Young activist tells Greenpeace to drop ‘old-fashioned’ anti-nuclear stance | Hacker News Reader

Young activist tells Greenpeace to drop ‘old-fashioned’ anti-nuclear stance

theguardian.com

12 points_hypx8 comments

When nuclear power works, it’s a beautiful thing. when itgoes wrong, it’s humanity’s worst nightmare.

Is it? There have been two major nuclear power accidents in 70 years of civilian use.

The total death toll, including long-term cancer deaths, from Chernobyl is typically estimated around 4,000. For Fukushima it's a few dozen at most (while 25,000 died from the tsunami itself).

Meanwhile, the number of deaths from outdoor air pollution due to burning fossil fuels is estimated at 8.7 million – for the year 2021 alone.

"Humanity's worst nightmare" is the truck in your garage – not the nuclear reactor a hundred miles away.

Didn't the dust in Chernobyl get kicked up last year? And Zaporizhia has been a major hazard.

Things would have surely been a lot less complicated without those two plants.

Still, it's extremely hard to point to anyone who's been directly harmed by those two plants (other than the soldiers messing around there, of course).

Should countries build new nuclear plants? Maybe not, especially if the money would generate more watts using renewables. Shutting down extant nuclear plants while a country still has open coal and gas plants? That shows that they are not at all serious about the whole climate change thing at all.

What about hydro?

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_hydroelectric_power_st...

> 1975 Banqian Dam failure: 26,000 dead from flooding, 145,000 dead from subsequent famine and epidemics, 11 million homeless. Caused loss of generation, dam failed by overtopping in a 1-in-2,000 year flood

More details in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam

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For a while, the Mosul dame was in a dangerous state. (It looks like it's stable now.) From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosul_Dam#Instability_and_reme...

> A September 2006 report by the United States Army Corps of Engineers noted, "In terms of internal erosion potential of the foundation, Mosul Dam is the most dangerous dam in the world." The report further outlined a worst-case scenario, in which a sudden collapse of the dam would flood Mosul under 65 feet (20 m) of water and Baghdad, a city of 7 million, to 15 feet (4.6 m), with an estimated death toll of 500,000. A report on 30 October 2007 by the US Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) said that the dam's foundations could give way at any moment.

Problem for nuclear is an AP1000 costs 15 billion and takes ten years to build.

For 15 billion you could install solar that would produce 4X the energy per year. And build it in three years.

Yeah except it requires 100x the land to build and only produces electicity when its sunny. There are pros and cons to every system.

So when you include price for storage to make it work 24/7 then we are on same price as nuclear power plant, but with system more reliant on weather. Too cloudy few last days? I guess no electricity for you then.

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