4 ms·

It kills the fewest number of people pre joule and the negative externalities are centralized, i.e., the people that made the mess need to pay to keep it stored

It kills the fewest number of people pre joule and the negative externalities are centralized, i.e., the people that made the mess need to pay to keep it stored safely. I fail to see how an underground bunker of radiation is dirtier than people literally breathing in toxic fumes. Coal even releases a ton of radiation per joule, so even the framing of radioactive vs non-radioactive is a subject of discussion. Also, I highly doubt that if humanity makes it even a thousand more years that we'll have trouble finding a productive use for depleted uranium or other spent fissile fuels. They have many interesting properties.

manquer 6y ago
The people and the governments who took those decisions will be long gone in few hundred years, the waste will still be here , leaking into the soil and water table. I was not arguing for coal in any way I am merely pointing saying Nuclear is not as clean as pro nuclear people argue. Yes the NORM released by Coal and other human activities is substantial, However it is not remotely comparable to Fukishma, Chernobyl and bikini atoll . I don't trust any of the world governments to build a safe reactor and I don't share your optimism on that we will find ways to handle the waste. Instead of trusting luck that we will find clean ways to handle, we can start building plants when we do find them, . It is recency bias to think we will be able to keep technologically innovating at the same pace we have in the last few decades or even few hundred years, most of our history innovation has happened rapidly only under certain conditions, it may be that those conditions will continue to favour, or maybe physical limits such as moore's law slowing down, resource limits stuck on single planet economically or socio political structural problems can slow down innovation substantially, Any of them could be a great filter in the Fermi Paradox sense.
dane-pgp 6y ago
> the people that made the mess need to pay to keep it stored safely. We'd certainly like for those people to keep the mess stored safely, but there are incentives for them to not do so, even assuming they had the ability to.

manquer 6y ago

The people and the governments who took those decisions will be long gone in few hundred years, the waste will still be here , leaking into the soil and water table. I was not arguing for coal in any way I am merely pointing saying Nuclear is not as clean as pro nuclear people argue. Yes the NORM released by Coal and other human activities is substantial, However it is not remotely comparable to Fukishma, Chernobyl and bikini atoll . I don't trust any of the world governments to build a safe reactor and I don't share your optimism on that we will find ways to handle the waste. Instead of trusting luck that we will find clean ways to handle, we can start building plants when we do find them, . It is recency bias to think we will be able to keep technologically innovating at the same pace we have in the last few decades or even few hundred years, most of our history innovation has happened rapidly only under certain conditions, it may be that those conditions will continue to favour, or maybe physical limits such as moore's law slowing down, resource limits stuck on single planet economically or socio political structural problems can slow down innovation substantially, Any of them could be a great filter in the Fermi Paradox sense.

dane-pgp 6y ago

> the people that made the mess need to pay to keep it stored safely. We'd certainly like for those people to keep the mess stored safely, but there are incentives for them to not do so, even assuming they had the ability to.