Nuclear energy is clean and safe

Than I will start by refuting safety. While its true that a Nuclear power plant is not capable of exploding Like a Nuclear Weapon, a Core melt down is in many ways far worse. The Nuclear fuel of a power plant has Exponentially more fissile material than does a Nuclear bomb and rather than "blowing up" a Nuclear core Burns ... for a very very...very...very,very,very,very,very,very (etc.) Long time. As in, when Our sun begins its transformation into a read giant and scorches the earth-eventually burning it up in its corona, Cheynobl will still be melting down. Because of this the nuclear materials are released far slower and are released into the environment. The Most Infamous of which is Cesium-137 the principle element of contamination from nuclear disasters. But unlike the bomb which uses a relatively small amount of fissile material designed for a faster matter to energy conversion, A nuclear core once more has VASTLY more fissile material designed for more sustained energy release. Though the official death toll form Cheynobl was tallied at under 40 people, there are all sorts of reasons why that number is not credible. Unsafe levels radioactive material ( again most infamously Cesium 137) have been found 100's of miles beyond the exclusion zone in cheynobl even many years after many of the areas have been considered safe. Cases of birth defects and cancers of various sorts are still at obscene levels in the area around the cheynobl. It will likely be the same for Japan, Already cases of thyroid cancer following the 2011 Fukushima disaster are as high as 40 times above average by some counts, and despite the Government's attempt to cover it up. A large portion of Japan is no longer usable land. The stakes for a Nuclear disaster are much,much higher than just a Nuclear blast.The land that suffers a full scale melt down is land that can cannot be reclaimed. It will be unsafe for human and animal life for the rest of their worlds ability to sustain life.But the greatest risk of a failure is not from the primary core it self, Regulations in place make today's power providers have a number of fail safes and fail safe containment to prevent core melt downs ( but I Remind you, even if the chances of a Melt down are remote, the stakes of a Melt down are still extreme) the biggest risk instead comes from the hugely dangerous, far more vulnerable and far lesser regulated-Nuclear waste produced by today's Nuclear power plants in the form of spent Nuclear fuel rods. Containment breaches of these spent rods are liable to release equally large amounts of Nuclear contamination that gets into the environment for Decades, causing cancer,birth defects and more if the nuclear material can find its way into the water supply or food chain. While some of this spent fuel is sent off to be buried in the mid west, large amounts of it is parked on a lot outside of the Power plant, or stored in Spent Fuel pools. Again these facilities are grossly under regulated and do not poses the same fail safes to prevent breaches. Current U.S. Regulation :Does NOT require Spent fuel pools to have a secondary water pump. Does NOT require the fuel pools to have a secondary containment vessel.All in all, current Regulation requires no real fail safes to prevent disaster from the Spent fuel rods at all and the facilities that store these fuel rods are not anywhere near as defended against attack as is a active reactor. These facilities are used BECAUSE ITS CHEAP and if Fukushima has reinforced any lesson to us... its that when faced with the responsible,safe thing to do or saving a buck and cutting some corners.... The corporations that run these massively expensive operations... will chose to save the buck, every time. In the absence of strict regulation, Nuclear plant operators cannot be trusted to spend extra money on safety of their own accord, and they don't. In the realm of safety, Nuclear power plants are a gamble with dire consequences that extent far into the future should something go wrong. 23 reactors in the United states still use the vulnerable Ge.Mark I and Mk.II Boiling Water reactors. There is nothing truly safe about it. Nor is it clean when the Danger and permanence of the waste product is considered.