Nuclear Power (spun off from Japan earthquake discussion)

[Slavetoebony]

Originally Posted by TracyCoxx

The people around those plants should get as far away from there as they can, or else they'll be dealing with cancer for the rest of their lives, as long as that may be.

There's talk in the US that because of what's going on in Japan that we should forget plans for building nuclear reactors. Unlike Japan, our entire country is not San Andreas fault, and we don't have quite the tsunami risk that Japan has. There are areas in the US that does have risks like these, but we don't have to build reactors there. Sure this is obvious, but probably not to politicians.

People are scared of nuclear energy. But fact remains that other forms of energy can be dangerous as well. People have been killed in gas explosions, fires caused by oil and electrical power lines / pylons are supposed to cause cancer.
On the other hand, we have been using nuclear powered submarines for 50 odd years now and to the best of my knowledge no sailor has fallen sick so far. Food for thought here.