Why are so many people opposed to nuclear energy?

[OrtwinS]

well, right now, we are incapable of FUSION only able to do FISSION. It is a clean energy, but, the risks associated with it are usually unacceptable. Just look at Chernobyl and 3 mile Island and that one reactor in Japan that suffered that Tsunami a while ago. There is also the matter of spent fuel rods and other nuclear waste that is not so friendly, and some of which, in the wrong hands become a dirty bomb iirc.

Actually, we can do fusion very well (and no, not just H-bombs who use fission as 'sparkplug' for a fusion reaction).

Read up on JET and ITER.

JET hasn't produced more energy than is required to keep it running yet (though it theory, it should be capable of doing so, but they use it for other experiments). ITER is expected to produce about 10 times as much energy than in needs.

The last big hurdle fusion needs to take is finding a suiteble reactor wall material.

We need something that can hold up to a barrage of neutrons for an acceptable amount of time before needing replacement.

[brienne]

Quote Originally Posted by brienne View Post

Three Miles Island, Tchernobyl, Fukushima, and so on...

Enough reasons to be suspicious about nuclear industry.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA no.

Did you read all my post or do you troll?

Imho, nuclear power is part of the global energy solution.

If peoples are affraid by nuclear power, those big fails may be a cause.

So... "Ahahaha no"?

[lajoswinkler]

well, right now, we are incapable of FUSION only able to do FISSION. It is a clean energy, but, the risks associated with it are usually unacceptable. Just look at Chernobyl and 3 mile Island and that one reactor in Japan that suffered that Tsunami a while ago. There is also the matter of spent fuel rods and other nuclear waste that is not so friendly, and some of which, in the wrong hands become a dirty bomb iirc.

Chernobyl was an inherently unstable design without containment on which illegal experiment has been made.

Three Mile Island gave the residents approximatelly one chest x-ray of radiation dose and no long term pollution occured.

Fukushima had more than one meltdown (so much about your knowledge on the subject matter, NHF).

There are huge amounts of decaying RTG equipment all over the Russia. Neglected, abandoned. You can go there and retrieve the material if you aren't afraid of dying. The amount of unaccounted highly radioactive material all over the world is.. staggering. You just need to know where to look for it. How many dirty bomb attacks have been made so far in the history of mankind?

I've successfully blasted your post to pieces.

Should I go on, or should you admit that with all the energy made from uranium lots of deaths from coal induced cancers have been avoided?

[Seret]

I don's see why is the waste such a problem.

And it is not true that no final deposit sites exist.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repository

It is currently being built.

Right, which means currently we have none. That facility is due to go into business about 2020, and will AFAIK take waste only from Finland. That's a good start, but still not a solution on the scale required for the problem.

I'm glad you "don't see what the problem is with the waste". The people responsible for running the plants however do see the problem, as would any industry that creates a dangerous waste that they aren't able to dispose of safely. Storing it at their plants is hardly their preferred solution. Nobody likes to s*&t in their own nest, and it really just pushes the problem down the road to decommissioning. It's not a solution, it's a delaying tactic.

Ideally we'd be using a fuel cycle that didn't generate a high-level waste product, but uranium was desirable during the Cold War for security reasons, so that's what we're stuck with for now.

Edited October 31, 2013 by Seret

[brienne]

France buid numerous nuclear plants mainly because of... 1973 and 1979 energy crisis.

Here dates of french power plants building: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Chrono-parc-nucleaire-francais.svg

"uranium was desirable during the Cold War for security reasons"

France nuclear strike force was up before this massive nuclear plants network was build http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force_de_dissuasion

You don't need a dozen plants to get materials for your bombs.

Nuclear plants are not mainly meant for building bombs, but at first, to get electricity.

Economy reasons, not military.

[Azivegu]

I'm really getting tired of this thread. No matter how much you explain things, and I've wrote a ton of text here, there will always come someone with the same stuff, so if you ignore it, it looks like you're backing out from a discussion.

So I'll be short.

So what if there is no place absent of seismic activity? Please explain to me why we should bother about dumping vitrified waste (locked in a glassy matrix, not a glass bottle) encased in concrete plugs into concrete cases filled with concrete and then flodding it with concrete in a place that will not experience anything more than few weak tremors in the next 50,000 years or more?

This is the third time I'm asking this. Why should we care? I'm still looking for an answer.

I was just clarifying the seismic activity part. Sometimes when you say it is a very stable place, it means something else then what the general public thinks. They are indeed relativly safe storage sites and is indeed where I would put it.

