I know nuclear power is bad, but…
Sun, Mar 30, 2008
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..what if there was a type of nuclear power that:
Three Mile Island Nuclear power Station. Image By US Government
- Was radioactive for a few hundred years, not millennia
- Could not meltdown
- Could not be used to make weapons-grade materials
- Burns up existing high-level radioactive waste and weapons material?
There is. Or may be, if the current research versions of Thorium reactors pans out. I still don’t think nuclear is the way to go, and I still think that conservation should be the number one priority, but if this technology could be made to work, I could get behind it as a temporary measure.
The problem always comes, of course, when vested interests get their hooks into the government and arrange subsidies and favourable regulations for their industry, thus eliminating both competition and more efficient ways of doing things. And this type of nuclear power would be no different unless we make our governments much more transparent and accountable – and unless we prioritise sustainable power generation.
Keep in mind that there are no perfectly clean electricity generation options. Dams destroy habitat and use enormous amounts of concrete – with the corresponding vast amounts of CO2 that are released during its manufacture. Solar panels use all kinds of exotic and toxic materials and chemicals to make. Wind turbines are made of metal that must be mined and smelted.
Even direct solar, or passive, requires glass, and it is not adequate in our climate. Active combined with passive solar can do the trick, but again this requires mined and manufactured materials like copper and glass.
The most attractive feature of these new types of reactors is that they degrade current highly radioactive and extremely long-lived wastes into much less radioactive and relatively short-lived wastes. If we get stuck for energy because of governments that have dithered too long, and if it looks like nuclear is going to be pushed down our throats, let’s at least make it Thorium.
For a very thorough article and easy-to-comprehend article, check out Cosmos Magazine
Brian Gordon is a Canadian Green Party member and candidate trained by Al Gore to present An Inconvenient Truth.
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malloreigh.com: little soul, big world Says:
March 31st, 2008 at 10:00 pm[...] If you haven’t heard yet, emo kids are being targeted in violent attacks in Mexico. Also, some NYPD officers beat and arrested some non-violent Buddhist Free Tibet demonstrators in front of the UN. Also, good nuclear power? Brian Gordon’s article means we should all go mine Thorium OMG. [...]
March 30th, 2008 at 5:37 pm
Nice post Brian. Thanks for keeping an open mind.
I agree that conservation and efficiency improvements should be pushed hard and now. They are – in essence – the low hanging fruit when it comes to emissions reductions.
Then push renewables, where the technology has been demonstrated and it makes economic sense to do so.
However, don’t take nuclear off the table until we ‘know’ that the above measures will allow us to achieve out goals in the context if ever increasing emission reduction targets, growing economies and an expanding global population.
Alone, it’s no panacea. But I do believe nuclear power has a growing role to play and the fast reactors you mention do look appealing.
March 30th, 2008 at 7:38 pm
So Thorium reactors can produce risk free energy from nuclear waste alone without producing radioactive waste themselves? Any sources?
March 30th, 2008 at 9:13 pm
There are at least five different reactor designs that use thorium. One it a fuel design nearing commercialization developed from Alvin Radkawsky’s seed and blanket. This is attractive because it was designed specifically to be used in current pressurized water reactors, the most common design on the planet. The second is the molten salt reactor, which sounds dangerous on the surface, but is thought to be one of the safer designs, its a ways off. The third is the pebble bed reactor, which has been tried successfully as a pilot project in Germany years ago and may be resurrected in South Africa. The forth are reactors like the SSTAR, which are microscale reactors that with no need for containment and projected to deliver 50-100 MW constantly for 5 years, this is a Los Alamos project at the moment. The fifth is the “energy amplifier” which uses a proton beam to produce neutrons that then pelt Thorium. This drives a subcritical reaction so that as soon as the proton beam turns off the reactors starts cooling down.
All these system work on the same basic reaction. Thorium absorbs a neutron, it goes through beta decays and a neutron becomes a proton and unstable protactinium is produced. This decays into U233, which is probably the best fuel for a reactor. It absorbs neutrons easily, when it undergoes fission, it releases more neutrons to sustain the reaction, and its fission daughters are largely short lived. The added advantage of the fuel design in example number 1 above, is that it stays in the reactor for up to 12 years, greatly reducing the mass of waste produced as well. To drive the reaction you need to use reactor waste or bomb grade plutonium, and with all those spare neutrons flying around, much of this is burned down. It is also safer to run, because the melting temp of Thorium oxides is 500 degrees C above Uranium Oxides, giving operators a greater safety margin. If Thorium lives up to its promise, it is the nuclear fuel of the future.
