My heart says no to nuclear power. My brain says yes.
I'm a radiation safety officer and the completeness of precautions taken is inversely proportional to the amount of greediness of the company's CEO.
Until that's solved, nuclear power is a double-edged sword, as seen in Chernobyl and Fukushima. There's currently no perfect solution to that energy problem.
What many people don't know: There's more radiation set free by coal power plants than nuclear power plants because they burn that stuff and blow it into the air.
In comparison the Earthquake and Tsunami killed 15,000 people.
Even setting aside the global effects of climate change, local air polution from coal burning kills 20,000 people a year in Europe alone [0], and 13,000 in the U.S. [1]
[0] http://www.env-health.org/IMG/pdf/heal_report_the_unpaid_hea...
[1] https://www.catf.us/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/CATF_Pub_TheT...
Why do you think that distinction is important? It's like saying that bikes don't kill people, only the hard surfaces you fall on when you crash do.
That type of evacuation in circumstances without the tsunami would not have lead to 2,000 deaths.
We could repeat this as many times as we want, but will be still a false statement.
If disinformation will continue to be the standard solution for managing all nuclear challenges, we are not ready for an adult discussion about it. Therefore nobody should be allowed to use this technology until we mature as species and we'll be able to focus in the real issues.
But in the meanwhile, I'll gave you something to meditate about. After the first 10 months baby mortality increased suddenly in the areas affected by radiation (and only in those areas). More than 1000 newborn died en excess with respect to the areas not affected. I assume that not all of those were evacuated, so evacuation is not the problem here.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5044925/
Surprise, surprise, human foetuses are very sensitive to even low "safe?" doses of radiation, leading to miscarriages or lack of inner organs in non-viable newborns.
So, if those babies weren't fu*d by Fukushima, how would you explain that? With this information in mind, do you still consider that areas with and without radiation are equally safe?
[1] https://www.bmj.com/content/309/6948/158.full
Actually that is not what I searched for, but the only thing I found(after a casual search). I remember it to be more, dispersed all over the former German Democratic Republic which accounted for it, while the Bundesrepublik Deutschland didn't, or at least not at the times.
Apologies, it caused 1 death. 7 years afterwards.
Trying to understand this: "more radiation set free by coal power plants than nuclear power plants"
Is that for the day-to-day operations of a plant? I actually thought nuclear power plants don't emit any radiation in normal operations and only if something bad happens. Or if it's referring to a Fukushima like event how do you compare that? I have a hard time putting these two in relation.
There are naturally occurring particulates of radioactive elements in coal, these are released into the environment in the exhaust. No-one cares about this but they panic over a nuclear power station which actually emits an order of magnitude less radiation.
I don't think anyone panics over a nuclear power station that's working. What people are afraid of is a Fukushima / Chernobyl in their backyard and the non-existing long term storage options that are more sophisticated than burying it in the holes.
That's misleading the way you state it. The total amount is not a relevant measure without also knowing the concentration.
> In fact, the fly ash emitted by a power plant—a by-product from burning coal for electricity—carries into the surrounding environment 100 times more radiation than a nuclear power plant producing the same amount of energy.
> In a 1978 paper for Science, J. P. McBride at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and his colleagues looked at the uranium and thorium content of fly ash from coal-fired power plants in Tennessee and Alabama. To answer the question of just how harmful leaching could be, the scientists estimated radiation exposure around the coal plants and compared it with exposure levels around boiling-water reactor and pressurized-water nuclear power plants.
> The result: estimated radiation doses ingested by people living near the coal plants were equal to or higher than doses for people living around the nuclear facilities. At one extreme, the scientists estimated fly ash radiation in individuals' bones at around 18 millirems (thousandths of a rem, a unit for measuring doses of ionizing radiation) a year. Doses for the two nuclear plants, by contrast, ranged from between three and six millirems for the same period. And when all food was grown in the area, radiation doses were 50 to 200 percent higher around the coal plants.
They are instead storing giant amounts of it on site.
Meanwhile coal powerplants throw radiation into air all day and noone raises an eyebrow.
Before it got diluted, would it lead to unwanted contamination of fish in the area?
You don't just dump it all at once at the local beach, you take it out to sea and do the diluting over several months.
You can even release it in the abbysal zone, where hardly anything lives.
Half-life of tritium is 12 years, so it would be mostly gone fairly quickly.
Nuclear terraplanism is defined as refusing to understand basic biology and scientific knowledge known since much before to put men in the moon to promote a nuclear agenda, so the risks remain hidden or are deliberately left out of the master plan.