I'm aware of the subduction problems, I've just mentioned it because the user I was replying to was thinking it would be horrible if the stuff was put into Earth. If we had easy access to mantle, all our problems would be solved. It's the ultimate trash destroyer.

Ok, sorry. Misinterpetation. IT would be ultimate (and a nice way to keep our planet a little bit warmer xD) but for the same reasons I stated (and you probably already knew) it wouldnt be a good idea. But it is good to see we are on the same page now.

Thorium reactors are not inherently safe. They don't operate at high pressures, but they still produce furiously radioactive daughter products that can reach the environment just like they can with uranium. The chances of such event are very small, but the point is that it's not true they don't exist for thorium.

They require U-235 or Pu-239 as boosters. Thorium alone can't sustain fission. They are still not commercially viable. Their technology is not nearly as tested as uranium technology that we've perfected greatly and have lots of experience with.

Proliferation of weapon grade material is not stopped with thorium because it requires purification of those two mentioned isotopes.

The good news about that is that U235 and Pu239 are less likely to be needed. Recently (think it was 2008 or 2009) they developed a neutron emitter that is much easier and safer to use. I think it uses an isotope of strontium or something. I was looking around for it but couldnt find it (I think you understand that it isnt exactly a hot topic.) And what I was pointing at is that whilst a U235/Pu239 reactor must be constantly stabilized, a Th reactor must be constently unstabilized. It is inherently safe because it requires activation energy. If you ruptered a tank then everything could spew forth. Especially the xenon could be a problem. But this is where the LFTR comes in. If the vessel breaks it would drain out and then solidify. We then know where the problem is and a Fukushima like messup would be prevented. the proliferation concerns come when the Th is breed into U233. That is weapons grade material. The only thing that we should be thankfull for then is that it isnt easy to use because of the U232. Not really a strong plus point I will admit...

It's very hard to find rational critique of thorium based reactors. If you search for thorium myths, you'll end up on greenwashed stupid pages lobbying for 100% replacement of every power source with solar panels and hating everything nuclear. Yeah, those poopie heads.

And when you search for proponents, you'll find weird preachers that talk crap about uranium and glorify thorium because they're conspiracy theorists and "it's all about how USA wanted bombs". It isn't.

The reality is that thorium might one day be a great source. It is not today and will not be for a long time. We already have uranium and decades of research and confidence and excellent technology. The fact USA is stuck with old reactors... you can thank that to the "green" movement.

I actually couldn't agree with you more. The bias with thorium is great and grand. I have the book Super Fuel by Richard Martin. It is like a Manifest Destiny of energy production. And ya, I did sum it up as the reason we have Uranium and not Thorium is because of the bombs, but in reality it came down to politics and how, sadly, the side supporting Uranium had more charisma and other things (like positions in the NAVY which forwarded the development of nuclear submarines.) And yes, it is said that we are still using GEN-I and GEN-II reactors when the designs are already at GEN-IV+ for uranium and several incredible designs for Thorium. And for that I do blame the eco movement (and in particular Greenpeace.)

I would also like to say that if you are getting tired, I would stop responding. I get how it feels. I think I just misunderstood you wrong. There is a lot to read here so I guess I missed the comment you where commenting on. I would also like to say that dont view this (between you and me) as a discussion, but rather a conversation. This is a particularly friendly forum and I want to keep it that way. And no need for arguments when we support the same side:P

On a finishing note:

My aunt and uncle live in New York, and when I visited them on vacation my aunt said something very clever: "Ya, we live between two military training grounds and a nuclear power plant. So it's pretty quite here."

[TheCardinal]

...

I've successfully blasted your post to pieces.

...

No, you haven't.

Personally, I'm absolutely opposed to nuclear energy. And not because i don't know anything about it or don't understand it.

There have been a lot of arguments in this thread (pro and contra) but unfortunately a lot of them are false. Take the argument that NE is safe and that the risk is immeasurably small. The number of (major) accidents isn't immeasurable small which proves that the risks are a lot larger than previously assumed.

The risk in itself isn't so important (although about a millon to a billion times larger than previously stated) compared to the consequences of a mishap.

Large area's of land have become unusable for a (very) long period (Chernobyl, Fukushima) and many people have received (normally considered unhealthy) doses of radiation. I.m.o. the potential damage is too large.

