4 ms·
What do you propose then? Its obvious that any kind of human activity will produce some kind of alteration to the surrounding environment. Kill the whole plan
by leojg 10y ago
What do you propose then?
Its obvious that any kind of human activity will produce some kind of alteration to the surrounding environment.
Kill the whole planet with greenhouse gases or kill a small and already almost sterile area?
- wstrange 10y agoI think the OP would lean towards small scale reactors which have a minimal footprint. Measured by fatalities per k/W generated, nuclear is by far the safest form of power. The fear of nuclear is irrational.
- toomuchtodo 10y agoThe fear is irrational, but so is the cost. Nuclear always comes in over budget and with far greater construction delays than any other generation type. Even if you were to start on new reactors today, it would take a decade to complete them; a whole lot of wind and solar are going to be deployed in a decade.
- wstrange 10y agoI'd submit that those cost overruns are driven in part by the irrational fear. It has made it politically difficult to research and deploy safer and more cost-effective reactors.
- beat 10y ago"Fatalities per kw" is terrible risk management. I really wish nuclear activists would stop making crappy arguments. Risk analysis has two axis - likelihood, and impact. The maximum potential impact of solar/wind plant failure is negligible - what's it going to do, fall over on someone? Meanwhile, the maximum potential impact of virtually any civilian nuclear plant is massive - release of toxins and carcinogens over large residential areas, rendering them uninhabitable. Any respectable risk analysis requires looking at impact, not just likelihood.
- wstrange 10y agoI guess I don't follow your reasoning. The long term data (over decades) shows that nuclear kills fewer people than other forms of power generation. Maybe that will change over time (fewer people falling off of roofs when installing solar). That data includes "high impact" events, including things like Fukushima, which evidently has not resulted in any radiation-related fatalities.
- beat 10y agoI'm not just measuring fatalities. I'm measuring economic costs. A nuclear accident can render a city uninhabitable, even if no one dies. edit: An additional risk is that a nuclear plant is much more complex and expensive than a solar plant. A major accident, if nothing else, wrecks the plant, taking away a key resource that could take a decade and billions of dollars to rebuild (if it's politically possible to rebuild at all). Solar and wind, made up of collections of small units, can't suffer the same kind of unrecoverable catastrophic failure. Again, economic risk. And yet another risk... because of the potential destructive nature, nuclear plants are obvious targets for terrorists and military action. This ties back to the ability to disable a plant and its impact. Even if it doesn't cause fatalities, taking a nuclear plant offline and forcing evacuations isn't that hard. High, high economic risk. This is another example of your original mistake. You're narrowly focusing, and not doing a solid risk analysis. Nuclear power is riskier than solar, because the potential impact of failure is much higher.
- ZeroGravitas 10y agoA recent explosion in a US nuclear waste facility is estimated to cost $2 Billion. It was caused by using the wrong kind of kitty litter apparently: https://www.abqjournal.com/830731/2014-nuclear-accident-at-wipp-ranks-among-costliest-in-u-s-history.html https://www.abqjournal.com/830731/2014-nuclear-accident-at-w...
- wstrange 10y agoThat waste dump was built for the nuclear weapons program, not for reactor waste. Different issue (plutonium is indeed nasty stuff).