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OmgAMark
28-11-2006, 02:32 PM
I've recently been studying on this and it got me thinking. Are you for or against nuclear power?

Around the world there are over 400 nuclear power plants which create 17% of the worlds power, for one reason... its cheap. But is it more of a question that we dont have a choice, we NEED to have the nuclear power to keep our technological slant going upwards?

I'm sure of you are all quite aware of the damage they can and will evidentially create. Not the emission of the nuclear rays exactly, but the harmful nuclear waste. At this given point in time we are just dumping it so our future generations can deal with it. Whether it be in oceans, underground or in massive concrete tanks in the middle of nowhere.

Even with these unadventured landscapes as home to the waste the rays can still travel far, and with more and more waste being dumped and more land being filled are we running out of space? Stephen Hawking says that we need to fix this problem now, or it will create an enviormental disaster by the year 3000.

By taking a look at uraniums half life of 760 Million years... A.K.A just 1kg of Uraninum will take 2.2952x10^11 years (229 Billion Years). Thats just 1kg, most nuclear power plants have the ability to withdraw over 1000 tons of waste per year. Times that by the 400 plants operable today and you get 400,000 tons of waste a year.

Are we really leaving this problem for later, hoping that in the future we can somehow alter or fix the atomic properties of Uranium-235 and Uranium-238 (the types of uranium) in a sense almost like alchemy?

But even knowing all this, I am FOR nuclear power but only as mentioned before. We NEED it now, its not a choice.

Express your views, I'm aware my contents is somewhat bias so feel free to flame :P

DiscoPat
28-11-2006, 08:29 PM
There are Pros and Cons, I think we do need to use it for our technnology but some countries abuse it and make weopons etc

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