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Countries with nuclear reactors: 32. Countries which have had nuclear leaks or meltdowns: 15. Number of nuclear leaks and meltdowns since 1952 (only those whi
by 10g1k 4y ago
Countries with nuclear reactors: 32.
Countries which have had nuclear leaks or meltdowns: 15.
Number of nuclear leaks and meltdowns since 1952 (only those which resulted in loss of human life or >US$50K property damage): ~100.
About 60% of those have been in the USA, allegedly the most advanced country in the world.
Note that the USA requirements for nuclear reactor waste (yes, they produce toxic waste; they are not clean), last time I checked, required the canisters to be able to survive for 300 years. The waste lasts longer than 300 years.
Two years ago the USA had a leak which spilled ~400,000 gallons of radioactive water into a major river system, and it was covered up for two years.
Finally: If you are not willing to have a nuclear reactor right beside your house, but are willing to have one beside someone else's house, you are a coward and are not really in favour of nuclear power.
- melling 4y agoI don’t want to live next to a coal power plant either. 40% of the electricity globally is generated with coal. It also produces something like 25% of greenhouse emissions. It has been like this for half a century? Waiting for the renewables and batteries really isn’t working out. We’ve squandered decades, and could have bought ourselves an extra few decades.
- 10g1k 4y agoNot liking apples is not a pro-orange argument.
- kbelder 4y agoIt is is you have to eat and your choices are limited.
- mrDmrTmrJ 4y agoBut if we both want to consume electricity - than we do have to make a choice about that source of electricity. And the data constituently says nuclear is far safer than coal, even though coal is far more common. So it really is 'apples vs. oranges' when comparing nuclear v. coal.
- kmeisthax 4y agoFor what it's worth burning coal emits more radiation than nuclear.
- beej71 4y agoNot when the reactor is melting down or exploding, it doesn't. :) People don't really have much of a problem with properly-functioning nuclear reactors.
- Schroedingersat 4y agoNo waiting was required. Wind + PHES has been a better option since before fission reactors were invented.
- uhtred 4y ago> If you are not willing to have a nuclear reactor right beside your house, but are willing to have one beside someone else's house, you are a coward and are not really in favour of nuclear power. If you are not willing to have a pig farm right beside your house, but are willing to have one beside someone else's house, you are a hypocrite and should not really be eating meat.
- it_citizen 4y agoI would pick a nuclear plant over a dam any day.
- PaulDavisThe1st 4y agoSort of a pointless comparison, isn't it? number of people who could live next to a dam: "small" number of people who could live next a nuclear power plant: "much, much larger"
- HPsquared 4y agoStill, not many.
- timbit42 4y agoDon't forget everyone who lives downriver from that dam all the way to the ocean. Living next to it but out of the path of the water, or above it, would be fine. I used to live in a small city on the coast that was a 20 minute drive from a nuclear plant and also downstream from a hydroelectric dam.
- mike_d 4y agoHere is a great thread that might clear up some of your misconceptions about nuclear waste: https://twitter.com/MadiHilly/status/1550148385931513856?lang=en https://twitter.com/MadiHilly/status/1550148385931513856?lan...
- schiffern 4y agoUnfortunately it only addresses the spent fuel rods themselves, not the large amounts of medium and low-level waste from operation and (especially) decommissioning of reactors.
- smithcoin 4y agoDeaths per terawatt-hour of energy production: - Biomass 4.63 - Brown coal 32.72 - Coal 24.62 - Gas 2.82 - Hydropower 1.30 - Nuclear 0.03 - Oil 18.43 - Solar 0.02 - Wind 0.04 Source: Markandya & Wilkinson (2007); Sovacool et al. (2016); UNSCEAR (2008; & 2018) Nuclear energy is one of the safest forms of energy we have.
