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Earlier quoted context omitted.
> very outdated information no rush on that -- we have another 21,000 years of half-life to talk about it, right?
Outdated information is quite relevant for nuclear power plants. Fukushima was older than Chernobyl. Every time someone tells me how safe modern power plants are I think "great, now get rid of all the old ones".
And burn some more coal in the meantime.
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Being the front line of the Cold War, while both the US and USSR developed battle plans for where nuclear weapons would be detonated in your country during a war, probably lends shades to the debate that aren't present in other countries. (Yes, nuclear power / nuclear weapons, but in the 70s that wasn't a clear distinction)
They were close enough (and downwind-enough) to experience direct effects from Chernobyl, no? Destroying contaminated produce, taking iodine pills as a precaution, that sort of thing, and, I'd guess, worries, for a time, about much worse consequences before the emergency was contained.
Biggest issue with older nuclear plants is the material degradation as a consequence of radiation, after a some decades of constant irradiation steel can become as brittle as glass, which is not only not reversible, but it also means that the actual rebar and concrete surrounding the core becomes damaged and the only way to replace that is to rebuild the whole core I am rather against setting up new reactors, given t…
He also has a great Substack where he writes on a variety of topics, including nuclear power. He just wrote an article titled "Nations Go Nuclear As Prices Spike & Renewables Fail" that is timely: https://michaelshellenberger.substack.com/p/nations-go-nucle...
Here is an English translation: https://cleanenergyrevolution.org/publications
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> very outdated information no rush on that -- we have another 21,000 years of half-life to talk about it, right?
Outdated information is quite relevant for nuclear power plants. Fukushima was older than Chernobyl. Every time someone tells me how safe modern power plants are I think "great, now get rid of all the old ones".
So instead of building new, safer power plants that will actually help us fight climate change, many places are still running old power plants as they can't afford to shut them down. There are still RMBK (Chernobyl-like) plants running today!
Mind you, Fukushima was not the only power plant that was subject to an earthquake and a tsunami. All others safely shutdown. Actually Fukushima shutdown too - and would have survived if not by the tsunami and some braindead decisions. Fukushima is like a Ford Model T that's thrown into a highway accident. It should have been replaced way before the accident.
Germany should be leading the effort here. Maybe they could take a page from France.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> very outdated information no rush on that -- we have another 21,000 years of half-life to talk about it, right?
Outdated information is quite relevant for nuclear power plants. Fukushima was older than Chernobyl. Every time someone tells me how safe modern power plants are I think "great, now get rid of all the old ones".
I'm a US expat living in Germany, and boy is the anti-nuclear sentiment real here. There have even been fights - physical altercations - between Green Party members at rallies for having differing viewpoints about nuclear. Unfortunately, it seems those who are against are working with very outdated information and 'tropes' w.r.t. nuclear safety and whatnot. Quite unfortunate.
Biggest issue with older nuclear plants is the material degradation as a consequence of radiation, after a some decades of constant irradiation steel can become as brittle as glass, which is not only not reversible, but it also means that the actual rebar and concrete surrounding the core becomes damaged and the only way to replace that is to rebuild the whole core I am rather against setting up new reactors, given t…
Safety concerns are moot when the coal alternative will kill orders of magnitude more people.
Perhaps this story is a tiny glimmer of hope that one day it won't be possible to get away with that cop out. We've wasted a lot of decades just to get this far though.
I'm a US expat living in Germany, and boy is the anti-nuclear sentiment real here. There have even been fights - physical altercations - between Green Party members at rallies for having differing viewpoints about nuclear. Unfortunately, it seems those who are against are working with very outdated information and 'tropes' w.r.t. nuclear safety and whatnot. Quite unfortunate.