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Originally Posted by Dave
I agree. US nuclear power plants are *very* safe.
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May be so (though I've also heard arguments to the contrary), but there comes a time when those rods are unable to generate electricity, and we have to store them somewhere. That's the big problem.
Keeping nuclear waste onsite near the plant is dangerous. (I'm thinking of all those doomsday terrorist senarios. *Shudders*) But you could also argue that Yucca Mountain will be operational in the future. Well, we would have to transport it. And there's a LOT of nuclear waste to transport on the nation's highways and railways. And that's potentially very dangerous.
To produce more nuclear waste would be making an already-dangerous situation even more dangerous. Also, nuclear energy is being phased out in the more forward-looking nations. Like Dorian said, in the U.S. and many other countries, no new plants are being built, and many more countries are decommissioning their plants. It's clearly not the future like everyone believed 50 years ago.
Furthermore, nuclear energy is very inefficient, even compared to coal. By the time the power reaches your house from the nuclear plant, much of the original potential energy has been wasted during production and transmission.