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Closing nuclear power plants and replacing them with coal power plants is simply criminal. In Europe, coal pollution kills ~20,000 people each year (), nuclear

by xroche 10y ago

Closing nuclear power plants and replacing them with coal power plants is simply criminal. In Europe, coal pollution kills ~20,000 people each year (), nuclear never killed a single person, and no study could ever provide any mortality increase due to nuclear energy (outside the Tchernobyl accident, which killed between 200 and 4000 people depending on estimations, after 20 years of study) To be clear: nuclear is not the perfect solution, is not a renewable energy, and will have to be replaced by something else in the future. But this is the least deadly energy, even safer than wind or solar power () () https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/jun/12/european-coal-pollution-premature-deaths https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/jun/12/european... () http://www.nextbigfuture.com/2016/06/update-of-death-per-terawatt-hour-by.html http://www.nextbigfuture.com/2016/06/update-of-death-per-ter...

pdog 10y ago
Fukushima has demonstrated that humans aren't great at controlling or predicting the real risk of nuclear. The fact is, even if no one dies from acute radiation poisoning, nuclear disasters are costly and devastating.
- loeg 10y ago
  That can be mitigated in the US because the entire country doesn't run along a fault line. Not so Japan. Yes, don't build your nuclear reactor in western California.
  - WalterBright 10y ago
    The Fukushima reactor stood the earthquake without damage, and could have been easily designed to withstand the tsunami. It was not. How, you might say? Put the backup generators in waterproof bunkers, or simply on platforms high enough to keep them dry. It's not expensive or tricky, it's just that the failure mode did not occur to anyone in charge.
- bpodgursky 10y ago
  Fukushima has demonstrated that relying on 60's technology and refusing to upgrade or invest because of political sensitivities exposes you to disasters 50 years down the line. It's like if everyone got afraid of airplanes in the 1980's and kept flying the same ones from the 60s through today because people were afraid to build new ones. Would you say air travel was unsafe, or that we made poor technology investments?
  - lispm 10y ago
    Now you understand a tiny part of the Energy business. 'Nuclear' is not only a technical problem, it is a financial problem. Old plants will be run until they collapse - unless a regulator keeps the companies from doing that. But then the regulator comes onto pressure, because there is huge amount of money/corruption involved to keep the plant online. Every single plant is a multi-billion dollar investment, jobs, surrounding industry, ... Tepco from Fukushima claimed until the day their plants were hit, that everything was totally safe. Politics supported them. Nobody was questioning them.
    - mpweiher 10y ago
      Yes, and despite the technical failings, the political failings and the corruption, the effects were comparatively benign.
      - sfifs 10y ago
        Possibly to you sitting on the other side of the world. Not so for the thousands of people displaced who lost their homes and communities through no fault of their own and might be exposed to higher cancer rates in their lifetimes.
        mpweiher 10y ago
        Yes, the evacuation zone almost certainly should have been smaller, that's one of the perverse effects of the panic about nuclear, that the mitigation efforts tend to be overblown (not that they should be zero), and therefore the damage from the mitigation much worse than it needs to be. But you missed the word "comparatively". We have lots of human-/technology-induced deaths and injuries. We allow car traffic in our cities at speeds that kills and maims thousands, often children. These are completely avoidable, just lower speed limits to 5mph or less. The US allows more than ten thousand gun deaths every year, because "reasons". etc. etc. So yes, the effects were comparatively benign, compared to most of the technology we surround ourselves with, and certainly compared to all power-generating technologies we have (including solar). Not absolutely benign, though it would be interesting to compare the damage even of accidents like Fukushima to the benefits (in lives saved) of the electricity that was produced.
- mpweiher 10y ago
  Dunno. The Tsunami killed upwards of 15000 people. I don't have figures, but I am sure that a good number of these were not killed by the wave directly, but by technical contraptions that failed, crushed them or what have you. One of these many technical contraptions that was damaged/destroyed by the Tsunami was the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. Yet, so far not a single person has been killed as a result of that failure, and so far the predictions are that future deaths will be so low as to disappear into the statistical noise. (And these predictions tend to be on the high side: the WHO created reports every decade after Chernobyl, and each report massively revised those estimates downwards). Yet, all we ever hear about is Fukushima. Odd. That.
