"Nuclear power is a potential safety threat, *if* something goes wrong. Coal-fired power is *guaranteed* destruction, filling the atmosphere with planet-heating carbon when it operates the way it's supposed to". (Bill McKibben)
Same for fossil gas, by the way.
@kravietz Nuclear power is guaranteed destruction as well… Creating nuclear waste lasting for centuries and other than CO2, we don't even have a remote idea on how to get rid of it.
And no, hiding it in the ground is not a great answer as all temporary depots have shown.
I think we have to come up with better solutions there.
@pro @kravietz So, I just spend some time reading about full cycle nuclear power strategy and the first thing that sticks out is: Even for the "little" amount of nuclear waste that France produces, it has no final destination.
And another point I came across, due to the "statistics being an asshole the risk of an incident increases drastically with every new power plant, The incidents of Fukushima and Chernobyl were no exceptions, they were statically "expectable".
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/00963402.2016.1145910
@pro @kravietz I don't know of any coal, wind or solar energy incident, that made it impossible for humans to live in an area as big as Chernobyl.
I mean if you want to live with the risk, fine, go ahead. But please somewhere not even remotely close to me? like further away than Chernobyl, because we still had their nuclear cloud over here and are still recommended to not collect mushrooms in the forest, due to this nonsense.
@sheogorath @pro Here are some case studies of fatal accidents in solar industry https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CCDPHP/DEODC/OHB/FACE/Pages/Solar.aspx
And obviously, we should not panic around that because *every* human activity can potentially result in harm and death. Keeping them safe is a task for healt & safety. The problem is that accidents in nuclear industry are singled out and presented as something immensely dangerous and deadly, when they are not.
@kravietz @pro I think the major difference is 1st party impact vs 3rd party impact.
The number of people that are at least subject of a nuclear incident is by a magnitude of hundred thousands when not millions higher than the number of even hundreds of solar or wind industry incidents.
https://www.who.int/ionizing_radiation/chernobyl/backgrounder/en/
https://www.who.int/ionizing_radiation/a_e/fukushima/faqs-fukushima/en/
And we can safely expect another incident within the next 15-20 years.
> than the number of even hundreds of solar or wind industry incidents
But not hydro incidents, right?
In a few recent years there were further dam failures in Brazil and in Russia.
They killed ~200 people.
Have you ever heard about them?
@kravietz @pro True, those can happen, and they do happen, but considering the environmental impact and the regulations that those project have regarding cleanness of water in Europe mean even the worst incident won't cause a wasteland. Like with a Tsunami people will die, people will flee but as soon as it's over they will come back and start living there. That not so much the case directly around Chernobyl or Fukushima even after decontamination.
It's not true - a flood in the first place fills up sewers, water treatment plants, farms etc so the sediment after a flood is essentially a mix of human and animal crap, animal corpses, dead fish etc. You can't just "come back and start living", houses need to be cleaned, sterilized, repainted and in some cases demolished and rebuilt. Cars can be only scrapped as they smell shit and fish.
@kravietz @pro Well, I didn't mean that it's like a holiday, but more like take a few years, maybe a decade and no one will notice that the flood was there in first sight.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_von_Stauanlagenunf%C3%A4llen (sorry for the german here again, but the english version doesn't list a lot of european incidents)
Looking those incidents, non of these ended with "and the area became impossible to settle again". Basically all were solved in a no time. Sometimes villages have moved, but that's pretty much it.