Even the disaster of Fukushima amounted to a group of people eating one or two more bananas than they normally would.
To put things in perspective in nuclear energy, the worst disaster imaginable happened at Chernobyl. Aside from a few people who were exposed to the core and handled radioactive material that was very hot (both in terms of radiation and temperature), no one was hurt. There was no increase in cancer. There was no decrease in lifespan.
We knew that low levels of radiation were harmless. Indeed, some studies suggested low levels of radiation were actually beneficial to you. We knew that very high levels of radiation would kill you, and we had a stack of dead bodies to demonstrate that. What we didn't know was what medium levels of radiation would do, and there was no way to ethically test it. Chernobyl was that test, and nuclear energy is, by far, the safest energy source in the universe, BAR NONE, even when it is completely mismanaged and an unimaginable disaster happens.
I mean, Chernobyl had ZERO SHIELDING of the core. When it blew, chunks of the core landed far away. You could see the Cerenkov Radiation -- the blue glow of particles travelling faster than the speed of light in a material. It was absolutely the worst possible disaster you could create short of a nuclear bomb.
Fukushima is a nothing burger, and the only reason people are scared of it is because they were told to be scared of it. It is harmless and will end up doing exactly ZERO harm to anyone.
What "environmental impacts"? A properly designed reactor is clean, and the byproducts can be used in other reactors. The waste can be collected in a small area until we decide a final disposal plan. The easiest one is to load it on a rocket to the sun. The best overall plan is, when we have nanotechnology perfected, we can take all waste apart atom by atom and make new power plants, cars, or whatever.
Once we accumulate enough nuclear "waste", we can create another reactor to take advantage of the energy, and get even more free power. And we can keep doing that until there are only inert materials left.
Nuclear is the only energy source that has ZERO pollution and can be almost infinitely scaled up. It produces way more energy than it consumes in construction and operation and cleanup.
The next source of energy after nuclear are things like Dyson spheres. And we have plenty of radioactive materials here on planet earth to power us to that phase of human existence!
Fake news in this instance, as those are cooling towers for a nuclear plant. That is steam. Nuclear is clean energy.
This, the second I saw that image, I was about to write the same.
Actually it is squeaky clean, compared to all other sources.
Unless you let Fukushima politicians overrule the engineers.
Even the disaster of Fukushima amounted to a group of people eating one or two more bananas than they normally would.
To put things in perspective in nuclear energy, the worst disaster imaginable happened at Chernobyl. Aside from a few people who were exposed to the core and handled radioactive material that was very hot (both in terms of radiation and temperature), no one was hurt. There was no increase in cancer. There was no decrease in lifespan.
We knew that low levels of radiation were harmless. Indeed, some studies suggested low levels of radiation were actually beneficial to you. We knew that very high levels of radiation would kill you, and we had a stack of dead bodies to demonstrate that. What we didn't know was what medium levels of radiation would do, and there was no way to ethically test it. Chernobyl was that test, and nuclear energy is, by far, the safest energy source in the universe, BAR NONE, even when it is completely mismanaged and an unimaginable disaster happens.
I mean, Chernobyl had ZERO SHIELDING of the core. When it blew, chunks of the core landed far away. You could see the Cerenkov Radiation -- the blue glow of particles travelling faster than the speed of light in a material. It was absolutely the worst possible disaster you could create short of a nuclear bomb.
Fukushima is a nothing burger, and the only reason people are scared of it is because they were told to be scared of it. It is harmless and will end up doing exactly ZERO harm to anyone.
What "environmental impacts"? A properly designed reactor is clean, and the byproducts can be used in other reactors. The waste can be collected in a small area until we decide a final disposal plan. The easiest one is to load it on a rocket to the sun. The best overall plan is, when we have nanotechnology perfected, we can take all waste apart atom by atom and make new power plants, cars, or whatever.
Compared to fossil fuel, it is, and if these climate fanatics want to remove the fossil fuels, nuclear is the only sustainable solution.
Once we accumulate enough nuclear "waste", we can create another reactor to take advantage of the energy, and get even more free power. And we can keep doing that until there are only inert materials left.
Nuclear is the only energy source that has ZERO pollution and can be almost infinitely scaled up. It produces way more energy than it consumes in construction and operation and cleanup.
The next source of energy after nuclear are things like Dyson spheres. And we have plenty of radioactive materials here on planet earth to power us to that phase of human existence!