4 ms·

But the nuclear power plant has the potential to make large swaths of land uninhabitable for thousands of years. There’s clearly a difference.

by maria2 4y ago

nebopolis 4y ago
Dams have the side effect of making huge swaths of land uninhabitable automatically as soon as they start filling. From the Three Gorges Dam > China relocated 1.24 million residents (ending with Gaoyang in Hubei Province) as 13 cities, 140 towns and 1350 villages either flooded or were partially flooded by the reservoir
- dredmorbius 4y ago
  Planned and managed operational characteristics are not sudden-onset, unanticipated, and highly-disruptive catastrophes. They're fully-anticipated side-effects. Your comment really doesn't speak to the nature of the phenomenon.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- maria2 4y ago
  Dams do not make land uninhabitable. Dams use land for a productive purpose. Do railroads make land uninhabitable? I would say that land with railroad tracks should still be considered habitable, even though you'd die should you choose to live on the railroad tracks. The land itself is still habitable, you'd just need to remove the dam to live there. Just as you might need to remove the railroad tracks.
littlestymaar 4y ago
The «inhabitable for thousands of years» is a myth. Do you know how many people live in Hiroshima and Nagasaki today? Poeple vastly overestimate the dangerous of this stuff after a few years. Fukushima and Prypiat are probably safer to live than the average Asian city center due to air pollution, or even the Midwest due to pesticide exposure…
- maria2 4y ago
  How many people live in the Chernobyl exclusion zone? Svetlana Alexievich interviewed some of “The Zone’s” residents in her excellent book Voices From Chernobyl. It’s not a fun place to live, unless having all your teeth fall out is fun.
  - littlestymaar 4y ago
    Do you mean that Chornobyl resident don't get enough vitamin C? Because I can't think of a link between exposure to radio-elements and losing your teeth…
  - yodelshady 4y ago
    [flagged]
- dredmorbius 4y ago
  Ironic as it sounds, nuclear weapons in many ways have far shorter-term impacts than nuclear reactors. The Little Boy (Hiroshima) bomb contained 64 kg of highly-refined uranium, of which less than 1 kg fissioned, the remainder being vapourised in the ensuing blast and distributed over a wide area. That dispersal in large part reduces the risk of radioactivity as it is so highly diluted. The rule of thumb for nuclear blasts is the "seven-ten rule": every sevenfold increase in hours from the blast reduces residual radiation by a factor of 10. That rule-of-thumb is an approximation, but with nearly 7^7 hours since the blast, radiation by that rule would be one ten-millionth the level 1 hour following the blast. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fallout#The_seven-ten_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fallout#The_seven-ten_...> Chernobyl put 400 times more radioactive material into the atmosphere than the Hiroshima bomb: <https://www.scifacts.net/earth/chernobyl-400-times-more-radioactive-atomic-bomb-hiroshima/ https://www.scifacts.net/earth/chernobyl-400-times-more-radi...> It's also worth noting that Chernobyl, and several other presently-operating nuclear power plants are in the middle of a war zone and have been the site of active fighting, bombardment, and missile strikes. I don't find a figure for the mass of the Elephant's Foot at Chernobyl, though it's clearly many tonnes of matter. In the case of Fukushima, the total reactor core and fuel waste on site is measured in hundreds of tonnes, with 560 tonnes of reactor fuel, from melted-down reactors, on site. <https://www.citizen.org/news/how-much-radioactive-material-is-at-the-fukushima-plant/ https://www.citizen.org/news/how-much-radioactive-material-i...> (There's another 680 tonnes of spent waste fuel, presumably in containment, on site. I'm excluding that from this discussion as that happens to be a managed waste stream.) The immediate vicinity of both Chernobyl and Fukushima will in fact be uninhabitable and restricted for at least many centuries, if not thousands of years.
Krssst 4y ago
Large? Fossil fuels are making significant parts of earth inhabitable.

