6 ms·

The window for nuclear energy has come and gone. Time to embrace renewables. People can argue about safety of nuclear or storage of nuclear waste until the cow

by cup 9y ago

The window for nuclear energy has come and gone. Time to embrace renewables. People can argue about safety of nuclear or storage of nuclear waste until the cows come home but what they can't argue against is government incompetence. We need to embrace clean energy solutions that don't hold us hostage down the line.

vkou 9y ago
This is FUD. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents All other forms of renewable (And non-renewable) energy generation kill more people then nuclear does, per KWH produced. More people fall off roofs installing solar panels, then die in nuclear accidents. Far more people die from hydro dam failures, then they do from nuclear accidents. Every hydroelectric dam is a loaded gun, pointed at the city downstream. Most of them are managed by the 'incompetent government.'
- kazinator 9y ago
  Hydro's "US" entry in the table ties for top with US nuclear: 0.01.
  - vkou 9y ago
    And yet, earlier this year, 200,000 had to be evacuated because a dam in California nearly broke. If 200,000 people in the US had to be evacuated because a nuclear reactor nearly went critical, every single nuclear plant in the country would have been shut down.
    - firethief 9y ago
      Those aren't equivalent events though. There's no risk to being somewhere a flood happened a billion years ago.
      - kazinator 9y ago
        Or, for that matter, fifty miles from where a flood is happening now.
      - cperciva 9y ago
        There's no risk to being somewhere a nuclear reactor melted down a billion years ago, either. The vast majority of radioactivity comes from short lived isotopes - Iodine, Caesium, and Strontium mostly.
      - vkou 9y ago
        We are living on a planet which was produced by a nuclear explosion of cataclysmic proportions, a few billion years ago. Where else do elements heavier then hydrogen (Or, if you want to split hairs, iron) come from? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernova_nucleosynthesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernova_nucleosynthesis
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - lostlogin 9y ago
      It's a lot easier to see, understand and avoid a flood than it to detect and avoid fallout.
      - flyingfences 9y ago
        Eighty years ago that was the case. Fifty years ago that was the case in many places. Today that is no longer the case. There are very robust and effective sensor networks in any and every location where there exists any possibility of a radioactive concern.
        lostlogin 9y ago
        The point stands - for the individual it is very reassuring to be able perceive a danger. And not all radiation sources have masses of alarms near them. Hospitals for example don't put detectors everywhere and they have some very nasty radiation sources.
      - throwaway1X2 9y ago
        And what precisely do you mean by "seeing and avoiding"? Ugo the caveman sees a slowly rising river, Ugo runs to the village, village safely runs away? Erm, no. When you see a flood wave several stories in height, you may have a few split seconds to start videorecording on your phone, maybe the phone will be found afterwards and handed over to your surviving out-of-town relatives, it will make a nice clip in evening news... With floods, you rely on authorities and early warning systems just as much as in radioactivity, actually you can buy a cheap dosimeters/Geiger counters and there are enthusiast networked detectors - but did you put a webcam with trained CV model on all surrounding flood paths? Did you put chemical sensors around all railway tracks in the neighborhood or do you just as well rely on "seeing, understanding and avoiding" a chlorine gas cloud? It is just the prehistorical evolutionary parts of the brain speaking - we see flood, radioactivity we don't, danger, quickly bash it with a stick!
- praneshp 9y ago
  > More people fall off roofs installing solar panels, then die in nuclear accidents. I think the concern is that in addition to killing people, nuclear accidents cause gene mutations, etc as well? Another concern I have with this sort of argument is the ratio of people getting killed to using it, etc. Other than that I do agree that there is FUD around Nuclear energy. But this is not a great rebuttal IMO.
  - Someone 9y ago
