It was a typical day, with high gas prices and articles about heating oil prices going up. I turned on the TV to CNN, to see if there is any new news. After a few minutes a commercial came on about Nuclear Energy. It claimed for your children you need clean energy and nuclear fits this bill. I scratched my head and thought "What a crock of ......"

     Did they forget about nuclear waste? A nuclear power plant has to remove its by-products. As per Nuclear Energy Institute, they claim nuclear power plants produce:

     "Relatively small volume of high-level waste. The high-level waste actually produced, in the form of used fuel rods, on average totals less than 20 tons per nuclear plant annually."

     20 tons per plant annually? At first it might not sound too bad. However when you realize how long nuclear waste is dangerous, it seems a lot worse. Here is the Nuclear Energy Information Service explanation of nuclear waste:

     "it produces long-lived and dangerous radioactive wastes which must be kept out of the environment for hundreds to thousands of years, and at a great financial cost to society"

     Hundreds to thousands of years until it's safe? This really doesn't sound cleaner or safer. Does it seem cleaner or safer to you?

     So I tried to look a little deeper into this issue and noticed, nothing has really proven to be perfect. Every type of situation could have an accident. Now imagine the results of an accident with nuclear power plants. I did a search in Wikipedia, which stated this:

     "February, 2003 – Oak Ridge Tennessee Y-12 facility. During the final testing phase of a new salt less uranium processing method the test experienced a small explosion followed by a fire."

     If our military is having accidents, it makes me wonder how controllable is this type of energy? So I researched civilian nuclear accidents and found this:

     "June 29, 2005 – Forsmark, Sweden. Radioactive water leaked out into the Baltic Sea from the waste storage at Forsmark nuclear power plant."

     This was just the latest accident of the nine listed in the last 5 years. Then in my mind popped up the memory of Chernobyl. Here is a brief clip on what happened at Chernobyl from Yahoo Education site:

     "On Apr. 25, 1986, during an unauthorized test of one of the plant's four reactors, engineers initiated an uncontrolled chain reaction in the core of the reactor after disabling emergency backup systems. On Apr. 26, an explosion ripped the top off the containment building, expelling radioactive material into the atmosphere; more was released in the subsequent fire."

     If we increase our nuclear usage, accidents and waste will probably increase as well. Can you answer how this is safer for the public?

     While searching for positives about the nuclear energy I ran into this:

     "Nuclear-powered drone aircraft on drawing board....."

     ".....But the idea is bound to raise serious concerns about the wisdom of flying radioactive material in a combat aircraft. If shot down, for instance, would an anti-aircraft gunner in effect be detonating a dirty bomb?"

     I sure wouldn't want this plane to have an accident near me, would you?

     I then turned to the NASA channel available by sattelite TV. They were describing a space station which has a water tank. This is for oxygen so they can breath in this space station. The by-product is hydrogen, which they claim is expelled into space as waste. This technology obviously already exists! So I wonder, why don't we have cars and heaters running on hydrogen, made from water? If we had this technology available for all, then we all could take a deep breath and relax about our energy concerns. However, many companies might not agree.