- this_user 4y agoStatistics like these are largely useless for comparison for several reason. One of these is the small sample size of nuclear accidents while the probability distribution of their impact exhibits an extremely high kurtosis risk, what Nassim Taleb calls a "Black Swan". All it takes is one Chernobyl-level accident in a densely populated area, and these statistics would look significantly worse for nuclear energy. But even if you could avoid an extremely large number of immediate and long-term deaths from the accident, suddenly having to evacuate and relocate tens of millions of people overnight would take most countries to the brink of collapse. And none of that even takes into account how completely uncompetitive nuclear energy is in economic terms, how long it would take to build new plans, and that long-term storage of radioactive waste still lacks a proper solution despite decades of work. It's a dead technology, and the time has come to stop wasting resources on trying to make it work when those could be used much more productively to accelerate the move towards renewables.
- dotancohen 4y agoAnd yet, in nuclear's first half-century of existence no such accident has happened. And the next half-century has technology to be far, far safer than the first.
- 10g1k 4y agoFirst nuclear reactor: 1942. First INES level 6 incident: 1957.
- dotancohen 4y ago
- vfclists 4y ago400,000 gallons = 12 meter cube of water. And how concentrated was that? Do you mind comparing it with the damage done by oil and coal powered stations or even hydro?
- hermitcrab 4y agoLots of people have been killed by dam failures. 240,000 people just from the failure of the Banqiao and Shimantan Dams in 1975, according to wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dam_failure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dam_failure But I don't see anyone calling for an end to hydroelectric power. Fission power certainly has it's issues, but I think a lot of the opposition to it is more emotional than rational.
- pengaru 4y ago> But I don't see anyone calling for an end to hydroelectric power. You must not be looking very hard then, plenty folks object to hydroelectric power.
- PaulDavisThe1st 4y agoThere's quite a big difference between objecting to specific instances of hydroelectric power and opposition to the entire concept (as exists for nuclear fission)
- DubiousPusher 4y agoIn the United States at least, new hydro is basically dead.
- _hypx 4y agoThat's mostly due to the lack of viable rivers left to dam.
- colordrops 4y agoThere are plenty of people who oppose it as a concept, for environmental reasons.
- karaterobot 4y agoTrue, including me! But, to be fair, you almost never hear about the direct risks to humans, only their affect on the ecosystem. I think if you asked most people whether the dam upstream from their home could burst and kill them, they'd say "that can't happen anymore", whereas if you asked about the nuclear plant upwind from their house, they'd say "yes, nuclear plants are fundamentally unsafe". That's the opposite of what you'd say if you just looked at the number of historical deaths, which is why I suspect it does not come from a cold-blooded look at those statistics, but from somewhere else.
- computershit 4y ago> Finally: If you are not willing to have a nuclear reactor right beside your house, but are willing to have one beside someone else's house, you are a coward and are not really in favour of nuclear power. Did anyone even make this point? What's more I don't think any one wants any kind of power plant next to their house. That's why they're zoned.
- vld_chk 4y agoQuite funny last statement. There are no more supporters of nuclear than people who live and work in this industry. So if you are trying to say that people who live next to NPP are “against” it, you say a wrong statement.
- katbyte 4y agoI would far rather live in a town with a nuclear power plant the either a coal/oil/gas power plant.
- Georgelemental 4y ago> 400,000 gallons of radioactive water How radioactive? Bananas are "radioactive" and so are you. As far as I can tell the amount didn't actually pose a health risk to anyone. > If you are not willing to have a nuclear reactor right beside your house, but are willing to have one beside someone else's house, you are a coward and are not really in favour of nuclear power. I would live near a nuclear reactor. I wouldn't prefer it, as the cooling towers are unsightly. But I wouldn't be worried about safety. Definitely preferable to living next to a coal plant!
- HPsquared 4y agoI'd much rather live next to a nuclear plant than a wind/solar farm of the same output. The size difference is enormous. Not even counting that the renewables would also need a spare gas plant on standby.
- markdown 4y ago> Finally: If you are not willing to have a nuclear reactor right beside your house The US is massive. Why would any American who doesn't work at a nuclear plant ever expect to live anywhere near one?
- dotancohen 4y ago> Finally: If you are not willing to have a nuclear reactor right beside your house, but are willing to have one beside someone else's house, you are a coward and are not really in favour of nuclear power. Are you willing to have a smoking a coal plant right beside your house? You are aware that they release orders of magnitude more radiation than a nuclear power plant, and are orders of magnitude more likely to have a disaster happen to them, right?