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I was surprised that ESGV (Vanguard Index for responsible environmental friendly investing) does not include nuclear power there. I wonder what's the stigma bou

I was surprised that ESGV (Vanguard Index for responsible environmental friendly investing) does not include nuclear power there. I wonder what's the stigma bout nuclear?

badestrand 6y ago
> I wonder what's the stigma bout nuclear? I am sure you know the answer but because you ask for it: Radioactivity is nasty. Example Germany: When I grew up my parents couldn't pick mushrooms and I couldn't play in a sandbox because a few thousand kilometers away there was a reactor incident and the wind blew it over. Today people living near a power plant receive free jodium tablets in case there will be an accident. The government spends endless years looking for places to store the nuclear waste because nobody wants it in their backyard, obviously. The waste in the old starage, designed to last 10000 years, leaked already and noone knows how to handle it. France built most of their power plants directly at the border so that hopefully we will receive all the fallout. Uranium mining is said to be desastrous for the environment. Probably there's a lot more.
- ajuc 6y ago
  You get more radioactive elements over your life from breathing air in coal-burning country than you would from eating these mushrooms. And it's no a one-time catastrophe result, but everyday operation.
  - Cthulhu_ 6y ago
    Often quoted, and while it's true that coal fumes and (worse) the leftover slag is a huge problem, the fear of nuclear is that it's a lot more sudden. Slag is less of a risk than nuclear waste is but has to be treated similarly. Fumes are dangerous and are basically destroying the world / ecosystem, but it's a slow process as opposed to a nuclear power plant meltdown (Chernobyl, Fukushima) which cause much shorter term issues. Basically people live to a hundred even with pollution, but life expectancy and quality of life is much lower near a meltdown site. That said, if you look purely at numbers, nuclear (assuming it doesn't explode) is better for humanity than coal. That said that said, loads of countries recognize how bad coal is, and it's being phased out in favor of gas and renewables.
    - ajuc 6y ago
      > Slag is less of a risk than nuclear waste is but has to be treated similarly Im my country (Poland) over 20 000 people die yearly of lung cancer. Significant percent of them never smoked cigarettes and the main reason they got that cancer was smog. Which in Poland is almost exclusively seen in winters and caused by burning coal. Chernobyl caused up to 4000 victims according to the worst estimates (including cancer developed later). Every year in just one country there's more victims of coal energetics than victims of nuclear power in the whole world over all time.
- tarsinge 6y ago
  These issues seem insignificant compared to the problems we face.
RockIslandLine 6y ago
Several different issues. Nuclear is necessarily large & centralized energy production, with all of the antidemocratic politics and corrupt economics that comes with that. The insane project duration and nonsense cost overruns for nuclear construction are their own problem. And you get a lot of people who don't understand and don't want to understand the safety aspect. https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/comed-bribery-scandal-affects-exelons-illinois-nuclear-plants-ratemaking-policy https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/comed-bribery-s...
krageon 6y ago
Nuclear isn't friendly to the environment.
- macspoofing 6y ago
  It is. Nuclear plants don't emit pollution. They don't emit carbon. They have tiny land-use requirements (especially compared to wind and solar), as does nuclear waste (for example, all of the nuclear waste generated in US since inception of nuclear power, would fit in an area the size of a single football field). There's nothing else like it.
  - krageon 6y ago
    The storage of nuclear waste for the time during which it needs to be stored without leaking is not a problem that has been solved, no matter how much government officials like to claim that it has. You can tell this is the case by looking into how these storage facilities actually do in practice. That's leaving aside the problem of them inevitably breaking, which they absolutely will. Even if it only happens very few times, that's enough to ruin a very large swathe of environment. The risk is low, the impact is very very high.
    - macspoofing 6y ago
      >The storage of nuclear waste for the time during which it needs to be stored without leaking is not a problem that has been solved Yes it has. You just store it. It takes up minuscule amount of land. The argument I hear is: "You can't store waste safely".. why? "Because you just can't". >That's leaving aside the problem of them inevitably breaking, which they absolutely will. Inevitably? I'm not sure about that. Right now that's not an issue and it hasn't been an issue for the the 60 years we've had nuclear power. >You can tell this is the case by looking into how these storage facilities actually do in practice. Sure. How many times did you hear about nuclear waste from commercial reactors leaking and causing damage to the environment? >Even if it only happens very few times, that's enough to ruin a very large swathe of environment. No. That's not true. That's not how radioactivity works. The longer the half-life of a radioactive substance, the less potent it is, and as you spread it over a larger area the potency goes down EXPONENTIALLY. Waste from commercial reactor is tiny - if you spread it, you dilute it to the point where it is engulfed in background radiation. There is no chance that waste from a commercial nuclear reactor will ruin a 'large swathe of environment'.
sgt101 6y ago
There are three problems: 1) Generations of nuclear engineers either told big lies or made huge errors of engineering; resulting in staggering disasters in Russia & Japan which will mark our planet for a period far longer than current human history. 2) The main use of nuclear plants was to create refined product for nuclear weapons, now we have vastly more of that stuff than you can imagine lying around. We don't need or want any more. I believe that a single facility in the north west of england has sufficient plutonium for 40,000 nuclear weapons. 3) They are wildly expensive compared to other forms of "clean" power - solar, hydro and wind are just far far cheaper in terms of both invested carbon, $ and collateral environmental damage. Apart from that fission is just fine.

