3 ms·

I'm not making an argument that nuclear isn't safe. However, it is inherently high-stakes. A mistake that causes a station blackout for a couple hours can cost

I'm not making an argument that nuclear isn't safe. However, it is inherently high-stakes. A mistake that causes a station blackout for a couple hours can cost thousands of lives and make large swathes of land uninhabitable, costing billions of dollars. What you say about it being the safest in terms of deaths per unit energy is the argument I use to counteract the concern, but I still admit that the concern is legitimate. It's a hell of a way to boil water (Karl Grossman).

MagnumOpus 7y ago
> A mistake that causes a station blackout for a couple hours can cost thousands of lives A mistake that causes a hydro dam burst can cost thousands of lives. A coal power plant operating as designed does cost thousands of lives due to direct pollution and eventually thousands more through climate-change-induced famines. A solar farm of a size that can replace a 3GW nuke plant as baseload doesn't exist yet, would have to have 10-15 GWpeak capacity, would need a 10-15 GWh battery just to cover overnight load-balancing, which is a substantial chunk of global factory capacity for batteries...