- cross-posted to:
- climate@slrpnk.net
- cross-posted to:
- climate@slrpnk.net
Nuclear doesn’t just have one problem. It has seven. Here are the seven major problems with nuclear energy and why it is not a solution to the climate crisis.
Nuclear doesn’t just have one problem. It has seven. Here are the seven major problems with nuclear energy and why it is not a solution to the climate crisis.
When you started comparing numbers of deaths you lost me, for several reasons. Comparing deaths of nuclear meltdowns with dams or coal mining seems a bit of a stretch to me, because it’s like forgetting how radiation works. It’s not visible but the toll of radiation on other living beings and the environment is, and should not be neglected imo.
For the comparison of uranium mining and coal mining, I am not sure that talking about these specific numbers of deaths help to get the whole picture. What I mean is that due to coal mining employing more workers than uranium mining, in a way I am not surprised by the numbers you provided. I wanted to find something showing the percentages of mortality rates by mining sector but I didn’t manage to do so. If you or anyone have something, please share.
In relation to nuclear waste, I totally disagree mainly because the ocean is not a dumpster. Apart from that, last time I checked, there were unresolved issues with this technique. Potential leaks (from defective unit, material degradation, earthquakes etc) that endanger marine environment. These are even more concerning because of difficulties of monitoring because they are in the seabed. Out of sight, out of mind does not apply to nuclear waste.
When I am saying that the death toll from Fukushima is between 0 and 1 it is because the effect of radiation is accounted for and that the level of exposure we are talking about makes it possible that it raises additional deaths by 1. When a zone is declared radioactive, humans tend to avoid it, which does wonders for all other lifeforms.
Oh sorry! I think I used a mistranslation, I did not mean to say “water bed” but "water table. I am not talking about using the ocean as a dumpster. It would be a very poor idea. We are talking about geological storage, which means within the rockbed, in geologically stable regions, below the layers where water is found. All the projects I am aware off are land based. And when they are below the water table, there is very little ways for it to raise to the surface.