would you be willing to live within 25 miles of a nuclear power plant?

would you be willing to live within 25 miles of a nuclear power plant if it meant you no longer had to live near a large city? (milwaukee)

Yes.
No, I'd just stay in NY.  

Having been involved with Industrial Maintenance in the past, the answer to your question would be

No

and

No

"No need to worry about that Men, if we can keep availability above 95% for the quarter, I will get a bonus!"

  [img]http://www.stopstart.fsnet.co.uk/smilie/rolleyes2.gif[/img]

Ask the people who lived next to Chernobyl.

well, i currently live less than 10 miles from one, and used to live less than 2 from the same one.
i don't glow, at least i don't THINK i do. [whacko]

I have water skied right by Three Mile Island and I don't glow! [flame]

Seems safe from my house.

I live about 6 miles from a twin reactor plant,
and I used to be stationed at the fire station less than a mile down the road from it.
Every year my whole fire department attends mandatory training at the plant for possible emergency situations, concluding in a tour of the whole plant.

EVERY SYSTEM in the plant has redundant backups, they have at least 4 (that I know of) seperate cooling systems that are all capable of running the plant (and handling an emergency) by themselves.
They also have several ways to HALT the reaction with the fuel rods.
The fuel rods are suspended by electro-magnets, and can be "dropped" with a push of a button, and flooded with boron.

If a failure WERE to happen,...they have ALOT of time before they have to "vent off" radioactive steam.  
Which they would more than likely be able to avoid by using the MEGA gallons per minute cooling system to re-condense the steam.

ALSO...([i]as opposed to some people's belief[/i])...A power plant emergency will NEVER cause a nuclear explosion, it is a COMPLETELY different type of reaction, and fuel rods are not weapons grade material.

Chernobyl was a very different type of power plant than anything used in the U.S.
It had no containment building, and used a different cooling mechanism.
A coolant pressure explosion blew that plant open, sending radioactive material everywhere.

It would take quite a bit to cause anything of major concern to happen here.

Im more scared driving on the roads down here than I am living near the power plant

Yes.  American nuclear power plants are safer than Russkie ones by several orders of magnitude.  They are designed to be inherently safe.  Further, most are staffed by former USN nucs...who are the best trained and most careful operators in the world.

Chernyoble was a disaster of Biblical proportions for the Russkies.  It was also very predictable and inevitable, considering the unsafe design of the reactors there and the unsafe operating procedures implemented by the Sovs.

Three Mile Island was a system material failure, it was not a "meltdown" to the point that it released nuclear material into the environment.  It was a PR disaster by Jimmy Carter and the boobs in his administration, who just made matters worse.  China Syndrome movie was total BS too.

Totally safe?  No.  Any system designed by man can be wrecked by man either by mistake, negligence or criminally.  Are the reactors in our country safe enought to live near?  I believe so and would do so.

HELL NO!

If nuke plants are so safe, we need to mandate they be built in Washington DC and all company execs live next door.

Living in / near a large city is only marginally safer.  I HATE big cities - I don't even like small ones!