I'm talking about concepts that each biologist understand like vertical migration or bioaccumulation, or physical properties of water (Warm water ascends to surface... duh, who would suspect that?)
Sink.
Kanpai!
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_tanker#Size_categories
With this 60's mentality YOU-WILL-END-KILLING-SOMEONE
Can people, in the age if internet, learn a single thing about abyssal ecosystems? Do you know where most (if not all) abyssal fishes born? ALL ARE SURFACE FISHES. All are linked directly with fisheries.
We could achieve the same, just much cheaper, dumping it directly in the New York port.
Stop crying. Enjoy your time. The 60ies and 70ies mostly had "the right stuff". What remains now are mostly disturbed head-cases, and way too many of them.
Example of "warm water rises" is silly - global ocean is not a teapot, water on the abyssal plain is not heated from the bottom.
You understand that the concept of radioactivity is linked somehow to release of heat. Do you?
Also my guess would be that they lay a pipe from these tanks into the water to dump the 1 million tons, meaning there would be some spots with fairly high concentration for a long time.
"total amount is not a relevant measure .." concentration.
That claim is incorrect - it is obviously possible to release tritium water without causing damage.
The actual management of Fukushima is a rabbithole, but if they spent years containing it, I dont think they will just flush it down a tube and call it a day.
Seems like you somehow misunderstood what I was saying then? You are basically restating my point.
The specifics of what's going on at Fukushima have nothing to do with it. Yes, if they can release contaminated water in a way that a maximal safe concentration is never exceeded, that would be safe.
I did not comment on whether nuclear plants are better or worse than coal plants or anything like that, I just pointed out that the argument about release of radioactive material by coal plants must be made in a different way (if that is possible) if it is to be effective.
NB: Please don't take this personally, but this looks like another example of interpreting a statement based on whether it superficially seems to fit into one's preferred narrative rather than looking at what was actually said. What I actually wrote is simply correct based on basic physics and biology.
I think we were coming from different directions, i see what you are saying.
We are probably too late in general.
If that is your first thought, why would you even think of nuclear power as an alternative? Hinkley Point C "might" be finished 17 years after inception. If everything goes right from now on. For 9+ ct per kWh.
And consider how German wind farms look fine on net total, but can't provide power to south of Germany, so usually during max production time they pay Netherlands to shut off their wind farms and send the over produced power there.
If there was a real will to build low carbon power, we would be assembling both renewables and nuclear out of mass produced modules
California alone, THIS YEAR alone, has lost an area 3 times the size of the Chernobyl exclusion zone due to weather that should be unusual, but won't be. Australia likewise. Forests near me have been lost due to parasites who should be killed by a frost that never came. This is the new normal. This doesn't end.
Those were the two options, and you knew it. Sorry but my life has been stories of people who claim to be environmental and frustrate every single practical effort to reduce emissions, then claim ignorance of the consequences. You knew.
Unless we curb the endless growth mindset, the world will become a dumpster full of garbage anyway, regardless of the energy source.
And cheapo power will only encourage "more of the same".
a single person getting access to nuclear waste and e.g. spreading it through a city, can kill tens of thousands.
A little more difficult to do with coal ash or conventional waste...
That's like comparing a stockpile of bombs and comparing it to a single atomic bomb.
Heavy metal toxicity may be less dangerous than contamination with radioactive isotopes. But it's not clear to me that the waste rich in heavy metals is preferable if there's millions of times more of it. Because of the smaller scale, radioactive waste could just be put in a big building with some armed guards and regular inspections. Coal ash cannot be kept contained to that degree.
France managed to keep all its waste in a small hall thanks to reprocessing. Both Chernobyl and Fukushima involved ancient designs coupled with extra non-reactor errors.
There are many reactor designs that have never suffered an accident, and some of them have been around since the 50's. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CANDU_reactor
>"horrible track record of nuclear waste"
Compared to what? On a normal year air pollution (combustion waste) kills 500,000 - 2,000,000 people, nuclear waste kills 0.
What is this horrible track record of which you speak? Some examples please.
https://earther.gizmodo.com/this-town-didnt-want-to-be-a-rad...
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-nuclear-environment-i...
https://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/articles/entry...
https://bellona.org/news/nuclear-issues/2008-09-20-year-long...
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2004-10-30/scotland-expos...
https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/un-atomic-agency-probing-del...
https://apnews.com/ba820f02074247fc8486b63b7c87d6cb/russias-...
https://www.upi.com/Energy-News/2008/09/08/Nuclear-waste-sca...
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/the-current-for-april-23...
https://www.oregonlive.com/politics/2020/02/oregons-response...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxic_waste_dumping_by_the_%27...
and tons more