  - agroot12 10y ago
    There would be more deaths if Japan and Tepco would not pour billions of dollars into collecting as much waste as possible. The waste of Fukushima is still an unsolved problem that will eat many billions more (see https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/03/11/world/asia/struggling-with-japans-nuclear-waste-six-years-after-disaster.html https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/03/11/world/asia/struggling-...). In fact, even when your reactor does NOT explode, you still have to manage the waste for 10,000 to 1,000,000 years (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_waste#Long_term_management_of_waste https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_waste#Long_term_manage...). The radioactive materials are not only deadly due to their radiation; most of them are also highly toxic. So even without a meltdown, you risk many lives in the future. Just because not many people have died yet does not make it a safe energy choice. Who in their right mind can guarantee safe storage of the waste for 10,000+ years?
    - 0xfeba 10y ago
      > So even without a meltdown, you risk many lives in the future. Just because not many people have died yet does not make it a safe energy choice. Even if that's true, compared to the certain deaths per year caused by coal it still wins out.
    - vidarh 10y ago
      You don't need to be able to guarantee safe storage for 10,000+ years. For starters most of it can be reprocessed and reused, resulting in less dangerous waste. But no matter how reckless you decide to be with it, the amounts are small enough that it'll be nothing compared to the devastation caused by coal.
- ekianjo 10y ago
  We are still waiting for Fukushima nuclear event related deaths. The tsunami already killed 15000 people. Yeah, nuclear is super risky.
- Turing_Machine 10y ago
  1) Massive earthquake 2) Devastating tsunami 3) Crippling fire causing loss of power to all control circuitry. Even with all that, the number of direct radiation casualties was zero. There are about six workers who got more than a lifetime allowed dose of radiation. They may have an increased cancer risk. 1) How many do you suppose would have died had it been a hydroelectric dam of similar capacity? (hint: a lot more than six) 2) Just how safe does something have to be?
- mizchief2 10y ago
  We can stop building nuke plants on fault lines right on the coast without abandoning nuclear energy.
tonyedgecombe 10y ago
In other words nuclear never killed anybody apart from the ones it killed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_and_radiation_accidents_by_death_toll#Chernobyl_disaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_and_radiation_...
- blowski 10y ago
  I'm no expert on Chernobyl or power generation. But I think Chernobyl was the result of under-investment and poor management, whereas many of the deaths from coal are an unavoidable consequence of burning coal. Hence, you can say nuclear is safer as long as it's managed well.
  - lostlogin 10y ago
    Where is it managed well?
    - blowski 10y ago
      I have no idea. I don't even know if it is practically possible to manage well enough to guarantee zero disasters. But there are many nuclear plants around the world that have operated with no problems. As I said, I'm no expert.
      - LoSboccacc 10y ago
        new design exist that in case of disaster self contains under most conditions, trouble is it's very hard to obtain certifications needed for operation today as opposed to decades ago, so we're mostly stuck with old designs.
    - ekianjo 10y ago
      by design already. all recent reactors have containment tanks to prevent radioactive leakage in a meltdown event.
    - cjrp 10y ago
      The UK seems pretty good at it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_the_United_Kingdom#Accidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_the_United_Ki...
legulere 10y ago
> (outside the Tchernobyl accident, which killed between 200 and 4000 people depending on estimations, after 20 years of study) Wikipedia seems to give 4000 as an estimate on those exposed to the highest levels of radiation alone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster#Cancer_projections https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster#Cancer_proj... On the other hand coal, wind and solar never poisoned our food (wild boars in Germany thousands of km away still often are too radioactive to be eaten ). Coal, wind and solar never led to emergency evacuations. Coal, wind and solar cannot be used to make atomic bombs.
- wbl 10y ago
  Really? Have you already forgotten about this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingston_Fossil_Plant_coal_fly_ash_slurry_spill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingston_Fossil_Plant_coal_fly... If coal plants had the same radiation rules as nuclear plants, they couldn't run.
  - kogepathic 10y ago
