6 ms·
We don't have all that many tsunamis in Germany...
by lrem 6y ago
We don't have all that many tsunamis in Germany...
- Hani1337 6y agoNo but we have a lot of terrorists
- cbmuser 6y agoModern nuclear power plants such as the German Konvoi or modern Russian VVER survive plane crashes. Some German plants even have military defense systems on site.
- kergonath 6y ago“A lot of terrorists”? In Germany? I’m not saying it is perfect, but you might want to balance a bit your news sources.
- Hani1337 6y agoI was including France in the group in that statement
- anoncake 6y agoI'm sure our nuclear plants are safe against all foreseeable dangers. So only unforeseeable dangers are a problem. I can't foresee any, so we're safe?
- acidburnNSA 6y agoNothing is perfectly safe. Hydro dams fail. Wind turbines throw ice. People fall off roofs installing solar. But 8 million people per year are killed by particulate emissions from normally-operating fossil and biofuel combustion plants. Nuclear, wind, solar, and hydro are all orders of magnitude safer ways, per TWh generated, than the dominant worldwide sources. Therefore we should replace fossil and biofuel with nuclear, wind, solar, and hydro. Conveniently, those 4 are also very low carbon, so they prevent climate change along the way. [1] https://www.who.int/health-topics/air-pollution#tab=tab_1 https://www.who.int/health-topics/air-pollution#tab=tab_1 [2] https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy
- anoncake 6y agoKilling a predictable number of people each year is not danger, it's damage. The danger posed by hydro is real, but entirely negligible compared to nuclear. But of course we should replace fossils by renewables and phase them out before nuclear. And if nuclear wouldn't take too long to build building new nuclear plants as a stopgap may actually make sense. Unfortunately, they do.
- acidburnNSA 6y agoFukushima was a triple meltdown after total inundation of 1960s-class reactors. The short and long-term death-toll from radiation was quite literally zero, as reaffirmed by UNSCEAR just last month [1]. I don't think the "boundlessly large nuclear accidents make the technology untenable" argument really holds water given this kind of experience. [1] https://unis.unvienna.org/unis/en/pressrels/2021/unisous419.html https://unis.unvienna.org/unis/en/pressrels/2021/unisous419....
- anoncake 6y agoYou cannot demonstrate the safety of something by pointing at an example that did not go as terrible as it could have.
- acidburnNSA 6y agoSo... so you must always postulate the worst possible scenario, no matter how unlikely, and judge any technology solely by that? Even in the face of 60 years of worldwide operation providing huge swaths of the world's carbon-free energy while injuring only a vanishing fraction of the people injured by the most common alternate sources? I cannot see how this view can be justified. But if you want to take this view, consider this hypothetical worst case. Imagine we push forward with wind, solar, and batteries, but human rights issues related to manufacturing with slave labor, corruption, mineral shortages, grid instabilities, and land usage issues that emerge once these technologies reach world-scale cause enough trouble that we just keep on operating large amounts of fracked fossil gas to the point that climate change hits the bad predicted scenarios and all the bad events of climate change happen anyway. Isn't that hypothesized worst case just as valid as this worse-than-Chernobyl nuclear accident you're holding above our heads?