March 31st, 2008 at 11:14 am
Thorium seems to be very promising, and India, at least is pushing research very hard. I agree with much of what you say, except that conservation is such a difficult way to solve the climate problem. Billions of people must be convinced to embrace it fervently. Also, some people claim that studies show rebound is likely. If someone puts a solar panel on his roof, the next car bought may be an SUV rather than hybrid. Nuclear energy’s massive power means that one simple decision gives a huge payoff.
March 31st, 2008 at 3:23 pm
http://www.thoriumpower.com is a good start. Its uncertain if they will make it, but Hans Blix just signed on as a senior adviser and the have a lot of weight on their boards of people who have held positions of power at the IAEA and several companies in the industry. The company was started by Admiral Rickover’s chief nuclear scientist, Alvin Radkawsky, who was also involved in producing the first commercial reactors and fuels. Initially he and others advocated for the use of thorium in the commercial reactor fleet and they did several experiments in operating reactors which were fairly successful but short lived. One of the reasons we burn U235 is that this produced economies of scale for uranium processing necessary for bomb production. Thorium Power took advantage of the program set up jointly by the US congress and the Russian Duma to fund nuclear projects that would basically keep former Soviet nuclear scientist busy, because it was feared that unemployed nuclear scientist poised a threat. Through this program they obtained grants and access to equipment to further develop Radkawsky’s fuel design as an alternative means to dispose of weapons grade plutonium, which both the US and Russia are treaty bound to do. It was specifically designed to utilize commercial reactors for this purpose under the “megatons to megawatts” program. The design has been running for four years at one third scale and Westinghouse has stated that the design should work, Thorium power states that it is compatible with the AP1000 reactor. This is the most favorable short term plan forward because the infrastructure already exists for its utilization.
March 31st, 2008 at 3:54 pm
Source: http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/node/348
It was quoted at the bottom of the article, but may not have been clear.
March 31st, 2008 at 7:09 pm
Add this in and we may be getting somewhere.
http://technology.newscientist.com/article/dn13545-nanomaterial-turns-radiation-directly-into-electricity.html
If this is applicable in this case with the reduced radiation. (I have no idea)
March 31st, 2008 at 7:19 pm
Nuclear Power is extremely clean, and efficient. The US Navy has been using it for almost 50 years now.
When you start a thread with “I know nuclear power is bad, but…” it means you don’t have a clue.
The amount of energy generated by a few pounds of radioactive material compared to the millions of pounds of pollution is not even a contest.
March 31st, 2008 at 7:19 pm
Not to be a negative Nancy here, but if this IS implemented then it’s not going to be ‘temporary’ but will remain a permanent part of the power grid. Once you integrate something into the system it’s 10x harder to remove it than put it in. No, if we go nuclear we’re staying nuclear. I don’t think nuclear power is bad, in fact I think it’s a much better alternative to coal or natural gas because the waste can be regulated instead of pumping CO2 and emissions into the air, and the threat of a nuclear meltdown is nill. As an aside, people are too paranoid of the dangers of nuclear energy. There are risks, but they can be more easily controlled than what we’re using now.
March 31st, 2008 at 7:20 pm
Nuclear Power isn’t bad for the environment. The waste a reactor produces every year fills about a five gallon bucket. It would fill more but they are able to re synthesize the uranium. There is only one nuclear plant melt down. The death from nuclear plants total does not compare from the yearly deaths from oil.
RESEARCH BEFORE YOU SPEAK!
March 31st, 2008 at 7:21 pm
It’s nice to see a an anti-nuke guy consider switching sides, but your post does not go far enough. Nuclear power takes years to go live, so we need to be supporting getting as many pebble bed and other safe and ready nuclear plants in the pipeline. This need not detract from conservations and renewables — any successful strategy has to tackle the problem from many angles.
The risks of modern nuclear power pale in comparison to global warming (or even coal mining). It’s not enough to study and consider nuclear, environmentalists need to be advocates for it. Thorium reactors may be a great future, but there’s room to make a few more plants made with proven technologies before the new ones are ready. If we don’t make them, you can bet that coal will fill in the margins.
