Comment by oneshtein
5 months ago
You arguments boils down to «it's OK to wipe a continent once in a while, because nuclear energy is the safest energy option per megawatt produced».
5 months ago
You arguments boils down to «it's OK to wipe a continent once in a while, because nuclear energy is the safest energy option per megawatt produced».
No, the argument is that it didn't "wipe the continent" and in fact caused far less damage than other things we're totally fine with. I don't see GP saying that they want an incident like this to repeat, just that, if it did, the consequences would be far less severe than "wiping the continent".
> OK to wipe a continent
Why not exaggerate to the "entire planet" if we are going this way..
Regardless, in hindsight humanity could have prevented (at least to a significant extent) climate change if we doubled down on nuclear 40-50 years ago instead of stopping most expansion. What will be the cost of that?
I doubt so: 416 industrial nuclear reactors are deployed in the world today. They produce 10% of the electricity, itself 20% of the final energy, so nuclear power produces at best 2% of the energy consumed.
Nuclear power would provide 10% of the energy, which would be far from sufficient since it is necessary to electrify uses (in order to reduce the quantity of fossil fuel burned) and therefore produce more electricity, if we could multiply the power of the fleet by 5, therefore building around 1500 new reactors and keeping the existing fleet active. Hoping for this before 2100 would be absurd.
Well, its way too late now. 80 reactors were launched between 1960 and 1970, 185 between 70s, 237 in the 80s, in the 90s it was barely 60.
Instead if it kept doubling every decade it would be well over 10%.
Of course electrification of transportation etc. should have starter much earlier.
Obviously none of that was economical compared to coal/gas/oil back then.
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No, those are your words. The dumbed down, skewed, ragebaity, Fox News level strawman. The guaranteed way to drag down the conversation when you have nothing of value to say: pretend the other guy said something just as worthless and then fight that because it’s easier and you think you have a shot.
Your arguments have been shot down all over this thread. Do you need a win so bad?
We have had several serious nuclear incidents and none have destroyed either a continent or the people on it
That it hasn't happened yet doesn't mean that it couldn't happen in the future. We have never had a worst case event but we do know pretty well what the consequences of a worst case event could be.
The worst case consequences of Chernobyl were stopped because people literally risked their lives to prevent it. The fire was put out, the steam explosion was prevented, and countless lives were saved as a result.
Even so, many countries spent billions, over several decades, to minimize the consequences. As far as 2000 miles away, animals are still to this day fed special foods and managed to avoid prolonged grazing in contaminated areas.
Think about it for a second - over 2000 miles away, almost 40 years later, this still requires active management. Despite best efforts to handle the situation when it happened.
Now consider that every reactor carries it's own copy of the risks, and they only generate around 10 TWh of electricity per year.
That's just way too little electricity for such a risk. It makes no sense.
Meanwhile solar and storage is deployed at a rate equivalent to a new reactor every month as we speak. Faster, cheaper, and comparatively risk-free.
Most Russian Roulette games have many 'clicks' before the 'bang'.
these were the bangs
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