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Originally Posted by MaDalton
Germany will switch off all nuclear power plants until 2025 i think. which i consider a good thing on one hand but pretty pointless on the other since they are among the most safe and the country is surrounded by countries that will remain to have nuclear plants. i would prefer everyone switches them off since man has always proven that nature cannot be dominated. but i don't see that in my lifetime. i wished, they would invest the money they need to spend on disposing nuclear waste in researching alternative energy though.
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But that's the thing. It's easy to say: Hey man, they should switch of nuclear power plants!
Where is the power going to come from?
Solar: It's too inefficient at present. Won't work in the Northern Hemisphere w/ winters.
Wind: Sure, but that takes a lot of space, is noisy, can't provide for the entire country, and requires vast amounts of fossil fuels to manufacture.
Tidal? GeoThermal? See above.
Are *you* going to be the person who steps up and reduces their power consumption by half? Are *you* going to be the person who changes to solar?
Everyone is an idealist until they realise they have to make lifestyle changes.
I am absolutely for alternative energy, but one has to recognise that it requires active participation.
Nuclear seems to be a pretty viable option. It takes one huge problem out: C02 and greenhouse gas [and other chemical emissions] - it can provide vast quantities of power.
There's obviously an issue with waste, but with breakthroughs such as
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.../01/30/1415200
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"A hybrid fission-fusion process has been developed that can be used in some traditional fission reactors to process radioactive waste and reduce the amount of waste produced by 99%. This process uses magnetic bottle techniques developed from fusion research. This seems like the first viable solution to the radioactive waste problem of traditional nuclear reactors. This could be a big breakthrough in the search for environmentally friendly energy sources. Lots of work remains to take the concept to an engineering prototype and then to a production reactor."
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that's pretty exciting. Still - uranium is a finite resource. Until we work out how to move off those completely, I think it's a step in the right direction.
BTW, I'm not totally hypocritical - I lived 100% on solar power, 100% off the grid for 5 or 6 years.