I was surprised that ESGV (Vanguard Index for responsible environmental friendly investing) does not include nuclear power there. I wonder what's the stigma bout nuclear?

badestrand 6y ago

> I wonder what's the stigma bout nuclear? I am sure you know the answer but because you ask for it: Radioactivity is nasty. Example Germany: When I grew up my parents couldn't pick mushrooms and I couldn't play in a sandbox because a few thousand kilometers away there was a reactor incident and the wind blew it over. Today people living near a power plant receive free jodium tablets in case there will be an accident. The government spends endless years looking for places to store the nuclear waste because nobody wants it in their backyard, obviously. The waste in the old starage, designed to last 10000 years, leaked already and noone knows how to handle it. France built most of their power plants directly at the border so that hopefully we will receive all the fallout. Uranium mining is said to be desastrous for the environment. Probably there's a lot more.

ajuc 6y ago
You get more radioactive elements over your life from breathing air in coal-burning country than you would from eating these mushrooms. And it's no a one-time catastrophe result, but everyday operation.
- Cthulhu_ 6y ago
  Often quoted, and while it's true that coal fumes and (worse) the leftover slag is a huge problem, the fear of nuclear is that it's a lot more sudden. Slag is less of a risk than nuclear waste is but has to be treated similarly. Fumes are dangerous and are basically destroying the world / ecosystem, but it's a slow process as opposed to a nuclear power plant meltdown (Chernobyl, Fukushima) which cause much shorter term issues. Basically people live to a hundred even with pollution, but life expectancy and quality of life is much lower near a meltdown site. That said, if you look purely at numbers, nuclear (assuming it doesn't explode) is better for humanity than coal. That said that said, loads of countries recognize how bad coal is, and it's being phased out in favor of gas and renewables.
  - ajuc 6y ago
    > Slag is less of a risk than nuclear waste is but has to be treated similarly Im my country (Poland) over 20 000 people die yearly of lung cancer. Significant percent of them never smoked cigarettes and the main reason they got that cancer was smog. Which in Poland is almost exclusively seen in winters and caused by burning coal. Chernobyl caused up to 4000 victims according to the worst estimates (including cancer developed later). Every year in just one country there's more victims of coal energetics than victims of nuclear power in the whole world over all time.
tarsinge 6y ago
These issues seem insignificant compared to the problems we face.

RockIslandLine 6y ago

Several different issues. Nuclear is necessarily large & centralized energy production, with all of the antidemocratic politics and corrupt economics that comes with that. The insane project duration and nonsense cost overruns for nuclear construction are their own problem. And you get a lot of people who don't understand and don't want to understand the safety aspect. https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/comed-bribery-scandal-affects-exelons-illinois-nuclear-plants-ratemaking-policy https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/comed-bribery-s...

krageon 6y ago

Nuclear isn't friendly to the environment.

macspoofing 6y ago
It is. Nuclear plants don't emit pollution. They don't emit carbon. They have tiny land-use requirements (especially compared to wind and solar), as does nuclear waste (for example, all of the nuclear waste generated in US since inception of nuclear power, would fit in an area the size of a single football field). There's nothing else like it.
- krageon 6y ago
  The storage of nuclear waste for the time during which it needs to be stored without leaking is not a problem that has been solved, no matter how much government officials like to claim that it has. You can tell this is the case by looking into how these storage facilities actually do in practice. That's leaving aside the problem of them inevitably breaking, which they absolutely will. Even if it only happens very few times, that's enough to ruin a very large swathe of environment. The risk is low, the impact is very very high.
  - macspoofing 6y ago
    >The storage of nuclear waste for the time during which it needs to be stored without leaking is not a problem that has been solved Yes it has. You just store it. It takes up minuscule amount of land. The argument I hear is: "You can't store waste safely".. why? "Because you just can't". >That's leaving aside the problem of them inevitably breaking, which they absolutely will. Inevitably? I'm not sure about that. Right now that's not an issue and it hasn't been an issue for the the 60 years we've had nuclear power. >You can tell this is the case by looking into how these storage facilities actually do in practice. Sure. How many times did you hear about nuclear waste from commercial reactors leaking and causing damage to the environment? >Even if it only happens very few times, that's enough to ruin a very large swathe of environment. No. That's not true. That's not how radioactivity works. The longer the half-life of a radioactive substance, the less potent it is, and as you spread it over a larger area the potency goes down EXPONENTIALLY. Waste from commercial reactor is tiny - if you spread it, you dilute it to the point where it is engulfed in background radiation. There is no chance that waste from a commercial nuclear reactor will ruin a 'large swathe of environment'.

sgt101 6y ago

There are three problems: 1) Generations of nuclear engineers either told big lies or made huge errors of engineering; resulting in staggering disasters in Russia & Japan which will mark our planet for a period far longer than current human history. 2) The main use of nuclear plants was to create refined product for nuclear weapons, now we have vastly more of that stuff than you can imagine lying around. We don't need or want any more. I believe that a single facility in the north west of england has sufficient plutonium for 40,000 nuclear weapons. 3) They are wildly expensive compared to other forms of "clean" power - solar, hydro and wind are just far far cheaper in terms of both invested carbon, $ and collateral environmental damage. Apart from that fission is just fine.