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[PTTG??]

I'm looking for succinct pro-nuclear-power arguments to put on a project for earth day. My computer graphics design professor just knows that my topic is "nuclear power".

I want to prove that the best "green" power source is, in fact, nuclear power, rather than solar or wind.

[MonkeyHead]

I am assuming other than the huge energy density, reliability of energy supply, lack of atmospheric pollutants, and abundant fuel?

[Gunner-Chan]

The easiest way to prove it's best is that it's actually green! No one can debate that!

[PTTG??]

The easiest way to prove it's best is that it's actually green! No one can debate that!

It's actually blue.

[Loud Whispers]

Biofuels cannot be grown carbon neutrally in Europe without competing with food sources or being a waste of time. Quite a lot of green power sources might not be able to supply continuous powers to habitation zones on particularly shitty days. There are some countries that don't get much sun. Or any really. Wind farms are hideously noisy and kill birds.

In general it's a hard one, reliance on any one particular energy source except maybe biofuels for the tropics or if we get down to N. fusion would be a silly mistake.

The easiest way to prove it's best is that it's actually green! No one can debate that!

It's actually blue.

'Tis a nuclear rainbow of friendship and industry.

[RedKing]

Biofuels cannot be grown carbon neutrally in Europe without competing with food sources or being a waste of time. Quite a lot of green power sources might not be able to supply continuous powers to habitation zones on particularly shitty days. There are some countries that don't get much sun. Or any really. Wind farms are hideously noisy and kill birds.

In general it's a hard one, reliance on any one particular energy source except maybe biofuels for the tropics or if we get down to N. fusion would be a silly mistake.

The easiest way to prove it's best is that it's actually green! No one can debate that!

It's actually blue.

'Tis a nuclear rainbow of friendship and industry.

Think that was a reference to Cherenkov radiation.

[Gunner-Chan]

Well sure it's blue. But everyone thinks it's green. So it's green and blue.

... The colors of earth! Perfect.

[RedKing]

Well sure it's blue. But everyone thinks it's green. So it's green and blue.

... The colors of earth! Perfect.

Interesting read about the history of "radioactive green glow" as a pop culture thing.


Also, never knew that Marie Curie kept a vial of radium near her bed as a night light. !!SCIENCE!! at its best.

[MonkeyHead]

Well sure it's blue. But everyone thinks it's green. So it's green and blue.

... The colors of earth! Perfect.

Interesting read about the history of "radioactive green glow" as a pop culture thing.


Also, never knew that Marie Curie kept a vial of radium near her bed as a night light. !!SCIENCE!! at its best.

Yeah, right up until that whole "death by radiation" thing she had going on.

[Loud Whispers]

Yeah, right up until that whole "death by radiation" thing she had going on.

Science. Getting cancer so that you don't have to.

[PTTG??]

What I need to address are people's fears. People don't like nuclear waste. People don't like the risk of nuclear disasters. Never mind coal ash spills, or oil spills, or the fact that more radiation is release from a coal plant on a good day than from a nuke plant on a bad day...

[Cthulhu]

I have a graph somewhere.  Almost all of the costs, environmental and otherwise, of nuclear power are frontloaded.  The facilities cost a lot and using that much concrete (necessary because of the radiation) makes construction pretty bad for the environment, but once it's built and being maintained it's super cheap compared to most other forms of fuel. 

Safety-wise, I compare it to plane crashes and car accidents.  Statistically, you're much more likely to die in a car accident but they happen to often they almost never make it past the local news.  Coal accidents happen all the time, and that's not even counting the general ill effect of fossil fuels on human health.  I would be afraid to see an estimate of the life-years lost due to coal particulates in the US, and in China it's much worse.  Nuclear accidents are comparatively much rarer but the news plays on people's fear of the nuclear boogeyman so their sense of the comparative danger of nuclear versus coal is skewed. 

If you need hard numbers you can look up the deaths by output comparison.  Even the popular green fuels like wind power end up worse than nuclear, although they're probably too small-scale at the moment for proper statistical analysis.

It's hard to put together a comprehensive fuck yeah nuclear power viewpoint because of the very serious issues of disposal, proliferation, etc.  I usually take a more moderate stance:  Nuclear power is the power of today, not tomorrow.  It's how we survive resource depletion and blunt climate change while the fancy future shit is still in development.

People are more reasonable than we give them credit for, if you can sit them down and shut them up long enough to explain how nuclear works, they usually don't freak out.

[Scelly9]

http://xkcd.com/radiation/
While he's not exactly an expert, his numbers are usually right.

[Willfor]

Do some research into thorium-based reactors, which I've heard are infinitely less capable of meltdowns, but still quite capable of producing heat.

[RedKing]

Do some research into thorium-based reactors, which I've heard are infinitely less capable of meltdowns, but still quite capable of producing heat.

They have their own problems, such as being more expensive to process the fuel and requiring significant redesign from existing plants. Most likely spot for them to really achieve a critical mass (pun intended) would be India, which has the world's largest thorium reserves and a critical demand for energy. Australia also has significant reserves, but I think folks there are far more leery of nuclear power.