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I don't think so. It's fairly clear that nuclear is incredibly safe in comparison with coal and other fossil fuels. Nuclear is going to be part of the solution,
by nsahu 4y ago
I don't think so. It's fairly clear that nuclear is incredibly safe in comparison with coal and other fossil fuels. Nuclear is going to be part of the solution, unless we figure out a way to massively scale up renewables. Thankfully, Europe seems to be doing some of this.
- hrdwdmrbl 4y agoCoal also produces more radioactive waste - https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1018/do-coal-plants-release-more-radiation-than-nuclear-power-plants https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1018/do-coal-pl...
- thehappypm 4y agoThis is a bad stat. Chernobyl is still radioactive. Coal plants don’t irradiate whole regions
- yellowapple 4y ago> Coal plants don’t irradiate whole regions They absolutely do. Where do you think that radioactive soot goes?
- thehappypm 4y agoIt’s so dilute compared to something like a nuclear meltdown.. like orders of magnitude
- hrdwdmrbl 4y ago"the solution to pollution is dilution"
- yellowapple 4y agoIt still exists, and a normally-operating coal plant produces far more radioactive contamination than a normally-operating nuclear plant, by orders of magnitude: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-...
- andrewla 4y ago> incredibly safe in comparison I assume you mean this empirically, not based on the actual risk profile. The cost, in lives, of a major nuclear containment failure is easily in the millions to tens of millions. The cost, in lives, of a major coal disaster is at worst maybe in the hundreds, even in principle. So it comes down to a belief in whether we have properly contained the risk. My priors on this shifted tremendously after Fukushima.
- lokimedes 4y agoDo you have any evidence for these claims?
- andrewla 4y agoThe claim for the millions to tens of millions number? I mean, we have deliberately initiated containment failures for military purposes, so we know what they can look like.
- SlickNixon 4y agoDo they look like Fukushima or Chernobyl?
- andrewla 4y agoTo redirect back to my original point -- this is an empirical argument. Russian Roulette is not safe because nobody got shot in the first two rounds. The turkey is not safe because he was well treated through October. Containment failures of nuclear reactors have a very large upper bound of damage.
- SlickNixon 4y ago> I mean, we have deliberately initiated containment failures for military purposes, so we know what they can look like. This is an empirical argument. Is the upper bound of damage higher for nuclear reactors or fossil fuels?