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Nuclear Power is Safest Way to Make Electricity

washingtonpost.com

11–20 of 262 posts

Re: Nuclear Power is Safest Way to Make Electricity

#11
post #3

Great. I can't drink milk, had to avoid water for a day or two, having problem finding relatively uncontaminated meat, 20 km or so of this country is probably going to be left unlivable and so on. I find it incredibly offensive to see the Americans on this board downplaying the damage from Fukushima. Mod me down all you want. I will be happy to pay attention when someone purchases land at a fair price near Fukushima…

You've drank milk and eaten meat contaminated by poisonous chemicals from coal power plants for your whole life. Not a single person has died yet from the Fukushima disaster, yet millions of people have died from ailments caused by coal power plants. Why is that kind of contamination just fine?

I find it incredibly offensive to see the Americans on this board downplaying the damage from Fukushima.

Perhaps we should first stop downplaying the damage from every single coal power plant in the world, particularly those in China and other developing nations with minimal pollution controls, where there are millions of people suffering from pollution-related illnesses?

Re: Nuclear Power is Safest Way to Make Electricity

#12
post #3

Great. I can't drink milk, had to avoid water for a day or two, having problem finding relatively uncontaminated meat, 20 km or so of this country is probably going to be left unlivable and so on. I find it incredibly offensive to see the Americans on this board downplaying the damage from Fukushima. Mod me down all you want. I will be happy to pay attention when someone purchases land at a fair price near Fukushima…

>I find it incredibly offensive to see the Americans on this board downplaying the damage from Fukushima.

I don't think anybody wanted to offend. People just learning what mSv is, and there is a lot of propaganda and brainwashing happening here and around the world. Big money at stake.

Re: Nuclear Power is Safest Way to Make Electricity

#13
post #3

Great. I can't drink milk, had to avoid water for a day or two, having problem finding relatively uncontaminated meat, 20 km or so of this country is probably going to be left unlivable and so on. I find it incredibly offensive to see the Americans on this board downplaying the damage from Fukushima. Mod me down all you want. I will be happy to pay attention when someone purchases land at a fair price near Fukushima…

Couldn't you give the same challenge to the area near a coal powerplant? And oh, our entire climate has been significantly soured by that.

Every power generation method we have significantly impacts the local environment, even geothermal and hydroelectric. There are a lot of accidents and environmental corruption stories every year, but one accident in a worst case scenario impacts you personally, and suddenly you're issuing edicts and saying hard facts are "handwaving" and "misinformation."

Great.

Re: Nuclear Power is Safest Way to Make Electricity

#14
post #3

Great. I can't drink milk, had to avoid water for a day or two, having problem finding relatively uncontaminated meat, 20 km or so of this country is probably going to be left unlivable and so on. I find it incredibly offensive to see the Americans on this board downplaying the damage from Fukushima. Mod me down all you want. I will be happy to pay attention when someone purchases land at a fair price near Fukushima…

1,000 upvotes.

Nuclear power is inherently UNSAFE. It takes a lot of hubris to claim otherwise. It harnesses intense fundamental forces of nature that we can never control without a small but inevitable risk of horrible damage and harm to unlucky populations. In controlling power of this magnitude, it is inevitable that there will be mistakes or freak events that allow this power to seep out of whatever is the latest in fundamental-forces-of-nature-containment technology. Coal plants may cause awful air pollution, but there is no chance of radioactively poisoning an entire city. There's a reason no coal power plant has ever been paid quite as much attention as Fukushima, isn't there?

Re: Nuclear Power is Safest Way to Make Electricity

#15
post #8
post #3

Great. I can't drink milk, had to avoid water for a day or two, having problem finding relatively uncontaminated meat, 20 km or so of this country is probably going to be left unlivable and so on. I find it incredibly offensive to see the Americans on this board downplaying the damage from Fukushima. Mod me down all you want. I will be happy to pay attention when someone purchases land at a fair price near Fukushima…

Nuclear power is cleaner than coal or oil. We just need to build stronger and safer reactors. Personally I'm glad OP posted this article. Fukushima was tragic, but it didn't give everyone the right to abandon rational thought. I used to work for a state pirg banging on doors to complain about nuclear power. Spreading fear by barking "3 mile island, chernobyl" etc. Then one day I knocked on the door of a nuclear physi…

Buy Fukushiman land. Raise your kids there. Feed them local produce. To thy own self be true.

I am not defending coal or solar or whatever. I am referring to the closed attitude of the nuclear industry. There is a huge problem with nuclear defenders in Japan who don't eat their own dogfood. You'd think they would be happy to do so since the reward is huge (improved confidence) and the risk is only 20 or more years down the line (if ever)

Re: Nuclear Power is Safest Way to Make Electricity

#16
I dont believe the numbers presented in this paper.

