Brendan D. Graham

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Gregory Bennet

Peter Green

Sure, it's very convenient to dispose of nuclear waste in the centres of tectonic plates now... but if the world were to become dependent upon nuclear power, the centres would soon fill up and we would have to find disposal areas that are less safe. Nobody thought we'd have a landfill problem I believe that the present-day nuclear technology is merely a step to meet the energy demands until sustained fusion can be achieved (which probably won't be very long). In the meantime however, the waste accumulated from 50 years of nuclear power is still very little compared to other sources, and it won't be that long before — fusion is sustainable.

I agree with David's point about nuclear fusion. Although regular fusion was obtained during the 1950's, it still reacted at temperatures to the order of many thousand degrees Kelvin. These extreme temper­atures rival' the sun's, making it very impractical for commercial use. Cold fusion namely is the solution. This reaction is theorized to occur at room temperature, making it quite containable. All that the fusion plants would need is a large supply of water, and they burn clean. There

114 Section II. Supplementary Reading

A. Atomic Energy

are still even more profound power sources suggested for the next mil­lennium. Vacuum energy was proposed by Arthur С Clarke in his lat­est novel 3001. Science Fiction aside, researchers are still scrambling ²to find cleaner more efficient sources of power. We've come a long way from fire being our primary energy source, however I'm sure the search is far from over.

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Alex Essex

I personally feel that with an incredible discovery such as an unlim­ited (or vast) source of energy would bring in a new era. If there are no (effective) limits to the energy, then there is no way for profits to occur. Look at the oil industry: as resources dwindle, the costs of maintain­ing the demand increase, and so the price increases, and by the time the products come to the consumer, the corporations have made bil­lions. But if there is no limit, no risk of running out, then one cannot expect to make a profit.

A civilization with little technological (or social or cultural or reli­gious, etc.) advance will not last long. Chaos theory describes how there is order in chaos, something that the Brahmins understood. Too little change is as destructive as too much. We can only strive for the best. We must look beyond the horizon and see the bigger picture.

I feel that the true problem with nuclear power is not the waste, because there are ways to deal with that, but the money involved to run them. In order to understand what it truly takes, in the United States, a nuclear power plant must run for over 15 years to recover the costs of operation and building, and that is with huge govern­ment subsidies. In truth, Nuclear Energy is not cost competitive for the energy industry. However, our current use of coal and oil is also not a logical choice. Although relatively inexpensive in operation and maintenance, the environmental costs of its use far outweigh' this. The solution at the current point should be the use of natural gas as a form of energy supply. Even though it is a fossil fuel, it burns very

cleanly and cheaply, thereby being — cost competitive and environ­mentally benign².

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