4 ms·

My pet conspiracy theory: all of the anti-nuclear fear and activists are bankrolled by big oil. How else can you explain humans turning their backs on the safe

My pet conspiracy theory: all of the anti-nuclear fear and activists are bankrolled by big oil. How else can you explain humans turning their backs on the safest and cleanest form of energy per megawatt we have ever created?

vmchale 5y ago
I'm pretty sure big oil supports solar/wind because they take the shine away from nuclear.
new_guy 5y ago
Fukushima. Three Mile Island. Chernobyl. Kyshtym. When a solar plant breaks down or a dam bursts the worst that can happen is a minor inconvenience. When you get a nuclear meltdown you get land uninhabitable for literal millennia and global contamination.
- standardUser 5y ago
  Not sure why anyone would downvote this. Legitimate or not, a lot of public fear about nuclear energy is due to the first three names on that list.
  - sofixa 5y ago
    Because it is not legitimate.
    - standardUser 5y ago
      But it is the correct answer to the question of why people have turned their back on nuclear energy.
  - Ericson2314 5y ago
    Because there is no major contamination from Fukushima and Three Mile Island. I'm convinced most people got confused with the Fukushima and the actual Tsunami damage to Japan at some subconscious level.
    - michaelcampbell 5y ago
      I suspect he's saying people are AFRAID of nuclear because of those incidents; not that the fear is rational.
      - Ericson2314 5y ago
        PP said it's about perception, true are false. That I agreed with. But GP had no qualifications. > When a solar plant breaks down or a dam bursts the worst that can happen is a minor inconvenience. When you get a nuclear meltdown you get land uninhabitable for literal millennia and global contamination. This is a not a fair comparison if we are talking facts not perceptions. It ignores issues of storage that doesn't make the energy outputs commensurate. It ignores the constant polution and health issue stemming from fossil fuel power plants when nothing goes wrong --- since the ability to use solar and wind wihtout those is as-of-yet undemonstrated at scale.
- ericd 5y ago
  When a dam bursts, it is not “a minor inconvenience”. There tend to be a lot of people living downstream.
- techplex 5y ago
  Please cite your sources. There are people living in the Chernobyl exclusion zone https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/moving_to_Chernobyl https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/moving_to_Cherno...
- alexgmcm 5y ago
  A dam bursting can cause mass fatalities, it's definitely a lot more severe than a minor inconvenience. And the alternative to nuclear at the moment isn't really solar or hydropower (most places aren't suitable for it) but rather coal and gas. And those are continually polluting the environment not just with CO2 but also carcinogens and other pollutants. Of that list of accidents only Chernobyl is still uninhabitable, so it's hardly "literal millennia" Three Mile Island didn't even kill anyone and many believe neither did Fukushima.
- sofixa 5y ago
  I had to look the last one up: > The Kyshtym disaster, sometimes referred to as the Mayak disaster or Ozyorsk disaster in newer sources, was a radioactive contamination accident that occurred on 29 September 1957 at Mayak, a plutonium production site for nuclear weapons and nuclear fuel reprocessing plant located in the closed city of Chelyabinsk-40 (now Ozyorsk) in Chelyabinsk Oblast, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union So it's even less related to this nuclear power plant than Chernobyl. The only incident vaguely relatable is Fukushima, and guess what, they weren't really up to the required security standards and it took an enormous earthquake and tsunami to do actual damage, which is still very limited and resulted in less deaths than what, a month of a coal power plant? > dam bursts the worst that can happen is a minor inconvenience Seriously? Dam failures can be catastrophic and very deadly: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dam_failure https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dam_failure
- KptMarchewa 5y ago
  All nuclear incidents together caused less than 1% of yearly deaths from coal.
- greenshackle2 5y ago
  Banqiao and Shimantan dams failure: 240,000 deaths, 11 million homes destroyed > minor inconvenience Hmmm.
ravenstine 5y ago
I'll go against the grain and say that I do think that's possible (I'm not sure why people let these companies put it past them), but if that was something big oil wanted then I don't know why they would facilitate the conspiracy themselves. Enough average Americans are already frightened enough by minor things that all you have to do is wait for film and TV to use nuclear disaster as entertainment for people to become adequately scared. No need for so much as a backroom handshake. When the population is adequately infantilized, let civilization take its course and it will scare itself. The real conspiracy, and it's not so much a conspiracy as confluence, is that the same powers that suggest that we need to take drastic action to curb climate change take little action in implementing real solutions. With all the hand waving around climate change, you'd think by now we would have an "Operation Warp Speed" for implementing more nuclear and developing large scale CO2 scrubbing. As far as I know, there's been little appreciable effort in that direction. But when it comes to actions that line pockets (electric cars serve not only car companies but fossil fuels and lithium mining), are adverse to civilization (intentional blackouts), and so on, America excels. The actual will to address climate change simply isn't there because modern regimes need crises to occur in order to maintain the illusion that they are even needed at the massive scale in which they currently exist. From corporate America to the depths of the federal government, in the back of our minds we know that most of us are excessive and therefore we need to manufacture reasons for our own existence. The concept of "bullshit jobs" has become popularized in recent years, but the same phenomenon happens at a much larger scale. Much of how countries like America operates is exactly like a bullshit corporate job. In fact, federal and state governments are the mass personification of flunkies, goons, box tickers, duct tapers, and taskmasters. Without crises, there's nothing for those bullshit job archetypes to do. Even the mainstream media addicts and zealots of either political party would have nothing to revere or resent.

