5 ms·

> I am very concerned for the future of my children that even well educated people (I have these same arguments with my university colleagues) don't realise tha

> I am very concerned for the future of my children that even well educated people (I have these same arguments with my university colleagues) don't realise that. Perhaps it's not very convincing to claim that "a few potential large nuclear explosions due to accident/malice" aren't as bad as an average temperature increase of 1 degree or so. Certainly seems borderline insane to me.

kuzehanka 8y ago
The worst nuclear accidents that could possibly happen have already happened. We couldn't have a worse nuclear power disaster than Lake Karachay even if we tried on purpose. And yet the sum damage they caused is a negligible blip compared to how many people die due to the use of fossil fuels on any given month of any given year. The environmental impact of nuclear power vs. fossil fuels or even renewables is just a negligible number no matter how you spin it. I too am confused like the GP poster as to how otherwise intelligent people just break down into baseless fearmongering about imaginary disaster scenarios while ignoring that today's conventional energy industry is literally thousands of times worse. If every single operational nuclear power plant had a meltdown incident after operating for 20 years, they'd still be orders of magnitude less damaging than what we're doing today. The environmental impact and safety numbers are just that far apart. https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldwide-by-energy-source/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldw...
- lispm 8y ago
  far from it. If nuclear fallout had been reached Tokyo, then we would talk about a much greater problem.
  - ElBarto 8y ago
    An accident in a nuclear plant that was constructed in a highly seismic and tsunami-prone area isn't an argument against nuclear power. I'm sure that Germany can find a more suited location if they wanted... Anyway, France is peppered with nuclear plants and Germany is right downwind from many of them.
    - lispm 8y ago
      > Anyway, France is peppered with nuclear plants and Germany is right downwind from many of them. That's why we would like to see some of them being closed immediately.
- lazyjones 8y ago
  > We couldn't have a worse nuclear power disaster than Lake Karachay even if we tried on purpose. How can you write such a ridiculous sentence? We have nuclear power plants in the middle of inhabited areas with tens of millions of people who would be immediately affected by an explosion. It's a permanent subject of dispute here in Europe. > If every single operational nuclear power plant had a meltdown incident after operating for 20 years, they'd still be orders of magnitude less damaging than what we're doing today. The environmental impact and safety numbers are just that far apart One single accident in Europe would dwarf these inflated WHO numbers.
  - kuzehanka 8y ago
    > We have nuclear power plants in the middle of inhabited areas with tens of millions of people who would be immediately affected by an explosion. Cite please. The tens of millions affected by a feasible powerplant issue. Explosion is not really in the realm of feasible unless we're talking about bombs or uncontained soviet reactors.
    - Tomte 8y ago
      Why would we leave out terrorist attacks? Because they destroy your argument?
      - kuzehanka 8y ago
        What would a terrorist do with a nuclear powerplant exactly? We've flown fighter jets into nuclear powerplants to test them[1]. They're protected by armed guards. The US has a nuclear emergency task force ready to fly pumps and generators to any plant. The best attack even a highly resourced terrorist could mount would be to damage the cooling tower and not really make any difference? If you're imagining some kind of super coordinated military unit taking control of a powerplant yeah sure maybe? They'd be much better used just poisoning the water supply. This is exactly the kind of baseless fear driven hypothetical sentiment that I'd like to understand. [1] http://www.nbcnews.com/id/3072967/ns/business-check_point/t/are-nuclear-plants-safe-attack/ http://www.nbcnews.com/id/3072967/ns/business-check_point/t/...
Gondolin 8y ago
Again, coal related death are of the order of 1-5 millions by year. By contrast the worst estimate for Chernobyl is 200000 deaths. The closing of germany's reactor, which amount to around 60GWh, if it had been used instead to close coal based plants would have saved around 6000 lives per year. So over 10 years would have saved 60000 lives. An average temperature increase of 1 degree would not be so bad, it would probably amount for a few million deaths and a few trillion dollar (don't forget the economic cost of displacement due to increased water level, this will concern a lot more km^2 than nuclear exclusion zone). Still worse than nuclear but not orders of magnitude more. But the Paris agreement is about 2°C more and we are not headed to respect that, we are headed for at last a 3°C increase. This is way way worse than a 1°C increase. I am not joking about billions of death if we reach this point. What is borderline insane is not realizing the impact that climate change is going to have is nothing is done. And I live near a nuclear plant in France which almost had an accident similar to Fukushima during the 1999 tempest. So it's not like a Nuclear accident would not affect me...
- lazyjones 8y ago
  > we are headed for at last a 3°C increase. This is way way worse than a 1°C increase. I am not joking about billions of death if we reach this point. What is borderline insane is not realizing the impact that climate change is going to have is nothing is done. It's beyond borderline insane how people make up these "billions of deaths" numbers with a straight face.
  - DennisP 8y ago
    Then you should read the book Six Degrees by Mark Lynas, who read 3000 peer-reviewed papers on the effects of climate change and summarized them, one chapter per degree. Billions of deaths at three degrees is probably overstating things, but three degrees does bring massive food shortages and hundreds of millions of refugees. At four degrees, billions of deaths doesn't look that unlikely, and it starts getting hard to imagine how modern civilization could survive. More than that is unthinkable. The book is a decade old but more recent work hasn't improved the outlook at all.