    Yes, nuclear accidents increase mutation rate and with it the occurrence of various forms of cancer, but it seems those mutations aren't passed on to next generations (layman's explanation: if it doesn't kill you, it's unlikely to have an effect on your children. If it _does_ kill you, you aren't likely to have children) http://www.rerf.jp/radefx/genetics_e/birthdef.html http://www.rerf.jp/radefx/genetics_e/birthdef.html: "No statistically significant increase in major birth defects or other untoward pregnancy outcomes was seen among children of survivors. Monitoring of nearly all pregnancies in Hiroshima and Nagasaki began in 1948 and continued for six years. [...] In addition, a clinical health study of about 12,000 individuals was conducted between 2002 and 2006 with a focus on lifestyle diseases, based on the idea that adulthood is when disorders from radiation effects may develop. In this study, possible relationships between parental exposure and a combination of six multifactorial diseases (e.g., diabetes and hypertension) were analyzed, taking into consideration such lifestyle habits as drinking and smoking. The results showed no evidence at this time of increased risk of these multifactorial diseases among the target individuals. However, given that the subjects were still young at the time of the health examinations, with an average age of 48.6, it would be desirable to continue the clinical health study of this fixed cohort." However, https://www.nap.edu/read/1800/chapter/3 https://www.nap.edu/read/1800/chapter/3: "WHETHER THE ATOMIC BOMBS dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki will have detectable genetic effects on the Japanese is a question of widespread interest. The purpose of the present note is to show briefly that (1) many difficulties beset any attempt to obtain a valid answer to this question and (2) even after a long-term study, such as that outlined below, it still may not be possible to determine just how much genetic damage was done at Hiroshima and Nagasaki."
  - pavement 9y ago
- codehusker 9y ago
  The Wikipedia entry is silent on non-rooftop solar installations, and I'm struggling to find good numbers. Can anyone with more experience in this sector point me in the right direction? I would hazard a guess that non-rooftop installation is substantially safer than getting on a roof. I would also guess that nuclear would be more hazardous if reactors were installed on roofs.
  - lucasmullens 9y ago
    I think the right conclusion is "they're both really safe". It's like people comparing things to the number of shark attacks per year. The number is so low that most things are more dangerous.
  - zizee 9y ago
    It's not even a fair comparison. One is construction/installation vs running. I would be interested to see how many deaths have occurred during the construction of nuclear plants. How many deaths occur from solar once it is built/installed?
    - cmdrfred 9y ago
      >How many deaths occur from solar once it is built/installed? Well if we are talking about what would happen if energy was produced entirely with solar/wind wouldn't you have to include things like the people freezing to death during a string of cloudy yet still winter days?
- ddingus 9y ago
  Before we commit to that thinking, Fukshima should be considered. That mess has the very real potential to irradiated our water. I remain unconvinced we have a grip on longer term risks associated with nuclear energy. And we can move to renewables. Lots of work there and lots of unemployed people to do it. We should.
  - vkou 9y ago
    No, it doesn't. This is also FUD. Fukushima is a local environmental disaster - not a global one. It has done nothing to natural seawater radiation levels. We are detecting a 'large' increase in radioactive Cesium in the world's oceans. It is, however, dwarfed by the amount of naturally radioactive potassium already dissolved in it. Radiation levels 500km from the disaster site have increased... By 2%.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - lostlogin 9y ago
      So by "done nothing" you mean it's done something relatively small to a truely vast area. I for one am glad I'm not living near it.
    - ddingus 9y ago
      And continue to accumulate. The half life on that hot mess is very long. If it settles into a waterway, all water may be accumulating radiation.
  - xrange 9y ago
    15,000 people died because of the tsunami. No one died from the radiation release at Fukushima. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_T%C5%8Dhoku_earthquake_and_tsunami#Casualties https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_T%C5%8Dhoku_earthquake_an...
    - contravariant 9y ago
      Only considering acute radiation poisoning doesn't seem like a fair metric.
- rdl 9y ago
  Also, Hanford isn't dangerous because of power generation. It is dangerous, to the extent it is, because of the crash effort to build weapons to defeat the Nazis and then to win the Cold War.
- grecy 9y ago
  > other forms of renewable (And non-renewable) energy generation kill more people then nuclear does, per KWH produced. And stairs are the most deadly form of transportation, by miles traveled per year.
  - AnimalMuppet 9y ago
    OK, but the point of energy generation is to produce KWH or something like it. The point of stairs is not to travel miles. So you're comparing how well something meets its intended use with how well something else meets something other than its intended use.
