Nuclear Power is the most viable substitute from fossil fuels

Thank you for this interesting and invigorating debate. First of all I would like to thank you for posting the link to the chart. I was pretty confused but I am no longer confused, but this chart is irrelevant to my arguments as they are about diseases and afflictions that are caused by radiation and toxicity of the enrichment process to create energy. This matters very little this debate however because the numbers are completely unknown, so I will drop this argument. My opponent then continues to say "My opponent has yet to provide the real cost of digging a hole a couple miles deep and releasing many toxic materials as I have previously mentioned. " You mean like how you gave the real cost to creating a powerplant? We do not need to give exact numbers, reasonable comparisons can be made in exchange. Judges please base this off of logic and reasoning AS WELL AS persuasive evidence. My comparison is, of course, oil. Companies who obtain oil must dig holes to extract it. But in the world of my opponent, they won't get past digging the hole because of how expensive it is? That makes no sense to me. Every bit of energy we obtained must be prepared. For example, coal needs to be mined in a facility, oil needs to be drilled, nuclear energy needs to be fissioned in proper conditions, geothermal energy needs to be drilled. How is geothermal energy hole drilling any more expensive than oil hole drilling? Realistically, it is not. My opponent goes on to say "My opponent is suggesting that we just transport thousands of gallons of water to our desired 2 to 3 mile hole and allow it to turn into steam. " Yes exactly, just like how nuclear energy requires the transportation of 60,000 tons uranium (number from your evidence cited for the "chart") each year. How does this make either sources of energy any less viable? Just because we aren't getting spoon fed alternative energy sources means we cannot work hard to obtain it? That is utter nonsense. My opponent also says "As to my opponents second rebuttal, I am quite offended. I ask him to do his research first before making any rash statements. " No, you asked me a question where you and I both already knew the answer. Of course geothermal energy is not used 40% or more in other countries. It is a new science, we are still learning about how to make it better and more productive. I made a few comparisons to what you attempted to do with Lady Gaga, which you happened to slither right by. Judges take note of this because later on he makes the claim of hitting all of my arguments "head on" because that little line is all he said about it. He did not defend WHY energies should be judged on that scale, only that they should with no warrant for his claim, and when I call him out on his lack of warrants, he gets "offended. " He then continues his statement by saying "There is A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A CIVILIAN NUCLEAR PLANT AND A NUCLEAR BOMB. " This is a great example of him not hitting MY arguments head on. My argument is not the nuclear plants are similar to nuclear bombs. It is THE PROCESS of taking energy from uranium is EXTREMELY SIMILAR to the process that creates weapons grade plutonium. Other countries are given the right to plans of nuclear powerplants, but they are under constant watch by US forces exactly for the reason that the two processes are so similar. But lets go into a scenario. Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen decide to go to war with the United States. Uh oh, we already taught them how to make nuclear weapons, do you think that since there would be a war between us that they would respect our rights enough to not make nuclear weapons? Absolutely not. The risk of nuclear proliferation is greater than anything you can imagine. Communist Soviet Union actually wanted to maintain power and did not drop bombs on the US because they knew we would do the same thing. But how would an extremist country like Iran handle that situation. Amadimajhad is already trigger happy to drop bombs on our allies even without nuclear weapons. If we completely replaced nuclear energy with geothermal energy, the risk of nuclear proliferation is completely absent. My opponent goes on to speculate with "I believe there is a reason that countries do not use geothermal energy because it is neither cost effective nor can it produce energy en mass and enough to supply demand. Nuclear can. " Well, if I was going to speculate, I would say that the reason that we use nuclear instead of geothermal energy is for three reasons. 1) it is too new. not very many people realize its potential, proven by our debate. 2) nuclear energy produces weapons grade plutonium that our military can use. (therefore the GOV funds it. ) 3) The oil and coal industries have made it almost impossible to provide an alternative energy source with pure money (buying off country leaders, buying off politicians, muscling out small companies, everything needing energy relies on gas or oil. ) My opponent makes this funny statement next "Towards the end of the article, one can see that many countries that have nuclear power plants are not currently holders of nuclear weapons. I wonder why that is? ?" First of all, that is nuclear weapons that we know about. Secondly, only 7 countries are ALLOWED to carry nuclear weapons. If any country carries nuclear weapons that is not the US, France, Pakistan, Israel, Russia, India, or China, they would have to go through a process to be allowed to have them. Iran and Saudi Arabia do not tell us they have nuclear weapons because they know we will not allow it. And as to my statement that I made that confused my opponent, I agree it is confusing so let me clarify. What I meant was that if we used geothermal energy instead of nuclear energy, we could share this technology with the world without fearing WMDs, and if we did, our environment would become safer at a faster rate than with nuclear energy because our government will simply not allow most countries to build nuclear power plants. I am sorry for my grammatical mistake. To pull this whole debate together, I have proven that geothermal energy is just as viable and just as economical as nuclear energy, but can actually be shared with the world to benefit us as a whole and without supplying other countries with the means to make nuclear weapons. My opponent says he has hit my points head on, I still have yet to see him do that. Even if nuclear energy WAS cheaper, and I will never admit that it is, it is not worth that risk of nuclear proliferation which we are forced to fear right now because we do not have control of every country. The risks of having nuclear energy outweigh the benefits. Geothermal energy has the same benefits and little to no risks. In the world of the Pro, we live in a world with great alternative energy and the possibility for every country who uses nuclear power plants to make WMDs. In the world of the Con, the same exact thing, except it can never cause nuclear winter.