Edited October 31, 2013 by TheCardinal
typo

[Drunken Hobo]

How many different ways could Fukushima have been prevented? If the sea wall was just a couple of metres higher (as had been recommended) it's likely the plant would have survived intact like the other nuclear plants on the Japanese East coast. If zirconium cladding had been replaced with something that doesn't react with high-temperature steam (good choice of metal there...) there would have been no hydrogen explosion and the reactors wouldn't have been damaged.

If the emergency diesel generators had been placed above sea-level, they wouldn't have failed and the cooling would have probably prevented a meltdown.

Are there any more?

Chernobyl was also a comedy of errors. This timeline shows how many basic safety procedures were ignored, and how many opportunities the workers had to prevent the impending disaster. They actually disabled the emergency cooling system. It's like they wanted it to go wrong.

[TheCardinal]

Chernobyl was also a comedy of errors. This timeline shows how many basic safety procedures were ignored, and how many opportunities the workers had to prevent the impending disaster. They actually disabled the emergency cooling system. It's like they wanted it to go wrong.

It was a test to check procedures. Ironic enough it was meant to ensure the safety of the plant.

[MC.STEEL]

This discussion is reaching explosive meltdown.

Get it?)

[Seret]

"uranium was desirable during the Cold War for security reasons"

France nuclear strike force was up before this massive nuclear plants network was build http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force_de_dissuasion

No, in the case of France that wasn't their reason for building so much nuclear. But the uranium fuel cycle had already been chosen by Britain and the US years earlier. Look at the early British reactors such as their Magnox reactors built right after the war. Production of plutonium was the primary reason these plants went online, electricity production was a nice bonus.

You don't need a dozen plants to get materials for your bombs.

Nuclear plants are not mainly meant for building bombs, but at first, to get electricity.

Economy reasons, not military.

The reason they chose uranium was because it could do both. The first practical reactors were military, the US Navy being one of the folks who developed the PWR, which is the most common reactor technology in use (including all the French plants AFAIK). The military had a massive influence over the development of the early nuclear industry, and their desire for a fuel cycle that could produce plutonium won the day.

[lajoswinkler]

Right, which means currently we have none. That facility is due to go into business about 2020, and will AFAIK take waste only from Finland. That's a good start, but still not a solution on the scale required for the problem.

I'm glad you "don't see what the problem is with the waste". The people responsible for running the plants however do see the problem, as would any industry that creates a dangerous waste that they aren't able to dispose of safely. Storing it at their plants is hardly their preferred solution. Nobody likes to s*&t in their own nest, and it really just pushes the problem down the road to decommissioning. It's not a solution, it's a delaying tactic.

Ideally we'd be using a fuel cycle that didn't generate a high-level waste product, but uranium was desirable during the Cold War for security reasons, so that's what we're stuck with for now.

And why is it so important to have one right now? Why do we so desperately need to bury it? Please explain it to me because I have no idea.

The problem is created by the "green" movement lobbying and trying to do whatever they can to ensure their the survival of their agenda, and believe me, it is not about the environment. Environmentalism started with the scientists realizing you can't dump crap forever during the late 19th century. Then after WW2, with the rise of new directions in society (mostly beneficial, though), the actual green movement was born but it was soon really messed up when science dropped out of it and hippie-like folk came onboard. Ignorant, scaremongering folk that not only enjoys, but is sometimes even paid by various interest groups to make a mess. Fun fact - they never offer solutions. All they do is nag.

I'll say again - my country stores all of its high level waste (decades worth!) in the spent fuel pool and the only people concerned about it are the scaremongers and occasionally politicians, when they need an excuse to stir some sh*t to win the affection of stupid citizens.

Meanwhile the fuel bundles are under purified, boriated water and pose no problems. No dry cask storage is used. One day they will be buried or reprocessed. We do have stable geological layers, but as soon as someone mentions it, the press goes wild. So you see, idiots don't want the waste in the pool, idiots don't want the waste in the ground. They offer no solutions. They just nag and collect political points because the waste is not the issue, it's an excuse.

And again with the thorium myths. There is no fission process which doesn't yield high level waste.

Thorium technology is pretty much the same thing as uranium. There are benefits, there are bad sides of it. At this moment, uranium is much better to use.

