Dangers+of+Nuclear+Science

=Problems with Nuclear Power Plants:= More information can be found [|here].
 * Mining and purifying uranium has not, historically, been a very clean process.
 * Improperly functioning nuclear power plants can create big problems. The Chernobyl disaster is a good recent example. Chernobyl was poorly designed and improperly operated, but it dramatically shows the worst-case scenario. Chernobyl scattered tons of radioactive dust into the atmosphere.
 * Spent fuel from nuclear power plants is toxic for centuries, and, as yet, there is no safe, permanent storage facility for it.
 * Transporting nuclear fuel to and from plants poses some risk, although to date, the safety record in the United States has been good.

=Dangers of Nuclear Power Plants:=
 * The power plants offer a prime target for terrorists. We obviously can't live our lives in fear over another attack, but these nuclear plants are just begging terrorists to come in and blow them up! We don't specifically need nuclear plants, so why tantalize terrorists with targets that we don't really need to have in the first place?

Storage of nuclear waste:

 * 99% of radiation comes from the nuclear fuel rods, which, when they are no longer useful, currently have no safe storage place. This means that the radioactive fuel rods are currently in an unsafe temporary storage area, and may never have a permanent storage area to go to.
 * Some options are: to bury the rods underground, bury them deep in the oceans, or shoot them into space. The obvious problems are: when underground and in the ocean, the containers could rupture and contaminate the environment, and to shoot them into space could cause unknown problems, with how the space environment would react to high doses of radiation. Also, mankind is ever-reaching for the heavens, so to ruin in before we even truly explore it would be an extreme folly.
 * Currently, the government is looking to bury waste in the Yucca Mountains of Nevada. The people living there are opposed to the idea, because the scientists can't guarantee that some radioactive waste won't leak into the surrounding area.