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When she first contemplated working at Diablo Canyon, she imagined the rat-infested Springfield Nuclear Power Plant on “The Simpsons,” where green liquid oozes
by krustyburger 6y ago
When she first contemplated working at Diablo Canyon, she imagined the rat-infested Springfield Nuclear Power Plant on “The Simpsons,” where green liquid oozes out of tanks. Eventually, like Hoff, she changed her thinking. “What we were doing actually aligned with my environmental values,” she told me. “That was shocking to me.”
You can tell from my username what an enormous fan of The Simpsons I am. One of the few things I wish the show hadn’t done is inserted into its world such a thoroughly negative vision of nuclear energy. If you don’t know much about the subject, The Simpsons leaves you thinking that using nuclear power at all is incredibly dangerous and foolish, and motivated by simple greed. It’s especially effective in this because the show is so pitch-perfect in how it depicts so many other aspects of society and human nature. I see this one element of the show as an unfortunate relic of the prevailing counterculture that informed Matt Groening’s otherwise generally brilliant worldview.
- afterburner 6y agoBumbling idiots and greedy management causing a major disaster is what happens in real life. Not sure I'd blame The Simpsons for merely reflecting that.
- iso8859-1 6y agoThe Springfield plant is cheap to operate compared to real reactors though. It would cost only $56 M to bring it up to the latest safety code. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Springfield_(The_Simpsons)#Springfield_Nuclear_Power_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Springfield_(The_Simpsons)#Spr...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- fulafel 6y agoTMI (plus other 80s US NPP incidents) and Chernobyl had happened in the previous 10 years when Simpsons started. Those plants had real problems and caused badly needed corrections to NPP safety culture and standards. It was a pretty reasonable take for its time.
- StreamBright 6y agoExactly. Judging nuclear safety based on Chernobyl is the same as judging fire safety based on a camp fire in a cave during in 15_000 BCE. I understand that is was bad and it could have been much worse, but we are not stopping flying with airplanes because the mishaps of Boeing 737 MAX 8.
- Daho0n 6y agoWell, let's base it on fukushima then.
- f430 6y agofukushima too caused an overreaction in Germany
- Daho0n 6y ago>leaves you thinking that using nuclear power at all is incredibly dangerous and foolish No one in his right mind can state with a straight face that nuclear power isn't incredibly dangerous. It might not be foolish with the right regulations and safety -that can always be debated- but no one can pretend nuclear power isn't incredibly dangerous if they know anything about it. The whole reason for all the regulation is exactly because it is so incredibly dangerous.
- acidburnNSA 6y agoI think you mean hazardous. Dangerous implies a hazard is regularly manifesting in measurable harm. Many people claim that nuclear is not unduly dangerous, and have good statistics to back it up. Certainly no one would argue that it isn't hazardous. Similar things can be said about fire.
- cbmuser 6y agoDepartment of Energy’s take on the Simpsons: > https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/7-things-simpsons-got-wrong-about-nuclear https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/7-things-simpsons-got-wro...