Senators Want Safety Review of U.S. Nuclear Power Plants

Here's a safety review. If we have earthquakes the size of the ones that hit Japan, we are in the same danger. Duh.

I'm more concerned with the disposition of all the nuclear waste from all those facilities. I wish we could park it all in an orbit opposite from earth. In a few million years when our sun starts to die they could push it into the sun to jump start it.

Yes, let's ignore the budget crisis and start a study to determine how many of our nuclear plants are located in Tsunami zones.

The 40+ y.o. plants have old technology that will be updated.There has to be a way to shut down the reaction in a reasonably short time,isolate the fuel rods,and address any safety issues.New plants obviously shouldn't be built within 5 miles of oceans,near earthquake faults,and avoid highly populated areas.We will learn alot from Japans misfortunes and correct the mistakes.Nuke plants can be made extremely safe.

The News Hour reported that many of our nuclear plants were built to perform for 40 years and they are past that point, as well as running at 120% capacity. I think a review is in order. The EPA is also addressing the mercury in our air and water that contributes to cancer created from burning coal. Again - the gop took away any power the EPA had when Bush took office so corporations could make record profits and not update their plants. Just before Bush took office the EPA and the electric companies in Florida worked together for them to update a plant and the ceo of the electric company admitted that it was a win win situation. But when the epa tried to work with other electric plants for updating - their authority was removed by the Bush administration. So now ten years later, we are still trying to address this.

THere is so much to be addressed and cleaned up after Bush's and the gop's less govt policies for the last decade. In 2004 gop legislation exempted halliburton from all clean water acts that have to do with natural gas infraction and the use of chemicals that are polluting wells and waterways in PA and elsewhere. So who do you think is left paying for cleanup? The taxpayers while halliburton walks away with record profits. I wish legislation could be passed that only gop supporters taxes were used for this stuff instead of everyones taxes.

Will someone explain to me why, if nuclear power plants are such a good deal, does the US government have to step in and subsidies them and give loan guarantees in order for them to be built.
Why are taxpayers being asked to fund a private profit making enterprise.
If taxpayer money is going to build these plants, shouldn't taxpayers get to vote on the level of safety, the operation of the plant, it's placement, what kind of backup system is being installed, the level of earthquake and terrorist resistance?
The bigger question: if nuclear power depends on the welfare of the taxpayers shouldn't we be looking at cutting our support for them in these tough economic times.
If we have to spend 3-5 billion dollars on one nuclear plant maybe we should put it alongside education, infrastructure, and all the other things getting cut and see which ones the voters really want to invest in

I'll just use this analogy, say that once in every 100,000 times when you turn on a light switch, you know you will be electrocuted, do you still gamble and switch it on? My point being, though problems with nuclear reactors are not common, they still occur; and often enough that at least three major disasters have happened in my life time. I think we need to think long and hard about how many of these facilities we want in our country. Something that we can't predict always eventually happens. Why not look more seriously at solar and wind energy, for example?

We should check them out to be sure they are as safe as possible.