Atomic Power is:

• Safe enough to power floating cities with more than 5,000 people living within 1000 feet of the plant.
  (The US owns and operates ten of these floating cities. We call them nuclear powered aircraft carriers.)
• Clean enough to operate inside sealed submarines.
• Cheap enough to provide overnight power for about 1.5 cents per kilowatt hour.
• Competitive enough to make suppliers of all other energy sources very nervo
  

Why nuclear power?

The current largest sources of energy are the combustion of coal, oil and natural gas, but they will probably run out or become harmful in tens to hundreds of years. Solar energy will also work but is not much developed yet except for special applications because of its high cost. Compare to it, nuclear energy is likely to remain cheaper. A major advantage of nuclear energy is that it doesn't put carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere. How much of an advantage depends on how bad the CO2 problem turns out to be.

In 1993 there were 109 licensed power reactors in the U.S. and about 400 in the world. They generate about 20 percent of the U.S. electricity. For how long will nuclear power be available? Present reactors are very likely good for some hundreds of years.

What about nuclear waste?
After the fuel has been in the reactor for about 18 months, much of the uranium has already fissioned and a considerable quantity of fission products have built up in the fuel. The reactor is then refueled by replacing about 1/3 of the fuel rods. This generally takes one or two months. {2002 note: Entergy Nuclear, an enthusiastic buyer and operator of American nuclear power plants has been reducing this time for their plants. They refueled their River Bend plant in Louisiana in 17 days and expect to reduce their average refueling outage time to two-three weeks.] Canadian CANDU reactors replace fuel continuously.

Can a nuclear plant blow up like a bomb?
No. A bomb converts a large part of its U-235 or plutonium into fission fragments in about 10^-8 seconds and then flies apart. This depends on the fact that a bomb is a very compact object, so the neutrons don't have far to go to hit another fissionable atom. A power plant is much too big to convert an important part of its fissionable material before it has generated enough heat to fly apart. This fact is based on the fundamental physics of how fast fission neutrons travel. Therefore, it doesn't depend on the particular design of the plant.

Can a nuclear plant blow up to a lesser extent?
Yes, if it is sufficiently badly designed and operated. The Chernobyl plant reached 150 times its normal power level before its water turned to high pressure steam and blew the plant apart, thus extinguishing the nuclear reaction. This only took a few seconds.

How much of a disaster is that?
In terms of immediate deaths it was a rather small disaster. 31 people died. Cave-ins in coal mines often kill hundreds.  However, about 20 square miles of land became uninhabitable for a long time. This isn't a lot. Fall-out from the Chernobyl explosion will contribute an increase to the incidence of cancer all over Europe. How much of an increase is disputed. Since the increase will be very small in proportion to the amount of cancer, we probably won't know from experience.
The largest estimates are in the low thousands which would make Chernobyl a disaster comparable to the Bhopal chemical plant or the Texas City explosion of a shipload of ammonium nitrate or the Halifax disaster during World War I. On the other hand these large estimates are small compared to the number who have died in each of several recent large earthquakes in countries using stone or adobe or sod houses. It is comparable to the number killed in coal mining accidents in the Soviet Union over the years Chernobyl was operating.

Are nuclear power plants perfectly safe?
No. Nothing is perfectly safe, but they are safe enough to be relied upon as a source of energy.

What about nuclear waste?
The waste consists of the fission products. They are highly radioactive at first, but the most radioactive isotopes decay the fastest. (That's what being most radioactive amounts to). About one cubic meter of waste per year is generated by a power plant. It needs to be kept away from people. After 10 years, the fission products are 1,000 times less radioactive, and after 500 years, the fission products will be less radioactive than the uranium ore they are originally derived from.

Are the reserves of uranium adequate for the long term?
At present, the reserves of uranium that can be profitably sold at at $50 per pound are enough for at least a hundred years. Since the cost of uranium ore is only 0.04 cents per kilowatt-hour, at the 2001 price of $9 per pound, even large increases in ore cost are affordable without increasing the cost of nuclear generated electricity significantly. At somewhat larger prices than uranium now costs it can be extracted from the sea. Thorium, which is three times as abundant as uranium can also be used in reactors.

What is likely to happen with nuclear energy?
The countries that need it the most will continue to use it. France gets 77 percent of its electricity from nuclear reactors, the rest being hydroelectric. Japan is close to 30 percent and increasing steadily. Japan has little domestic coal and no oil.