    > If coal plants had the same radiation rules as nuclear plants, they couldn't run. I think you mean if nuclear plants had the same radiation output as coal plants, they would be required to shut down. Edit: thanks for the downvotes, I realise now that I'm basically stating the same thing as OP. Quite the double standard that coal plants are allowed to spew so much radiation when all other forms of power generation are held to a higher standard.
    - TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago
      What @wbl wrote also makes sense. Nuclear power has a closed fuel cycle: what goes in comes out and is stored. There's no way we could hope to capture all the radioactive particles from a coal plant exhaust, not in the foreseeable future with any reasonable efficiency.
      - kogepathic 10y ago
Tomte 10y ago
We still don't know how to handle spent fuel. So nuclear apologists are simply offering a calculation, where the biggest risk/liability has been left out, because "what number should we put in?". Also, I'm always fascinated of the "Chernobyl was unsafe, today reactors are safe" argument. The exact same line was fed to us when Chernobyl was state of the art. There are good reasons to think that it may indeed be so this time. But the nuclear industry has lost all trust and all right to demand anyone ever trusted them again.
- WalterBright 10y ago
  > Chernobyl argument Consider airliners. Airliners have been around for 80 years, and get substantially safer every decade. This is a statistical fact. Every crash is used as a learning experience and designs, procedures, and training is adjusted as a result. There's no reason to believe that such does not apply to nuclear power stations.
  - mpweiher 10y ago
    One of the biggest problems with nuclear is that we aren't building new plants.
    - douche 10y ago
      Outside of submarines and aircraft carriers, that is. We seem to have those pretty figured out. You'd think that nuclear propulsion would be a natural choice for the biggest of the enormous cargo container ships that are currently burning millions of gallons of dirty, dirty bunker fuel instead.
- mpweiher 10y ago
  > We still don't know how to handle spent fuel. Actually we do, technically, and the amount is trivial (and can be reused, though that isn't currently being done). Spent fuel is a political problem. In fact, last time I checked even just the radiation from coal power plants is greater than from nuclear plants. > The exact same line was fed to us when Chernobyl was state of the art Chernobyl was never state of the art and western reactors, which are much safer, are also of a design derived from military designs, not optimized for safety. Also, the negative health effects of coal and other energy sources are so much worse than even Chernobyl that it isn't funny.
kostyash 10y ago
How sweet, the study that guardian refers returns 404: http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/silentkillers/ http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/silentkillers/
- The_Double 10y ago
  Working link: http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/publications/Campaign-reports/Climate-Reports/Silent-Killers/ http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/publications/Camp...
  - Neliquat 10y ago
    Maybe avoid taking facts from a terrorist org.
bhgraham 10y ago
Energy Source Mortality Rate (deaths/trillionkWhr) Coal – global average 100,000 (41% global electricity) Coal – China 170,000 (75% China’s electricity) Coal – U.S. 10,000 (32% U.S. electricity) Oil 36,000 (33% of energy, 8% of electricity) Natural Gas 4,000 (22% global electricity) Biofuel/Biomass 24,000 (21% global energy) Solar (rooftop) 440 (< 1% global electricity) Wind 150 (2% global electricity) Hydro – global average 1,400 (16% global electricity) Hydro – U.S. 5 (6% U.S. electricity) Nuclear – global average 90 (11% global electricity w/Chern&Fukush) Nuclear – U.S. 0.1 (19% U.S. electricity) https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-price-always-paid/#22fff54d709b https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-d...
- wapz 10y ago
  How is the mortality rate of wind and hydro calculated? Is it from engineers being killed during maintenance/construction? It feels like those two would have a mortality rate or something similar to "a house."
  - ekianjo 10y ago
    Hydro means dams and dams can cause a number of accidents if they are not properly maintained.
    - vidarh 10y ago
      Specifically, hydro was the cause of the worst single power generation accident of all time: 171,000 dead when the Banqiao dam failed. Before anyone assumes that will never happen again: There are fears over multiple large dams, including Mosul, where a failure worst case could kill a million. If we're lucky Banqiao will be a one-off, but large dams are massive risk factors because they need ongoing maintanenance forever, and are often upstream of some of the densest populated areas. On top of that they're also ecological disasters.
opo 10y ago
>...To be clear: nuclear is not the perfect solution, is not a renewable energy, and will have to be replaced by something else in the future. While we may want to replace nuclear with a different power source in the future, there is enough uranium and thorium to last hundreds of thousands (or more likely millions) of years.

