2 ms·

I'm just waiting for the day all of the humans required to keep a one of the older, less safe designs running all become unavailable and the people required for

I'm just waiting for the day all of the humans required to keep a one of the older, less safe designs running all become unavailable and the people required for disaster management when it melts down are also unavailable and the world experiences a completely unmitigated meltdown. I really don't think this is out of the realm of possibility within the next hundred years. The assumption here is a societal collapse of sorts where say 90% of the population go away. IIRC there were something like 600,000 people who responded to the cleanup of Chernobyl, and something like 4% of the radioactive material of a single reactor was all that leaked into the environment. I sort of see nuclear power plants (at least certain designs) as a ticking time bomb that'll potentially leave large parts of the planet uninhabitable (or maybe just really high rates of thyroid cancer in the remaining population) for the 10% that remain in a post collapse world. Nuclear does have a great record on paper. It's the non-linear behavior that scares people. And when troops roll up and start shelling nuclear power plants and people go "oh... oh I didn't consider how it might function under these conditions" that that non-linearity rears its head again and people get pretty cold on nuclear when faced with situations like that.

DrBazza 5y ago
> I sort of see nuclear power plants (at least certain designs) as a ticking time bomb But that's just progress, right? Even now we still do stupid things with regular chemicals despite knowing not to. Every chemical process evolves and gets safer. 1st gen nuclear power stations were/are potentially able to meltdown. Newer designs can't. But we can never be safe from human stupidity and wars. For example - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_industrial_disasters https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_industrial_disasters And even recently: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Beirut_explosion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Beirut_explosion Somehow people will ignore those disasters as they're not nuclear, but Chernobyl+Fukashima everyone remembers. It just feels like "meltdown and waste" whilst genuine concerns, aren't really the conversation-ending arguments people pretend them to be. (edit - I live within 15 miles of a nuclear power station, and I'm completely comfortable with that).
- throwaway6532 4y ago
  I think you miss my point. My frame of reference is society has collapsed and the _people_ that keep nuclear safe are no longer around and this has the potential to cause a Beyond Design Basis Accident the likes of which could render large portions of the planet uninhabitable. I'm generally fine with nuclear as long as society can maintain itself and the data back up what the proponents of nuclear claim. I'm just suspecting that every reactor that could and would meltdown if humans were no longer around to attend to it being left to meltdown completely unmitigated would be a disaster of epic proportions.

DrBazza 5y ago

> I sort of see nuclear power plants (at least certain designs) as a ticking time bomb But that's just progress, right? Even now we still do stupid things with regular chemicals despite knowing not to. Every chemical process evolves and gets safer. 1st gen nuclear power stations were/are potentially able to meltdown. Newer designs can't. But we can never be safe from human stupidity and wars. For example - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_industrial_disasters https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_industrial_disasters And even recently: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Beirut_explosion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Beirut_explosion Somehow people will ignore those disasters as they're not nuclear, but Chernobyl+Fukashima everyone remembers. It just feels like "meltdown and waste" whilst genuine concerns, aren't really the conversation-ending arguments people pretend them to be. (edit - I live within 15 miles of a nuclear power station, and I'm completely comfortable with that).

throwaway6532 4y ago
I think you miss my point. My frame of reference is society has collapsed and the _people_ that keep nuclear safe are no longer around and this has the potential to cause a Beyond Design Basis Accident the likes of which could render large portions of the planet uninhabitable. I'm generally fine with nuclear as long as society can maintain itself and the data back up what the proponents of nuclear claim. I'm just suspecting that every reactor that could and would meltdown if humans were no longer around to attend to it being left to meltdown completely unmitigated would be a disaster of epic proportions.