  - astrodust 9y ago
    Standing in the bathtub taking a shower is also one of the most dangerous places in the world.
- Spooky23 9y ago
  FUD doesn't negate FUD. It's pretty absurd to compare the operating hazards of nuclear plants to buildouts of residential solar. How many workers on nuclear plant construction projects have died per man-hour vs solar? It's akin to saying that hamburgers are less dangerous than avocados because more people have choked on avocado pits. How are you accounting for deaths caused by waste containment problems over the next 10,000 years? In the Hanford case you have even nastier chemical and radiological materials on site prone to leakage or unintentional exposure in the future millennia.
- contravariant 9y ago
  The way I understood it 'FUD' refers to a propaganda tactic that consists of aggressively spreading misinformation in order to spread (as the name suggests) fear, uncertainty, and doubt about your opponents' arguments. The key being that the person seeding the misinformation knows the information to be false or dubious. Expressing concern isn't even close to the same thing. Maybe I'm being overly sensitive about this, but I can't help but feel that if 'that's spreading fear / uncertainty / doubt' is considered a valid argument, then it can be used to dismiss anyone expressing concern or questioning something. Which in my opinion should be avoided at all costs.
  - flyingfences 9y ago
    >'FUD' refers to a propaganda tactic that consists of aggressively spreading misinformation ... which is exactly what has been going on for quite some time. There is a very real and very vocal anti-nuclear contingent that has been active for decades. Some of it is players in the fossil fuel industry who don't want their market share diminished. A much larger, much more vocal portion is the moonbats (Greenpeace, et al.) who have never considered any option other than "tax the rich to build more solar panels everywhere". They've been churning out propaganda for decades and their propaganda is what most people have heard and listened to. End-of-the-world-as-we-know-it emotional appeals are much more convincing to the layman than are actual scientific, logical explanations. I think FUD is a very accurate term to describe the current popular views of nuclear power.
lucb1e 9y ago
To explain my downvote: this comment does not invite discussion but seems to try to close the subject. On top of that, I doubt the factual accuracy of your statement.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
mwambua 9y ago
Did you really read the article? The Hanford site was used in the 80s to produce weapons-grade nuclear material. An accident there is related to nuclear energy in the same way that forest fires are related to fireplaces.
- erentz 9y ago
  Actually the Hanford site goes back to the manhatten project where it was used to produce plutonium and since that time continued to produce the fuel for our nuclear arsenal during the Cold War. One of the original reactors from the manhatten project is now open for tours and its fascinating to visit. Highly recommend for anyone nearby in the PNW to check it out. (Google "manhatten project b reactor".)
  - tanderson92 9y ago
    The point is that the Hanford site is unrelated to the future use of nuclear for energy production, not that in the past nuclear energy production and nuclear defense have been entwined.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
Aloha 9y ago
clean energy is very hard to use for base load generation, you still need something for base load, nuclear energy fits that.
- dflock 9y ago
  Or you can over-provision with renewables (which are cheap and getting cheaper all the time), or have utility/grid/home power storage, or balance renewable generation from different parts of the country/globe - it's always windy/sunny somewhere. There are lots of options.
  - coddingtonbear 9y ago
    Although that might _seem_ reasonable on its face, during peak periods (i.e. mid-winter during a cold snap), usually that other place you can get extra wind/sun supply from is on the other side of the globe. https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/browser/#/?f=M&start=201511&end=201701&charted=4-6-7-14 https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/browser/#/?f=M&start=20...
boomboomsubban 9y ago
> but what they can't argue against is government incompetence. They can't? Governments are supposed to legislate based on the demands of the public. When you demand a stop to all nuclear power, the budget for the existing installations requires more political capital, making these kinds of events more likely. Oh, and there is renewable nuclear energy. There's a bit of a controversy over it, the petroleum industry has spent a lot of money to say that it isn't renewable.

