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FINALLY! Someone who understands the reality of the situation and backs it up with FACTS! If people weren't so terrified of nuclear energy by movies like Silk

FINALLY! Someone who understands the reality of the situation and backs it up with FACTS! If people weren't so terrified of nuclear energy by movies like Silkwood or TV shows like The Simpsons they might actually look past their own emotional hinderances and do some trivial comparisons, like, say, the extraction-to-power-generation death rates of nuclear energy versus coal and oil (not to mention air pollution) of the last 50 years and come to a simple conclusion: nuclear energy is perfectly safe if you do it right.

schoen 10y ago
One way to look at media like Silkwood is that one of the differences that lets nuclear power be safe in the U.S. even if it wasn't safe in the U.S.S.R. is a well-functioning nuclear regulatory, press, and legal system that lets people act on knowledge of problems and defects, and allows Feynman's hope that "reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled" to be better borne out in practice. These media strongly questioned those institutions based on stories of cases in which they seem to have failed. If operators of nuclear power plants manage to reduce the effectiveness and autonomy of the institutions that are working to guarantee safety, the situation gets more like the Soviet Union. One way of thinking about this is that the most useful lesson of the 1970s anxiety about the nuclear industry is less "nuclear power is dangerous!" and more "how effective and independent are our institutions, and how do we know?".
Dr_tldr 10y ago
So what do we do with the waste that takes 10,000+ years to become safe, given that the average corporation has a lifespan of less than a hundred years?
- ageofwant 10y ago
  Modern LFTR reactors produce almost no waste and low grade at that. Current stockpiles of nuclear "waste" are in fact immensely valuable resources as fuel stock to modern reactors.
- GunboatDiplomat 10y ago
  Burn the waste in breeder reactors.

schoen 10y ago

One way to look at media like Silkwood is that one of the differences that lets nuclear power be safe in the U.S. even if it wasn't safe in the U.S.S.R. is a well-functioning nuclear regulatory, press, and legal system that lets people act on knowledge of problems and defects, and allows Feynman's hope that "reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled" to be better borne out in practice. These media strongly questioned those institutions based on stories of cases in which they seem to have failed. If operators of nuclear power plants manage to reduce the effectiveness and autonomy of the institutions that are working to guarantee safety, the situation gets more like the Soviet Union. One way of thinking about this is that the most useful lesson of the 1970s anxiety about the nuclear industry is less "nuclear power is dangerous!" and more "how effective and independent are our institutions, and how do we know?".

Dr_tldr 10y ago

So what do we do with the waste that takes 10,000+ years to become safe, given that the average corporation has a lifespan of less than a hundred years?

ageofwant 10y ago
Modern LFTR reactors produce almost no waste and low grade at that. Current stockpiles of nuclear "waste" are in fact immensely valuable resources as fuel stock to modern reactors.
GunboatDiplomat 10y ago
Burn the waste in breeder reactors.