81–90 of 679 posts
Apart from the waste. We really don't know what to do about it other than bury it and leave it for a few tens to hundreds of generations in the future to deal with with the hope that they will know what to do. So it's the safest option. But only for now. We might just be dooming our descendants to deal with the mess and they might be in a worse state than we are now.
We should shoot the waste into to sun.
The brain is not designed to understand statistics. Nuclear accidents are theatrical and fun, and therefore get a lot of play on the media when they happen. Look no further than the media circus surrounding Fukushima to confirm. Everybody is scared to death of Sharks, yet sharks killed only 1 person in the US last year. Cows killed 20, 75% of which were deliberate attacks, but almost no one is afraid of a Cow. Meanwh…
I really think you're just spitting out numbers. Where are you getting these numbers? Particularly the cow one (deliberate killings only). Generally intrigued. > yet people jump in cars like it's routine. It is routine. Time spent driving is much, much, much higher than time spent swimming near sharks. So... My brain understands that if I refused to go skydiving, then I can not die from a skydiving accident. Which is…
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/06/0613_050613_... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fatal,_unprovoked_shar...
Also, closer to 30k+ traffic fatalities (last reported year is 2015, so far it seems) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_i...
Still can't find cow numbers.
Apart from the waste. We really don't know what to do about it other than bury it and leave it for a few tens to hundreds of generations in the future to deal with with the hope that they will know what to do. So it's the safest option. But only for now. We might just be dooming our descendants to deal with the mess and they might be in a worse state than we are now.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor
Hell Thorium-based reactors could theoretically generate the same energy while being much safer and producing orders of magnitude less waste. But as of yet support for actually building one has been tepid at best. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based_nuclear_power
The issue is nuclear energy is so risky that only nation-states are willing to underwrite the creation of plants. As a result regulations on plant design tend to be extremely conservative, so innovation is brought to a crawl. On top of that the origins of nuclear energy is weapons research, the waste was the original objective. So the most proven model of reactor is the one that produces the most waste. Put the two together and we're left with the simplest, least efficient design: light-water reactors.
Nuclear can be viable, but the government will have to grow some balls and take some extra risk. We could really use another Musk or Bezos to take on Nuclear Power the same way the former two are taking on space.
My understanding, which is admittedly drawn from HN "napkin math" , is that at current prices for solar and wind, nuclear is a non-starter. That trend is only intensifying. It seems to me that nuclear could have been a good option, but because we've neglected it for so long, squashed innovation with regulations (not necessarily complaining that it didn't need the regulations!) it is uncompetitive economically and wil…
Chernobyl and Fukushima's fuck-up is still to this day not completely resolved.
Let's focus in solar/wind for our peace's sake
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why do you think it's not meaningful? What would be the alternative?
Here are a few measurable statictics that Nuclear would win hands down: * Square miles of uninhabitable land produced/tWh * Fishing industries destroyed/tWh * Agricultural land destroyed/tWh * Peoples displaced/tWh * Lethal toxic waste produced/tWh * Clean up cost/tWh
This is of course excluding coal, which I'm 92% sure makes even hydroelectric (let alone nuclear) look like a peaceful meadow full of fairies and butterflies by comparison.
Apart from the waste. We really don't know what to do about it other than bury it and leave it for a few tens to hundreds of generations in the future to deal with with the hope that they will know what to do. So it's the safest option. But only for now. We might just be dooming our descendants to deal with the mess and they might be in a worse state than we are now.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong.
The most egregious example is Chernobyl, where the official Soviet position was that only a single person died from the disaster. But studies from other nations say the death toll may be close to one million. Well believe it or not a lot of these studies that show how safe nuclear is actually take the official Soviet data about chernobyl as truth. (I am not sure whether this is the case for this particular study because their source is behind a paywall).
But similar (if not as outrageous) lies have also been said about accidents in the west. The official story about three mile island for example is that it caused no deaths, yet studies find drastic increases of all kinds of cancers in the affected area. See, for example, https://www.counterpunch.org/2015/03/27/cancer-and-infant-mo...
I usually believe that we should be guided by science and data in our public decisions, but the data surrounding nuclear is so distorted by governments that it is just not to be trusted. And now that we have truly safe alternatives like solar and wind, we can finally put that nightmare behind us.
The brain is not designed to understand statistics. Nuclear accidents are theatrical and fun, and therefore get a lot of play on the media when they happen. Look no further than the media circus surrounding Fukushima to confirm. Everybody is scared to death of Sharks, yet sharks killed only 1 person in the US last year. Cows killed 20, 75% of which were deliberate attacks, but almost no one is afraid of a Cow. Meanwh…
People don't handle statistics well, but statistics are also easily manipulated and therefore potentially completely unreliable (Mark Twain quote here). It's not quite as simple as "people need to listen to the statistics".
Also, people go to the beach way less often than they go near roads. If most people only go to the beach 1 day a year and go on roads every day, then it's more like "you're 50x more likely to die by car than by shark". That's a far cry from 17000x.
That said, I've always thought that stat could be abused to push car safety - "Imagine you're attacked by a shark - now, cars are like that but TIMES FIFTY! Drive safe, look both ways, etc".