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Nuclear's environmental drawbacks are well known numerically but not by the general public. By TWh generated, their overall impact on land use and waste generat

Nuclear's environmental drawbacks are well known numerically but not by the general public. By TWh generated, their overall impact on land use and waste generation is astoundingly small because they leverage nuclear forces and E=MC². 2,000,000x less nuclear fuel is required to make a kWh than chemical fuel (fossil, biofuel, or storage in batteries). Fossil and biofuel kills 8,000,000 people/yr from air pollution. Add in climate change and who knows. Meanwhile nuclear power stations have caused Chernobyl and Fukushima, which were devastating locally but have had surprisingly little radiological impact [1,2]. [1] https://www.unscear.org/unscear/en/chernobyl.html https://www.unscear.org/unscear/en/chernobyl.html [2] https://www.unscear.org/unscear/en/fukushima.html https://www.unscear.org/unscear/en/fukushima.html The thesis of the recent Michael Moore film "Planet of the Humans" [3] talks about human die-outs and serious trade-offs. I like your perspective of accepting trade-offs. This is very reasonable. Another recent film, Juice [4] is kind of the optimistic mirror of the Moore doco. [3] Full documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zk11vI-7czE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zk11vI-7czE [4] Promo: http://juicethemovie.com/ http://juicethemovie.com/

throwaway13337 6y ago
Planet of the humans oddly makes almost no reference to nuclear as an option. It's just never explored. This seems like an intentional omission to go along with the rest of the doc's tone. I suppose making it into a marketing piece for nuclear wouldn't be good branding for Moore, either.
- acidburnNSA 6y ago
  Yeah the nuclear advocates of the world were like, "huh ok. I guess that's a perfect pitch to us to swoop in with a slightly more positive outlook."
- erentz 6y ago
  I never fact checked that movie on its critiques of wind and solar. Though I’ve seen some reports that would partly corroborate some of thrust of their claims elsewhere. I doubt it’s as black and white as they put it. That said it annoyed me that the movie spent a lot of time in Vermont and not once acknowledge that Vermont gets 70% of its electricity from clean nuclear power at the Vermont Yankee plant. And this particular plant is targeted for shutdown by environmental groups for a long time. This contradiction needs to be seriously dealt with and was ignored by the movie. The movie really basically boiled down to wind/solar is a scam and we can’t possibly think of any other solution (cough nuclear cough) so we need to reduce our use magically and oh I guess somehow tell the rest of the developing world to stop developing. This doesn’t work. It’s not a solution.
  - acidburnNSA 6y ago
    What you say was true in 2008. But Vermont Yankee shut down in 2014. Bernie Sanders and many other anti-nuclear campaigners fought for its early closure, in part because of low fracked gas prices (among other things). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vermont_Yankee_Nuclear_Power_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vermont_Yankee_Nuclear_Power_P...
    - erentz 6y ago
      Wow. In that case substitute what I said for past tense :)

throwaway13337 6y ago

Planet of the humans oddly makes almost no reference to nuclear as an option. It's just never explored. This seems like an intentional omission to go along with the rest of the doc's tone. I suppose making it into a marketing piece for nuclear wouldn't be good branding for Moore, either.

acidburnNSA 6y ago
Yeah the nuclear advocates of the world were like, "huh ok. I guess that's a perfect pitch to us to swoop in with a slightly more positive outlook."
erentz 6y ago
I never fact checked that movie on its critiques of wind and solar. Though I’ve seen some reports that would partly corroborate some of thrust of their claims elsewhere. I doubt it’s as black and white as they put it. That said it annoyed me that the movie spent a lot of time in Vermont and not once acknowledge that Vermont gets 70% of its electricity from clean nuclear power at the Vermont Yankee plant. And this particular plant is targeted for shutdown by environmental groups for a long time. This contradiction needs to be seriously dealt with and was ignored by the movie. The movie really basically boiled down to wind/solar is a scam and we can’t possibly think of any other solution (cough nuclear cough) so we need to reduce our use magically and oh I guess somehow tell the rest of the developing world to stop developing. This doesn’t work. It’s not a solution.
- acidburnNSA 6y ago
  What you say was true in 2008. But Vermont Yankee shut down in 2014. Bernie Sanders and many other anti-nuclear campaigners fought for its early closure, in part because of low fracked gas prices (among other things). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vermont_Yankee_Nuclear_Power_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vermont_Yankee_Nuclear_Power_P...
  - erentz 6y ago
    Wow. In that case substitute what I said for past tense :)