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The Chernobyl exclusion zone, terrible as it is, doesn’t hold a candle to the realities of climate change. Geological repositories are the solution for long te

• chiefalchemist 5y ago
  Um. I'm not so sure that's accurate. Chernobyl and Fukushima are uninhabitable, and will be as such for many years to come. As we increase fission reactors, risk will increase as well. Ironically, perhaps due to climate change. The question is: if we commit to fission, are we simply trading one problem disaster for another? Put another way, given our collective (lack of) response to CC, should our track record on decision making be trusted?
  • himinlomax 5y ago
    > Fukushima are uninhabitable What area are we taking about here, and is it truly inhabitable or is it just the same flawed logic that caused the Japanese government to evacuate the area when there was no sense in doing so?
  • onepointsixC 5y ago
    >risk will increase as well Not even close to significant amount, compared to the certainty of a CO2 fueled Climate disaster. Not to mention modern reactors are passively safe.
    • chiefalchemist 5y ago
      Climate disaster? To who? Humans? Mother Nature, on average isn't concerned. She adjusts. She evolves. History is clear on this. Radiation on the other hand is all but permanent. Climate disaster is a self-inflicted death blow by humans to humans.
      • DougWebb 5y ago
        Radiation on the other hand is all but permanent. No it isn't. The purpose of a nuclear reactor is to take highly radioactive material found in nature, cook off a bunch of its radioactive energy (producing power in the process), and create less-radioactive material as a by-product. The waste that comes out at the end is less radioactive than the material we started with, albeit much more concentrated. But that makes it easier to handle and store, compared to the CO2 and other greenhouse gases that are spewed out all over the place. If we dumped all that radioactive waste into the ocean (BAD IDEA), mother nature would dilute it for us and spread it out until it disappears into the natural background radiation. The drawback is that it'll be dangerous to everything that encounters it before it's diluted, so we can't do that.
        • simondotau 5y ago
          It’s also a bad idea because the “waste” might end up being useful/valuable to future generations. It’s only considered waste right now because we currently have no purpose for it.
          • merb 5y ago
            it might also be a death trap for them. I mean we bury high toxical waste deep inside a mountain and try to forget it?
            • simondotau 5y ago
              As opposed to the raw uranium that we dug out of the ground? I don’t recall nature storing that inside radiation-proof barrels. Also there’s the pesky fact of half-life. Ignorant anti-nuclear activists seem to think that nuclear waste is extremely dangerous and lasts for centuries. Nope. Nuclear material can either be imminently dangerous or have a centuries long half-life. It can’t be both.
        • CheezeIt 5y ago
          > The waste that comes out at the end is less radioactive than the material we started with, albeit much more concentrated. This is not true. Nuclear fuel not highly radioactive. Their use in nuclear reactors stems from the fact that they emit two neutrons when hit with one, producing a chain reaction. Their byproducts are much more radioactive than the original fuel.
  • dataflow 5y ago
    > Chernobyl and Fukushima are uninhabitable Climate change will make much larger parts of the planet uninhabitable.
  • DenisM 5y ago
    On one hand - uninhabitable Chernobyl, on the other hand - uninhabitable Earth.
  • ImprobableTruth 5y ago
    >... and Fukushima are uninhabitable This is incorrect. Not only is the Fukushima prefecture inhabited, even the very town in which the incident happened is inhabited.
  • goatlover 5y ago
    > Chernobyl and Fukushima are uninhabitable, People choose not to live there, but plenty of wildlife does. Which is different from saying it's uninhabitable. People could live there. People haven't because an increased risk for cancer and birth defects. Which is a far cry from saying it's not livable. Chernobyl is basically a wild life sanctuary now. Nature is doing better off because of the lack of human presence.
    • chiefalchemist 5y ago
      > plenty of wildlife does Yup. And the same can we said for the planet. Mother Nature will adjust and bounce back. Ultimately, she's not at risk. We are. So if it's about wildlife, CC is not a fatal issue. Again, MN will persist, one way or another. CC and Humans? That's a differnt plot arc.
