"Roger Shoaf" wrote in message
...
Jim,

Any endeavor of man has benefits and costs. The United States has been
collecting a tax on all of the power generated at all of this countries
nuclear power plants for years promising to build a repository for the
waste.

As I remember it, if you were to stack all of the spent fuel rods in one
place it would fit inside an average high school gymnasium. This is not a
whole lot of stuff to store in such a way as to protect the public.

The longer we delay Yucca Mountain, the longer we delay the benefits of
building more nuclear power plants. Now you seem to have almost a
religious
belief that nuclear power is bad. I however do not hold such a belief. I
feel that the advantages gained from nuclear power far outweigh the risks
and the costs.

Consider the costs of the alternatives. Coal is very polluting. Even so
called "clean burning" coal dumps tons of radioactive material and other
nasty stuff into the environment.

Not sure if you had this in mind but the process of extracting coal is also
very polluting.


Natural gas is fairly clean, but the supply is limited and there is still
the CO2 released when the gas is burned.

Hydroelectric is good, but how many more dams can we build?

Hydroelectric has a tremendous environmental impact in its' construction.
How many square miles of land were flooded Lake Meade was finally full?

Solar and wind are just too inefficient to supply the quantity of power we
need when we need it.

Oil is not cheap nor can we have a reliable supply. Sooner or later our
automobiles will be run on hydrogen, but it takes energy to make the
stuff.

Nuclear fusion would be great but is no where near commercial viability.
Fission we got down. We can produce massive amounts of electricity on the
cheap. Sure this produces spent rods that need to be dealt with, but that
is not an insurmountable problem.

Cheap power is good. With cheap power the price of steel drops, the
price
of concrete drops, and the quality of life improves. Burning less fossil
fuel would give us cleaner air and water.