ODT: The U.S. should increase its nuclear energy development.

C1: Nuclear Power Plants have a risk of High Environmental and Societal Damage [1][2] My opponent essentially argues that accidents happen which harm the environment and society with nuclear energy. Twith this analysis is that its comparatively non-unique to other forms of energy especially oil and fails to take into account technological advances. I don’t need to remind everyone about the BP oil spill in the gulf and various other oil disasters. Just because a risk exists does not mean one should not pursue the beneficial goal nor try and minimize the risks. Weinburg in, Social Institutions and Nuclear Energy, points out that the disasters of nuclear energy (1) are rare in comparison to other energy disasters, there has really been only 3 disasters in the whole history of nuclear energy but more importantly (2) those disasters would most likely not occur in the United States due to immense safety precautions, oversight that would exist and technological advances in safety measures. Moore, a founding member of Greenpeace writes: "The multi-agency U.N. Chernobyl Forum reported last year that 56 deaths could be directly attributed to the accident, most of those from radiation or burns suffered while fighting the fire. Tragic as those deaths were, they pale in comparison to the more than 5,000 coal-mining deaths that occur worldwide every year." Thus, comparatively nuclear energy is much safer and my advocacy would eventually lead to a mass decrease in the need for coal and oil since there would be a reduction in demand. As such, nuclear energy’s minor risks subsume the higher risked fossil fuel ventures. C2: Nuclear Power Plants are Uneconomical [3] My opponent makes a few errors in his economic analysis: First, my opponent is solely looking at costs and not gains. From the analysis I provided on France above, it demonstrates that the economic benefits very much outweigh the costs. The majority of costs are in the beginning stages of development, which is a non-issue since one wouldn’t build a nuclear facility unless has the funds to do it, and at decommissioning which as the evidence indicates is subsumed by the capital gained when exporting energy from the nuclear facility. The WNA study, “In assessing the economics of nuclear power, decommissioning and waste disposal costs are fully taken into account… they [decommissioning and waste] contribute only a few percent to the investment cost and even less to the generation cost. In the USA they account for 0.1-0.2 cent/kWh, which is no more than 5% of the cost of the electricity produced. The study concludes that when analyzing all the major countries which use nuclear energy the economic benefits of exporting nuclear energy has both the economic effect of cheap and abundant energy, but also an economically sustainable alternative to fossil fuels. The company in the majority of cases always are economically green (the company subsumes the initial costs). The study also indicates that there are plenty of opportunities for tax assistance and private assistance in the nuclear energy field which helps bring down the initial investment cost. Second, it is good for the economy because as my opponent indicates it will hire people and other companies for the building and maintenance of the facility. This isn’t a bad thing as my opponent tries to indicate. If he believes this is a bad thing he must provide the appropriate analysis, which he has not done. Third, his analysis of uranium is false. The evidence indicates that uranium is actually abundant and relatively cheap in comparison to other fuel sources. C3: No Fossil Fuel Independence [4] My opponent argues that even with nuclear energy we would still need to use fossil fuels for power, transportation etc. The problem with this argument is that it mistakes a huge reduction in the use of fossil fuels, with a utopian unconditional independence from fossil fuels. Under my opponent’s advocacy there will be zero action taken to make us independent, but under my advocacy we are at least doing something to reduce our dependence. And, from an environmental standpoint nuclear makes all the difference. Schultz writes, “Roughly 700 million metric tons of CO2 emissions are avoided each year in the United States by generating electricity from nuclear power rather than some other source. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, that is nearly equivalent to the CO2 released from all U.S. passenger ­cars.” 90% of our power is taken from fossil fuels, the 5% produced from nuclear already equalizes that of all cars in the U.S.; under this comparison no matter what fossil fuels are needed to initially start the process, having the U.S. increase its production from 5 to say 20%, 30% or 40% the amount of environmentally deadly fumes and C02 would be reduced outweighs the initial amount by an inconceivable number. Moreover, my opponents claim that solar and wind are better is completely false. His argument negates this claim: to build wind and solar energy devices transportation and initial building would still use fossil fuels. The importance is that both systems inevitably reduce the overall need for fossil fuels. Source Critique My opponent foresaw my objection to his use of Wikipedia. It is ok to use Wikipedia one or two times to reference statistics or such but using Wikipedia as your only source is absurd. Wikipedia is unreliable due to user interpretation of the texts and essays and worse even manipulation of the arguments in the texts. I won’t object to Wikipedia on the argumentation level, though I ask the readers to highly evaluate using just Wikipedia as a misuse of a source. [1] Weinburg. Social Institutions and Nuclear Energy. [2] Moore. Going Nuclear, a Green makes a Case. [3] http://www.world-nuclear.org... [4] http://www.wilsonquarterly.com...