      • scrose 5y ago
        Climate change is leading to many insects and other wildlife becoming extinct
        • 8note 5y ago
          Natural selection will replace them with new wildlife it might take a while, but organisms will still live there
• godelski 5y ago
  One might even say that we have no long term waste storage solution for fossil fuels or other greenhouse gas emitting sources. I'd also say that the climate zone is much larger and deadlier than the Chernobyl zone.
  • weaksauce 5y ago
    the op seems to be missing the fact that the waste from fossil fuels is the thing that is causing the climate change. we definitely don't have a good long term waste solution for that.
    • godelski 5y ago
      Honestly I think a lot of people miss this. Similarly people will look at full cycle for nuclear but not for renewables. Nor include batteries or other storage systems. First order approximations aren't good enough to let us even approximate an understanding of what is arguably the most difficult problem in human history.
  • bryanrasmussen 5y ago
    ok, well I hear that a lot but does anyone have the figures of how many Chernobyl zones would be expected if all of the fossil fuel usage was replaced with nuclear? we might start from https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-future-generation/nuclear-power-in-the-world-today.aspx https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-fu... and https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2020/06/20/bp-review-new-highs-in-global-energy-consumption-and-carbon-emissions-in-2019/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2020/06/20/bp-review-ne... but then questions become - does increasing power generation via nuclear improve or make the systems worse - because maybe the sites we have now are the best of the best and we get more we no longer have the best of the best. Final question - is there perhaps any sort of interplay from multiple Chernobyl like incidents possible? In the same way that the increase of fossil fuel usage went beyond just local pollution to climate change. But yeah, fossil fuel usage providing almost all of humanity's energy needs over a century has damaged the environment much more than a much shorter period and much more limited nuclear power usage has. on edit: I am in fact a proponent of increasing nuclear power usage - just these arguments I see about Chernobyl not being that bad in comparison to climate change are not that impressive without some extrapolation and hard science.
• gpm 5y ago
  The Chernobyl exclusion zone as terrible as it is, is very far from a worst case. It's what you get from a moderately bad meltdown with heroic mitigation efforts as a follow up. The risks are far greater than that. Holding it up and saying "this isn't bad" is missing that that's the point, this is what happens in a "good" meltdown. An article describing some of it... https://www.thetrumpet.com/14007-three-men-who-saved-millions https://www.thetrumpet.com/14007-three-men-who-saved-million...
  • DennisP 5y ago
    It's also what you get from a reactor with no containment dome, unlike every modern reactor. On top of that, the Chernobyl reactor had a strong positive feedback: as the temperature went up, the reaction sped up. Modern reactors do the opposite.
    • Retric 5y ago
      Only up to a point. Modern designs tend to be short term passively safe, but shut off the pumps and radioactive decay alone can be enough to eventually cause a melt down in many modern designs. Which is the core issue, there’s a huge cost trade off for protection vs every possible issue no matter how remote. Spent fuel pools are probably the greatest example of this. They haven’t caused a major issue yet but they’re potentially a much larger risk than the actual reactor.
      • koheripbal 5y ago
        No. Modern reactors use their pumps to keep the reactor going. Shut them off and the reactor shuts itself off. They now all have passive safety systems that do not require power.
      • i_am_proteus 5y ago
        >shut off the pumps and radioactive decay alone can be enough to eventually cause a melt down in many modern designs The newest designs being built worldwide use natural circulation cooling and do not need cooling pumps in emergencies. Eventually the cooling pool needs to be refilled, but it's external to the containment pressure boundary, so you could refill it with a fire truck.
• TheCondor 5y ago
  Yucca Mountain is sort of ready but the state doesn't want waste to be moved there and more and a few places don't want the waste transferred through them to get there. I think if nuclear energy is to be part of the solution here, as things are we have to plan for indefinite storage of waste on site with the energy production. And ideally we could minimize waste or process it in to such a state as it could conceivably be transported somewhere else but those costs undermine the profitability of energy production as it is.
  • bumby 5y ago
    I wonder if there is a political solution to the storage problem. What if GHG externalities are taxed in a way that can be shuttled to those areas, like NV and NM, that can provide part of the nuclear solution? That might make the Yucca Mountains and WIPPs more palatable while also incentivizing more, better storage solutions.
