Quote:
Originally Posted by Locke
I veer away from Nuclear power because it is the red-headed stepchild of energy.
I'm a huge proponent personally, but it carries a lot of negative weight.
Plunk a few reactors around this giant land of ours and we'd be getting a lot closer to those Paris targets while seeing our Utility bills practically dry up.
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Nuclear safety reminds of the airplanes vs cars comparison. Nuclear from a big-picture perspective is extremely safe and rarely ever fails, but when it fails it, it gets a lot of attention... like a plane crash. Meanwhile, other sources of energy are like car accidents...they add up, but don't necessarily make the news. When it comes to energy, there many more cumulative negative health and environmental effects (air pollution, mining, dangerous working conditions etc.) from non-nuclear sources, yet they don't get the headlines in the same way because there's not that one big news-making event.
I'm with you though, I think if we're serious about climate targets and still want to maintain our energy lifestyle, a much heavier reliance on nuclear is needed. It actually already makes up something like 20% of the USA's energy needs. In France it's a whopping 70%. France is an interesting case-study in that it's energy prices are half the cost of those of it's neighbour Germany (who went big on solar/wind instead).