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Nuclear safety in war time is unproven sure but I would argue that a nuclear power plant is much less dangerous than a hydro dam. Imagine a strike on Three Gorg

by jpgvm 4y ago

Nuclear safety in war time is unproven sure but I would argue that a nuclear power plant is much less dangerous than a hydro dam. Imagine a strike on Three Gorges Dam, at minimum millions would die, without needing to use a nuclear weapon. Sure it's a tough pile of concrete, but that is exactly what a nuclear power plant is too. Nuclear fuel is a non-issue if it was profitable to mine it. Australia has vast supplies of very high quality Uranium deposits and a substantial portion of the worlds supply of Thorium so the "West" will have ample supply to fissile material for the next several millennia. Spent fuel is also really a non-issue. It gets talked about a lot but even if we were to supply 100% of the worlds energy on nuclear (which we never would, solar and hydro are too good for that) we could still store all of it in probably a single facility in a desert in Australia far from where anyone could give a shit about it. Australia is -extremely- large and -extremely- sparsely populated, especially the interior. I get why people don't like the sound of nuclear but the arguments just don't stack up against the facts, cost really is it's only downside and I'm certain that can be fixed with mass production of reactors and designs that don't need active cooling in failure scenarios.

chrsw 4y ago
Nuclear definitely has a PR problem and I don't have enough background in the science to claim how unfounded the problem actually is. But what I do have are memories of how people react to anything nuclear related. All it takes is one high profile incident and all the political capital spent on selling nuclear as an attractive option to the public vanishes instantly. I don't know why other energy sources don't seem to have this problem. Not to the degree nuclear has, at least.
- jpgvm 4y ago
  For the same reason why people turn a blind eye to oil, coal, guns, alcohol and cigarettes yet have a problem with cannabis, abortions, nuclear power, gun control and until recently electric cars. PR/marketing trumps all because people aren't sufficiently educated in science and statistics to understand what represents risk vs what is feasible, etc. Because they can't interpret the data themselves they defer to media and public figures and unfortunately in our world those people aren't incentivised to present things honestly - even in the rare cases they are educated enough to do so.
  - henearkr 4y ago
    Well it depends on the country. In France for example, people who are anti-abortion, anti-cannabis, anti-EV, etc (most often those are Conservative people) are also anti-wind-turbines and pro-nuclear.
    - jpgvm 4y ago
      The specific issues aren't the point. The point is that most people don't have informed opinions based on fact but rather just regurgitate whatever is fed to them in whatever media they consume. Us sitting here having an educated debate on the merits of nuclear vs hydro aren't the problem, we lie in the relatively informed group. We have concerns about nuclear (and other technologies no doubt) but those come from a place of reason, not of group-think. Side note: Nuclear and it's relation with Green's parties around the world is also special as it was the platform on which those parties were created. So otherwise rational people, i.e environmentalists are irrationally against nuclear power because of long-standing historical reasons that probably don't hold anymore but can't change the very basis of their platform - or at least are unwilling to. No amount of facts changes that as it has nothing to do with facts and everything to do with politics.
  - dane-pgp 4y ago
    Sorry to pick up on your specific examples, but I don't know why you are classifying alcohol deaths as under-estimated and abortions as over-estimated(?). For the record, the National Center for Drug Abuse Statistics reports there are about 95,000 alcohol-related deaths in the United States annually[0], while the CDC reports over 600,000 abortions per year.[1] It's true that someone who reads PR/marketing material is more likely to die from being hit by a drunk driver than by being aborted, but I don't think that's the point you're trying to make. [0] https://drugabusestatistics.org/alcohol-related-deaths/ https://drugabusestatistics.org/alcohol-related-deaths/ [1] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/06/24/what-the-data-says-about-abortion-in-the-u-s-2/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/06/24/what-the-da...
    - jpgvm 4y ago
henearkr 4y ago
I concur that, for this kind of near-civilzation-collapse risks, dams are less desirable than wind/solar facilities. But I can't compare the risk posed by a dam and the risk posed by a nuclear fission plant. One is an instant and relatively local disaster, the other is a long term and wide-spread (before containment) pita. However, I suspect that dams are much harder to turn into a catastrophe than nuclear plants. While for a nuclear plant you just have to disable the cooling and move all the fuel rods all the way outside of the boron dampener and keep it this way for enough time to overheat, for a dam you would have to throw a really huge lot of explosives on it to physically destroy its concrete. There are several types of dams too, some of which are probably as strong as a natural hill. About spent fuel: there are probably many reasons (that I don't know) why the actively-cooled-pools are not all in the middle of deserts, but right now they are just next to the plants. Of course we could put them on the Moon too, I would consider it a definitive solution (for this part of the problem).
- Paradigma11 4y ago
  "One is an instant and relatively local disaster, the other is a long term and wide-spread (before containment) pita." And then the flood crashes into a chemical plant or two and suddenly the problem is very long term and wide spread.
- BrainVirus 4y ago
  >However, I suspect that dams are much harder to turn into a catastrophe than nuclear plants. https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-deadliest-dam-failures-in-history.html https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-deadliest-dam-failur...