by cup 9y ago

vkou 9y ago

This is FUD. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents All other forms of renewable (And non-renewable) energy generation kill more people then nuclear does, per KWH produced. More people fall off roofs installing solar panels, then die in nuclear accidents. Far more people die from hydro dam failures, then they do from nuclear accidents. Every hydroelectric dam is a loaded gun, pointed at the city downstream. Most of them are managed by the 'incompetent government.'

kazinator 9y ago
Hydro's "US" entry in the table ties for top with US nuclear: 0.01.
- vkou 9y ago
  And yet, earlier this year, 200,000 had to be evacuated because a dam in California nearly broke. If 200,000 people in the US had to be evacuated because a nuclear reactor nearly went critical, every single nuclear plant in the country would have been shut down.
  - firethief 9y ago
    Those aren't equivalent events though. There's no risk to being somewhere a flood happened a billion years ago.
    - kazinator 9y ago
      Or, for that matter, fifty miles from where a flood is happening now.
    - cperciva 9y ago
      There's no risk to being somewhere a nuclear reactor melted down a billion years ago, either. The vast majority of radioactivity comes from short lived isotopes - Iodine, Caesium, and Strontium mostly.
    - vkou 9y ago
      We are living on a planet which was produced by a nuclear explosion of cataclysmic proportions, a few billion years ago. Where else do elements heavier then hydrogen (Or, if you want to split hairs, iron) come from? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernova_nucleosynthesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernova_nucleosynthesis
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - lostlogin 9y ago
    It's a lot easier to see, understand and avoid a flood than it to detect and avoid fallout.
    - flyingfences 9y ago
      Eighty years ago that was the case. Fifty years ago that was the case in many places. Today that is no longer the case. There are very robust and effective sensor networks in any and every location where there exists any possibility of a radioactive concern.
      - lostlogin 9y ago
        The point stands - for the individual it is very reassuring to be able perceive a danger. And not all radiation sources have masses of alarms near them. Hospitals for example don't put detectors everywhere and they have some very nasty radiation sources.
    - throwaway1X2 9y ago
      And what precisely do you mean by "seeing and avoiding"? Ugo the caveman sees a slowly rising river, Ugo runs to the village, village safely runs away? Erm, no. When you see a flood wave several stories in height, you may have a few split seconds to start videorecording on your phone, maybe the phone will be found afterwards and handed over to your surviving out-of-town relatives, it will make a nice clip in evening news... With floods, you rely on authorities and early warning systems just as much as in radioactivity, actually you can buy a cheap dosimeters/Geiger counters and there are enthusiast networked detectors - but did you put a webcam with trained CV model on all surrounding flood paths? Did you put chemical sensors around all railway tracks in the neighborhood or do you just as well rely on "seeing, understanding and avoiding" a chlorine gas cloud? It is just the prehistorical evolutionary parts of the brain speaking - we see flood, radioactivity we don't, danger, quickly bash it with a stick!
praneshp 9y ago
> More people fall off roofs installing solar panels, then die in nuclear accidents. I think the concern is that in addition to killing people, nuclear accidents cause gene mutations, etc as well? Another concern I have with this sort of argument is the ratio of people getting killed to using it, etc. Other than that I do agree that there is FUD around Nuclear energy. But this is not a great rebuttal IMO.
- Someone 9y ago
  Yes, nuclear accidents increase mutation rate and with it the occurrence of various forms of cancer, but it seems those mutations aren't passed on to next generations (layman's explanation: if it doesn't kill you, it's unlikely to have an effect on your children. If it _does_ kill you, you aren't likely to have children) http://www.rerf.jp/radefx/genetics_e/birthdef.html http://www.rerf.jp/radefx/genetics_e/birthdef.html: "No statistically significant increase in major birth defects or other untoward pregnancy outcomes was seen among children of survivors. Monitoring of nearly all pregnancies in Hiroshima and Nagasaki began in 1948 and continued for six years. [...] In addition, a clinical health study of about 12,000 individuals was conducted between 2002 and 2006 with a focus on lifestyle diseases, based on the idea that adulthood is when disorders from radiation effects may develop. In this study, possible relationships between parental exposure and a combination of six multifactorial diseases (e.g., diabetes and hypertension) were analyzed, taking into consideration such lifestyle habits as drinking and smoking. The results showed no evidence at this time of increased risk of these multifactorial diseases among the target individuals. However, given that the subjects were still young at the time of the health examinations, with an average age of 48.6, it would be desirable to continue the clinical health study of this fixed cohort." However, https://www.nap.edu/read/1800/chapter/3 https://www.nap.edu/read/1800/chapter/3: "WHETHER THE ATOMIC BOMBS dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki will have detectable genetic effects on the Japanese is a question of widespread interest. The purpose of the present note is to show briefly that (1) many difficulties beset any attempt to obtain a valid answer to this question and (2) even after a long-term study, such as that outlined below, it still may not be possible to determine just how much genetic damage was done at Hiroshima and Nagasaki."
