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It's safe in terms of deaths, but most power sources' failure modes don't include "render a large area uninhabitable for a century".

by PeCaN 7y ago

traverseda 7y ago
Have you looked at Hiroshima on google maps? This is where the detonation occurred https://www.google.com/maps/place/Hiroshima+Atomic+Bomb+Hypocenter/@34.3896179,132.4532512,1178a,35y,19.52h,29.12t/data=!3m1!1e3!4m13!1m7!3m6!1s0x0:0x0!2zMzTCsDIzJzQxLjMiTiAxMzLCsDI3JzE2LjkiRQ!3b1!8m2!3d34.3948!4d132.4547!3m4!1s0x355aa20cfb72be19:0x2fa8b78b04761f58!8m2!3d34.3947199!4d132.4547131 https://www.google.com/maps/place/Hiroshima+Atomic+Bomb+Hypo... It's not particularly relevant, but I thought it was interesting seeing the people living so close to the site of a nuclear detonation.
- jpindar 7y ago
  And they never have been able to keep people from staying in, or moving back into, the area around Chernobyl. There's an interesting documentary, "The Babushkas of Chernobyl" about some women who refused to leave.
  - Krasnol 7y ago
    Meanwhile NGOs like the http://www.hilfe-tschernobyl.de/ http://www.hilfe-tschernobyl.de/ fund the removal of tumours of kids from Belarus who suffer due to the accident and support local hospitals and hospices where victims are being treated or live their last days.
    - Grue3 7y ago
      >tumours of kids from Belarus who suffer due to the accident Sounds like bullshit to me. There's no way to tell if it's due to the accident, and the statistics of such cases are not conclusive. And of course it's a German organization, which is a country known to be irrationally anti-nuclear, burning brown coal just to offset the closed nukes which had zero impact on the environment.
mbell 7y ago
> "render a large area uninhabitable for a century". I've never really understood this argument. Even if we set aside 1000 square miles of land for waste disposal, that's a rounding error in the amount of uninhabitable land on the planet. It's probably even a rounding error in land that has been made uninhabitable by humans for similarly long time spans.
- PeCaN 7y ago
  Not waste disposal, nuclear disasters. I think the waste problem is awkward but far from a dealbreaker for nuclear energy, especially with breeder reactors and other more efficient designs. The problem is that even though nuclear reactors work the overwhelming majority of the time, such that disasters are practically a rounding error, when they happen they're rather spectacular.
  - ChrisLomont 7y ago
    The most spectacular one so far won’t render a place uninhabitable for a century, and it’s a terribly old design. Where is the evidence of your century of uninhabitable failure mode going forward?
ChrisLomont 7y ago
How about all the uninhabitable land from other power sources? There’s plenty of Superfund sites from traditional power generation. If you’re going to criticize, be sure to apply the same standard to all methods. When you dig into it carefully, you’ll find nuclear to be one of the cleanest, safest solutions, taking into account cost to build and externalities, cost for waste, lifetime of the plant, etc. And modern designs don’t render a place dangerous after failure. That’s 1950 talking, not 2019. Google nuclear reactor safety and read about it. You’ll be surprised. It’s not the terror so many associate with the word nuclear.
- PeCaN 7y ago
  oh, and i forgot, the worst part of nuclear power is the fans.
dragonwriter 7y ago
> but most power sources' failure modes don't include "render a large area uninhabitable for a century". Large scale hydro is probably the closest to nuclear in this respect. And is notable because it's success mode also does something similar. (Of course, the “success” mode of fossil fuel power renders the whole planet uninhabitable, but not from a single average-size generating station.)

It's safe in terms of deaths, but most power sources' failure modes don't include "render a large area uninhabitable for a century".

by PeCaN 7y ago

It's safe in terms of deaths, but most power sources' failure modes don't include "render a large area uninhabitable for a century".

traverseda 7y ago

Have you looked at Hiroshima on google maps? This is where the detonation occurred https://www.google.com/maps/place/Hiroshima+Atomic+Bomb+Hypocenter/@34.3896179,132.4532512,1178a,35y,19.52h,29.12t/data=!3m1!1e3!4m13!1m7!3m6!1s0x0:0x0!2zMzTCsDIzJzQxLjMiTiAxMzLCsDI3JzE2LjkiRQ!3b1!8m2!3d34.3948!4d132.4547!3m4!1s0x355aa20cfb72be19:0x2fa8b78b04761f58!8m2!3d34.3947199!4d132.4547131 https://www.google.com/maps/place/Hiroshima+Atomic+Bomb+Hypo... It's not particularly relevant, but I thought it was interesting seeing the people living so close to the site of a nuclear detonation.

jpindar 7y ago
And they never have been able to keep people from staying in, or moving back into, the area around Chernobyl. There's an interesting documentary, "The Babushkas of Chernobyl" about some women who refused to leave.
- Krasnol 7y ago
  Meanwhile NGOs like the http://www.hilfe-tschernobyl.de/ http://www.hilfe-tschernobyl.de/ fund the removal of tumours of kids from Belarus who suffer due to the accident and support local hospitals and hospices where victims are being treated or live their last days.
  - Grue3 7y ago
    >tumours of kids from Belarus who suffer due to the accident Sounds like bullshit to me. There's no way to tell if it's due to the accident, and the statistics of such cases are not conclusive. And of course it's a German organization, which is a country known to be irrationally anti-nuclear, burning brown coal just to offset the closed nukes which had zero impact on the environment.

mbell 7y ago

> "render a large area uninhabitable for a century". I've never really understood this argument. Even if we set aside 1000 square miles of land for waste disposal, that's a rounding error in the amount of uninhabitable land on the planet. It's probably even a rounding error in land that has been made uninhabitable by humans for similarly long time spans.

PeCaN 7y ago
Not waste disposal, nuclear disasters. I think the waste problem is awkward but far from a dealbreaker for nuclear energy, especially with breeder reactors and other more efficient designs. The problem is that even though nuclear reactors work the overwhelming majority of the time, such that disasters are practically a rounding error, when they happen they're rather spectacular.
- ChrisLomont 7y ago
  The most spectacular one so far won’t render a place uninhabitable for a century, and it’s a terribly old design. Where is the evidence of your century of uninhabitable failure mode going forward?

ChrisLomont 7y ago

How about all the uninhabitable land from other power sources? There’s plenty of Superfund sites from traditional power generation. If you’re going to criticize, be sure to apply the same standard to all methods. When you dig into it carefully, you’ll find nuclear to be one of the cleanest, safest solutions, taking into account cost to build and externalities, cost for waste, lifetime of the plant, etc. And modern designs don’t render a place dangerous after failure. That’s 1950 talking, not 2019. Google nuclear reactor safety and read about it. You’ll be surprised. It’s not the terror so many associate with the word nuclear.

PeCaN 7y ago
oh, and i forgot, the worst part of nuclear power is the fans.

dragonwriter 7y ago

> but most power sources' failure modes don't include "render a large area uninhabitable for a century". Large scale hydro is probably the closest to nuclear in this respect. And is notable because it's success mode also does something similar. (Of course, the “success” mode of fossil fuel power renders the whole planet uninhabitable, but not from a single average-size generating station.)