Before => Shitty, After => Even worse.

Give me nukes or give me death! (or Fusion... I'll take either)

Looks like Mars in Total Recall...

Coal burning releases more radiation than properly contained nuclear fuel rods.

"Big Coal" must be the ones that are coming out against nuclear power, because with as safe as it is now, there really is no danger. Nuclear plants are not all Chernobyls, not even close.

They claim we're afraid in the US because of 3 Mile Island, but no one died from that. And they don't even make nuclear plants like that one anymore.

Used fuel rods are stored in containers that can survive trains crashing into them, and fires, and many other things. Search for videos of tests on the containers on YouTube. Plus, they will be buried in a mountain that has been dug out specifically for storage of these containers.

And today's new reactors can reuse fuel rods that we thought once were spent.

Anyone that fears nuclear plants either lives in the former Soviet bloc or believes the FUD being spread by people with an irrational fear of nuclear power or by people that stand to make money from the alternatives.

We learn this as children playing Sim City:

Coal Powerplants -> cheap, polluting.
Nuclear Powerplant -> expensive, clean.

Don't they play Sim City in Germany!?

@Shiryu: Also Fusion > all. Thats what Sim City taught me. Also build the most expensive Arcologies!

Fortunately, the above pictures are not as major a concern for strip mining coal in the US as we have federal laws requiring the renewal of land utilized for such... I wish the same was true for stip mining other materials. We have quite a few "scars" in the mountains here in CO from strip mining gold and other metals.

That being said, I would still prefer to see the expansion of the nuclear power industry in the US. I have read about some great possible designs for future nuclear plants that sound even more safe and less waste producing than the ones I use to operate and work on.

Also, as a reply to smcallah above, the facility in Nevada that I think he is refering to when talking about a dug out mountain was built for low level waste only... not fuel rods. Spent fuel rods go to some facility somewhere with large pools of water in which the rods will spend their life in until the US gov decides to allow the recycling of them.

@Log1c: Im still waiting on those cold fusion reactors Ive been hearing about all my life...

Well, NJ is actually considering building the first nuke plant in America in 25 years. Ahh, nothing like re-inforcing the old "glowing" NJ stereotype. But at least I'll know we'll have power when the rest of you don't!

@Shiryu: I can't wait to hear big coal's opinion on fusion. "Yeah it's all great, until it blows up a continent."

Anybody else catch the video on giz the other day about the fusion experiment that's supposed to go online in a couple years?
*fingers crossed*
[gizmodo.com]

@smcallah: Yeah, the Yucca mountain thing might not happen now. The short version: Nevada politicians are getting very good at blocking it. From my understanding, it's already several years behind schedule and many millions of dollars underfunded.
Then there's the whole licensing issue too... Basically it's a cluster f'.

The area it's located in is one of the prettier parts of Nevada I've ever seen, but it's far less destroyed than the coal plant presented above. And judging by the number of rabbits in the area, it's not doing too much to the local ecology just yet.

Except for maybe the Crows. Capital C. They are scary huge.

Uh...I hate to say it but that "smoke" shooting into the air is nothing more than water vapor from the cooling towers. There is no visible plume (i.e., smoke) from the 3 boiler stacks...

*poke* Hello? Comment go bye bye?
@smcallah: Well, the whole Yucca mountain thing is kind of up in the air at this point. The funding has been cut, local legislature is doing all it can to block it at every turn, and if I recall correctly they are also being denied any sort of operating license. It's also several years behind schedule at this point...

That said, the area that it's in is rather neat. I'd consider it some of the most breathtaking parts of Nevada I've ever seen, and located in a damn secure area. So, you know, warm fuzzies there.

The big hole did bug me before, but compared to the destruction of this coal mine, it's nothing! That, and there are still billions of rabbits, so it can't be effecting the ecology too much.

Except the Crows. Capital C. Suckers are huge.
And scary.

@smcallah: To be fair, most of the modern fear of nuclear energy comes from the early radiation testing by the government and the atomic bomb. Big Coal doesn't need to fan the flames of ignorance and fear, it can burn on its own.

@Dunny0: A steady diet of rabbits will do that to a crow.

Say what you will about the environment, looking at that top picture I just figured out where I'm filming the finale of my Steampunk movie.

@Ghede: I think these Crows are a bit higher on the food chain than that. I would not be surprised if they ate coyotes. Words cannot describe the sheer hugeness of these black birds.

