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"Science" doesn't say either of those things are safe. Yes, it does. Sorry. Nuclear power is orders of magnitude safer than any other energy source (including
by Turing_Machine 9y ago
"Science" doesn't say either of those things are safe.
Yes, it does. Sorry.
Nuclear power is orders of magnitude safer than any other energy source (including solar). We've got 60 years of real-world data on it.
- aaronbrethorst 9y agoCool, care to share some citations on it?
- Turing_Machine 9y agoDiscussion here, with plenty of links to sources: https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-ener...
- cameldrv 9y agohttp://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/wp-content/uploads/Prevented-mortality-and-greenhouse-gas-emissions-from-historical-and-projected-nuclear-power1.pdf http://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/wp-content/uploads/Prevented-mor... Headline is that nuclear power has saved about 1.8 million lives relative to probable alternatives, even ignoring the GHG effects.
- aaronbrethorst 9y agoI’m afraid I don’t see the word “solar” appear once in that document, which doesn’t do anything to confirm the argument above.
- konschubert 9y agoReally? I guess if you factor in all the externalities of solar and none of those of nuclear you could probably make an argument they solar killed more kids than Tschernobyl, but that's of course dishonest. Or am I missing something?
- Turing_Machine 9y agoReally? Yes. Really. The U.S. nuclear power program has been running for over 60 years without a single fatality to a member of the general public. That is a better safety record than any other method of power generation. *Or am I missing something? You're missing the fact that judging a technology by Soviet-era implementations of it is ridiculous. Soviet airliners crashed a lot, too. That doesn't make airliners in general unsafe.
- konschubert 9y agoWhat's ridiculous is your sampling bias. Of course if you look only at a country where there hasn't been an accident yet then it's safe... Next thing you tell me that Fukushima doesn't count either. I'm not against nuclear power generation actually. But your way of arguing is utterly unscientific and dishonest.
- Turing_Machine 9y agoWhat's ridiculous is your sampling bias. "Sampling bias"? I'm not the one who's pretending that Chernobyl is somehow representative. Nuclear power is operating safely in more than 30 countries, and has been for decades. You're picking a crap Soviet reactor and pretending that it's somehow representative. Then you accuse me of "sampling bias". Whatever, dude. Next thing you tell me that Fukushima doesn't count either. Fukushima doesn't count either. Magnitude 9 earthquake. Devastating tsunami. Outdated reactor that lost all power to its control systems. Still didn't kill any members of the general public (some plant workers were killed fighting the fire, but that hazard exists with any technology). So tell me, why should Fukushima "count" and just how safe do you expect something to be? Edit: to put things in perspective, suppose a similar magnitude 9 earthquake struck near the Three Gorges Dam in China. What do you suppose the death toll would be? Hundreds of thousands, minimum. Possibly millions. Compared to zero at Fukushima.
- DrScump 9y agoMagnitude 9 earthquake. Devastating tsunami. Outdated reactor that lost all power to its control systems. ...and its entire supply chain of backup power was limited to generators that were located in an area totally vulnerable to flooding (tsunami or otherwise).