by jpgvm 4y ago

chrsw 4y ago

Nuclear definitely has a PR problem and I don't have enough background in the science to claim how unfounded the problem actually is. But what I do have are memories of how people react to anything nuclear related. All it takes is one high profile incident and all the political capital spent on selling nuclear as an attractive option to the public vanishes instantly. I don't know why other energy sources don't seem to have this problem. Not to the degree nuclear has, at least.

jpgvm 4y ago
For the same reason why people turn a blind eye to oil, coal, guns, alcohol and cigarettes yet have a problem with cannabis, abortions, nuclear power, gun control and until recently electric cars. PR/marketing trumps all because people aren't sufficiently educated in science and statistics to understand what represents risk vs what is feasible, etc. Because they can't interpret the data themselves they defer to media and public figures and unfortunately in our world those people aren't incentivised to present things honestly - even in the rare cases they are educated enough to do so.
- henearkr 4y ago
  Well it depends on the country. In France for example, people who are anti-abortion, anti-cannabis, anti-EV, etc (most often those are Conservative people) are also anti-wind-turbines and pro-nuclear.
  - jpgvm 4y ago
    The specific issues aren't the point. The point is that most people don't have informed opinions based on fact but rather just regurgitate whatever is fed to them in whatever media they consume. Us sitting here having an educated debate on the merits of nuclear vs hydro aren't the problem, we lie in the relatively informed group. We have concerns about nuclear (and other technologies no doubt) but those come from a place of reason, not of group-think. Side note: Nuclear and it's relation with Green's parties around the world is also special as it was the platform on which those parties were created. So otherwise rational people, i.e environmentalists are irrationally against nuclear power because of long-standing historical reasons that probably don't hold anymore but can't change the very basis of their platform - or at least are unwilling to. No amount of facts changes that as it has nothing to do with facts and everything to do with politics.
- dane-pgp 4y ago
  Sorry to pick up on your specific examples, but I don't know why you are classifying alcohol deaths as under-estimated and abortions as over-estimated(?). For the record, the National Center for Drug Abuse Statistics reports there are about 95,000 alcohol-related deaths in the United States annually[0], while the CDC reports over 600,000 abortions per year.[1] It's true that someone who reads PR/marketing material is more likely to die from being hit by a drunk driver than by being aborted, but I don't think that's the point you're trying to make. [0] https://drugabusestatistics.org/alcohol-related-deaths/ https://drugabusestatistics.org/alcohol-related-deaths/ [1] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/06/24/what-the-data-says-about-abortion-in-the-u-s-2/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/06/24/what-the-da...
  - jpgvm 4y ago

henearkr 4y ago

I concur that, for this kind of near-civilzation-collapse risks, dams are less desirable than wind/solar facilities. But I can't compare the risk posed by a dam and the risk posed by a nuclear fission plant. One is an instant and relatively local disaster, the other is a long term and wide-spread (before containment) pita. However, I suspect that dams are much harder to turn into a catastrophe than nuclear plants. While for a nuclear plant you just have to disable the cooling and move all the fuel rods all the way outside of the boron dampener and keep it this way for enough time to overheat, for a dam you would have to throw a really huge lot of explosives on it to physically destroy its concrete. There are several types of dams too, some of which are probably as strong as a natural hill. About spent fuel: there are probably many reasons (that I don't know) why the actively-cooled-pools are not all in the middle of deserts, but right now they are just next to the plants. Of course we could put them on the Moon too, I would consider it a definitive solution (for this part of the problem).

Paradigma11 4y ago
"One is an instant and relatively local disaster, the other is a long term and wide-spread (before containment) pita." And then the flood crashes into a chemical plant or two and suddenly the problem is very long term and wide spread.
BrainVirus 4y ago
>However, I suspect that dams are much harder to turn into a catastrophe than nuclear plants. https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-deadliest-dam-failures-in-history.html https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-deadliest-dam-failur...