March 31st, 2008 at 7:23 pm
Why is nuclear power bad?
“How do the dangers of nuclear energy compare to the dangers of fossil fuel energy? A report in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that some 50,000-100,000 Americans die each year from lung cancer caused by particulate air pollution, the biggest cause of which is coal-burning power plants in the midwest and east. Even taking the maximum predicted death toll from Chernobyl, we would need a Chernobyl-sized accident every three weeks to make nuclear power as deadly as coal and oil already is. Shall I repeat that? If the world was filled with Generation I reactors run by feuding coal miners, we would need a worst-case scenario every three weeks just to match the US death toll we’ve imposed upon ourselves by clinging to our current fossil fuel system.”
Check out the rest for yourself – http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4092
March 31st, 2008 at 7:38 pm
‘Pebble bed’ reactors are already around. Meltdown proof, waste easily disposable + you can’t get weapons grade plutonium from it. The future is here, i’ve been saying go nuclear for ages. Everyone just shits their pants when people talk about nuclear energy (reminiscence of cold war and Chenobyl etc.). But no-one realizes that reactors were put together poorly then and nuclear power has come a long way.
March 31st, 2008 at 7:54 pm
“I know nuclear power is bad, but…”
You really might need to reconsider this preconceived notion. All power has impacts and risks. The activism directed towards nuclear power has left us with older and less-safe plants that produce more waste than the newer ones. Shouldn’t we at least use a non-fossil fuel to provide the massive amounts of power required to create solar panels and the like?
March 31st, 2008 at 7:57 pm
how is nuclear power bad? Does no one do research before saying that it is ‘bad’. France has 59 nuclear power plants providing 79% of its power, they even export 18% of its produced power. They even reprocess spent fuel making it still usable. France has had ONE accident: a slight materials leak that resulted in minor radiation, no injuries or deaths.
Just because of some mistakes in new technology in its infancy means we have to fear nuclear power indefinitely?… most of the mistakes were human error. Nuclear power is not bad and it would decrease our dependency on foreign energy sources too.
March 31st, 2008 at 8:00 pm
India is one of the other countries spearheading the Thorium based nuclear fuel cycle. If successful, this would come as quite an advantage for India as it has the second largest known reserves of Thorium
March 31st, 2008 at 8:02 pm
I’m not sure that this is a real solution. Nuclear power is problematic beyond complex safety concerns… Thorium included.
1. COST- As I understand it nuclear is power in general is cheap only if you start counting when the electricity goes out of the plant. Mining the nuclear material, refining the nuclear material, protecting the nuclear material from us and us from it, subsidizing the building of incredibly expensive plants, paying staff professional salaries so they don’t take naps on the job and blow us up
(yeah, I’m looking at you Homer)
transporting and protecting the spent fuel from us and us from it, maintaining a safe place for the larger and larger piles of radioactive materials, and on, and on, and on. As I understand it, Nuclear Power has never been profitable and that’s why banks won’t give these folks a dime unless the taxpayer pays for most of the expense of these monstrosities. Traditional Nuclear Power has a bad business model, and I would imagine Thorium Reactors would share many of the same characteristics.
2. As you point out, these things aren’t Carbon Neutral. Again, if you start counting when the juice leaves the plant and hits the wire, all is peachy. But mining is a serious greenhouse gas emitting activity, and without mining, you don’t have fuel. Then you add the carbon costs of transportation , etc,etc again. Sure you have initial set up Carbon Costs for other green tech, but do they match the recurring carbon charges of mining fuel for the life of the plant?
So count me as highly skeptical for now.
Why spend all that money subsidizing and inventing new boondoggle technology and supplying that tech with fuel when we have a portfolio of existing technology that works? Should we investigate new tech? Absolutely, but I say spend that money now (which is when we need to act… actually yesterday) on those existing techs and forget nuclear.
