4 ms·

Its interesting how people have weird biases. Nuclear accidents do happen - and when they do - they poison the area pretty much forever. If you had the choice

Its interesting how people have weird biases. Nuclear accidents do happen - and when they do - they poison the area pretty much forever. If you had the choice of building a power plant - or building a solar / wind factory - it's a no brainer. You're building a power plant factory rather than one single power plant. Everyone but he US sees the potential.

fabatka 8y ago
In the case of Chernobyl, I would argue that the area is not poisoned "pretty much forever". The effects of radiation on local wildlife is up for debate[0], but note the fact that mammal population is increasing(cited in [0]). From this I would think that the local wildlife is not worse off than it would be if humans continued living in that area. [0]: https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/04/060418-chernobyl-wildlife-thirty-year-anniversary-science/ https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/04/060418-chernobyl... EDIT: forgot reference
- olavk 8y ago
  Of course wildlife is not worse off - anywhere humans leave an inhabited area (ghost towns) you will see it gradually reclaimed by nature. If you want to argue that radiation is healthy for mammals, you would have to compare with a similar unpolluted wildlife area, not with how wildlife fared when the area was a populous industrial city!
- legulere 8y ago
  Here in Bavaria, over 1500km away, we still today have problems that game and mushrooms are often too much contaminated with radioisotopes to be fit for human consumption.
bhickey 8y ago
> Nuclear accidents do happen - and when they do - they poison the area pretty much forever. The Chernobyl exclusion zone is about 1,000 mi^sq and the Fukushima exclusion zone is about 240 mi^sq. This is a lot of land, but it must be dwarfed in comparison to the land destroyed, essentially forever, through mineral exploitation.
- titzer 8y ago
  Not to mention, the rebound in local wildlife in Chernobyl, due to the simple fact that it's an exclusion zone for humans, show that nuclear accidents are bad for people, but, in the long run, great for wildlife. The picture isn't all roses, of course, but this article is pretty interesting: http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160421-the-chernobyl-exclusion-zone-is-arguably-a-nature-reserve http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160421-the-chernobyl-exclus...
  - olavk 8y ago
    Well if you wanted to turn an inhabited area into wildlife you could do it by forcibly removing people without having to build and explode a nuclear reactor first. So I don't find this a very convincing argument in favor of the benefit of nuclear accidents.
    - titzer 8y ago
      Hungry people will go anywhere to get food. Always have, since the dawn of man. Hunters would love to go in and bag a deer, some rabids, anything else. Sadly, the only way to keep them out is if they are scared to death. I won't say "bring on the nuclear accidents", but holy cow, look at what they tell us about ourselves.
  - zeth___ 8y ago
    What I'm seeing here isn't that radiation is harmless, but that radiation is less harmful than humans, which is no great surprise considering we kill wolves in a few minutes with guns, but radiation can take up to half the lifespan of a wolf to do the same.
- shawnz 8y ago
  Its interesting how people have weird biases!
athenot 8y ago
It's like airplanes vs. cars. There are several orders of magnitude more deaths in cars than there are in airplanes, but it is immensely spectacular when there are aiplane accidents, leading to a perception of unsafety. On the flip side, there will be at least one person dying in your city, TODAY, due to cars. But that is not spectacular and we gloss over it.
- codingdave 8y ago
  If every airplane crash poisoned the ground for 100 miles surrounding it, there would be a far different measurement of their impact. I don't know anyone who denies the safety record of nuclear if your only metric is human casualties. But that simply isn't the only impact.
  - athenot 8y ago
    You are right, there are different metrics that should be considered. Yes, there is the risk of long-term damage to the environment. But we've also learned a lot from failures and really make sure we can minimize the impact so that failure modes don't condemn an area like at Chernobyl. The stakes are very high, so the precautions aren't half-arsed. But if we're going to have an honest conversation, we also need to consider the secondary impact of other energy sources. Windfarms kill large birds[1]. Also watch for flying ice [2]. Hydro power disrupts fish migration and affects silt patterns. Most importantly of all, oil continues to cause many wars in addition to health issues. All means of energy production carry risks and impact both nature and human lives. Some forms spread the risk out, some just shift it to less fortunate populations. Nuclear addresses the risk head-on and contains it. That requires every control system in triplicate; an insane amount of regulation, inspection, safety checks; and of course it requires a level of transparency so that the population can remained informed about the risks and issues. In the end, there must be a basket of methods used for energy production, to balance the electrical needs of an area. - Nuclear makes a good baseline for high levels of output. But it doesn't scale up/down very fast to match needs. - Wind and solar are great if the environment permits it but are vulnerable to weather, and produce several ordrer of magnitude less than nuclear. - Hydro is free except for the ecological (and sometimes human) disruption it causes when whole areas are lost to the water, and is dependent on weather (at a longer timeline). - Gas is a great on-demand source to complement the ones above but of course is a net producer of CO₂ and has it's own high ecological & geopolitical impact. - Coal... well that one needs to be discontinued for the reasons mentioned in the article. [1] http://savetheeaglesinternational.org/new/us-windfarms-kill-10-20-times-more-than-previously-thought.html http://savetheeaglesinternational.org/new/us-windfarms-kill-... [2] https://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/09/ice-tossing-turbines-myth-or-hazard/ https://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/09/ice-tossing-turbi...
rascul 8y ago
Maybe we do see the potential and it's not yet cost effective for us to implement wind or solar on a large scale. There are lots of smaller scale solar farms around the country, though, and I'm seeing more and more wind turbines, so it's not like we're ignoring it.

