Nuclear or Not-ear?

Unless you're living under a rock (with uranium as your bed... in which case you should move AWAY from us because chances are you are HIGHLY radioactive)... You should know about the controversial nuclear power plant being proposed in Saskatchewan.

There is a HUGE list of pro's and con's to the use of nuclear power as an energy source. This will be forever debated and mulled over whether it is approved or not. As a society trying to find sustainable ways of living, nuclear power has been proposed as a possible solution. Whether it's the best solution or even an appropriate solution is in question, but it is being proposed as "A" solution.

Public forums have been held across Saskatchewan, and continue to be held, and the government is surely on board (read the news, listen to their program... definitely on board). You have doooo voice, so get informed and use it. If you want to know more, do your research. If you don't care, don't! But if things go to h*** in a handbasket, you can't be upset, because you didn't at least try to. It is up to YOU AND ONLY YOU. We know most of you are cringing at us in this moment, thinking "another thing to add? "These girls have got to be kidding! We have children to feed, soccer to play, life to live!" But as our timeless theory says: add by subtraction. You make your priorities, so make them!

Soooo through our research, we have compiled a list of pro's and con's (NOTE: these are not OUR pro's and con's, but they are those of the general public taken from the news and the internet. We did this to help make your research a little easier, so here it is:

Con's:

-Uranium mines inevitably pollute their environment, tailings dams cause pollution through leakage.

-Uranium tailings retain almost all their radioactivity, which continues for hundreds of thousands of years.
-Uranium is potentially hazardous to miners' health.
-There is no safe level of radiation exposure.
-Nuclear wastes (as, or in, spent fuel) are an unresolved problem.
-The nuclear industry is responsible for horrific wastes which will endure as a nightmare for our grandchildren.
-Nuclear reactors are unsafe, Chernobyl was typical, and resulted in a huge death toll.
-Nuclear reactors are vulnerable to terrorist attacks like that on the World Trade Centre in 2001, waste and spent fuel storage is even more so.
-Insurance companies will not insure nuclear reactors so the risk devolves on to government.
-Nuclear power enjoys massive government subsidies.
-In the whole fuel cycle, nuclear power uses nearly as much energy as it produces.
-Transport of uranium and other radioactive material is hazardous.
-Reprocessing spent fuel gives rise to plutonium which is likely to be used in bombs.
-Mining Australian/Canadian uranium contributes to nuclear weapons proliferation.
-We cannot be sure that our uranium does not end up in weapons, eg in France or China.
-Nuclear energy makes only a trivial contribution to world energy needs.
-The capital costs of nuclear power are massive. The unsupportable debt created by Canada's Candu reactors has already surpassed $10-billion, not including additional billions hidden in the federal debt after decades of public subsidy.
-The consequences of an accident would be absolutely devastating both for human being as for in nature.
Pro's:
-Ideally, it could provide an alternative to the use of fossil fuels, especially coal-fired power plants that are high emitters of GHG and pollutants.
-Nuclear power generation does emit relatively low amounts of carbon dioxide (CO₂). The emissions of green house gases and therefore the contribution of nuclear power plants to global warming is therefore relatively little.
-This technology is readily available, it does not have to be developed first.
-It is possible to generate a high amount of electrical energy in one single plant.

Think about it, Nuclear or Not-ear?

Chanel & Heather