But the nuclear power plant has the potential to make large swaths of land uninhabitable for thousands of years. There’s clearly a difference.

by maria2 4y ago

But the nuclear power plant has the potential to make large swaths of land uninhabitable for thousands of years. There’s clearly a difference.

nebopolis 4y ago

Dams have the side effect of making huge swaths of land uninhabitable automatically as soon as they start filling. From the Three Gorges Dam > China relocated 1.24 million residents (ending with Gaoyang in Hubei Province) as 13 cities, 140 towns and 1350 villages either flooded or were partially flooded by the reservoir

dredmorbius 4y ago
Planned and managed operational characteristics are not sudden-onset, unanticipated, and highly-disruptive catastrophes. They're fully-anticipated side-effects. Your comment really doesn't speak to the nature of the phenomenon.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
maria2 4y ago
Dams do not make land uninhabitable. Dams use land for a productive purpose. Do railroads make land uninhabitable? I would say that land with railroad tracks should still be considered habitable, even though you'd die should you choose to live on the railroad tracks. The land itself is still habitable, you'd just need to remove the dam to live there. Just as you might need to remove the railroad tracks.

littlestymaar 4y ago

The «inhabitable for thousands of years» is a myth. Do you know how many people live in Hiroshima and Nagasaki today? Poeple vastly overestimate the dangerous of this stuff after a few years. Fukushima and Prypiat are probably safer to live than the average Asian city center due to air pollution, or even the Midwest due to pesticide exposure…

maria2 4y ago
How many people live in the Chernobyl exclusion zone? Svetlana Alexievich interviewed some of “The Zone’s” residents in her excellent book Voices From Chernobyl. It’s not a fun place to live, unless having all your teeth fall out is fun.
- littlestymaar 4y ago
  Do you mean that Chornobyl resident don't get enough vitamin C? Because I can't think of a link between exposure to radio-elements and losing your teeth…
- yodelshady 4y ago
  [flagged]
dredmorbius 4y ago
Ironic as it sounds, nuclear weapons in many ways have far shorter-term impacts than nuclear reactors. The Little Boy (Hiroshima) bomb contained 64 kg of highly-refined uranium, of which less than 1 kg fissioned, the remainder being vapourised in the ensuing blast and distributed over a wide area. That dispersal in large part reduces the risk of radioactivity as it is so highly diluted. The rule of thumb for nuclear blasts is the "seven-ten rule": every sevenfold increase in hours from the blast reduces residual radiation by a factor of 10. That rule-of-thumb is an approximation, but with nearly 7^7 hours since the blast, radiation by that rule would be one ten-millionth the level 1 hour following the blast. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fallout#The_seven-ten_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fallout#The_seven-ten_...> Chernobyl put 400 times more radioactive material into the atmosphere than the Hiroshima bomb: <https://www.scifacts.net/earth/chernobyl-400-times-more-radioactive-atomic-bomb-hiroshima/ https://www.scifacts.net/earth/chernobyl-400-times-more-radi...> It's also worth noting that Chernobyl, and several other presently-operating nuclear power plants are in the middle of a war zone and have been the site of active fighting, bombardment, and missile strikes. I don't find a figure for the mass of the Elephant's Foot at Chernobyl, though it's clearly many tonnes of matter. In the case of Fukushima, the total reactor core and fuel waste on site is measured in hundreds of tonnes, with 560 tonnes of reactor fuel, from melted-down reactors, on site. <https://www.citizen.org/news/how-much-radioactive-material-is-at-the-fukushima-plant/ https://www.citizen.org/news/how-much-radioactive-material-i...> (There's another 680 tonnes of spent waste fuel, presumably in containment, on site. I'm excluding that from this discussion as that happens to be a managed waste stream.) The immediate vicinity of both Chernobyl and Fukushima will in fact be uninhabitable and restricted for at least many centuries, if not thousands of years.

Krssst 4y ago

Large? Fossil fuels are making significant parts of earth inhabitable.