The good news about that is that U235 and Pu239 are less likely to be needed. Recently (think it was 2008 or 2009) they developed a neutron emitter that is much easier and safer to use. I think it uses an isotope of strontium or something. I was looking around for it but couldnt find it (I think you understand that it isnt exactly a hot topic.) And what I was pointing at is that whilst a U235/Pu239 reactor must be constantly stabilized, a Th reactor must be constently unstabilized. It is inherently safe because it requires activation energy. If you ruptered a tank then everything could spew forth. Especially the xenon could be a problem. But this is where the LFTR comes in. If the vessel breaks it would drain out and then solidify. We then know where the problem is and a Fukushima like messup would be prevented. the proliferation concerns come when the Th is breed into U233. That is weapons grade material. The only thing that we should be thankfull for then is that it isnt easy to use because of the U232. Not really a strong plus point I will admit...

I don't understand this thing with activation energy. You do realize that fuel bundles inside a typical PWR require water to start the fission? Water serves as a moderator. If there is no water, and you pull out control rods, nothing fancy happens. So if the water boils away in uranium PWRs, its fission stops immediately.

What causes meltdowns is not uncontrolled fission, but decaying fission products heating up in the reactor devoid of coolant.

Thorium also produces fission products. Their composition is different, but they are there, and they will increase the temperature if not cooled down. I'm pretty sure problems can arise.

The only difference I see here is the fact that when uranium reactors start melting, they create a kind of lava which can melt through the thick steel vessel, and the initial lava has too much uranium dioxide close together, so hotspots of criticality can be created, but the material spreads and gets contaminated by steel and molten concrete below, so any fears of new criticality soon stop. That essentially happened in Chernobyl when the lava started dripping down. Its melting point is high so it's like spreading warm peanutbutter over cold bread. It sticks. It solidifies, too.

It does not accumulate in a neat little critical pond.

Thorium would be different because such drastic meltdowns could not happen, but to say any type of meltdown is impossible? No, that's just wrong. There are insanely radioactive fission products inside and they release heat, not to mention volatile isotopes which can escape (hence the need for containment dome, something Chernobyl lacked entirely).

No, you haven't.

Personally, I'm absolutely opposed to nuclear energy. And not because i don't know anything about it or don't understand it.

There have been a lot of arguments in this thread (pro and contra) but unfortunately a lot of them are false. Take the argument that NE is safe and that the risk is immeasurably small. The number of (major) accidents isn't immeasurable small which proves that the risks are a lot larger than previously assumed.

The risk in itself isn't so important (although about a millon to a billion times larger than previously stated) compared to the consequences of a mishap.

Large area's of land have become unusable for a (very) long period (Chernobyl, Fukushima) and many people have received (normally considered unhealthy) doses of radiation. I.m.o. the potential damage is too large.

I will not discuss this with trolls.

How many different ways could Fukushima have been prevented? If the sea wall was just a couple of metres higher (as had been recommended) it's likely the plant would have survived intact like the other nuclear plants on the Japanese East coast. If zirconium cladding had been replaced with something that doesn't react with high-temperature steam (good choice of metal there...) there would have been no hydrogen explosion and the reactors wouldn't have been damaged.

If the emergency diesel generators had been placed above sea-level, they wouldn't have failed and the cooling would have probably prevented a meltdown.

Are there any more?

Chernobyl was also a comedy of errors. This timeline shows how many basic safety procedures were ignored, and how many opportunities the workers had to prevent the impending disaster. They actually disabled the emergency cooling system. It's like they wanted it to go wrong.

Nuclear technology showed its bright face in the case of Fukushima. Electrical engineering and industrial architecture are the ones to blame.

Only idiots would build a wall too low and put electrical equipment unshielded on the shore.

Zirconium is unavoidable. It is the best metal when it comes to corrosion resistance and low nucleus cross section, meaning it is a poor absorber of neutrons i.e. highly transparent to neutron flux.

Most metals react with water at high temperatures. It's how chemistry works. Metal is oxidized, hydrogen from the water is reduced to elemental state.

Yes, Chernobyl was a total comedy done on a crappy power plant design. The reactor itself is not that bad (it's not great) and no accidents would happen if they had respected well known protocols. Also if there was a containment dome, much less contamination would occur in the case of accident. But there was only steel roof above it. Like a shopping mall.

It was a test to check procedures. Ironic enough it was meant to ensure the safety of the plant.

It was to impress the Party. It was an illegal experiment. For god sake, they've removed almost every control rod from the graphite pile. Graphite is a moderator. It was an insane, stupid, illegal test that should never ever have been conducted.

If you want to talk about nuclear safety, these things are basics. You can not have a meaningful conversation about it if you lump everything together and say nuclear power plants are bad because some twats did everything they could to make a huge mess.

