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..you also need to consider that we still have no proven way of handling high level waste, and that nuclear accidents can render huge areas completely unusable
by Boothroid 9y ago
..you also need to consider that we still have no proven way of handling high level waste, and that nuclear accidents can render huge areas completely unusable for decades, and that clean up of nuclear sites can consume utterly huge amounts of money. The same is not true of fossil fuels. Also don't discount the utterly huge amounts of energy required to construct, operate, and decommission nuclear plants. Nuclear industry apologists often conveniently exclude these from their analyses.
I don't see that you have refuted my point - you just have to look at the record (thousands of nuclear incidents worldwide over decades) to see that humanity apparently is not capable of safely using nuclear, and I'm sceptical that the benefits in terms of reduced exigencies are as great as is often claimed. And personally I'd far rather have the damage spread out over a wide area if it means we don't have to every now and then throw away all the milk in Wales for years and distribute iodine tablets to thousands..
- mikeash 9y agoIf you look at the record, you see that fossil power is vastly more dangerous. Do you really prefer killing a million people a year, every year, to "every now and then" throwing away all the milk in Wales, just because the million deaths are spread out? I can't fathom this.
- Boothroid 9y agoBy some analyses the C02 output of nuclear is on a par with fossil fuels once the whole cycle is taken into account. Let's not forget that uranium has to be dug out of the ground, processed etc., power plants built which generally uses a lot of concrete, big holes dug in the ground to put the waste into (since we have no good way of reprocessing much of this waste). None of this comes cheap in C02 terms. I get it, you love nuclear, but supporters of nuclear often conveniently ignore.