Hasn't technology improved enough to build nuclear power plants again?
398957
Methinks.  Everything has a drawback no matter what - even wind and solar do.  Radioactivity is not caused by humans - the stuff came from the ground in the first place all we are doing in concentrating it.  The waste is a problem - yes - but Japan has had breeder reactors for years which not only eat up the plutonium which used to be waste but create even more energy in the process.  \nThe US currently uses 17 million barrels a day of crude.  The world uses about 84 million barrels.  Estimates of reserves vary widely - anywhere from 600 billion to 10 trillion barrels, which would last between 20 and 300 years at the rate we are using it, and we have probably 500 years worth of coal in the ground too, but it can't last forever.
152530
NUCLEAR POWER\nIn the mid-1950s, nuclear physicists confidently predicted that nuclear energy would usher in a golden age for humanity: the cost of energy would be so low it would be "too cheap to meter." They predicted that, by the year 2000, there would be one thousand commercial reactors and one thousand "breeder" reactors producing unlimited amounts of power. Like the horse and buggy, oil and coal would become little more than historical curiosities.\n\nNuclear power has exceeded some of these early predictions. Its safety record, when compared, say, to the airline industry, is vastly superior. Compared to the air pollution and acid rain caused by the coal industry, its environmental record is admirable. It currently generates over 15 percent of the nation's electricity and has thus reduced the dependence on scarce fossil fuels. Some claim it may also reduce the impact of the greenhouse effect.\n\nIronically, however, this same industry is also teetering on the verge of collapse. Contrary to previous expectations, the United States now has over one hundred commercial reactors, the breeder reactor program is defunct, and there has not been a single reactor order since 1978, one year before an accident at Three Mile Island. Over one hundred reactor orders have been canceled, and costs have escalated so that the Nine Mile Point reactor in upstate New York will soar beyond $6 billion, or about six times the cost of a coal plant of similar power.\n\nNever in modern history has a major technology, with the full backing of industry and the government, come to such an abrupt halt. Well over $100 billion has been invested in nuclear energy, yet the people of California voted to close down an operating reactor, and the people of Long Island, New York, are closing down the fully completed $5 billion Shoreham reactor before it opens.\n\nUtilities that invested heavily in nuclear power have been driven to the wall by its mounting costs; the Washington Public Power Supply System went bankrupt, and the Long Island Lighting Co. incurred billions in losses. What went wrong? \n\nAlthough the reasons for this unprecedented collapse are complex, many of the problems can be traced to unwise decisions made in the 1950s. Specifically, when the Nautilus nuclear submarine sailed effortlessly beneath the North Pole, it touched off a stampede among corporations interested in the commercial development of nuclear energy. The 1960s marked the "gold rush" in reactors, when General Electric, Westinghouse, Combustion Engineering, and Babcock-Wilcox scrambled to bring this technology to the marketplace. In fact, Con Edison even applied for a license to build its Ravenswood reactor in the heart of New York City opposite the United Nations.\n\nBecause large plants are more economical than small ones, designers started with the small (40-megawatt) Nautilus reactor and essentially scaled it up many times to the current 1,000-megawatt design, without clearly thinking through the consequences. Decades later, this would lead to three serious problems. First, in retrospect, scaling up the Nautilus design was a poor choice to begin with because the light-water Nautilus reactor is highly susceptible to a rapid melting of the uranium core. Alternate designs (e.g., gas-cooled high-temperature gas reactors) were much more stable against a meltdown but were ignored. Second, this meant that elaborate and expensive emergency core cooling systems had to be installed, which would later add hundreds of millions of dollars to the cost of the reactor and delay construction for several years. Third, no attention was paid to how reactors would be decommissioned after thirty to forty years of use or where the radioactive nuclear waste would be disposed of.\n\nIn 1957, a prophetic, but secret, report was issued by the Brookhaven National Laboratory, called wash—740. It estimated that a meltdown, a Class 9 accident, could cause $7 billion in pro
46130
Pebble bed reactors are going to revolutionize the nuclear power industry. These reactors are being pursued by the Chinese, with the goal of building a small enough reactor that it can be mass produced, safe to operate without highly skilled operators, and cheap enough to build that every city can have one, maybe even every large industrial facility.  MIT is also working on designing pebble bed reactors. There are efforts in South Africa as well. \n\nThe pebbles in the reactor are spheres about the size of a tennis ball and are fuel and graphite. Within each sphere there are 'particles' of fuel coated with a special coating of silicon carbide. No gas or metallic radiocative products can escape the silicon carbide coating. As the spheres are spent, they are dropped from the bottom of the reactor and either sent to spent fuel storage or recycled into the reactor. The silicon carbide coating is believed to be capable of lasting one million years, which is longer than the activity of plutonium. \n\nI also beleive that we will solve the radioactive waste disposal problem eventually. Radioactivity heats this planet, and deep disposal wells would allow the return of radioactive materials to a part of the earth's deep crust where the radioactivity would not be dangerous. DOE is looking at several alternatives.  \nhttp://www.ocrwm.doe.gov/factsheets/doeymp0017.shtml\n\nWhile I myself am a consumer of wind and solar energy, I believe that oil has peaked, and will become a scarce resource during the next half-century. Coal is not a solution because the mining process is destructive to the environment. The only energy source capable of making large amounts of energy without causing climate problems is nuclear energy. If I were a teenager again, I would probably  major in nuclear engineering, as I expect it to be a growing job field.
