Very good, this is a great step, but just a thing to be remembered: hydroelectric energy is renewable, better than coal, oil, etc, but it still kills a lots of animals and flood great areas, disappearing with waterfalls and changing landscapes.
They do mind, they mind a lot, it's just that for the vast majority of wildlife humans (land alterations, activity and presence byproduct) have an even larger effect than a touch of long-term radiation-induced lethal disease.
I caught a documentary while on a transatlantic flight about the Wolves of Chernobyl [1], and it discusses how the wildlife seems to be thriving with few to no ill effects.
This isn't me suggesting that irradiating the land with nuclear waste is good - far from it. But it does seem that nature is pretty resilient to it.
[0] they're not, though r-strategist will tend to be pretty resilient
In fact, though you said it much more intelligently with terminology I was unaware of, I was more suggesting that nature is more resilient in the face of nuclear waste/damage than one might expect, and I think that's what the parent is suggesting as well.
No more, no less. We should still be very cautious because there is undoubtedly a limit (perhaps even known?) as to how much punishment an environment can take. But Chernobyl's ecosystem does seem to show that when you take humans out of the equation, Nature can be pretty darn tough.
you're talking about the whole nature instead of the individuals. Place a bunch of humans near Chernobyl for several generations (30 years for wolves would be like 200 years for humans) and enforce the rule of quickly killing off any ill individual - natural thing in nature - and 200 years later you'll have a thriving human population there, and some alien would naturally conclude that humans "is more resilient in the face of nuclear waste/damage than one might expect".
Hell, if Chernobyl is any indication, nuclear accidents tend to save landscapes more than they waste'em.
Or do you mean "waste" in the sense that humans can't wring them dry?
I'm guessing you mean uninhabitable (as in "humans can't live there").
That seems to be an excellent way to preserve the landscape.
> have a bad effect on a lot of other organisms.
Which, if the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone is any indication, is significantly lower than the effect humans have on most of these organisms.
> I think humanity has done harm to the whole ecosystem (including humans themselves) by beginning to use atomic energy.
Whereas I think humanity has done harm to just about everything by beginning to use fossil energy, and much larger civilian application of atomic energy would have been a significant improvement at pretty much all levels, including (and possibly especially because of, though they've really been much too rare for that) the odd nuclear accident.
One doesn't need to hate humanity to recognize humans as the apex predator and being really really really really high on the list of causes for habitat destruction and stock depletion for a number of species, and the value of nature preserves and other low/no human zones for helping reduce the harm of such things.
> and you, at least that's what one could read in it, don't like it
You could read it that way, but I think that's likely an inaccurate reading and can't recommend it.
Renewables and nukes both have their drawbacks. Ignoring them isn't productive. Overstating them is also not productive. Trying to correct such perceived mistakes doesn't mean anyone likes or dislikes either.
In-context, hydro isn't available everywhere, and I'd rather see some of the safer nuke tech than coal - but Fukushima seems to be heading towards more coal instead. Perhaps you think that's better?
If you do, you either think the harms of nuclear tech much greater than I do, or the harms of coal much fewer. If you don't think that's better, perhaps you can see why others would wish to encourage the fair treatment of nuclear power.
For example, with comparative similar power output, wind power plants will kill way more birds, than Chernobyl did. And that's just at the power generation/operation stage. It's impossible to argue that it will reduce harm to any living being; some "green" power generation techniques increase the harm to them.
Now what are you talking about?
> you don't like it because this doesn't eliminate the space for humans as a good nuclear accident would do. Did I get it right?
You know you don't have to make stuff up right? I haven't given any opinion on the Costa Rican situation, I have only replied to your inane comments on nuclear energy.
When coming here, they went to an airplane which was high up in the sky and momentarily gave them an even higher dose of radiation.
Fukushima exclusion zone is a social phenomenon created by human fear, not physiological created by radiation.