5 ms·
Indeed! Nukes provide about 60% of the low-carbon energy in the USA. They emit about 12 gCO2-eq/kWh (vs. 40 for solar PV, 11 for wind, 490 for gas, 820 for coal
by acidburnNSA 8y ago
Indeed! Nukes provide about 60% of the low-carbon energy in the USA. They emit about 12 gCO2-eq/kWh (vs. 40 for solar PV, 11 for wind, 490 for gas, 820 for coal). They net save millions of lives simply by displacing air polluters. They contain and pay for all their waste (where other energy systems dump their waste right into our lungs where it kills hundreds of thousands per year). Accidents have hurt relatively few people (0 died or will die from Fukushima, while a gas explosion just happened and we already forgot about it).
The operating plants now are struggling because fracked gas pulled out the electricity revenue rug below their operating costs, and post-9/11 upgrades have been expensive for operation and maintenance.
But the capability of atomic energy is just so darn intriguing it's hard to just give up on fission now, even though it advanced fission has struggled through the years.
- nostromo 8y agoChernobyl won’t be habitable for 20,000 years. While accidents are rare, with their incredibly high cost (in this case: a city of 50,000 people that cannot be inhabited for a time longer than all of human history), they need to be even rarer.
- LyndsySimon 8y agoChernobyl was terrible design, and we’ve come a long way. Fukushima would be a better example of a modern design failing, and even then there are much more fault-tolerant designs. We certainly aren’t going to be building any more Chernobyls for commercial power generation.
- NeutronStar 8y agoFukushima uses a 50 years old design.
- leeoniya 8y agoJapan is somewhat forced to build nuclear plants in a very seismically active zone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_of_Fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_of_Fire
- cryoshon 8y agochernobyl had known reactor design flaws at the time of the accident. even then, there were designs for fail-safe reactors instead of fail-deadly reactors. those have only improved with time.
- AngryData 8y agoI wouldn't consider Fukishima modern either, it began construction in 1967, with the actual design plans being a bit older. That is like 25 years from the first nuclear reactors, we are now 50 years of research and technology beyond fukishima. Yeah it has had some upgrades, but you can only modify an already existent reactor design so much.
- nickik 8y agoFalse. There are people living many people in that exclusion zone right now and they are actually fine and don't drop dead of cancer like flies. And lets remember that this was a Soviet design build as a technology to have reactor for nuclear weapons (or at least dual use). Fukushima is the worst thing ever happened in terms of actual western civilian reactors and not a single person died from radiation. Not a single person died in the US from civilian nuclear. It is the safest energy technology in terms of actual data. So yes, it should be saver, but comparatively it is saver then everything else.
- mixmastamyk 8y agoNot a single person died in the US or Japan? Quite misinformed.
- tehbeard 8y agoCare to back that claim up?
- mixmastamyk 8y agohttps://arstechnica.com/science/2018/09/japan-acknowledges-first-radiation-linked-death-out-of-fukushima/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/09/japan-acknowledges-f... We all know how enthusiastic governments are to admit fault, there are probably many more. One I'm familiar with in the US: "The Sodium Reactor Experiment-SRE was an experimental nuclear reactor that operated at the site from 1957 to 1964 and was the first commercial power plant in the world to experience a core meltdown. There was a decades-long cover-up of the incident by the U.S. Department of Energy." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Susana_Field_Laboratory#Accidents_and_site_contamination https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Susana_Field_Laboratory#... Many of the workers died in their 40s or earlier, in town most of that generation dead by their 60s of cancer. Appears to still be having an affect: https://www.change.org/p/no-more-kids-with-cancer-clean-up-the-santa-susana-field-lab https://www.change.org/p/no-more-kids-with-cancer-clean-up-t...
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- acidburnNSA 8y agoFirst of all, the threat we're up against is global warming and air pollution which is currently killing hundreds of thousands of people, right now, per year. Also, you're assuming a linear no-threshold radiation dose response, which is very hard to find support for at the low dose rates now present at Chernobyl. As someone else in this thread pointed out, that's like assuming hundreds of people would die per year from handshakes due to linear health response to Newton's laws. Indeed, it appears that human presence was more detrimental to life than radiation [1]. [1] https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/04/060418-chernobyl-wildlife-thirty-year-anniversary-science/ https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/04/060418-chernobyl...
