Sen. Barack Obama on nuclear power from SentinelSource.com

Senator Barack Obama answers question on nuclear power from Opinion Page Editor Guy R. MacMillin and Managing Editor Paul Miller during a Keene Sentinel Editorial Board interview on Novemeber 25, 2007 at http://www.SentinelSource.com and http://www.NHElects.com as recorded by http://www.EventVideoTeam.com

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  News & Politics

[staciejung]

You don't know anything about nuclear power or what happened at Chernobyl. Chernobyl was a cheeply built plant with not internal containment. It was run by idiots who turned off all the existing safety systems in the plant and then decided to cause a runaway reaction in the rods. That would never happen at any power plant in the US. There are too many standards and safegards in place.

[rand98324]

Yes, he's spot on about Yucca Mountain.

I'm very pro-nuclear but like anyone who understands the issue, I agree that Yucca Mountain is just plain dumb stupid. It's politically stupid. It's technically stupid. It's the wrong place for the wrong mission using the wrong methods.

The future of spent fuel is reprocessing. You get more energy out of it and the 2 or 3% of the spent fuel which is truly ultimate waste become much easier to manage than whole fuel rods.

[blackle4ps3]

global radioactive waste site near chernobyl, water-way access, create revenue that's much needed in area

[blackle4ps3]

how about a global radioactive waste site near chernobyl , waterway access , create revenue that's much needed in that area

[Claire Breedlove]

Obama

[Brumicchia]

Can someone please write the first sentence pronunced by MacMillan? "we're talking about regulation....?"

[Fuxx Choo]

Beyond it being undeniably best for the environment, however, with its ability to make mass transportation so cheap that burning fuels for travel is economically unsound, EXPANSION is the only way to solve our economic woes. Economists now are proposing making us all slowly poorer to keep us from collapsing. Electricity equals labor and production, it equals wealth and jobs. By opening the doors once more for new plants we could solve problems like redistributing wealth never will.

[Fuxx Choo]

Please people, PLEASE do some actual research on nuclear and call your representatives. It's the court delays that make it take long and rise interest to several times the cost of the plant. Nuclear is CHEAP, the fuel is practically inexaustable, and it can easily be made completely non polluting. Nuclear fuel reprocessing is a MUST. Oil lobbies pay for the laws against nuclear, ppl. They pay the enviromental lawyers who sue the plants. Nuclear and mass tans means no more oil.

[Fuxx Choo]

What a bunch of buffoons. Nuclear is ALREADY safe. Nuclear produces very little waste. You can burn it and reprocess it over and over again until there's almost nothing left but energy and useful isotopes (stuff we'd export for big money), NO nuclear bomb material left (you burn it all) and you anti nuclear ppl have forced us into a situation where we just burn it once and bury it! It's cheaper to reprocess the stuff for energy than to mine and process the FIRST time.

[bocckoka]

Other than emitting much more CO2 a coal plant pollutes the enviroment with much more radioactivity too, because there are isotopes in the coal mined, which is drilled, burnt and spread out by a high chimney. Cheers

[KohnanTB]

The real reason why Yucca Mountain won't happen is because we don't need it. If we resume reprocessing the spent fuel, we get even more energy out of the process. Additionally, if we transition to Thorium (LFTR), there is even less spent fuel to deal with and almost no transuranics. The biggest problem nuclear faces is not any kind of operational risk; it's that "the next big thing" is always around the corner. Investors are nervous about committing to one idea when a better might be ready soon.

[AeroDan7748]

As far as I know the only US reactors that use graphite as a moderator are a few experimental reactors. Anyways, healtheplanetfirst's comment sort of illustrates the public's misconception about nuclear power. Nuclear power has HUGE potential in supplying our future energy needs over any other source! If done right, it could prove to be safe, cheap, reliable, and environmentally friendly for the asshole up there ^^^ (!)