81–90 of 190 posts
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disa... reminds us that nuclear kills much less than regular earthquakes, car accidents, or air pollution due to the burning of fossil fuels...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A number of Russian middle class volunteers who fought in Donbass war treated it as kind of similar experience - an adventurous game/vacation, a "noble quest to defend 'Russian world' from dark forces of fascism and imperialism".
Is there an evidence of that? We could open a case for these war crimes.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m not worried about how many people nuclear power kills every year. I’m worried about how many people it kills every hundred years. A major nuclear disaster, however unlikely, has the potential to kill millions of people and leave a big portion of the Earth uninhabitable for centuries. Just because we haven’t seen one on that scale yet, doesn’t mean we never will.
Ok, let's do a Fermi-like estimation. Estimates on the number of deaths related to coal generation vary from around 13,00 to 30,000 per year in the US [1] and 500,000 per year in China [2]. The current world population is 7.6 billion, of which the US and China account for approximately 1.8 billion people. Let's round the coal-related death rate way down for easy math: 10,000 per year in the US and 100,000 per year in…
Even ignoring renewables, gas solves many of the worst problems with coal.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disa... reminds us that nuclear kills much less than regular earthquakes, car accidents, or air pollution due to the burning of fossil fuels...
I’m not worried about how many people nuclear power kills every year. I’m worried about how many people it kills every hundred years. A major nuclear disaster, however unlikely, has the potential to kill millions of people and leave a big portion of the Earth uninhabitable for centuries. Just because we haven’t seen one on that scale yet, doesn’t mean we never will.
This is where probabilities bite us. If the probability is small enough then the expected death toll will drop to almost zero which merits little worry, despite how horrific said event mightt be. It sounds like you're doing the natural, intuitive thing of picturing a very scary scenerio and then wanting to avoid said scenerio at all costs.
The problem is, while you're busy avoiding some almost-zero probability event, you're also nuking your ability to mitigate events with actual high expected deaths and loses.
Fossil fuels already kill on the order of millions per century [citation needed], so if you think nuclear power does the same, it means we should expect several Chernobyl level events in the next few decades. Are you sure your probabilities are well-calibrated here?
Also, some of the rough skimming I've done has me believing that cycles without possibility of medown can be built, cf. liquid salt reactors. IIRC, some of these even have really nice waste profiles with the worst stuff only having half lives in the decades and very low volume at that [citation badly needed].
Anyway, fear of nuclear power reads to me like a fear of planes over cars. Chernobyl and Fukushima were single, isolated events making them visible and viscerally scary like plane crashes. Fossil fuels, on the other hand, pick us off one by one, relentlessly, but never so loudly as to evoke that gut-level fear.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ok, let's do a Fermi-like estimation. Estimates on the number of deaths related to coal generation vary from around 13,00 to 30,000 per year in the US [1] and 500,000 per year in China [2]. The current world population is 7.6 billion, of which the US and China account for approximately 1.8 billion people. Let's round the coal-related death rate way down for easy math: 10,000 per year in the US and 100,000 per year in…
There are very few people who are anti-nuclear power who are pro-coal. Even ignoring renewables, gas solves many of the worst problems with coal.
In a world in which we must choose the lesser of evils for energy, nuclear is among the least evils, yet faces the greatest overall public resistance to new installations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disa... reminds us that nuclear kills much less than regular earthquakes, car accidents, or air pollution due to the burning of fossil fuels...
Most radiation kills are due to slow secondary effects, so it's relatively easy to get out of the way. I don't think anyone really argues that if people would move back before deconamination they would all be fine. Just for reference, the number of people worldwide who died due to contamination from atmospheric atom bomb testing is estimated to be 430 000 by the end of last century: "Radioactive Heaven and Earth, The…
> "... exotic space particles called muons " welph, that's my eyes rolling right out of my head. I mean really, "space particles"! The might as well call all metals "supernova remnants" -_-
Would you prefer for them to be referred to them as "Cosmic Rays" :) ? To be honest, "Space Particles" sounds less silly and more descriptive. It also emphasizes that they're not generating the muons themselves, but collecting them from space. EDIT: Though I guess, now that I think of it, it's a bit unfair to refer to muons as 'exotic'. People will typically encounter thousands of them in a day [1]. [1] http://cosmic…