4 ms·

I do not agree. Actual 'nuclear' (Uranium fission based) is a proved environmental risk: - Chernobyl, Fukushima Daiichi (INES level 7) are not some sort of sm

I do not agree. Actual 'nuclear' (Uranium fission based) is a proved environmental risk: - Chernobyl, Fukushima Daiichi (INES level 7) are not some sort of small environmental incidents - Kyshtym, First Chalk River, Sellafield (1957), Three Mile Island, Goiânia (INES level 6 & 5), and maybe the Tomsk-7 explosion (not rated) where comparably smaller but the environmental impact was not small - we still do not know what to do with nuclear waste in the long term... But we do know than this waste is not a 'green' crap - fortunately nuclear waste is not drooped anymore in the ocean... but only since 1993! The quantity rooting under the sea is estimated around 200,000 tons (this also include waste from medical usage). Everybody look elsewhere and cross finger on this. - (we could also add 8 or 9 nuclear submarines rooting under the sea, and an unknown number of lost wea pons, but i agree than this not from civil reactors) - it is no secret than environmental researchers who study marines currents, already use "small leaks" from know origin since a long time. The quantity may not have environmental impact, but the leaks are big enough to be used in scientific studies. See for example https://hal-normandie-univ.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02433310/document https://hal-normandie-univ.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02433310... (and many more for the English channel) That said, Nuclear power could be environmental friendly. Thorium based reactor are promising. They are certainly not 'green' but, far less problematic. Also Fusion reactors could be the perfect 'green energy' if solved. But, Uranium fission based reactors, are useful: you could use them to start your nuclear bombs collection... And this is one of the historical reason why the Green parties and Greenpeace are against them. With reasons, because actual nuclear plants, do come from military origins (most are based from submarines reactors), and in nuclear power countries the separations between 'nuclear civil' and 'nuclear military' was never a real thing. The other big reason is the historical 'democratic' way all this nuclear plants where build: simply rain local authorities with money, and put anti-nuclear militants in prisons. Personally, my main problem with the uranium reactors is than it's a dead-end technology. It's true than it do not product greenhouse-effect gas and create a lot of energy, but it's like taking a very big loan instead on working on more secure and less risky nuclear energy. Or investing in more renewable energy, or in less energy consumption, or in non-battery powered electric cars... Saying than it's 'green' is just green-washing from the actual nuclear lobby.

theptip 4y ago
Fukushima is a good case study. Everybody freaked out about it, but if you actually look at the data objectively, I can't see how it's anything other than a resounding success for nuclear. In a once-in-a-generation worst-case scenario (an earthquake beyond the safety parameters to which the plant was designed), you have something on the order of a hundred deaths caused by the reactor leak (this estimate attempting to include lifetime deaths from cancer and so on). Compare this to the death toll of the disaster itself -- something like ten thousand people died from the tsunami. And the conclusion we draw is that nuclear is unsafe? Certainly, the damage and disruption caused by the exclusion zone were substantial. But you'll notice that despite the tsunami, people want to move right back into the tsunami zone even though they know there is a once-in-a-generation risk of a 10k death disaster. Contrasting that tsunami risk with nuclear, "this is worse than climate change and we need to turn off existing reactors" is the opposite conclusion than we should have come to. The correct conclusion IMO is "even extremely rare disasters now result in relatively small damage and death toll". In other words, Fukushima should update you towards thinking that modern nuclear is quite safe, not away from that. One PR problem that nuclear has is that we have extremely sensitive detectors for radiation, so it was possible to detect an increase in radiation in Pacific fish following the Fukushima disaster. The lay public doesn't understand that this is increase was something like one banana's worth of radiation per fish, completely harmless. We simply have extremely sensitive detectors, and most people aren't able to understand the concept of orders of magnitude that small. While I definitely don't advocate for dumping nuclear waste in the ocean as a general approach, it's worth noting that deep underwater is not the worst place for a small amount of nuclear waste to end up. There is a lot of water in which to dissolve the radioactive particles, and so it's unlikely to actually cause harm. For example the one-off plan to discharge Fukushima cleanup waste water in the ocean was controversial but probably makes sense.
- pvaldes 4y ago
  > it's worth noting that deep underwater is not the worst place for a small amount of nuclear waste to end up. Is worth noting also that sometimes the deep underwater currents raise to surface in some points when crashing against continents, so is not so simple.
4y ago

theptip 4y ago

Fukushima is a good case study. Everybody freaked out about it, but if you actually look at the data objectively, I can't see how it's anything other than a resounding success for nuclear. In a once-in-a-generation worst-case scenario (an earthquake beyond the safety parameters to which the plant was designed), you have something on the order of a hundred deaths caused by the reactor leak (this estimate attempting to include lifetime deaths from cancer and so on). Compare this to the death toll of the disaster itself -- something like ten thousand people died from the tsunami. And the conclusion we draw is that nuclear is unsafe? Certainly, the damage and disruption caused by the exclusion zone were substantial. But you'll notice that despite the tsunami, people want to move right back into the tsunami zone even though they know there is a once-in-a-generation risk of a 10k death disaster. Contrasting that tsunami risk with nuclear, "this is worse than climate change and we need to turn off existing reactors" is the opposite conclusion than we should have come to. The correct conclusion IMO is "even extremely rare disasters now result in relatively small damage and death toll". In other words, Fukushima should update you towards thinking that modern nuclear is quite safe, not away from that. One PR problem that nuclear has is that we have extremely sensitive detectors for radiation, so it was possible to detect an increase in radiation in Pacific fish following the Fukushima disaster. The lay public doesn't understand that this is increase was something like one banana's worth of radiation per fish, completely harmless. We simply have extremely sensitive detectors, and most people aren't able to understand the concept of orders of magnitude that small. While I definitely don't advocate for dumping nuclear waste in the ocean as a general approach, it's worth noting that deep underwater is not the worst place for a small amount of nuclear waste to end up. There is a lot of water in which to dissolve the radioactive particles, and so it's unlikely to actually cause harm. For example the one-off plan to discharge Fukushima cleanup waste water in the ocean was controversial but probably makes sense.

pvaldes 4y ago
> it's worth noting that deep underwater is not the worst place for a small amount of nuclear waste to end up. Is worth noting also that sometimes the deep underwater currents raise to surface in some points when crashing against continents, so is not so simple.

4y ago