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Being against nuclear energy, is like being against vaccines because of risk of side effects. A lot of the anti-vaxxers have the same form of argument, demandin
by RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
Being against nuclear energy, is like being against vaccines because of risk of side effects. A lot of the anti-vaxxers have the same form of argument, demanding absolute safety and talking up the rare incidents where people were harmed, instead of considering the risks in context of what it is preventing.
Climate change if we can't control it, will end human civilization as we know it and at best result in tens of millions of people dying and many more being displaced. Compared to this, even a 100 Chernobyls would be an acceptable risk.
- runarberg 6y agoThis is a gross oversimplification and simply wrong. There are number of unsolved problems with nuclear energy, including: * Safety – e.g. we don’t trust Iran to operate a nuclear power plant). * Waste – There are some expensive solutions that can store the waste (and the problem) for the foreseeable future, but we lack a permanent solution. * Time – Global warming is already out of control, we simply don’t have time to build all the new plants required. * Cost – Nuclear plants are really expensive, spending that money elsewhere is probably cost effective for the battle against the climate disaster. A more apt analogy is probably GMO. Sure there are concerns about the safety, pollution, and marketability of GMO product, but what grosses most environmentalists about GMO is the false promise that GMO will safe humanity from a potential food shortage. It doesn’t. Food shortages are a problem of distribution, not quantity. There are other safer, cheaper and quicker ways to solve the problems. Focusing on GMO is simply derailing us from talking about actual solutions.