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Nuclear Power Worldwide
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Fact: Nuclear weapons are no longer inextricably linked to nuclear power plants. Centrifuge technology now allows nations to enrich uranium without first constructing a nuclear reactor. The closed fuel cycle model outlined by the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership—in which stable democracies effectively lease nuclear fuel to participating countries and take it back once used—can help ensure enriched uranium is used for civilian purposes only. Over the past 20 years, one of the simplest tools—the machete—has been used to kill more than a million people in Africa, far more than were killed in the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear bombings combined. Yet no one suggests banning machetes, as they are valuable tools for farmers in developing countries. The only practical approach to the issue of nuclear weapons proliferation is to put it higher on the international agenda and to use diplomacy and, where necessary, force to prevent countries or terrorists from using nuclear materials for destructive ends. New technologies, such as the reprocessing system recently introduced in Japan (in which the plutonium is never separated from the uranium) can make it much more difficult to manufacture weapons using civilian materials.
Read Nuclear Re-Think by Patrick Moore

Myth 1: Nuclear energy is expensive
Fact: Nuclear energy is one of the least expensive energy sources. In 2004, the average cost of producing nuclear energy in the United States was less than two cents per kilowatt-hour, comparable with coal and hydroelectric. Advances in technology will bring the cost down even further in the future.
Myth 2: Nuclear plants are not safe
Fact: While Three Mile Island was a success story, the 1986 accident at Chernobyl was not. But Chernobyl was an accident waiting to happen. This early model of Soviet reactor had no containment vessel, was an inherently bad design and its operators literally blew it up. The multi-agency UN Chernobyl Forum reported last year that only 56 deaths could be directly attributed to the accident, most from radiation or burns suffered while fighting the fire. Tragic as those deaths were, they pale in comparison to the more than 5,000 deaths in coal mine accidents worldwide every year. Or the 1.2 million people who die in automobile accidents annually. No one has died of a radiation-related accident in the history of the US civilian nuclear reactor program. (Sadly, hundreds of uranium mine workers did die from radiation exposure underground in the early years of that industry. This was long ago corrected).
Myth 3: Nuclear waste will be dangerous for thousands of years
Fact: Within 40 years, used fuel has less than one-thousandth of the radioactivity it had when it was removed from the reactor. And it is incorrect to call it waste, because 95% of the potential energy is still contained in the used fuel after the first cycle. Now that the United States has removed the ban on recycling used fuel, it will be possible to use that energy and to greatly reduce the amount of waste that needs treatment and disposal. Last month, Japan joined France, Britain and Russia in the nuclear-fuel-recycling business.
Myth 4: Nuclear reactors are vulnerable to terrorist attack
Fact: The five-feet-thick reinforced concrete containment vessel protects the contents from the outside as well as the inside. And even if a jumbo jet did crash into a reactor and breach the containment, the reactor would not explode. There are many types of facilities that are far more vulnerable, including liquid natural gas plants, chemical plants and numerous political targets.
Nuclear Re-Think by Patrick Moore

In Ayat. Kashani: N-bomb production religiously forbidden
Full report in Nuclear Power Worldwide: Status and Outlook. A Report from the IAEA