fabatka 8y ago

In the case of Chernobyl, I would argue that the area is not poisoned "pretty much forever". The effects of radiation on local wildlife is up for debate[0], but note the fact that mammal population is increasing(cited in [0]). From this I would think that the local wildlife is not worse off than it would be if humans continued living in that area. [0]: https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/04/060418-chernobyl-wildlife-thirty-year-anniversary-science/ https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/04/060418-chernobyl... EDIT: forgot reference

olavk 8y ago
Of course wildlife is not worse off - anywhere humans leave an inhabited area (ghost towns) you will see it gradually reclaimed by nature. If you want to argue that radiation is healthy for mammals, you would have to compare with a similar unpolluted wildlife area, not with how wildlife fared when the area was a populous industrial city!
legulere 8y ago
Here in Bavaria, over 1500km away, we still today have problems that game and mushrooms are often too much contaminated with radioisotopes to be fit for human consumption.

bhickey 8y ago

> Nuclear accidents do happen - and when they do - they poison the area pretty much forever. The Chernobyl exclusion zone is about 1,000 mi^sq and the Fukushima exclusion zone is about 240 mi^sq. This is a lot of land, but it must be dwarfed in comparison to the land destroyed, essentially forever, through mineral exploitation.

titzer 8y ago
Not to mention, the rebound in local wildlife in Chernobyl, due to the simple fact that it's an exclusion zone for humans, show that nuclear accidents are bad for people, but, in the long run, great for wildlife. The picture isn't all roses, of course, but this article is pretty interesting: http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160421-the-chernobyl-exclusion-zone-is-arguably-a-nature-reserve http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160421-the-chernobyl-exclus...
- olavk 8y ago
  Well if you wanted to turn an inhabited area into wildlife you could do it by forcibly removing people without having to build and explode a nuclear reactor first. So I don't find this a very convincing argument in favor of the benefit of nuclear accidents.
  - titzer 8y ago
    Hungry people will go anywhere to get food. Always have, since the dawn of man. Hunters would love to go in and bag a deer, some rabids, anything else. Sadly, the only way to keep them out is if they are scared to death. I won't say "bring on the nuclear accidents", but holy cow, look at what they tell us about ourselves.
- zeth___ 8y ago
  What I'm seeing here isn't that radiation is harmless, but that radiation is less harmful than humans, which is no great surprise considering we kill wolves in a few minutes with guns, but radiation can take up to half the lifespan of a wolf to do the same.
shawnz 8y ago
Its interesting how people have weird biases!

athenot 8y ago

It's like airplanes vs. cars. There are several orders of magnitude more deaths in cars than there are in airplanes, but it is immensely spectacular when there are aiplane accidents, leading to a perception of unsafety. On the flip side, there will be at least one person dying in your city, TODAY, due to cars. But that is not spectacular and we gloss over it.

codingdave 8y ago
If every airplane crash poisoned the ground for 100 miles surrounding it, there would be a far different measurement of their impact. I don't know anyone who denies the safety record of nuclear if your only metric is human casualties. But that simply isn't the only impact.
- athenot 8y ago
  You are right, there are different metrics that should be considered. Yes, there is the risk of long-term damage to the environment. But we've also learned a lot from failures and really make sure we can minimize the impact so that failure modes don't condemn an area like at Chernobyl. The stakes are very high, so the precautions aren't half-arsed. But if we're going to have an honest conversation, we also need to consider the secondary impact of other energy sources. Windfarms kill large birds[1]. Also watch for flying ice [2]. Hydro power disrupts fish migration and affects silt patterns. Most importantly of all, oil continues to cause many wars in addition to health issues. All means of energy production carry risks and impact both nature and human lives. Some forms spread the risk out, some just shift it to less fortunate populations. Nuclear addresses the risk head-on and contains it. That requires every control system in triplicate; an insane amount of regulation, inspection, safety checks; and of course it requires a level of transparency so that the population can remained informed about the risks and issues. In the end, there must be a basket of methods used for energy production, to balance the electrical needs of an area. - Nuclear makes a good baseline for high levels of output. But it doesn't scale up/down very fast to match needs. - Wind and solar are great if the environment permits it but are vulnerable to weather, and produce several ordrer of magnitude less than nuclear. - Hydro is free except for the ecological (and sometimes human) disruption it causes when whole areas are lost to the water, and is dependent on weather (at a longer timeline). - Gas is a great on-demand source to complement the ones above but of course is a net producer of CO₂ and has it's own high ecological & geopolitical impact. - Coal... well that one needs to be discontinued for the reasons mentioned in the article. [1] http://savetheeaglesinternational.org/new/us-windfarms-kill-10-20-times-more-than-previously-thought.html http://savetheeaglesinternational.org/new/us-windfarms-kill-... [2] https://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/09/ice-tossing-turbines-myth-or-hazard/ https://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/09/ice-tossing-turbi...

rascul 8y ago

Maybe we do see the potential and it's not yet cost effective for us to implement wind or solar on a large scale. There are lots of smaller scale solar farms around the country, though, and I'm seeing more and more wind turbines, so it's not like we're ignoring it.