America should expand nuclear energy production.

He is the best opponent that I have faced. I will defend my case and then attack his. Argument 1: My opponent says that France as an example does notwork due to America having more resources and the three mile island incident. We import almost half of our oil. I would not call this "abundant natural reserves". The three mile island incident was due to lack of proper training and nobody was even harmed in the incident. [1] France still is a valid example that we can base our code and nuclear progress from. France also has some of the lowest electricity costs of any country. [4] Argument 2: He says that natural disasters are reasons to stop the expansion of nuclear energy. [2] The largest storm and a storm that is breaking records cannot breach the nuclear safe wall. My opponent says that the storms will continue to grow because of global warming. This will be true only if we do not grow out nuclear energy production. The Japanese did not defend against the design flaw. [3] They did not. It is not the same as the one in America. The advanced reactors, the ones we would be building, stayed up and shut down safely. The argument about cost:[5] "20 percent of U. S. electricity comes from 104 nuclear reactors on about 100 square miles. " This also can have something to do with cost. The cost of land. [4]" Producing the same amount of power from wind would require covering an area the size of West Virginia with 183,000 50-story turbines as well as building 19,000 miles of new transmission lines through scenic areas and suburban backyards"while building a nuclear plant does require money to build the payoff is very worth it. We will have more land to work with and instead of buying we could sell or do something worthwhile off of. Nuclear is the cheapest when it is already established. "nuclear plant built in the near future to cost around "70 per megawatt hour over its lifetime. The figure for gas would be "95/MWh, for coal it would be "130/MWh and for wind the cost is even higher, around "145/MWh" [4]Nuclear is worth it. Safety concerns: Chernobyl was a completely different type of reactor than American reactors. The American reactors are the 5 that did not break down during fukoshima and did not break down during the record breaking storm Sandy. My opponent also acts like the BP oil spill did not happen. The Alaskan oil spill and this is just in the past few years while my opponent is going back to 40 years ago. The point is that to act like nuclear energy is the only source of energy to have problems is not true. Solar, wind, and geothermal simply cost way too much. Natural gas is just far too risky. [6] The waste issue that my opponent asks me to address. "And thanks to technology, we can safely recycle "nuclear waste" and turn most of it into more fuel. After recycling, the French are able to store all of their final waste"from producing 80 percent of their electricity for 30 years"in one room in La Hague. " The problem is one of the past. 30 years of production and the largest problem is still in only one room. I would call that more efficient than all the carbon dioxide in the air as of right now. [4] [1]. http://www.world-nuclear.org... [2]. http://boston.cbslocal.com... [3]. http://online.wsj.com... [4]. http://www.usnews.com... [5]. http://www.urenco.com... [6]. http://tech.fortune.cnn.com...