March 31st, 2008 at 8:53 pm
Ian, the carbon cost of all other forms of energy dwarfs nuclear per unit output. Coal is nuclear powers only real rival, in the absence of good geology or hydro power. You obviously know about others that I am unaware of, or you wouldn’t express such certitude in your post. A coal plant consumes 120 million tons of coal a year. They removed entire mountains to get to it. Then they transport this heavy mass half way across continents. The use heavy equipment to grind it to a powder and blow it into blast furnaces. Coal does not only emit carbon, it is ladened with As, Pb, Cr, Th, and U, but most insidious, Hg. Coal plants emit so much radiation, that near by nuclear plants have to shield their detectors from them because otherwise they are rendered useless. (I forgot to mention acid rain). 40% of all mercury pollution comes from burning coal. This is actually the existing technology that you are promoting. Nuclear plants consume 2 tons of mildly enriched (3 to 4 fold u235) uranium per year. The cost of fuel is extremely low and the cost of electricity per kWhr is around 4 us cents, including the cost of construction and waste storage. Coal is around 3.5 cents. For this wonderful margin, you can ruin the planet. How much mining do you think it takes to acquire 2 tons of uranium prior to enrichment vs 120 million tons of coal? The point that is no doubt lost on you at this moment is that after all that carbon used to get this mass of coal to the plant, it is then burned, accounting for orders of magnitude more carbon release than expended in its procurement. Very little carbon is released after the nuclear fuel is transported once a year in a truck.
As for Thorium, it is a common bi-product of almost all rare earth metal (like those needed for photo voltaic cells). The amount needed may actually be supplied by disposing of all those problematic yellow drums being warehoused because they can’t be disposed of due to their radioactivity. The US government recently buried over 32000 tons of Thorium nitrate. Thorium is also 3 to 4 times as abundant in the crust as uranium and unlike uranium, needs no isotopic purification. Its the other white meat.
April 1st, 2008 at 1:06 am
viva Jane Fonda! The China Syndrome set our nuclear policy for the last three decades! What a way to make decisions. Maybe if we asked her for permission to go nuclear, we could get it doen faster.
April 1st, 2008 at 1:11 am
Sorry, actually we now need Al Gore’s permission. BTW- why does France get away with this “irresposibility” without all the enviro’s going nuts? If Bush tried to do what France has done they’d be calling for his head and trying to figure out which of his friends was being enriched. Quite hypocritical, i’d say.
April 1st, 2008 at 1:38 am
Cost: This has been the big problem with nuclear. I can’t figure out if it’s going to continue to be a big problem or not.
Palo Verde produces 3.7 GW peak, cost $5.9 billion, and was finished in 1988. So, that’s a pretty recent datapoint, and that’s a pretty good price. Palo Verde is making really large amounts of money these days, but not 5 years ago when gas prices were low. I’m pretty sure the average price of natural gas is going to stay high for the next couple of decades, so I would invest my own money in such a project. Most plants built since 1988 are variations of the Palo Verde design (which is a pressurized water reactor).
Florida Power and Light has announced they are looking at building two new units for $12B each! These would produce something like 1.5 GW. This doesn’t look like a good investment to me.
I don’t know why there is a difference between the two. I agree that if nuclear plants are going to cost what FP&L thinks they will, this technology is a nonstarter. If they cost what Palo Verde did, then I think it would be very much in my interest, and in almost everyone else’s, to have several dozen more units in the U.S. alone in the next decade.
2. Carbon. The problem is that all these numbers are large. Building a nuclear power plant releases a lot of carbon. But the carbon it takes to run the coal plant that would be run otherwise just beggars every comparison.
I have read a bit about liquid fluoride thorium reactors, and they look promising to me, enough that I’d like to see real research money put there.
– No radioactive pressure vessel — the core is at atmospheric pressure, so the containment system doesn’t have to deal with high pressures trying to push the radioactive stuff out.
– Complete burn of heavy metals — no million-year isolation required.
– High temperature operation — hot enough to make cement or hydrogen (for industrial use in refineries and fertilizer plants).
April 2nd, 2008 at 4:20 pm
Author responds:
Here are the reasons I would prefer to go nuclear only as a last resort:
1. Conservation can drastically reduce our energy needs. Every building should be net-zero or even contributing energy to the grid, as France has legislated. There is also all kinds of waste heat that we can capture and use, from industrial processes to sewage plants. Stockholm heats 80,000 homes with heat recaptured from sewage. (And gets biofuel for buses and taxis as well.) Conservation should always be the first consideration, partly because of the reduction in energy usage and partly because of the “waste not-want not” culture it produces – which will then also work for all kinds of pollution.
2. I do not like or trust centralized control. That is a personal bias that I believe has been validated by history both ancient and recent. I favour local and independent. I would much prefer to see houses with solar panels selling energy to the grid than houses dependent upon a central power plant. In addition, big utilities will invariably gain some influence on the government.