[Seret]

And why is it so important to have one right now? Why do we so desperately need to bury it? Please explain it to me because I have no idea.

Well, I'm not sure I believe that you are unable to understand why. It would have been sensible to implement the infrastructure required for a particular fuel cycle as soon as we started using that fuel cycle. This is just common sense. Doing anything else is just delaying the inevitable.

[magnemoe]

Well, I'm not sure I believe that you are unable to understand why. It would have been sensible to implement the infrastructure required for a particular fuel cycle as soon as we started using that fuel cycle. This is just common sense. Doing anything else is just delaying the inevitable.

Multiple ways to bury it, simples solution, metal as an barrier, high quality concrete as protection, bury it in an desert, dig if up if the desert becomes wet some thousands year later, inside an mountain in an desert works a bit better. Yes it has an political cost so its not done.

No need to protect it for millions of years, if civilization fails you will get plenty of nuclear pollution anyway, also irrelevant compared with the number who will die it this happens.

yes you can store it safe for 50 million years if you want, drill an hole in the ocean floor, drop the containers with metal and concrete down in it some hundreds meter of clay and a concrete plug. Yes you could just bury it 10 meter down as the ocean floor is almost as stable as moons surface but you could use an oil drilling rig to make the hole just as easy. This also carry an political cost.

After 10-50 million years it disappear down into the mantle.

[Edicius]

You just need to be keep it safe for 500 or 600 years. After that time you have:

a) reliable surface-space transport, space infrastructure. So take nuclear 'waste' to orbit, reprocess or fire to sun.

humanity is still bound to planet, depleted part or most fossil fuels. Nuclear 'waste' is valuable resource again for reprocesing.

Just my opinion for this matter.

[brienne]

You just need to be keep it safe for 500 or 600 years. After that time you have:

a) reliable surface-space transport, space infrastructure. So take nuclear 'waste' to orbit, reprocess or fire to sun.

humanity is still bound to planet, depleted part or most fossil fuels. Nuclear 'waste' is valuable resource again for reprocesing.

Just my opinion for this matter.

Hide it in a safe place.

Last think to do: send it in space. The rocket could explose in the atmosphere

Too risky!!!!

[TheCardinal]

....

I will not discuss this with trolls.

....

I don´t understand the necessity to start calling names. If that´s the way you think you can win an argument so be it.

....

It was to impress the Party. It was an illegal experiment. For god sake, they've removed almost every control rod from the graphite pile. Graphite is a moderator. It was an insane, stupid, illegal test that should never ever have been conducted.

....

No sir, it was not to impress the Party and not illegal. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7oDyuMssCY

[sal_vager]

Don't go calling people trolls guys, it's the kind of thing that brings a promising thread to a close...

Most people are against nuclear energy simply because they don' understand it, they don't know how safe it is and they read too many tabloids.

[Godot]

You just need to be keep it safe for 500 or 600 years. After that time you have:

a) reliable surface-space transport, space infrastructure. So take nuclear 'waste' to orbit, reprocess or fire to sun.

humanity is still bound to planet, depleted part or most fossil fuels. Nuclear 'waste' is valuable resource again for reprocesing.

Just my opinion for this matter.

You´re an optimist ...

I assume that shortage of resources (especially oil) and strengthening of religious fundamentalism within the next few hundred years will result in multiple world wide wars

and finally the survivors will revert to tribe like societies with strong religious beliefs and technologies that don´t go above a medieval level

(aside from usage/knowledge of the "magical relics" and the "huge forests of stone and glass" that their ancestors left behind ).

Uranium/Plutonium/nuclear waste will only be known as the sick making stuff by those people ... not as a valuable resource

Edited October 31, 2013 by Godot

[PakledHostage]

Don't go calling people trolls guys, it's the kind of thing that brings a promising thread to a close...

What's promising about it? It reads like a religious discussion. Just about everyone who's expressed any concern about nuclear energy in this thread has been shot down as being stupid, irrational, a hippie or some combination thereof... Now we can add troll to the mix.

Risk management involves more than just simple statistics, and complex issues like the risks associated with nuclear or any other form of energy need intelligent discussion. There is almost certainly room for both sides of the argument to learn something, but this thread isn't turning out to be a forum where that can happen.

[sal_vager]

:/ Yeah okay I guess, it's not the best thread I've seen but I'm hoping it improves.

Though really, unless we get some actual nuclear physicists in here that's unlikely.

