Comment by DennisP
17 hours ago
And then there's coal. The difference between nuclear and coal is that when nuclear has a horrible accident, it kills fewer people than coal kills as part of its normal expected operation.
17 hours ago
And then there's coal. The difference between nuclear and coal is that when nuclear has a horrible accident, it kills fewer people than coal kills as part of its normal expected operation.
The great thing is that coal is not the alternative in 2025.
Renewables are forcing enormous amounts of coals and fossil gas off grids around the world as we speak.
> coal is not the alternative in 2025.
Except in uncle Donald’s kingdom with “America’s Beautiful Clean Coal Industry” (yes, seriously):
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/04/rein...
Lets come back if that leads to an increase of coal usage instead of being posturing like most else they do.
Coal has been uncompetitive since the advent of the CCGT plant and was stagnating long before the fracking boom.
Yes, and in terms of overall deaths per terawatt-hour, nuclear is similar to renewables.
The difference between nuclear and coal is that when nuclear has a horrible accident, it kills as many people right here and makes as much land uninhabitable right here as coal does in our enemy countries within its normal expected operation.
Except for Russia, where else have deaths + land issues happened?
Not a commercial reactor but US lost 3 people trying to hand operate a small reactor with minimal safety: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SL-1
“On Tuesday, January 3, 1961, SL-1 was being prepared for restart after a shutdown of 11 days over the holidays. Maintenance procedures required that rods be manually withdrawn a few inches to reconnect each one to its drive mechanism. At 9:01 pm MST, Rod 9 was suddenly withdrawn too far, causing SL-1 to go prompt critical instantly. In four milliseconds, the heat generated by the resulting enormous power excursion caused fuel inside the core to melt and to explosively vaporize.”
The industry didn’t just randomly get so risk averse there where a lot of meltdowns and other issues over time.
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Our enemy countries are West Virginia and Pennsylvania?
Meltdowns aren't physically possible if we're building newer types of plants, so there can't be a new Chernobyl or even Fukushima if we're using modern types of passively cooled plants.
There’s generally significant costs and asterisks around such claims.
You’re much better off paying attention to site placement than trying to design something to safety handle getting covered in several meters of volcanic ash Pompeii style.