by xroche 10y ago

pdog 10y ago

Fukushima has demonstrated that humans aren't great at controlling or predicting the real risk of nuclear. The fact is, even if no one dies from acute radiation poisoning, nuclear disasters are costly and devastating.

loeg 10y ago
That can be mitigated in the US because the entire country doesn't run along a fault line. Not so Japan. Yes, don't build your nuclear reactor in western California.
- WalterBright 10y ago
  The Fukushima reactor stood the earthquake without damage, and could have been easily designed to withstand the tsunami. It was not. How, you might say? Put the backup generators in waterproof bunkers, or simply on platforms high enough to keep them dry. It's not expensive or tricky, it's just that the failure mode did not occur to anyone in charge.
bpodgursky 10y ago
Fukushima has demonstrated that relying on 60's technology and refusing to upgrade or invest because of political sensitivities exposes you to disasters 50 years down the line. It's like if everyone got afraid of airplanes in the 1980's and kept flying the same ones from the 60s through today because people were afraid to build new ones. Would you say air travel was unsafe, or that we made poor technology investments?
- lispm 10y ago
  Now you understand a tiny part of the Energy business. 'Nuclear' is not only a technical problem, it is a financial problem. Old plants will be run until they collapse - unless a regulator keeps the companies from doing that. But then the regulator comes onto pressure, because there is huge amount of money/corruption involved to keep the plant online. Every single plant is a multi-billion dollar investment, jobs, surrounding industry, ... Tepco from Fukushima claimed until the day their plants were hit, that everything was totally safe. Politics supported them. Nobody was questioning them.
  - mpweiher 10y ago
    Yes, and despite the technical failings, the political failings and the corruption, the effects were comparatively benign.
    - sfifs 10y ago
      Possibly to you sitting on the other side of the world. Not so for the thousands of people displaced who lost their homes and communities through no fault of their own and might be exposed to higher cancer rates in their lifetimes.
      - mpweiher 10y ago
        Yes, the evacuation zone almost certainly should have been smaller, that's one of the perverse effects of the panic about nuclear, that the mitigation efforts tend to be overblown (not that they should be zero), and therefore the damage from the mitigation much worse than it needs to be. But you missed the word "comparatively". We have lots of human-/technology-induced deaths and injuries. We allow car traffic in our cities at speeds that kills and maims thousands, often children. These are completely avoidable, just lower speed limits to 5mph or less. The US allows more than ten thousand gun deaths every year, because "reasons". etc. etc. So yes, the effects were comparatively benign, compared to most of the technology we surround ourselves with, and certainly compared to all power-generating technologies we have (including solar). Not absolutely benign, though it would be interesting to compare the damage even of accidents like Fukushima to the benefits (in lives saved) of the electricity that was produced.
mpweiher 10y ago
Dunno. The Tsunami killed upwards of 15000 people. I don't have figures, but I am sure that a good number of these were not killed by the wave directly, but by technical contraptions that failed, crushed them or what have you. One of these many technical contraptions that was damaged/destroyed by the Tsunami was the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. Yet, so far not a single person has been killed as a result of that failure, and so far the predictions are that future deaths will be so low as to disappear into the statistical noise. (And these predictions tend to be on the high side: the WHO created reports every decade after Chernobyl, and each report massively revised those estimates downwards). Yet, all we ever hear about is Fukushima. Odd. That.
- agroot12 10y ago
  There would be more deaths if Japan and Tepco would not pour billions of dollars into collecting as much waste as possible. The waste of Fukushima is still an unsolved problem that will eat many billions more (see https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/03/11/world/asia/struggling-with-japans-nuclear-waste-six-years-after-disaster.html https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/03/11/world/asia/struggling-...). In fact, even when your reactor does NOT explode, you still have to manage the waste for 10,000 to 1,000,000 years (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_waste#Long_term_management_of_waste https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_waste#Long_term_manage...). The radioactive materials are not only deadly due to their radiation; most of them are also highly toxic. So even without a meltdown, you risk many lives in the future. Just because not many people have died yet does not make it a safe energy choice. Who in their right mind can guarantee safe storage of the waste for 10,000+ years?
  - 0xfeba 10y ago
    > So even without a meltdown, you risk many lives in the future. Just because not many people have died yet does not make it a safe energy choice. Even if that's true, compared to the certain deaths per year caused by coal it still wins out.
  - vidarh 10y ago
    You don't need to be able to guarantee safe storage for 10,000+ years. For starters most of it can be reprocessed and reused, resulting in less dangerous waste. But no matter how reckless you decide to be with it, the amounts are small enough that it'll be nothing compared to the devastation caused by coal.
ekianjo 10y ago
We are still waiting for Fukushima nuclear event related deaths. The tsunami already killed 15000 people. Yeah, nuclear is super risky.
Turing_Machine 10y ago
1) Massive earthquake 2) Devastating tsunami 3) Crippling fire causing loss of power to all control circuitry. Even with all that, the number of direct radiation casualties was zero. There are about six workers who got more than a lifetime allowed dose of radiation. They may have an increased cancer risk. 1) How many do you suppose would have died had it been a hydroelectric dam of similar capacity? (hint: a lot more than six) 2) Just how safe does something have to be?
mizchief2 10y ago
We can stop building nuke plants on fault lines right on the coast without abandoning nuclear energy.