vmchale 5y ago

I'm pretty sure big oil supports solar/wind because they take the shine away from nuclear.

new_guy 5y ago

Fukushima. Three Mile Island. Chernobyl. Kyshtym. When a solar plant breaks down or a dam bursts the worst that can happen is a minor inconvenience. When you get a nuclear meltdown you get land uninhabitable for literal millennia and global contamination.

standardUser 5y ago
Not sure why anyone would downvote this. Legitimate or not, a lot of public fear about nuclear energy is due to the first three names on that list.
- sofixa 5y ago
  Because it is not legitimate.
  - standardUser 5y ago
    But it is the correct answer to the question of why people have turned their back on nuclear energy.
- Ericson2314 5y ago
  Because there is no major contamination from Fukushima and Three Mile Island. I'm convinced most people got confused with the Fukushima and the actual Tsunami damage to Japan at some subconscious level.
  - michaelcampbell 5y ago
    I suspect he's saying people are AFRAID of nuclear because of those incidents; not that the fear is rational.
    - Ericson2314 5y ago
      PP said it's about perception, true are false. That I agreed with. But GP had no qualifications. > When a solar plant breaks down or a dam bursts the worst that can happen is a minor inconvenience. When you get a nuclear meltdown you get land uninhabitable for literal millennia and global contamination. This is a not a fair comparison if we are talking facts not perceptions. It ignores issues of storage that doesn't make the energy outputs commensurate. It ignores the constant polution and health issue stemming from fossil fuel power plants when nothing goes wrong --- since the ability to use solar and wind wihtout those is as-of-yet undemonstrated at scale.
ericd 5y ago
When a dam bursts, it is not “a minor inconvenience”. There tend to be a lot of people living downstream.
techplex 5y ago
Please cite your sources. There are people living in the Chernobyl exclusion zone https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/moving_to_Chernobyl https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/moving_to_Cherno...
alexgmcm 5y ago
A dam bursting can cause mass fatalities, it's definitely a lot more severe than a minor inconvenience. And the alternative to nuclear at the moment isn't really solar or hydropower (most places aren't suitable for it) but rather coal and gas. And those are continually polluting the environment not just with CO2 but also carcinogens and other pollutants. Of that list of accidents only Chernobyl is still uninhabitable, so it's hardly "literal millennia" Three Mile Island didn't even kill anyone and many believe neither did Fukushima.
sofixa 5y ago
I had to look the last one up: > The Kyshtym disaster, sometimes referred to as the Mayak disaster or Ozyorsk disaster in newer sources, was a radioactive contamination accident that occurred on 29 September 1957 at Mayak, a plutonium production site for nuclear weapons and nuclear fuel reprocessing plant located in the closed city of Chelyabinsk-40 (now Ozyorsk) in Chelyabinsk Oblast, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union So it's even less related to this nuclear power plant than Chernobyl. The only incident vaguely relatable is Fukushima, and guess what, they weren't really up to the required security standards and it took an enormous earthquake and tsunami to do actual damage, which is still very limited and resulted in less deaths than what, a month of a coal power plant? > dam bursts the worst that can happen is a minor inconvenience Seriously? Dam failures can be catastrophic and very deadly: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dam_failure https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dam_failure
KptMarchewa 5y ago
All nuclear incidents together caused less than 1% of yearly deaths from coal.
greenshackle2 5y ago
Banqiao and Shimantan dams failure: 240,000 deaths, 11 million homes destroyed > minor inconvenience Hmmm.

ravenstine 5y ago

I'll go against the grain and say that I do think that's possible (I'm not sure why people let these companies put it past them), but if that was something big oil wanted then I don't know why they would facilitate the conspiracy themselves. Enough average Americans are already frightened enough by minor things that all you have to do is wait for film and TV to use nuclear disaster as entertainment for people to become adequately scared. No need for so much as a backroom handshake. When the population is adequately infantilized, let civilization take its course and it will scare itself. The real conspiracy, and it's not so much a conspiracy as confluence, is that the same powers that suggest that we need to take drastic action to curb climate change take little action in implementing real solutions. With all the hand waving around climate change, you'd think by now we would have an "Operation Warp Speed" for implementing more nuclear and developing large scale CO2 scrubbing. As far as I know, there's been little appreciable effort in that direction. But when it comes to actions that line pockets (electric cars serve not only car companies but fossil fuels and lithium mining), are adverse to civilization (intentional blackouts), and so on, America excels. The actual will to address climate change simply isn't there because modern regimes need crises to occur in order to maintain the illusion that they are even needed at the massive scale in which they currently exist. From corporate America to the depths of the federal government, in the back of our minds we know that most of us are excessive and therefore we need to manufacture reasons for our own existence. The concept of "bullshit jobs" has become popularized in recent years, but the same phenomenon happens at a much larger scale. Much of how countries like America operates is exactly like a bullshit corporate job. In fact, federal and state governments are the mass personification of flunkies, goons, box tickers, duct tapers, and taskmasters. Without crises, there's nothing for those bullshit job archetypes to do. Even the mainstream media addicts and zealots of either political party would have nothing to revere or resent.