- 7952 8y agoThe engineering cost of dealing with Fukushima and Chernobyl are aboslutely eye watering. I would agree that the human reaction is sometimes irrational, but that needs to be accepted. Human life is not a lab controlled experiment where people will always behave rationally.
- NeutronStar 8y agoNo one is saying to build 70s era nuclear power plants. New nuclear design are way safer than those old designs.
- acidburnNSA 8y agoOk, but would you agree that we should also expect to not overdo cleanup efforts by several orders of magnitude without reasonable evidence that low-dose radiation is dangerous after collecting multiple decades of data. I don't think infinite-duration irrationality in the face of data is necessary.
- 7952 8y agoA focus of the engineering efforts at Chernobyl and Fukushima are to make sure that higher risk contamination is avoided. So the current radiation impact is not the issue. It is the potential impact that is addressed. I hope that one day Chernobyl and Fukushima can be repopulated, and agree that may be safe. I don't think that makes any difference to the actual cost of the event. Nor, would it be wise to presume that a subsequent event could be safely handled without an evacuation. But that is one for politicians to decide.
- lisper 8y ago> Chernobyl won’t be habitable for 20,000 years. The area around Chernobyl is habitable today. In fact, wildlife is thriving there because humans are staying away.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- ArchTypical 8y ago"habitable" is not the same as survivable. Generally the term habitable means safe for society, so while you may quibble over what exact standard to use the dangers around Chernobyl are MAGNITUDES higher than the dangers of smoking. More like guaranteeing cancer in <20 years.
- lisper 8y agoReference? Here's another data point: Even by your definition, Hiroshima and Nagasaki are habitable today, less than 100 years after having been hit by nuclear bombs. Ground zero in those cities are thriving tourist zones. Yes, radiation is dangerous, but the dangers of nuclear power have been VASTLY exaggerated by left-wing propaganda.
- brianobush 8y agoNagasaki and Hiroshima were both air burst explosions for maximal blast, but didn't contaminate the ground as much as a ground explosion would.
- lisper 8y agoChernobyl was not a ground explosion either. (Well, OK, it was, but it wasn't a nuclear explosion, it was a steam explosion.)
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- yellowapple 8y agoIf radiation sickness is your concern, then you're better off replacing coal (which spews radioactive material into the air all day every day) with nuclear (which does not normally, and even with the very few nuclear disasters in Earth's history doesn't do so at anywhere near the scale of coal).
- credit_guy 8y ago20,000 years is way off. Here's a report by the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) [1]. The main radio-isotopes after the Chernobyl disaster were (see p. 2): "The total release of radioactive substances was about 14 EBq1 (as of 26 April 1986), which included 1.8 EBq of 131I, 0.085 EBq of 137Cs and other caesium radioisotopes, 0.01EBq of 90Sr and 0.003 EBq of plutonium radioisotopes. The noble gases contributed about 50% of the total release of radioactivity." Iodine-131 has a half-life of only 8 days, and it cleared up long ago. The only going concern is Caesium-137, which has a half-life of 30 years, and needs 300 years to go to 1/1000 of the initial levels and 600 years to all but disappear. The other radioisotopes were contained to the location of the reactor. The only one that will be there for millenia is a decay product of Pu-241, namely Am-241 with a half-life of 430 years. However, as stated before, that is localized to the nuclear reactor itself. It will reach a maximum about 100 years after the event (so about 70 years from now). [1] http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/Pub1239_web.pdf http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/Pub1239_web.pd...
- Siecje 8y agoI don't think it is fair to say that 0 died from Fukushima. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster_casualties https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disa...
- acidburnNSA 8y agoYou're right. The proper statement is that radiation killed zero people, but fear of radiation did kill.
- morrad 8y agoThe first radiation exposure related death was reported a few weeks ago from one of the plant's workers. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-45423575 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-45423575 Still, your point that nuclear is significantly safer from a community health perspective is correct.