41–50 of 201 posts
It would be really, really nice if we lived in a world where people new nuclear power mostly just means heating water (like many methods of power generation…)
It's not fail safe.
If you think maintenance is expensive you should try an incident.
So, even though reactor prices seems to have tripled, cleanup costs seems to have no upper limit.
If you think maintenance is expensive you should try an incident.
Let's rule out Chernobyl and look at TMI and Fukushima. - Three Mile Island had cleanup costs of $1B (1982, so maybe $2-3B in todays money). - Cleanup costs after Fukushima seems to be about $500B+ So, even though reactor prices seems to have tripled, cleanup costs seems to have no upper limit.
Somehow we collectively forget/ignore that coal power releases many times the radioactivity of nuclear power, and that is just dumped directly into the air. The numbers are not directly apples to apples but absolutely lead to more life/health loss from fossil nuclear radiation contamination than fission nuclear radiation contamination. E.g: https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/... https://www.s…
A comment from the author I found interesting (with some minor edits, mainly for spelling): > "All the evacuations at Fukushima were unnecessary, and in the case of the frail [or] elderly murderously so. If there had been no evacuations, few members of the public would have received more than 1 mSv/day peak and some 1600 lives would have been saved, and some 100,000 less lives sadly disrupted. Even the EPA now counse…
Those statements (not yours) are quite surprising, and seem falsifiable. Anyone have the expertise to judge whether the factual claims are true?
I never understand why the "man in the street" with their zero knowledge will decide if which type of power plant is safe/sustainable/economical. Imagine if they would be also allowed to tell your car mechanical what is wrong and how to fix that.
Democracy. Sounds banal, but it's all we got. Nuclear triggers some primal fear. The safety regulations have become table stakes, unfortunately.
Rightfully so.
There's a lot to be said for a big, strong containment vessel. That's why the Three Mile Island meltdown was an expensive accident but didn't injure anyone. Maybe if the industry just got better at big, strong containment vessels cheaply...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>that can kill millions Did the inverse square law stop working recently or do they all take turns touching it?
Do you need to take turns touching it for it to be mishandled, stolen, have some accident during transport, leak in the biosphere, the soil, rivers, or underground waters, spread as air particles, be used in a dirt bomb, and several other ways besides?