THOUSANDS of pounds of waste?!

Do you realize how minuscule that is? Even a couple of hundred thousand pounds is pretty tiny. A freaking semi truck can haul 60,000 lbs, and you're worried about some relatively small amounts of admittedly nasty stuff? Like it or not, nuclear is a big part of the answer to global warming. It's murderously efficient and eco-friendly. Despite any negative issues surrounding the of storing the waste, it is one of the most economical green source of energy in existence.

Miguel is correct but the Guardian would never admit that. Like their worn-out anti-capitalist rhetoric from the 70's they're also recycling this old anti-nuclear shibboleth now.

Let's repeat - there is NO way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the US without using nuclear power. Questions? Ask the French who've used safe nuclear power for years with no accident. Nuclear power now comprises 80% of their electricity production.

Ms. Witherell, a very good post. Thank you for doing so. Finding the new seismic fault should finally put an end to nuclear power in CA.
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Miguel: nuclear is nuts, not an answer to global warming. Nukes emit four times as much waste heat into the atmosphere, compared to natural gas-fired cogeneration. Nukes also cost billions to build and are not economical. The toxic nuclear waste is a serious problem for generations to come. They will not thank us for poisoning their world.
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Shane: France is doing the same as we are, storing the waste. France also has radioactive spills from time to time. Future frenchies will curse the current generation for producing toxic wastes. The answers to power are solar, wind, wave, geothermal, biomass, and natural gas cogeneration.
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A wonderful new patent for producing clean-green power from municipal waste is U.S. 7,452,392.

Some Other Facts To Counter The Pro-Nuclear Nutters -

1) Nuclear power plants are so expensive and time consuming to build that not nearly enough of them could be built in time to have any measurable impact whatsoever during the time deadlines needed to effectively counteract the global climate crisis. According to the latest science we now have 10-30 years to go carbon free to avoid a major global environmental and civilisational collapse. We simply do not have tome to wait for large scale nuclear.

2) Nuclear power plants, contrary to industry claims are responsible for large scale CO2 emissions. This is because of mining and ore processing. Because the world is neither filled with solar and wind power plants nor nuclear plants, uranium ore must be processed using fossil fuels. Because of this, over the course of its life time, a nuclear plant generates one third to one half of the CO2 emissions of a natural gas fired power plant.

3) Peak Uranium. Just as with oil and natural gas, uranium is reaching its peak global extraction curve. It is becoming progressively harder and harder to find uranium at previous levels of purity. The result is that less pure ore is extracted and this ore requires -more- fossil fuel burning to purify. This dynamic is so important, that if we were to try to switch to nuclear power in the massive capacities suggested for countering global warming, the added fossil fuel inputs necessary to process the ore as it rapidly becomes less and less pure would completely counteract the lower on-site emissions of the nuclear plants themselves. If we were to pursue such a course, the average nuclear power plant would generate the same CO2 emissions as the average natural gas power plant in just 10 years. So once again, the realities of basic physics make using nuclear power to counter the climate crisis an impossibility.

4) A fact unknown to most, because it is covered up by the industry, is that nuclear power plants require the continuous emission of low level nuclear waste into the air, all throughout their entire lifetimes. If we were to build lots of nuke plants, we would be swamping the biosphere and our communities with these wastes.

So it is impossible, -impossible- for nuclear power plants to have any measurable impact on the climate crisis.

And for all the reasons stated previously and by virtually every environmental group on the planet, building nuclear power plants is an incredibly stupid thing to do, because of the inherently bad economic and environmental impacts involved.

Pro-nukers need to take the blue pill now, and rejoin us up here in reality, above the rabbit hole.

1: We CAN have a Carbon Free Nuclear Free future - I refer you to http://www.ieer.org/carbonfree/ where you can dowload a roadmap for energy independence written by Arjun Makhijani, PhD in Nuclear Engineering and expert in energy efficiency.

2: France may lose one its most cherished places, the Champagne Region, to radioactive contamination of the groundwater http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/273411/nuclear_waste_sites_may_affect_french.html http://www.flex-news-food.com/pages/3156/France/Water/france-radioactive-waste-leaking-champagne-water-supply---greenpeace.html AND The French have been dumping radioactive material into the sea causing contamination of the North sea and into the Arctic http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12938721 http://www10.antenna.nl/wise/566/5396.html

3: Nuclear power begins it killing process before even one watt is produced. If you don't believe it, I would challenge you to visit the Navajo Reservation, The Laguna Pueblo in M. Mexico, the Pine Ridge Reservation and places in and near the Black Hills of S. Dakota as I have. You will meet people whose whole families have been decimated by uranium mining. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-navajo-series,1,6643736.special http://www.unobserver.com/index.php?pagina=layout5.php&id=2901&blz=1

4: Leukemia death rates in U.S. children near nuclear reactors rose sharply (vs. the national trend) in the past two decades, according to a recent study.

The greatest mortality increases occurred near the oldest nuclear plants, while declines were observed near plants that closed permanently in the 1980s and 1990s. The study was published in the most recent issue of the European Journal of Cancer Care.

I could go on and on about the excessive amounts of waters needed for a nuke plant, the fact that when it gets hot nuke plants have to shut down because their source of water gets too hot, the near misses. Nuclear power is uneconomical and unsafe and has proven to be a failed technology. It has NOT delivered power to cheap to meter.

The size doesn't really matter, because the liquid retention bins they store the waste in all get contaminated. And though the radioactivity level goes down after a while, it never goes away completely.

This nuclear plant could harm residents health near
on its location, water contamination and air pollution, it also contributes on global warming..

Yeah your right pretten, nuclear plant could harm residents health and can cause pollution..