    • jandrewrogers 5y ago
      In the case of Yucca Mountain, a number of proposals were floated to give concessions to the State of Nevada in return for cooperation. There was a proposal put forward a couple decades ago to allow storage in exchange for returning unused Federal land to State control. ~85% of Nevada (and increasing) is Federally controlled. This creates significant economic problems for Nevada due to the practical restrictions on growth and land use. Most of this land has no Federal purpose and is not actively managed, it is simply under Federal control and subject to their whims that change with each administration, creating a sparse patchwork of private property the use of which effectively requires Federal permission. This proposal was flatly rejected by the Federal government, even though it would have come at no cost (indeed, it would have saved money by reducing administration costs of land they have no purpose for in any case). Generally speaking, the Federal government has been unwilling to grant any concessions to States for taking the nuclear waste.
  • LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
    Would that even register against the background of what remains from the fun they had in the Nevada test range? Especially if transported in casks?
• konspence 5y ago
  False dichotomy of saying we have the consequences of climate change OR we have a few Chernobyl like incidents. We don’t need to choose between these options. We can avoid climate change without nuclear energy
  • lisper 5y ago
    > We can avoid climate change without nuclear energy How?
    • jacquesm 5y ago
      Massive investments in renewables, capping your personal energy budget to something reasonable rather than what you can afford from a financial perspective, aiming for energy neutrality in buildings (doable, I've seen demonstration setups in the early 2000's). And even then: we can no longer avoid climate change, you can take that to the bank. The very best we can do is limit the impact of the climate change that is inevitable now.
      • rsj_hn 5y ago
        "capping your energy budget" is a non-starter. I oppose it, the majority opposes it, and this is a good way of getting kicked out of power and then having even your realistic policies rolled back. Unless you're the type of person who enjoys being right rather than being effective, you'll make reasonable proposals that have a chance of being enacted, rather than unreasonable proposals that lose elections. The future is one of cheap, abundant energy, that is growing in use. It is one of increasing industrialization and output. Increasing consumption and production. If you can't find a way to get there, then you'll be left behind as the rest of the world chooses a different path.
        • jacquesm 5y ago
          Yes, god forbid we would enact realistic policies. No, instead, let's stick our heads in the sand and kick the bucket down the road a generation. That's worked so well so far. Elections are great, right up to the point where you are going to have to make very harsh decisions affecting the majority. I predict our democratic institutions will be a casualty of climate change long before we will allow ourselves to become overwhelmed by climate change itself.
• forgotmypw17 5y ago
  The effects of Chernobyl are not limited to the exclusion zone. In the 100km radius zone, my family had to test all our food with a Geiger counter because anything grown in the area was poisoned. (The government made Geiger counters illegal to own, btw.)
  • godelski 5y ago
    Did any of your food ever have dangerous levels of radiation?
    • forgotmypw17 5y ago
      Yes, that is why we were testing it.
      • godelski 5y ago
        If you're talking about boars and mushrooms, then I'm guessing not. You'd have to eat an absurd amount of meat and mushrooms every day to accumulate enough dose to go over your yearly limits, and you still wouldn't get anywhere near radiation worker limits. We're talking at least a hamburger every single day in the worst case scenario, and let's be real, that much red meat is going to cause other serious health problems.
    • dividedbyzero 5y ago
      There are still lots of boars in southern Germany that are far above the official threshold for consumption (which is quite high already), like, almost glow-in-the-dark. Southern Germany is a long way from Chernobyl, but a substantial amount of the fallout rained down here. Pretty much nothing grown in the areas that got contaminated precipitation was safe to eat, sometimes for years. Milk was way too contaminated even after dilution with milk from other areas, and pretty high amounts of radionuclides accumulated in the bottom layers of sandboxes on playgrounds and other unexpected places. No one knew at first though, the West German government kept playing down the incident even though they knew that fallout reaching Germany was a big possibility, and thus lots and lots of people got rained on who could have protected themselves (my mom for one, on the way to work, metallic taste and all) That's a pretty important part of the anti-nuclear sentiment in Germany, by the way. That's why a lot of people simply won't trust the parties involved in running nuclear power plants to do so safely – because the system failed already in an incident that wasn't even a domestic one, and also because of the rampant corruption surrounding those plants and high-level politics in general.