If they are placed in remote areas and the people operating the facilities are in fact qualified and not rushed. Why not?

They require a lot of time and money to build, but what they cost initially they make up for in operation. They are almost the most efficient and require less resources to operate that any other power plant other than geothermal plants which are by far the most efficient overall, but are limited by geography. This is a good thing now that the price of fossil fuels are on the rise. We can run these plants at least until solar power is efficient enough to take up the load... but as of now, most solar panels are only around 10% efficient (though even now, there are some in production that can use 30% of the available energy radiated from the sun, but they are costly especially on large scales)

I'm sure the only arguments to this will involve melt-down (and fall-out), radiation leaks and the nuclear waste from the facilities, but if these plants are located far enough from any population and the people operating them are doing things by the books, there is no real need to worry about these things.

The usual radiation "leakage" is not hazardous to people's health, meltdowns are extremely rare, especially in well built facilities with qualified people maintaining them, and the waste can be sent into space for all I care, but I think there are a few ways of getting rid of the waste by more practical means and still be safe.

Yes, but not in my backyard. ;)

Currently we have an energy crisis looming, yet we haven't built any new power plants in who knows how long. Every time we try to build a power plant someone is offended and the whole project is put into jeopardy due to politics.

The people who build nuke plants are put in the situation of having to invest nearly decade into getting the permits and clearance needed to just break ground on a new plant. I believe that the permitting process needs to be cut down to where it takes less than two years (less than a year would be ideal) so that we can get some new plants online sometime this generation.

If we remove nuclear power from the table, the United States will be unable to become energy independent. Though environmentalists have protested nuclear energy for more than 30 years, its time for them to come around. Carbon emissions are enemy #1. However, there is no future for expanded nuclear without first addressing four key issues: public right-to-know, security of nuclear fuel and waste, waste storage, and proliferation.

sure but not in my bedroom

they stop us from polluting with gas.

lovi

Nuclear power is likely the cleanest source of power that we have today that will accomadate our growing energy needs. As of now, completely clean methods (completely clean ignoring their manufacturing processes) of power generation such as solar and wind turbines are not nearly constant, cost effective, or overall efficient enough to be implemented on the large scale we need. The burning of fossil fuels is definately going to be detrimental to the planet. There are some major concerns with this form of power however.

The first lies heavily on the publics tendancy to relate nuclear power with nuclear weapons. Nuclear reactors are not ticking nuclear bombs. Its actually the refining process that we should be concerned about. Basically uranium comes in two forms, one that is stable and the other is unstable and decays, giving off radiation. Natural uranium ore has only about 0.7% unstable uranium in it. It is in fact quite safe, people pick it up with their bare hands. There are technologies which use this naturally occuring 0.7% unstable uranium to produce power, such as most of the reactors in Canada. Some countries tend to refine the uranium, bringing its unstability up to around 4%. I believe that its these technologies we must worry about, as refining processes can be used to make weapons grade uranium. This is basically proliferation, and technologies must be adopted which dont allow this to happen.

Its also important to know that underground natural nuclear reactors were located all around the world, the largest know being in africa. These natural reactors shut off about 200 000 years ago. The areas where these reactors were located are not nuclear wastlands. Obviously the "waste" can be safely stored. The truth is however that we don't want to bury and forget about the waste. The technologies used now only use about 1% of the potential power of uranium. Technologies are being worked out that will hopefully be able to get the rest of the energy out. Waste may be considered fuel in the future, illiminating the need to mine and destroy ecosystems. I dont have any resources for this information off of the top of my head but if you google it youll find something.

we is as hard as nails and we should build more because we do want to lower the energy prices for the future

Of course we should, just the nuclear power plants is a remote location. Sure there are worried that a meltdowm might happen (Ex. Chernobyl) but that happened because the people working there were idiots and that nuclear plant was constructed poorly.

Another problem is the possibility of terrorist attacks. First of all, the nuclear fission material is not the same grade needed to make a bomb unless it's a dirty bomb but with enough security, those terrorists-want-to-be's will think twice before pulling a stint like that.

NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO! we shouldn't build more nuclear plants because we already have lots of them and we dont need more of them to kill us so NO NO NO NO NO!

Nuclear Power is the way to go. In France 90 percent of its power come from nuclear energy. It is safe and clean. I usually do not agree with the French, but they are right on this one.