Quote Originally Posted by ThisYouWillDo View Post
I find it hard to accept that nuclear energy is good for the environment when you look at what happened at Three Mile Island, or at Chernobyl, where, over 20 years later, there's still an exclusion zone of hundreds of square kilometres where wildlife is still being damaged by the effects of contamination, and is apparently spreading up the food chain. Animals are being poached within the zone and consumed by humans.
Let's stop all use of pesticides just because DDT proved to be bad? Three Mile Island belongs to the group of reactors known as Generation I, Chernobyl belongs to Generation II, and is more specifically known as a CANDU reactor. Guess how many is in use today? All nuclear rectors in use in the west are Generation III and are far more safe. There have been no incidents with any of them. The worst that has happened is a controlled shut down because of a faulty indicator. But many new advances have come, and any new reactors will be labelled generation IV and are even safer than the safe ones we have today. They only thing that is different between the generations is the safety. Output is the same.

There's always the same deal with technology. It only develops if it's being used. If we are to be free from accidents we'll also be free from progress. This will be more pronounced and accidents will be more serious as energy technology gets more efficient. It's in the nature of the business.

There's also positive effects of Chernobyl. It's aided archaeology, carbon dating techniques and ecology research very much. There's some good with the bad.