kuzehanka 8y ago

The worst nuclear accidents that could possibly happen have already happened. We couldn't have a worse nuclear power disaster than Lake Karachay even if we tried on purpose. And yet the sum damage they caused is a negligible blip compared to how many people die due to the use of fossil fuels on any given month of any given year. The environmental impact of nuclear power vs. fossil fuels or even renewables is just a negligible number no matter how you spin it. I too am confused like the GP poster as to how otherwise intelligent people just break down into baseless fearmongering about imaginary disaster scenarios while ignoring that today's conventional energy industry is literally thousands of times worse. If every single operational nuclear power plant had a meltdown incident after operating for 20 years, they'd still be orders of magnitude less damaging than what we're doing today. The environmental impact and safety numbers are just that far apart. https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldwide-by-energy-source/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldw...

lispm 8y ago
far from it. If nuclear fallout had been reached Tokyo, then we would talk about a much greater problem.
- ElBarto 8y ago
  An accident in a nuclear plant that was constructed in a highly seismic and tsunami-prone area isn't an argument against nuclear power. I'm sure that Germany can find a more suited location if they wanted... Anyway, France is peppered with nuclear plants and Germany is right downwind from many of them.
  - lispm 8y ago
    > Anyway, France is peppered with nuclear plants and Germany is right downwind from many of them. That's why we would like to see some of them being closed immediately.
lazyjones 8y ago
> We couldn't have a worse nuclear power disaster than Lake Karachay even if we tried on purpose. How can you write such a ridiculous sentence? We have nuclear power plants in the middle of inhabited areas with tens of millions of people who would be immediately affected by an explosion. It's a permanent subject of dispute here in Europe. > If every single operational nuclear power plant had a meltdown incident after operating for 20 years, they'd still be orders of magnitude less damaging than what we're doing today. The environmental impact and safety numbers are just that far apart One single accident in Europe would dwarf these inflated WHO numbers.
- kuzehanka 8y ago
  > We have nuclear power plants in the middle of inhabited areas with tens of millions of people who would be immediately affected by an explosion. Cite please. The tens of millions affected by a feasible powerplant issue. Explosion is not really in the realm of feasible unless we're talking about bombs or uncontained soviet reactors.
  - Tomte 8y ago
    Why would we leave out terrorist attacks? Because they destroy your argument?
    - kuzehanka 8y ago
      What would a terrorist do with a nuclear powerplant exactly? We've flown fighter jets into nuclear powerplants to test them[1]. They're protected by armed guards. The US has a nuclear emergency task force ready to fly pumps and generators to any plant. The best attack even a highly resourced terrorist could mount would be to damage the cooling tower and not really make any difference? If you're imagining some kind of super coordinated military unit taking control of a powerplant yeah sure maybe? They'd be much better used just poisoning the water supply. This is exactly the kind of baseless fear driven hypothetical sentiment that I'd like to understand. [1] http://www.nbcnews.com/id/3072967/ns/business-check_point/t/are-nuclear-plants-safe-attack/ http://www.nbcnews.com/id/3072967/ns/business-check_point/t/...

Gondolin 8y ago

Again, coal related death are of the order of 1-5 millions by year. By contrast the worst estimate for Chernobyl is 200000 deaths. The closing of germany's reactor, which amount to around 60GWh, if it had been used instead to close coal based plants would have saved around 6000 lives per year. So over 10 years would have saved 60000 lives. An average temperature increase of 1 degree would not be so bad, it would probably amount for a few million deaths and a few trillion dollar (don't forget the economic cost of displacement due to increased water level, this will concern a lot more km^2 than nuclear exclusion zone). Still worse than nuclear but not orders of magnitude more. But the Paris agreement is about 2°C more and we are not headed to respect that, we are headed for at last a 3°C increase. This is way way worse than a 1°C increase. I am not joking about billions of death if we reach this point. What is borderline insane is not realizing the impact that climate change is going to have is nothing is done. And I live near a nuclear plant in France which almost had an accident similar to Fukushima during the 1999 tempest. So it's not like a Nuclear accident would not affect me...

lazyjones 8y ago
> we are headed for at last a 3°C increase. This is way way worse than a 1°C increase. I am not joking about billions of death if we reach this point. What is borderline insane is not realizing the impact that climate change is going to have is nothing is done. It's beyond borderline insane how people make up these "billions of deaths" numbers with a straight face.
- DennisP 8y ago
  Then you should read the book Six Degrees by Mark Lynas, who read 3000 peer-reviewed papers on the effects of climate change and summarized them, one chapter per degree. Billions of deaths at three degrees is probably overstating things, but three degrees does bring massive food shortages and hundreds of millions of refugees. At four degrees, billions of deaths doesn't look that unlikely, and it starts getting hard to imagine how modern civilization could survive. More than that is unthinkable. The book is a decade old but more recent work hasn't improved the outlook at all.