5 Responses

1. Sustainable? Remember all the accidents that happened in the past? Is this a form of sustainability?

   Katerina

2. It’s not as dangerous as it was, they didn’t know so much about nuclear physics back then. It’s not exactly clean, because it makes so much waste, and it’s not cold, but it’s more sustainable than fossil fuels, and i’d rather they be using radioactive metals on power than bombs, but biodiesel and wind/water generators are much better alternatives.

3. Nuclear energy is not “cold”, I am not sure what you meant by that. The whole principle of how muclear energy is used to generate electrcity relies on the fact that it gives off a lot of heat.

   It is also not too clean either. The depleted nuclear waste posses a problem of where to dispose of it. It will stay radio active for hundreds of thousands of years, so whereever you put it it needs to be out of the way and secure. Right now, the government is planning to store the stock piles of nuclear waste deep underground under Yucca Mountain (in Nevada I think), but there is a lot of debate over this.

   As for sustainable, perhaps not in the long run. There is only so much fissionable material on Earth, it will run out eventually just like fossil fuels. A more long term nuclear energy sourse would rely on fusion, not fission, but this has yet to be practical.

4. It’s clean as long as we can find out the most efficient ways to deal with the nuclear waste as well as devising enough safety measures so that accidents like that at Chernobyl won’t happen again in human history.

5. In fission power the uranium used is not a renewable resource. It is consumed and isnt being recreated in any way (only in supernovas…). Also it leaves alot of radioactive and poisonous waste that cannot be allowed to get into nature. How to get rid of it is a big problem.

   As for fusion power it may be the way of the future. We are a long way from making it work, though, and will take many billions of $ before it can get off the ground. A huge reactor is currently on the drawing board with many nations involved to fund and build it. It will hopefully be the first fusionreactor that actually gives off some power.

   Fusion power uses hydrogen isotopes to generate power and although there is a huge amount of this hydrogen in the worlds oceans it is not a renewable resource. But long before we have used up enough of the worlds hydrogen at a quantity that can actually be measured, it will be so long into the future that we will already have the technology to extract hydrogen directly from the atmosphere of Jupiter…

   Fusion power doesn´t produce anywhere near the amount of radioactive waste that fissionpower does but it does generate waste. Over time the walls of the reactor will become radioactive as neutrons from the processes slam into it creating heavier and eventually radioactive isotopes. This waste will have to be dealt with in a similar way that we handle the waste from fission reactors.

   Cold fusion is not a reality. Everyone that claims to have achieved fusion in test tubes under room temperature and ambient pressure have been dissproven.

   There is another source of fusionpower that is a little easier to harness. It´s called The Sun…