[Karriz]

Nuclear discussion is always about risks vs benefits. We know that both exist, but it's impossible to "measure" two different things and determine which one weighs more. You could play it safe, or you could just go for it because it's unlikely that things would go terribly wrong.

Imo, it's important that everyone sees both sides of the argument, and don't just promote their own "ideology" and think that the opposing opinion is absolutely wrong. That's exactly like all the political and religious discussions everywhere in the internet.

I just say that "I don't know". We already have nuclear plants so we might as well keep using them until something better comes up, but we shouldn't keep building them all over the place. Compromises are cool, right?

[Psycix]

Personally, I'm absolutely opposed to nuclear energy. And not because i don't know anything about it or don't understand it.

There have been a lot of arguments in this thread (pro and contra) but unfortunately a lot of them are false. Take the argument that NE is safe and that the risk is immeasurably small. The number of (major) accidents isn't immeasurable small which proves that the risks are a lot larger than previously assumed.

The risk in itself isn't so important (although about a millon to a billion times larger than previously stated) compared to the consequences of a mishap.

Large area's of land have become unusable for a (very) long period (Chernobyl, Fukushima) and many people have received (normally considered unhealthy) doses of radiation. I.m.o. the potential damage is too large.

Both the major accidents each have a set of reasons why they happened and why they will never happen again, even if we were to construct dozens of new reactors.

France, for example, has been running over 50 nuclear powerplants for years without any problems, but nobody knows because the media attention to nuclear power is one-sided.

Chernobyl:

Major design flaws + major flaws in safety protocol + major human error + absolute retardation = Nuclear disaster.

Obviously, a modern reactor in a modern first world country is different, and a disaster like this could never happen. A small example is that Chernobyl did not even have a containment building! I could sum up everything that was or went wrong at Chernobyl, but I'll let those interested do that research yourself (it's a good read).

So I wonder: why are people so determined to compare modern reactors to chernobyl?

Modern reactors seem to be carrying the burden of something they are hardly related to.

Fukushima:

A plant built all the way back in 1971 gets hit by a 9.0 magnitude earthquake (the fifth most powerful ever recorded!) and a 14 meter high tsunami.

The plant would have survived the earthquake without problems, weren't it for the fact the 10 meter high wall was not high enough and the backup generators flooded.

Now, if we build a new state-of-the-art reactor with enhanced safety features in an area is not generally struck with earthquakes or tsunamis, how can this not be considered safe?

Can someone tell me how Fukushima proves how dangerous nuclear energy is? When I look at the data we have available, having 100% of all reactors in Japan safely shutting down after one of the most powerful earthquakes ever recorded proves how incredibly safe these reactors are rather than unsafe!

People living in the vincinity of the Fukushima plant have an estimated 7% increased chance of leukemia and a 70% increased chance of thyroid cancer. No, this is not an absolute percentage: This means "70% more than normal".

Fukushima raised the risk of thyroid cancer for local resistents from 0,75% to 1,275%.

Some other interesting numbers:

total amount of deaths as a result of Fukushima: 130 (Estimation by Stanford University professor and anti-nuclear advocate Mark Z. Jacobson using the linear-no-threshold model)

total amount of deaths due to the same earthquake and tsunami: 18500

Percentage of cancer-induced deaths (there were no direct radiation exposure deaths) due to Fukushima relative to the rest of the earthquake: ~0.7%

Does anyone here agree that the term "nuclear disaster" should be redefined?

Natural disasters are a hundred times more harmful.

The last thing I would like to put out in this thread is radiophobia.

If you do some googling, you will find out that the fear of radiation does orders of magnitude more damage to society than radiation itself.

TLDR: Chernobyl and Fukushima are not relevant to modern nuclear power in safe locations and should not be compared.

People's fears of radiation are more harmful than nuclear disasters themselves, which are not as bad as many people believe.

Edited October 31, 2013 by Psycix

[MBobrik]

Risk management involves more than just simple statistics, and complex issues like the risks associated with nuclear or any other form of energy need intelligent discussion. There is almost certainly room for both sides of the argument to learn something, but this thread isn't turning out to be a forum where that can happen.

yeah, teach both sides. where I've heard that one again. Frankly, one side made its case where the other failed to do anything but baseless fear mongering.

[MBobrik]

The last thing I would like to put out in this thread is radiophobia.

If you do some googling, you will find out that the fear of radiation does orders of magnitude more damage to society than radiation itself.

'nuff said. Psycix wins the thread.