For a long time, nuclear energy had a really bad reputation. The accidents at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl undermined nuclear power in its infancy. Add to that the way the catastrophic destruction of the bombs dropped on Japan made their mark in the public imagination, and you really have a situation where nuclear fission can not get a fair chance. Nonetheless, with the way that energy costs have been rising and fossil fuel supplies have been shrinking, people are starting to give nuclear energy another chance. Popular opinions are changing, and who knows how our country will feel about power plant reactors in the next couple of years.
A lot of the enemies of nuclear energy make the claim that renewable resources like solar power and hydroelectric power are cleaner and better for the environment. What they do not realize is how clean nuclear power can be. It will be hard to switch to completely renewable resources in a short period of time, but by building new nuclear reactors along with wind farms and solar power facilities, we can make the change over from fossil fuels in a relatively short period of time. Like solar power and wind generators, nuclear can really reduce the effects of carbon in the atmosphere.
One thing that few people realize is that we have been using nuclear energy all along. Although our country has not been building a lot of new nuclear power plants, we have been continuing to use many of the ones we have. Other countries such as France have been expanding their fission reactors and building new ones in the meantime. Yet between all of these reactors operating at the same time, there has not been another major incident in decades. If this does not put a hole in the theory that atomic energy is not safe, I don't know what does!
One of the biggest problems with atomic power is that it produces solid waste that takes a long time to decompose. When you compare the quantity and cost of nuclear waste with the amount of smoke put in the air by older coal power plants, however, you can see that the balance is still in favor of fission power. It does not end up in the air, and can be safely stored until it degrades fully. You never get that sort of result from an oil burning power plant or a coal plant.
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