tonyedgecombe 10y ago

In other words nuclear never killed anybody apart from the ones it killed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_and_radiation_accidents_by_death_toll#Chernobyl_disaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_and_radiation_...

blowski 10y ago
I'm no expert on Chernobyl or power generation. But I think Chernobyl was the result of under-investment and poor management, whereas many of the deaths from coal are an unavoidable consequence of burning coal. Hence, you can say nuclear is safer as long as it's managed well.
- lostlogin 10y ago
  Where is it managed well?
  - blowski 10y ago
    I have no idea. I don't even know if it is practically possible to manage well enough to guarantee zero disasters. But there are many nuclear plants around the world that have operated with no problems. As I said, I'm no expert.
    - LoSboccacc 10y ago
      new design exist that in case of disaster self contains under most conditions, trouble is it's very hard to obtain certifications needed for operation today as opposed to decades ago, so we're mostly stuck with old designs.
  - ekianjo 10y ago
    by design already. all recent reactors have containment tanks to prevent radioactive leakage in a meltdown event.
  - cjrp 10y ago
    The UK seems pretty good at it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_the_United_Kingdom#Accidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_the_United_Ki...

legulere 10y ago

> (outside the Tchernobyl accident, which killed between 200 and 4000 people depending on estimations, after 20 years of study) Wikipedia seems to give 4000 as an estimate on those exposed to the highest levels of radiation alone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster#Cancer_projections https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster#Cancer_proj... On the other hand coal, wind and solar never poisoned our food (wild boars in Germany thousands of km away still often are too radioactive to be eaten ). Coal, wind and solar never led to emergency evacuations. Coal, wind and solar cannot be used to make atomic bombs.

wbl 10y ago
Really? Have you already forgotten about this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingston_Fossil_Plant_coal_fly_ash_slurry_spill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingston_Fossil_Plant_coal_fly... If coal plants had the same radiation rules as nuclear plants, they couldn't run.
- kogepathic 10y ago
  > If coal plants had the same radiation rules as nuclear plants, they couldn't run. I think you mean if nuclear plants had the same radiation output as coal plants, they would be required to shut down. Edit: thanks for the downvotes, I realise now that I'm basically stating the same thing as OP. Quite the double standard that coal plants are allowed to spew so much radiation when all other forms of power generation are held to a higher standard.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago
    What @wbl wrote also makes sense. Nuclear power has a closed fuel cycle: what goes in comes out and is stored. There's no way we could hope to capture all the radioactive particles from a coal plant exhaust, not in the foreseeable future with any reasonable efficiency.
    - kogepathic 10y ago