116117
Depends on what you mean by better.  I would say neither actually, because they both produce dangerous waste products.  Nuclear breeder reactors are probably the safest way to produce energy (limiting myself to the two choices you provided) since there are no dangerous byproducts.  Unfortunately, both of these energy forms are from limited resources (as far as we know).  I think we should be tapping into wind and solar (particularly) more than rather finite, polluting energy sources.  Hell, why not build solar fields on the opposite side of the moon and beam the energy via satellites and microwaves?  Oh well, what do I know?
948165
There have been proposals and designs for wave-generated electricity.  It is not the same as dams and is more difficult because of the variability of the wave motion.  I think the reason it hasn't  been done is that the mechanisms are expensive for the amount of power that can be obtained.
562675
No.\n\nWe (the USA) have the best technology to do it and we use it to the fullest extent possible.
404486
We already use nuclear power...so none.
1076095
Yes but it would take a some time and a lot of effort and money invested into alternative sources in energy . We know that we have the capabilities with hydro electric wind solar and nuclear energies but they need more time and effort the only problem is with global warming Do we have the time?
228172
technically it could contribute in the future, but especially given the current state of nanotech it is really not a large possibility.  you have to consider that nanotechnology is mostly doing what we already know how to do, but on a smaller scale.  for weapons it is much more practical to simply use proven large scale technology that already exists rather than spending billions of dollars on extremley complex equivalent technology.
507799
Good Project:\n\nThere have been different attempts all need to be developed yet.\n\nThe attempts include:\n1.Solar energy through silicon cells.\nThis is of more importance in hot regions with maximum sun shine.\n\n2.Ethanol by way of combustion.\nStill an economical method is to be discovered for extracting ethnol from sugarcane.\n\n3.Hydrogen by combustion.\nHydrogen is to be obtained by decomposition of water.\n\n4. Nuclear energy at small scale.\nSo far techniques on domastic production have not been successful.
233396
Nuclear research can bring greater efficiencies to current nuclear processes.  The shape, materials used, and methodologies in maintaining fission are all currently refined and reevaluated to find an optimal solution that would provide greater efficiencies.  Futhermore, technologies on how to deal with current nuclear wastes are essential in solving the contamination problems.  Furthermore, a means of preventing proliferation goes hand in hand with reducing contamination - radioactive wastes can be used as a dirty bomb.  Therefore refinement is essential.  A technology that looked promising was the Integral Fast Reactor (IFR).  This technology reduced the means of proliferation by maintaining the nuclear wastes at an extremely high temperature (molten metal).  Additionally, it was built with intent of never being able to go supercritical - physical properties of the fuel capsules prevented this; temperature would increase the volume of the capsules which would decrease the density required to maintain fission.  Furthermore, the process of pyroprocessing effectively recycled it's wastes so that all actenides and harsh long lasting stuff were removed; wastes had half life of 100 years as opposed to current stuff which last practically forever.  In addition, it was 20% efficient in breeding new fuel as opposed to older breeder reactors which were at 3% fuel recycle.  But, since there was a effective way of recycling fuel, the entire fuel was never disposed, rather it was pyroprocessed and remade without the wastes.\n\nThat is one great benefit of nuclear research.  Others include more efficient propulsion systems for rockets, better sources of energy such as fusion, better medicinal technologies to tag molecules for investigative means, other investigative means unknown to us yet, sensors such as smoke detectors (which contain americium), etc.  The possibilities are limitless.
1182541
It is true read bellow and go to that site also for more information\nThe EU, US, China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and India have joined together to fund a Fusion Reactor in France. .The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) will be built in Cadarache, in southern France. The entire project is worth about €10 billion ($13 billion) and is expect to run for 30 years. "This is a truly crucial moment, for the ITER project and for global scientific co-operation in general," EU Science and Research Commissioner Janez Potocnik said at the signing ceremony.\n\nIt's encouraging to hear there is still interest in Fusion power plants, though there are many hurdles. Cleaner and potentially more powerful than Fission, Fusion has been in the doghouse since midnineties reports of cold fusion that eventually were discredited. I think we could do better than 10 Billion, but I guess it's a start.
584806
we have them now.  submarines run on nuke power with an onboard reactor.  there are plenty of solar powered devices.  calculators come to mind.
78131
Right now there isn't much. The idea of nuclear power for spacecraft isn't too attractive, given the radiation, fallout, and potential mess after an accident. \n\nThe old chemical rockets have experienced an upgrade recently, thanks to the Russian technology of the closed cycle motor. The energy used to run the pumps used to be jettisoned outside the motor bell, but the Russians needed that extra bit of power for their N1 moon ship, and designed the NK33 closed cycle motor. Thankfully, some of the motors survived the cold war, and ended up in the hands of researchers who used them to construct the closed cycle motors that power the Atlas 5. The New Horizons spacecraft rode out on the Atlas 5, which was the fastest launch in history. The Apollo ships took three days to cover the distance between Earth and Moon; New Horizons did it in 9 hours. That's an improvement.
673649
I don't think we're even CLOSE to building a machine that can support a stable fusion reaction.
235628
Most countries i believe have the technology. Its actually about producing it. I believe our government and the UN have treaties about the amount of nuclear power to have for each countries.
339908
A nuclear plant is efficient and very clean. They probably dont cost that much more than any other sort of plant. The disadvantages are straight forward, if anything goes wrong then they go very wrong.