Soleron said:
Political pressure. The legacy of nuclear accidents in the past and the very high cost of designing and building new ones has stopped it. But compared to the reactors running now, modern nuclear designs are MUCH safer and more efficient. I believe they are a great stopgap between fossil fuels and an eventual 100% renewable future but not a permanent solution (even uranium is finite). I'm a big fan of nuclear fusion as an upcoming technology, seeing as it's completely safe, no long-term waste, much more reliable than wind/solar. Only problem is it isn't quite ready. |
The problem with safety is that it costs money. What they do is look at the events that happened the last x years and then make a plant that will resist those. If something "bigger" happens... well, you saw what happened in Fukushima.
However, Kasz is right. The effects of nuclear meltdowns aren't that bad. Accidents in chemical plants are usually more dangerous and nobody cares about those. (I'm not saying that we shouldn't care about nuclear accidents, though).
@Kynes: No fissible Thorium isotopes can be found in nature. However, Th-232 can absorb slow neutrons like U-238, then beta minus decay into Uranium 233 which is fissible, but you need a source of neutrons to do so. A fuel rod composed only of Th-232 won't work, just like a rod composed only of U-238 doesn't.