Tomte 10y ago

We still don't know how to handle spent fuel. So nuclear apologists are simply offering a calculation, where the biggest risk/liability has been left out, because "what number should we put in?". Also, I'm always fascinated of the "Chernobyl was unsafe, today reactors are safe" argument. The exact same line was fed to us when Chernobyl was state of the art. There are good reasons to think that it may indeed be so this time. But the nuclear industry has lost all trust and all right to demand anyone ever trusted them again.

WalterBright 10y ago
> Chernobyl argument Consider airliners. Airliners have been around for 80 years, and get substantially safer every decade. This is a statistical fact. Every crash is used as a learning experience and designs, procedures, and training is adjusted as a result. There's no reason to believe that such does not apply to nuclear power stations.
- mpweiher 10y ago
  One of the biggest problems with nuclear is that we aren't building new plants.
  - douche 10y ago
    Outside of submarines and aircraft carriers, that is. We seem to have those pretty figured out. You'd think that nuclear propulsion would be a natural choice for the biggest of the enormous cargo container ships that are currently burning millions of gallons of dirty, dirty bunker fuel instead.
mpweiher 10y ago
> We still don't know how to handle spent fuel. Actually we do, technically, and the amount is trivial (and can be reused, though that isn't currently being done). Spent fuel is a political problem. In fact, last time I checked even just the radiation from coal power plants is greater than from nuclear plants. > The exact same line was fed to us when Chernobyl was state of the art Chernobyl was never state of the art and western reactors, which are much safer, are also of a design derived from military designs, not optimized for safety. Also, the negative health effects of coal and other energy sources are so much worse than even Chernobyl that it isn't funny.

kostyash 10y ago

How sweet, the study that guardian refers returns 404: http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/silentkillers/ http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/silentkillers/

The_Double 10y ago
Working link: http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/publications/Campaign-reports/Climate-Reports/Silent-Killers/ http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/publications/Camp...
- Neliquat 10y ago
  Maybe avoid taking facts from a terrorist org.

bhgraham 10y ago

Energy Source Mortality Rate (deaths/trillionkWhr) Coal – global average 100,000 (41% global electricity) Coal – China 170,000 (75% China’s electricity) Coal – U.S. 10,000 (32% U.S. electricity) Oil 36,000 (33% of energy, 8% of electricity) Natural Gas 4,000 (22% global electricity) Biofuel/Biomass 24,000 (21% global energy) Solar (rooftop) 440 (< 1% global electricity) Wind 150 (2% global electricity) Hydro – global average 1,400 (16% global electricity) Hydro – U.S. 5 (6% U.S. electricity) Nuclear – global average 90 (11% global electricity w/Chern&Fukush) Nuclear – U.S. 0.1 (19% U.S. electricity) https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-price-always-paid/#22fff54d709b https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-d...

wapz 10y ago
How is the mortality rate of wind and hydro calculated? Is it from engineers being killed during maintenance/construction? It feels like those two would have a mortality rate or something similar to "a house."
- ekianjo 10y ago
  Hydro means dams and dams can cause a number of accidents if they are not properly maintained.
  - vidarh 10y ago
    Specifically, hydro was the cause of the worst single power generation accident of all time: 171,000 dead when the Banqiao dam failed. Before anyone assumes that will never happen again: There are fears over multiple large dams, including Mosul, where a failure worst case could kill a million. If we're lucky Banqiao will be a one-off, but large dams are massive risk factors because they need ongoing maintanenance forever, and are often upstream of some of the densest populated areas. On top of that they're also ecological disasters.

opo 10y ago

>...To be clear: nuclear is not the perfect solution, is not a renewable energy, and will have to be replaced by something else in the future. While we may want to replace nuclear with a different power source in the future, there is enough uranium and thorium to last hundreds of thousands (or more likely millions) of years.