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Nuclear accidents have unique and sometimes unpredictable environment impact, like Fukushima continuing to pollute the ocean with radioactive material to this d
by thebean11 7y ago
Nuclear accidents have unique and sometimes unpredictable environment impact, like Fukushima continuing to pollute the ocean with radioactive material to this day.
Not saying that's a good reason to swear ourselves off nuclear, but it's more complicated than low carbon emissions.
- acidburnNSA 7y agoI agree that it's complicated. Radiological hazards are indeed pretty unique in the human experience. I disagree that any given release has unpredictable impact though. Top scientists around the world have studied the effects of radiation on living things and the environment in elaborate detail for 80 years. We have vast amounts of good data. This really became political around 1953 as the radioactive fallout from the big atmospheric thermonuclear weapons became extremely serious. The entire environmentalist movement itself was born out of protests against radiological hazards from weapons testing. Where climate science has the IPCC, heath effects of radiation has UNSCEAR [1], a UN-organized international group of top scientists. [1] https://www.unscear.org/ https://www.unscear.org/ The number one argument for nuclear is that it dramatically reduces air pollution deaths by displacing fossil fuel. The carbon-free nature you mention is argument number 2 in my mind. Number 3 is that it can run 24/7 and be deployed in a wide variety of geographies. As for polluting the ocean at Fukushima, I recommend seeing what Jim Conca has to say on it [2]. He's one of the world experts in nuclear waste. [2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2019/09/12/its-really-ok-if-japan-dumps-radioactive-fukushima-water-into-the-ocean/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2019/09/12/its-reall...
- evanlivingston 7y agoThat second article talks a whole lot about how tritium can't hurt humans but then says that keeping the contaminated water in tanks poses a risk to humans...
- acidburnNSA 7y agoI think the second point is that if insist that tanks with tritium are indeed dangerous (which the first point argued against), then you should want the hazard eliminated (by dilution) to avoid hurting living things.
- solveit 7y agoEverything has unpredictable environment impact at this scale. Name one energy source that can replace nuclear that doesn't have hard-to-predict consequences of unknown but possibly gigantic magnitude on a global scale.
- thebean11 7y agoThat's exactly my point, nuclear is not some magical exception to this rule
- paulddraper 7y agoManufacturing the equivalent obscene number of solar and wind power plants also has unique and unpredictable environmental impact.