3. Nuclear plants have a history of leaks – and then a history of covering up those leaks. Check Monbiot’s Heat for some sources and examples. In most cases they are small, but they do add up, given than nuclear waste is toxic for so long.
4. We have a choice to move to a sustainable economy, one that lives within our current solar budget. There is plenty of energy available to do it. We also have a choice to move to a restorative economy, where industries actually clean human-created toxins from our water, air, and soil, rather than steadily adding to it. (See McDonough’s Cradle-to-Cradle for working examples.)
The only reason I could accept Thorium nuclear is because there is no other choice – meaning we have squandered opportunities to create a waste-free and conservative economy and are now facing catastrophe.
April 15th, 2008 at 6:09 pm
uuuuuu alllllllllllll stink
May 19th, 2008 at 9:27 pm
By burning coal, you release more radioactive trash into the atmosphere (radioactive isotopes) than nuclear energy ever thought of doing. How many deaths have directly been caused by nuclear power? The problems at Chernobyl can probably be written off as human error and cost cutting measures taken in the construction of their reactor. As for what happened at Three Mile Island, it was vastly blown out of proportion. You have a better chance of dying from tritium inhalation than you do from nuclear waste from a nuclear power plant.
Unfortunately, what has ruined the U.S. is also at play here: special interest groups/lobbyists and bad science.
December 7th, 2008 at 4:32 am
Given the modeling predictions regarding burning fossil fuels into the future, the hazards of nuclear/ supplemented by renewable energy sources seem trivial. If a billion citizens (15% of earths humans) were to be killed by nuclear energy (a disastrous worst case scenario of extreme unlikeliness) in the next two hundred years, this toll would still be less than the death toll predicted by many climate change models.
Nuclear power can eliminate greenhouse emissions. It can provide the electricity needed to power the “emissions- free” vehicles we will purchase soon. Yes, nuclear power will kill people. But a lot less people than climate change. We should use it now, it will give us time to figure out fusion.
December 13th, 2008 at 5:59 am
When all you people over 40 who don’t have their heads on straight die, the world will be run by my generation. A generation (not without its flaws) that is not still constantly looking over its shoulder for the Commie Red Russkies, and screams holocaust at the slightest mention of the words nuclear or atomic, and nuclear power will finally be free from the paranoia, misinformation, dramatization, and misunderstanding that it has endured since its creation that unfortunately coincided with the Atomic bomb. A reactor is not a bomb, it cannot be a bomb, the laws of physics dictate this, not some safety systems (plentiful though they are) or human operators. Reactors are engineered from the atomic level to shut themselves down in the event of an accident. the circumstances that led to Chernobyl were: bad design, poor training, human error, and poor disaster management. Three Mile Island was a non-event, more of a lesson learning process, no one was hurt or even exceeded federal radiation exposure limits (which are incredibly strict), and what happened at both of these reactors is physically impossible (not just highly unlikely… impossible). As for the waste problem, nuclear waste is also a non-issue. Since the creation of nuclear power the total amount of waste from all nuclear reactors would cover one football field 10 feet deep. That’s 50 years of waste. On top of that 98% of that waste can be reprocessed. When fuel is removed from power reactors it is not because it is all burned up, its because there are neutron poisons built up in the fuel that can be removed. The removal process also liberates minute amounts of Pu 239, which led to the Carter Administration banning the process (which france has pursued whole heartedly)because of public fear. The plutonium is also not an issue because it can be combine with Uranium in what is called MOX (mixed oxide) fuel, and burned up in reactors. The cost of a power plant installation is vast, but they pay for themselves in less than 10 years. Mining uranium is not particularly dangerous as far as mining goes because natural uranium emits negligible radiation, so it is no more dangerous than any other manual labor job. THE ONLY PROBLEM WITH NUKE IS THE FEAR OF STUPID PEOPLE, GET INFORMED, GET NUKE.
January 29th, 2009 at 1:13 am
Nuclear power IS the solution. Just because all of this is POSSIBLE, does not mean that it will happen. Look at the nuclear industries deaths, and then compare them to: smoking, coal mining, car accidents. You can’t hardly even compare. No one historically has died in the US from nuclear power and in the last year thousands have died in car accidents. You can’t just say that nuclear energy is bad, you have to look at the positives!!!