- pavement 9y ago
codehusker 9y ago
The Wikipedia entry is silent on non-rooftop solar installations, and I'm struggling to find good numbers. Can anyone with more experience in this sector point me in the right direction? I would hazard a guess that non-rooftop installation is substantially safer than getting on a roof. I would also guess that nuclear would be more hazardous if reactors were installed on roofs.
- lucasmullens 9y ago
  I think the right conclusion is "they're both really safe". It's like people comparing things to the number of shark attacks per year. The number is so low that most things are more dangerous.
- zizee 9y ago
  It's not even a fair comparison. One is construction/installation vs running. I would be interested to see how many deaths have occurred during the construction of nuclear plants. How many deaths occur from solar once it is built/installed?
  - cmdrfred 9y ago
    >How many deaths occur from solar once it is built/installed? Well if we are talking about what would happen if energy was produced entirely with solar/wind wouldn't you have to include things like the people freezing to death during a string of cloudy yet still winter days?
ddingus 9y ago
Before we commit to that thinking, Fukshima should be considered. That mess has the very real potential to irradiated our water. I remain unconvinced we have a grip on longer term risks associated with nuclear energy. And we can move to renewables. Lots of work there and lots of unemployed people to do it. We should.
- vkou 9y ago
  No, it doesn't. This is also FUD. Fukushima is a local environmental disaster - not a global one. It has done nothing to natural seawater radiation levels. We are detecting a 'large' increase in radioactive Cesium in the world's oceans. It is, however, dwarfed by the amount of naturally radioactive potassium already dissolved in it. Radiation levels 500km from the disaster site have increased... By 2%.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - lostlogin 9y ago
    So by "done nothing" you mean it's done something relatively small to a truely vast area. I for one am glad I'm not living near it.
  - ddingus 9y ago
    And continue to accumulate. The half life on that hot mess is very long. If it settles into a waterway, all water may be accumulating radiation.
- xrange 9y ago
  15,000 people died because of the tsunami. No one died from the radiation release at Fukushima. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_T%C5%8Dhoku_earthquake_and_tsunami#Casualties https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_T%C5%8Dhoku_earthquake_an...
  - contravariant 9y ago
    Only considering acute radiation poisoning doesn't seem like a fair metric.
rdl 9y ago
Also, Hanford isn't dangerous because of power generation. It is dangerous, to the extent it is, because of the crash effort to build weapons to defeat the Nazis and then to win the Cold War.
grecy 9y ago
> other forms of renewable (And non-renewable) energy generation kill more people then nuclear does, per KWH produced. And stairs are the most deadly form of transportation, by miles traveled per year.
- AnimalMuppet 9y ago
  OK, but the point of energy generation is to produce KWH or something like it. The point of stairs is not to travel miles. So you're comparing how well something meets its intended use with how well something else meets something other than its intended use.
- astrodust 9y ago
  Standing in the bathtub taking a shower is also one of the most dangerous places in the world.
Spooky23 9y ago
FUD doesn't negate FUD. It's pretty absurd to compare the operating hazards of nuclear plants to buildouts of residential solar. How many workers on nuclear plant construction projects have died per man-hour vs solar? It's akin to saying that hamburgers are less dangerous than avocados because more people have choked on avocado pits. How are you accounting for deaths caused by waste containment problems over the next 10,000 years? In the Hanford case you have even nastier chemical and radiological materials on site prone to leakage or unintentional exposure in the future millennia.
contravariant 9y ago
The way I understood it 'FUD' refers to a propaganda tactic that consists of aggressively spreading misinformation in order to spread (as the name suggests) fear, uncertainty, and doubt about your opponents' arguments. The key being that the person seeding the misinformation knows the information to be false or dubious. Expressing concern isn't even close to the same thing. Maybe I'm being overly sensitive about this, but I can't help but feel that if 'that's spreading fear / uncertainty / doubt' is considered a valid argument, then it can be used to dismiss anyone expressing concern or questioning something. Which in my opinion should be avoided at all costs.
- flyingfences 9y ago
  >'FUD' refers to a propaganda tactic that consists of aggressively spreading misinformation ... which is exactly what has been going on for quite some time. There is a very real and very vocal anti-nuclear contingent that has been active for decades. Some of it is players in the fossil fuel industry who don't want their market share diminished. A much larger, much more vocal portion is the moonbats (Greenpeace, et al.) who have never considered any option other than "tax the rich to build more solar panels everywhere". They've been churning out propaganda for decades and their propaganda is what most people have heard and listened to. End-of-the-world-as-we-know-it emotional appeals are much more convincing to the layman than are actual scientific, logical explanations. I think FUD is a very accurate term to describe the current popular views of nuclear power.