Also, stupid double post. Bah!

I've gotta echo Xenocidal Maniac: those are cooling towers in the second picture, not smokestacks, and they're emitting steam, not smoke. Anyone remember pictures of the Three Mile Island nuclear plant? The most recognizable feature was the cooling towers, which for some reason always have more or less the same shape.

I wouldn't call Nuclear clean - you still have to mine the isotopes, namely U238, and well, mining itself is a dirty process that pollutes every environment around the mining site, including the water system, and air. Imagine comparing coal mining, which exhales coal soot, sulfer, acid rain, and other pollutants into the surrounding enviro - air, water and land, and then add to that, mining of radioactive isotopes and you have everything from alpha, beta, and gamma emitting particles/rays entering into the air, soil, and water. Although, nuclear plants today are far safer than they were decades ago, the mining side of the whole process still turns me off.

You know that excavator arm would look pretty awesome on my giant take-over-the-world robot.

I wonder who the manufacturer is and if they offer a student discount.

New conspiracy theory: i09 funded by the nuclear power industry

@Shiryu: Its just 20 years away. Don't worry about it ;)

all i see is that giant buzzsaw robots are effective at conquest

Most of what comes out of the smoke stacks isn't really smoke. Stacks of that shape are coolant towers and not exhausts.
And Germany has vast reserves of coal, it is more densely populated then the US (under a third of the population of the US on the area less then Montana) so it is difficult to place a nuclear plant somewhere where the locals won't protest it. They feel less strongly about coal plants it seems. And the before and after shots are misleading. Once they have exhausted a certain coal vein they fill it back up and is returned to either farm land or a nature park.

i used to work in a lab that tested samples from nuclear power plants for low-level radioactivity. we serviced a number of plants in the midwest and some on the east coast, one of which was.. well, let's say it rhymed with Free Style Pieland. never found anything to squawk about, never even heard about anything. in the nuclear industry, the greatest threat is human error. despite knowing some of the humans that deal in it, i'd still pick nuclear over coal...with a little trepidation.

@Log1c: Yay for Arcologies!

@Mathmos: I am kinda pro-nuke power. But really what I like are pictures of giant machines. And these certainly fit the bill.

I'm pro-nuke power, but only after I found out that there is a way to design reactors that are physically impossible to go critical.

[www.wired.com]

[en.wikipedia.org]

It's weird, but I find these pics beautiful. The bottom one just became my desktop background.

Coal rocks.

What an artificial set of alternatives! As if anything is better than conservation and solar, in the long run. I say, run up the costs per kilowatt hour by requiring inclusion of all currently "externalized costs" like pollution, global warming, spent fuel, species destruction, etc. and throw your money where it can actually make a difference.

@monkity:

I strongly prefer "enough energy generation to run something resembling civilisation" to "conservation and solar".

Besides, solar has environmental costs too. Everything does.
-Kle.

@monkity: Have you ever seen the awful byproducts produced by making solar panels?

@monkity: Not to be "pro-coal" but nothing gives you more bang for your buck than a coal power plant, in fact, nothing else even comes close. That's why people still use them. :(

@Annalee Newitz: Or nickel mines for those Prius batteries...

they should just build a giant nuclear power plant on some island in the middle of the sea and if it blows up who cares.

Nobody wants to live next to the dump...

@Crrusherr: Good Idea! That way, instead of some contaminated land, you've got contaminated seawater. Complete with helpful ocean currents to spread the isotopic goodness even faster! Hope you enjoy three-eyed fish.

If you look hard enough, you'll find that a lot of green energy sources have overlooked drawbacks. Think about the steel mills that make the turbines blades for wind and tidal generators. Think about the copper mining in Peru for all that wire. Think about all the concrete made and used to build the factories that make the PV cells for solar energy.

But I think that overall the green energy sources have lower impact than petrochemicals like coal, oil, shale tars and so on.

But here's an vaguely related thing to wonder about. Why is it that some people (Myself for example. Cars just leave me cold they just don't go nearly fast enough. But everytime I see movie rendition of hyperlight drives, I just thrill! Where the hell does that come from?) power trip on images of giant machines beating the daylights out of natural spendor?

Where does that weird urge come from? In ancient times, we had none of these machines so why do some of us groove on faster planes, bigger ocean liners, taller skyscrapers, faster computers? What evolutionary pressures put this urge in our primative monkey brains?