First as nuclear technology comes from military projects, there is a long history of hiding evidences and wrong informations.

2 examples in france:

- The nuclear lobby had regulation change, only for nuclear workers among all other workers, work related desease must be declare within 10 years.

- The most dangerous jobs are done by subcontractors and the work related deseases or death among those people are not counted as "nuclear industry related" in the official statistics.

Re: Nuclear Power is Safest Way to Make Electricity

#17
post #3

Great. I can't drink milk, had to avoid water for a day or two, having problem finding relatively uncontaminated meat, 20 km or so of this country is probably going to be left unlivable and so on. I find it incredibly offensive to see the Americans on this board downplaying the damage from Fukushima. Mod me down all you want. I will be happy to pay attention when someone purchases land at a fair price near Fukushima…

"20 km or so of this country is probably going to be left unlivable"

[citation requested] I haven't seen any hint of that. Is that from actual scientific reports based on sensible standards of "unlivable" (i.e., based in sensible risk analysis), or is it just based on unscientific worries?

And did you have a hard time finding "uncontaminated" meat because there was actually a shortage of meat that was scientifically unsafe to eat, or because there was a shortage of meat due to an overzealous safety organization that proactively condemned vast swathes of goods unnecessarily to look active and because people are just really scared? Because if the latter, this turns the argument circular; nuclear is dangerous because governments overreach and aggressively condemn things because nuclear is dangerous.

If you got actual sources, I'd love to hear about them, in all seriousness, and then I'd like to know why I didn't hear about 20 kms being rendered uninhabitable yet. But I'd like to see the citation first.

Re: Nuclear Power is Safest Way to Make Electricity

#18
post #3

Great. I can't drink milk, had to avoid water for a day or two, having problem finding relatively uncontaminated meat, 20 km or so of this country is probably going to be left unlivable and so on. I find it incredibly offensive to see the Americans on this board downplaying the damage from Fukushima. Mod me down all you want. I will be happy to pay attention when someone purchases land at a fair price near Fukushima…

1,000 upvotes. Nuclear power is inherently UNSAFE . It takes a lot of hubris to claim otherwise. It harnesses intense fundamental forces of nature that we can never control without a small but inevitable risk of horrible damage and harm to unlucky populations. In controlling power of this magnitude, it is inevitable that there will be mistakes or freak events that allow this power to seep out of whatever is the lates…

What is that reason, exactly? When Banqauio kills 171,000, Bhopal kills 10,000, and 30,000 people die every year from coal pollution, why exactly don't we give energy production methods like that the kind of scrutiny we're giving Fukushima?

Re: Nuclear Power is Safest Way to Make Electricity

#19
post #3

Great. I can't drink milk, had to avoid water for a day or two, having problem finding relatively uncontaminated meat, 20 km or so of this country is probably going to be left unlivable and so on. I find it incredibly offensive to see the Americans on this board downplaying the damage from Fukushima. Mod me down all you want. I will be happy to pay attention when someone purchases land at a fair price near Fukushima…

1,000 upvotes. Nuclear power is inherently UNSAFE . It takes a lot of hubris to claim otherwise. It harnesses intense fundamental forces of nature that we can never control without a small but inevitable risk of horrible damage and harm to unlucky populations. In controlling power of this magnitude, it is inevitable that there will be mistakes or freak events that allow this power to seep out of whatever is the lates…

> There's a reason no coal power plant has ever been paid quite as much attention as Fukushima, isn't there?

Yes. There is a reason: sensationalism.

Re: Nuclear Power is Safest Way to Make Electricity

#20
post #3

Great. I can't drink milk, had to avoid water for a day or two, having problem finding relatively uncontaminated meat, 20 km or so of this country is probably going to be left unlivable and so on. I find it incredibly offensive to see the Americans on this board downplaying the damage from Fukushima. Mod me down all you want. I will be happy to pay attention when someone purchases land at a fair price near Fukushima…

You've drank milk and eaten meat contaminated by poisonous chemicals from coal power plants for your whole life. Not a single person has died yet from the Fukushima disaster, yet millions of people have died from ailments caused by coal power plants. Why is that kind of contamination just fine? I find it incredibly offensive to see the Americans on this board downplaying the damage from Fukushima. Perhaps we should f…

why to promote that false dichotomy - either nuclear or coal. There are other options, better nuclear designs, natural gas, wind [ which is baseline type of energy if towers are high enough ], solar - we have so much desert on Earth, and start seriously develop nuclear fusion [ as its development has been practically stopped for the fear of proliferation ]
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