Those French who can't drink water because of the 500 lbs of uranium that ended up in a river from a nuclear reactor feel safe?

Yes, it is going to be very hard for nuke advocates to live down all the problems in France with its two "incidents" involving uranium leakage into its water system. That's okay, they'll say -- water is a very low cost commodity that won't hurt the economy. Seriously, though, nuclear power is very costly because of all the safety requirements and potential for human error involved. Other forms of alternative energy, such as solar, wind, and geothermal, don't require that cost and so will be less expensive in the long run. The time is now for innovation on clean, safe energy sources -- not going back to old 20th century technology that created all sort of problems that we've still not solved yet!

Because of our shortsightedness, we are many years behind in nuclear technology. The French, who have really had no other choice, are many years ahead of us in the technology and are finding ways to recycle nuclear waste.

We have to pursue this option. We really have no choice. Only people who are uninformed could be against nuclear power at this point.

Our country is in an energy crisis that seriously affects our national security. We must pursue all forms of energy technology including nuclear.

I'm concerned about nuclear energy as an option due to the amount of water it consumes then makes unusable. We can't afford to use nuclear power on a large scale until we figure out how to reclaim the water and deal with the waste.

I searched and found no documented case of a nuclear accident in france.

So those claimming problems in france please site your sources, please.

It's The Water must not realize that it takes just as much water to cool a coal or natural gas plant that generates power from steam as a nuclear plant.

Most of the problems holding back nuclear power is driven by pure paranoia. There is a problem with proliferation, but now that Iran and N. Korea have nuclear materials, there is not much left to prevent.

The 9 wind turbines in the mouth of Spanish Fork Canyon cost over 200 million dollars, about 23 million apiece. They only run a few hours a day and then less than half of them normally operate. I wonder how much it would cost to produce the same amount of power full time with a small nuclear plant? These wind turbines only put out 1 megawatt when operating at capacity. It would then take 100 of them to produce, part time the same as a smaller 100 megawatt nuclear plant could produce full time. 100 wind turbines would cost about 2.3 billion.

The comment implying that solar, wind, and geothermal costs are less than those of nuclear is completely uninformed. Someone said it once because it sounded good, and it stuck in the minds of those who want it to be true.

I also seem to recall that most (or all) natural gas power stations are centered around turbines that run directly on burned fuel (like a jet engine) and not on heated steam. Gasified coal could be used similarly.