lucb1e 9y ago

To explain my downvote: this comment does not invite discussion but seems to try to close the subject. On top of that, I doubt the factual accuracy of your statement.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

mwambua 9y ago

Did you really read the article? The Hanford site was used in the 80s to produce weapons-grade nuclear material. An accident there is related to nuclear energy in the same way that forest fires are related to fireplaces.

erentz 9y ago
Actually the Hanford site goes back to the manhatten project where it was used to produce plutonium and since that time continued to produce the fuel for our nuclear arsenal during the Cold War. One of the original reactors from the manhatten project is now open for tours and its fascinating to visit. Highly recommend for anyone nearby in the PNW to check it out. (Google "manhatten project b reactor".)
- tanderson92 9y ago
  The point is that the Hanford site is unrelated to the future use of nuclear for energy production, not that in the past nuclear energy production and nuclear defense have been entwined.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

Aloha 9y ago

clean energy is very hard to use for base load generation, you still need something for base load, nuclear energy fits that.

dflock 9y ago
Or you can over-provision with renewables (which are cheap and getting cheaper all the time), or have utility/grid/home power storage, or balance renewable generation from different parts of the country/globe - it's always windy/sunny somewhere. There are lots of options.
- coddingtonbear 9y ago
  Although that might _seem_ reasonable on its face, during peak periods (i.e. mid-winter during a cold snap), usually that other place you can get extra wind/sun supply from is on the other side of the globe. https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/browser/#/?f=M&start=201511&end=201701&charted=4-6-7-14 https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/browser/#/?f=M&start=20...

boomboomsubban 9y ago

> but what they can't argue against is government incompetence. They can't? Governments are supposed to legislate based on the demands of the public. When you demand a stop to all nuclear power, the budget for the existing installations requires more political capital, making these kinds of events more likely. Oh, and there is renewable nuclear energy. There's a bit of a controversy over it, the petroleum industry has spent a lot of money to say that it isn't renewable.