Nuclear power

[AndrewJ]

A friend of mine lives within a few mile of one, and it does not bother me being there.

Without Nuclear we could face many a dark night without power in the cold freezing temperatures?

[Nugget]

Originally Posted by greencreeper

Why not build a nuclear power plant under the sea, with a sort of oil rig style platform for controlling it. That way, if the thing goes bang, the water shields the worse of the radiation. Ok, so you might have a few funny shaped fish, but better that than funny shaped babies

What, fish like this one?

[AndrewJ]

three eyes...can you imagine trying to fish for the thing

[Dumpty]

Nuclear power unfortunately is here to stay. Our natural resources are going to run out at some point and we would need something to sustain the countrys needs.
More research I think is needed before the likes of me can trust it 100%.
We are only a small nation and any sort of a problem (or meltdown) would probably mean that most of the country would be affected in one way or another.
Security and the dangers of nuclear power really need to be of paramount importance.

[AndrewJ]

Nuclear Reactors could be built to be automated, as in with Cherobyl, someone turned off a safety cut out switch ( source : documentary ) and this allowed it to happen.

A fail safe system would be one which does not include the moronic element...i.e: human.

[keithwalton]

Removing human error / incompetent managers would be a good thing.
As chernobyl wasn't completly an accident, more an experiment gone wrong. They were attempting to run the reactor faster which was beyond its design specification by quite some margin. They went to far, and the reaction went out of control. Since control rods only have a finite ability to slow down a reaction.
Sadly when the reactor goes beyond a critical point thats it your doomed. The control rods could not stop the reaction from cascading out of control.
Designers incorporate hughe overheads in design so that the reactions can be slowed down even if the users get sloppy and let it run off.
Unfortunutly this was abused and they just went too far.

For new reactors there should be as quite right a fail safe which will over ride humans and lock down the core

[AndrewJ]

We would require a non microsoft based software system, which gave only minimal control to the average joe at the nuclear core control system.

A administrator would not have such control. As boss's could and would demand the impossible once money/greed takes over.

The system would have to be smart enough to not go over limits set by a watchdog commitee who would have to do daily checks on this system. Reports of the safety checks would also be publically viewable online, or at many record stores and libarys and newspapers.

This would give the public the idea and knowledge of how serious and safe the system is. And at even 1000 to 1 chanes of a meltdown the reactor would shut down, and require totally resetting, sadly the element of human nature and greed over profit is something we just could not have with something this deadly.