3 ms·

>A nuclear reactor blowing up, though? The immediate death potential is mostly limited to the on-site staff and the "liquidators" (as evidenced in Chernobyl), b

>A nuclear reactor blowing up, though? The immediate death potential is mostly limited to the on-site staff and the "liquidators" (as evidenced in Chernobyl), but the land wide swaths around the site can remain uninhabitable for hundreds of years. If the land is really that valuable it can be cleaned. Nobody is going to remediate a forest in the Ukraine though because the Ukraine doesn't have that kind of money and it's not like they're particularly strapped for land in eastern Europe. By definition anything radioactive enough to cause harm is not going to be long-lived. After a few years it's generally going to >To this day, wild pigs and fungi in Bavaria (1700 km away!) have to be radiation tested If by "have to" you mean "in order to make people feel safe" then sure. If by "have to" you mean "because it is not uncommon to find examples that are too irradiated for human consumption" so we have to test them to get a picture of how common these cases are. Honestly I'd be more concerned about eating deer that have been drinking from god knows what contaminated water source than I would be about radiation in animals around Chernobyl.

mschuster91 8y ago
> If the land is really that valuable it can be cleaned. Not really. Even in Japan, regulators basically screwed over regulations to declare the land as "inhabitable" again (https://www.zeit.de/politik/ausland/2017-03/fukushima-japan-tsunami-orte-sicherheit-radioaktivitaet-evakuierung https://www.zeit.de/politik/ausland/2017-03/fukushima-japan-...). > If by "have to" you mean "in order to make people feel safe" then sure. Keeping people safe is the primary objective for a state, not allowing private entities to extract the most possible profits while offloading the risks to the state. We saw this in Japan, it is impossible for any private entity to shoulder the cost of an accident.
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  >Keeping people safe is the primary objective for a state You seem to be confusing "keeping people safe" with "keeping people safe theater". Monitoring the radioactivity of European crops and livestock in 2019 is solidly in the latter category. >not allowing private entities to extract the most possible profits while offloading the risks to the state. This it as tangential to a discussion of nuclear safety compared to the safety of any other power source. >We saw this in Japan, it is impossible for any private entity to shoulder the cost of an accident. And this is different than a dam failure, or any other industrial accident of similar magnitude, in a similarly populated/developed location how?
  - mschuster91 8y ago
    > This it as tangential to a discussion of nuclear safety compared to the safety of any other power source. No, it is not. No other power source comes even close in the amount of time that has to be covered by insurances. A dam breaks, a gas plant explodes, that's a couple billions of dollars of damage plus a couple billions in payments for the relatives of the dead. For corporations making billions of years in profits, that's pocket change. (Which coincidentally explains why disasters regarding open "seas" of toxic mining slurry occur so regularly) For Fukushima? That land is inhabitable for decades. Assume the Isar 1 AKW blows up? This is only 100km away from Munich. Can you imagine how much it costs to move an area with over 3M people? And that doesn't even touch the question: where to put the nuclear trash? Germany doesn't have a permanent waste facility and many other countries don't have one either. Note that I'm not against nuclear in general: Inherently safe designs such as MSRs? Perfectly fine. But not the often shoddily maintained stuff that is in use today!
    - mikeyouse 8y ago
      Forget Munich (don’t but you get my point) what’s the liability of the 40-year old 2GW Indian Point plant, which is constantly receiving safety citations, being 30 miles upwind from NYC? 20 million people live there..
      - mschuster91 8y ago
        Exactly this. Nuclear power using pressure vessels is simply too dangerous.

mschuster91 8y ago

> If the land is really that valuable it can be cleaned. Not really. Even in Japan, regulators basically screwed over regulations to declare the land as "inhabitable" again (https://www.zeit.de/politik/ausland/2017-03/fukushima-japan-tsunami-orte-sicherheit-radioaktivitaet-evakuierung https://www.zeit.de/politik/ausland/2017-03/fukushima-japan-...). > If by "have to" you mean "in order to make people feel safe" then sure. Keeping people safe is the primary objective for a state, not allowing private entities to extract the most possible profits while offloading the risks to the state. We saw this in Japan, it is impossible for any private entity to shoulder the cost of an accident.

dsfyu404ed 8y ago
>Keeping people safe is the primary objective for a state You seem to be confusing "keeping people safe" with "keeping people safe theater". Monitoring the radioactivity of European crops and livestock in 2019 is solidly in the latter category. >not allowing private entities to extract the most possible profits while offloading the risks to the state. This it as tangential to a discussion of nuclear safety compared to the safety of any other power source. >We saw this in Japan, it is impossible for any private entity to shoulder the cost of an accident. And this is different than a dam failure, or any other industrial accident of similar magnitude, in a similarly populated/developed location how?
- mschuster91 8y ago
  > This it as tangential to a discussion of nuclear safety compared to the safety of any other power source. No, it is not. No other power source comes even close in the amount of time that has to be covered by insurances. A dam breaks, a gas plant explodes, that's a couple billions of dollars of damage plus a couple billions in payments for the relatives of the dead. For corporations making billions of years in profits, that's pocket change. (Which coincidentally explains why disasters regarding open "seas" of toxic mining slurry occur so regularly) For Fukushima? That land is inhabitable for decades. Assume the Isar 1 AKW blows up? This is only 100km away from Munich. Can you imagine how much it costs to move an area with over 3M people? And that doesn't even touch the question: where to put the nuclear trash? Germany doesn't have a permanent waste facility and many other countries don't have one either. Note that I'm not against nuclear in general: Inherently safe designs such as MSRs? Perfectly fine. But not the often shoddily maintained stuff that is in use today!
  - mikeyouse 8y ago
    Forget Munich (don’t but you get my point) what’s the liability of the 40-year old 2GW Indian Point plant, which is constantly receiving safety citations, being 30 miles upwind from NYC? 20 million people live there..
    - mschuster91 8y ago
      Exactly this. Nuclear power using pressure vessels is simply too dangerous.