today." I don't doubt it and I'm certainly not arguing that coal is clean. (That would be like saying that nuclear is clean.) I'm a runner and I get sick from running where I live, because the air quality is so bad. Nuclear won't solve the problem though -- it'll give me cancer just the same as coal.

Yes, it is speculative to say that hundreds of thousands died from cancer caused by Chernobyl. I can't prove it, but you can't prove it wrong either. It would be just as speculative to say that those cancer deaths were caused by coal. We don't have the technology to track pollutants from the source to their victim. I wish we could, because then we could hold the corporate polluters responsible for the people that they are killing.

Zero emissions should be the law of the land. It shouldn't be acceptable to kill anyone to meet our electrical needs. Poisoning people to death is not a civilized energy policy. We can do better.