4 ms·
This is an important point. Nuclear can be very safe in theory. Under the right circumstances, all risks can be accounted for (except long term waste storage, a
by mcv 4y ago
This is an important point. Nuclear can be very safe in theory. Under the right circumstances, all risks can be accounted for (except long term waste storage, apparently). Problem is, in the hands of profit-seeking companies and aggressive and/or corrupt governments, those circumstances will not be right.
Remember that both Fukushima and Deep Water Horizon were caused by companies cutting costs in the face of warnings of the risks.
- origin_path 4y agoWhy can't the waste just be ejected into space. SpaceX has made launches a lot cheaper than it once was and once you push it into the solar system it'll never cause problems again.
- mcv 4y agoLaunching large amounts of nuclear material comes with its own risks, and if it orbits the sun in an earth-crossing orbit, we will eventually encounter it again. Launching into the sun would be nice, but that's way more expensive.
- 988747 4y agoPutting few tons of radioactive material on top of dozens of tons of highly explosive rocket fuel... what could possibly go wrong?
- origin_path 4y agoCompared to keeping it on earth, or putting it in the ocean, where there are also many things that can go wrong? Yes, launches can explode, but it's very rare, getting rarer and presumably these rockets could be launched from small islands where if there's an explosion the fallout would mostly be over the ocean.
- mcv 4y agoI once read that 1 kg of plutonium burning up in the higher atmosphere would be enough to kill the entire population of the earth. I'm not enough of an expert to know if that's really true, but I suspect there's a good reason why experts don't consider this a good option. Or at least not yet.