Ok, in light of the Fukashima plant in Japan near melt down conditions, there has been a ton of nuclear news, and most of it is has either been sensational, conflicting or ignorant. The amount of crap the press reports that makes me think they have no clue is about 70% of it.

We have heard that the plant was in total China Syndrome mode, and the truth is it is a serious issue, but short term and likely not life threatening unless you are the ones dealing with it up close. That is a sad tragedy, but in a nation that has probably 20000 people missing or dead, the death's of these brave souls trying to get this thing under control will be just more names on the list.

No, what I want to debate, is the pros and cons of nuclear power and talk about the reality that it is the best way of producing power that is "green" once you have maximized or dammed up all the watersources. Solar and Wind are great ideas but not practical in the large scale the way nuclear power is. Coal, Oil, and Gas are all used to produce power, but with the GWG theory of global warming, they are emitters. Nuclear is not.

Nuclear however, has its issues. It is horribly expensive to set up, with a lot of Environmental assessment issues and red tape. Fear of these plants wont be going away thanks to this mess with Fukashima.

That said, I live between two large Nuclear sites in Ontario. Pickering A and B are 4 reactor stations (8, 2 decommisioned, 6 operational ) and Darlington GS, with 4 more. CANDU reactors using heavy water for moderation of the reaction and to transfer the heat to the heat exchanger to make steam. The CANDU's use U238 in a purified form as fuel, not enriched, and the basic fuel pellets that go into the fuel bundles is at a very low level of radioactivity until it actually starts the fission process. You can literally hold the Uranium in your hand and not have anything close to any real issue for radiation. So it is a safe system, and it is designed to be refuelled on the fly, and to be shut down really quick in an emergency (the core can be emptied of the heavy water very quickly, and since it is required to keep the reaction going with this low level of uranium fuel, the reaction stops, almost assuring no real danger ever of a melt down). The protocols these plants have to conform to is outrageously complicated, and hence a very high cost to get them built BUT it is done for safety, and they seem to run 20 to 30 years without any major retooling or extensive maintenance.

So I feel safe. Since this province has 12 million people, and we get over half our power from nuclear power (8 reactors total, 2 more are at Kincardine ON on Lake Huron), we are married to this way of making electricity whether anyone likes it or not.

What say the rest of you? What do you fear or know about nuclear power as practiced in your countries and what are the issues?