February 17th, 2009 at 9:12 pm
There is one but, it is not currently deveoped it is called FUSION it uses duterium and NO weapons can be made out of fusion. Fusion also does not explode.
March 18th, 2009 at 7:34 am
i think we should use wind power GO GREEN
NO COAL
NO NUCLEAR ENERGY
NO HYDRO ELECTRICITY
WIND ALL THE WAY
April 1st, 2009 at 5:00 pm
There already is one and its not thorium. It is called reprossesing, its very simple we get used nuclear fuel and USE IT AGAIN its like recycling. It works because used fuel retains 95% of its energy. Plus it also reduces waste to low level waste that only lasts a few hundred years. Also since it uses old fuel we wont have to mine more so it is CO2 free and with large scale we could supply ourselves power for 10’s of thousands of years. It is already being done a lot in France and Japan.
It comes down to one thing, If the French are doing it, are we too pussy to do it?
April 1st, 2009 at 5:22 pm
You people don’t seem to understand that nuclear power is so REDICULOUSLY POWERFUL that it could ELIMINATE the need for all other power source.
1. It is very safe, there are an insane number of safety measures, just like you don’t worry about your car filled with explosive gasoline to kill you.
2. Meltdowns are DO NOT = mushroom clouds, they are simple large releaes of rediation, even Chernobly (wich was a piece of shit even by Russian 1980 standards) had ALMOST ALL of its megare 4000 death within the first week. Infact people live on the outskirts of Chernobyl to this day.
3. All the waste we have made in 50 years can only fill a football field 10 feet deep. Anyway nuclear waste can be reprossesed to make it MUCH LESS radioactive AND go away in just a few hundred years.
4. It makes an insane amount of power, It CAN AND WILL power us for the next 10000 years (both fission and fusion as fission makes more power + more resources that way).
5. Solar and other renewables (exept wave in the 30-90 year future because the ocean is fucking huge) can not power us, they are expensive and make small amounts of energy. The only place solar has in on houses to make sure there are not blackouts and we have extra power.
May 11th, 2009 at 4:04 pm
THPW is the company that knows how to burn Thorium safely and are presently helping India do so. We should as a country get on board and stop sending so much money to the middle east for oil for our power plants.
December 15th, 2009 at 11:52 am
There are many things wrong with this and i will tell you some:
1) Nuclear power IS clean, as it doesnt put anything out but radioactive waste
2) Scientists and Engineers at Chernobyl have found a fast growing fungus that absorbes radioactivity like a sponge soaks up water. This is very useless as its easily culticvated and the cost of cleanup is reduced.
3) A nuclear neltdown of the reator would be contained by the dome that is constructed above it. The reason Chernobyl caused so much damage was because it didnt HAVE a dome, or any other containment measures as it was built on an ever decreasing Soviet budget.
I’m not saying we SHOULDN’T use Thorium, but we can still use uranium (among other fuels) as long as there is adquate security and counter measures.
December 15th, 2009 at 12:03 pm
1. It is very safe, there are an insane number of safety measures, just like you don’t worry about your car, filled with explosive gasoline to kill you.
2. Meltdowns DO NOT = mushroom clouds, they are simple large releaes of rediation, even Chernobly (wich was a piece of shit even by Russian 1980 standards) had ALMOST ALL of its 4000 deaths within the first week and, as also mentioned by me before, the domes that are built over them are built to withstand a meltdown so there would NEVER BE another Chernobyl. Infact people live on the outskirts of Chernobyl to this day.
3. All the waste we have made in 50 years can only fill a football field 10 feet deep. Anyway nuclear waste can be reprossesed to make it MUCH LESS radioactive AND go away in just a few hundred years.
Adding to this, as mentioned before by me, there is a fungus that can easily soak up all the radioactivity out of the waste.
4. It makes an insane amount of power, It CAN AND WILL power us for the next 10000 years (both fission and fusion).
5) Nuclear Fusion is very powerful, far more powerful than fission
And to the advocates of wind power, you should know that it would take all the land on earth, plus about half of hte oceans to power half the number of countries on Earth? Hell it would take the area of China (with a wind turbine3 every INCH) to power the USA!! for crying out loud.
Nuclear power is the way to go as it can potentially put out yottawatts (10^24 watts Figures from estimates based on large modern power stations around today.