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This humor from The Onion sums up the situation fairly well:
http://www.theonion.com/articles/nuclear-energy-advocates-insist-us-reactors-comple,19740/

WASHINGTON—Responding to the ongoing nuclear crisis in Japan, officials from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission sought Thursday to reassure nervous Americans that U.S. reactors were 100 percent safe and posed absolutely no threat to the public health as long as no unforeseeable system failure or sudden accident were to occur. "With the advanced safeguards we have in place, the nuclear facilities in this country could never, ever become a danger like those in Japan, unless our generators malfunctioned in an unexpected yet catastrophic manner, causing the fuel rods to melt down," said NRC chairman Gregory Jaczko, insisting that nuclear power remained a clean, harmless energy source that could only lead to disaster if events were to unfold in the exact same way they did in Japan, or in a number of other terrifying and totally plausible scenarios that have taken place since the 1950s. "When you consider all of our backup cooling processes, containment vessels, and contingency plans, you realize that, barring the fact that all of those safety measures could be wiped away in an instant by a natural disaster or electrical error, our reactors are indestructible." Jaczko added that U.S. nuclear power plants were also completely guarded against any and all terrorist attacks, except those no one could have predicted.

Check this out as well:


http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2690392/posts


Yes you read that right, windmills kill more people than Nuclear power.

Um, that narrow (in more ways than one) article said, "Americans", not people world wide. Also, wind mills don't kill people for thirty years or more after they collapse due to residual radiation effects, poisoning the food chain and worse. I'll stick with the scientists, not the ideologists, thank you very much. Now go eat some coconuts on Bikini Atoll, they're perfectly safe.

Nucelar power actually is relatively safe. It's just that people don't hear about the dozens of power plants working perfectly fine, and only know about Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima. Let's bear in mind that Three Mile Island never actually hurt anyone, Chernobyl was a crappy reactor crewed by morons, and Fukushima took the 2nd largest earthquake in the histor of the world to set off.

Not to mention radiation is still a 'ZOMG WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE' buzzword.

BrassScorpion wrote:Um, that narrow (in more ways than one) article said, "Americans", not people world wide. Also, wind mills don't kill people for thirty years or more after they collapse due to residual radiation effects, poisoning the food chain and worse. I'll stick with the scientists, not the ideologists, thank you very much.

Well, only 35 people died due to the original Chernobyl incident.

In related news, toothpicks are more dangerous than the H-Bomb. No one has died to an H-Bomb.

BrassScorpion wrote:Um, that narrow (in more ways than one) article said, "Americans", not people world wide. Also, wind mills don't kill people for thirty years or more after they collapse due to residual radiation effects, poisoning the food chain and worse. I'll stick with the scientists, not the ideologists, thank you very much. Now go eat some coconuts on Bikini Atoll, they're perfectly safe.

Oh come on, it just a bit of fun!

Just trying to make a point that Nuclear power isn't as bad as a lot of the fear mongers make it out to be. Heck Coal mining is probably the worst for energy related deaths.

I thought everyone had realised about the Onion by now...

We do, I just got the feeling the OP thought that nuclear power was dangerous, and I was trying to respond to that.

The Onion is still awesome though.

ChrisWWII wrote:We do, I just got the feeling the OP thought that nuclear power was dangerous, and I was trying to respond to that.

The Onion is still awesome though.

You think it isn't dangerous?

You've seen the aftereffects of chernobyl right? IF something goes wrong, its a complete disaster. Its great when nothing goes wrong, but I've gone from thinking investing more into nuclear is a good idea to thinking it probably isn't. Its just too dangerous if something goes wrong, it just takes one accident to render a huge area dead and unfit for habitation.

Damnit, you did it wrong! You should try to make it look like CNN or something.

daedalus-templarius wrote:
You think it isn't dangerous?

You've seen the aftereffects of chernobyl right? IF something goes wrong, its a complete disaster. Its great when nothing goes wrong, but I've gone from thinking investing more into nuclear is a good idea to thinking it probably isn't. Its just too dangerous if something goes wrong, it just takes one accident to render a huge area dead and unfit for habitation.

Everything is dangerous, coal mines are death traps on occasion, oil wells can explode, and wind mills kill people. Remember, even if something does go wrong it's much more likely to end up like Three Mile Island with a harmless release of some radiation, rather than Chernobyl and FUkushima, both of which had major extenuating circumstances. Besides, even in the Zone of Exclusion around Chernobyl, life has been rebounding. It's basically become a mini nature reserve, due to the lack of humans.

Although, I do have to note that by refusing to replace and rebuild nuclear reactors, and keeping money from them we're making it MORE likely for a Chernobyl to occur instead of less. Chernobyl resulted from idiot operators, and a poorly designed reactor. If they had proper non-idiot operators, and a good reactor design, the disaster likely would have never happend. We can get those things with investment.

Nuclear Power really is safe, to be honest it's like flying. If something goes really wrong, it'll likely end up catastrophic, but it's unlikely there WILL be something wrong in the first place.

ChrisWWII wrote:Nuclear Power really is safe, to be honest it's like flying. If something goes really wrong, it'll likely end up catastrophic, but it's unlikely there WILL be something wrong in the first place.

When something goes really wrong on a plane, hundreds of people die. When something goes really wrong with a nuclear power plant, a handful of operators potentially have a statistically relevant increase in their chance of developing cancer later in their lives, and a few miles around the plant is marked as off limits.

Right, I face more danger driving into Dallas than I do from nuclear power plants.

edit: Hrm, that might have been a bad example, could be tied to a wall and had blindfolded midgets throw axes at targets less than a foot away from my body and I'd still be safer than driving to Dallas.

Melissia wrote:Right, I face more danger driving into Dallas than I do from nuclear power plants.

edit: Hrm, that might have been a bad example.

I think that nuclear energy is far less threatening when compared to the awesome power of a Chuck Norris anything.

I think that was a worse example than what Melissia brought up.

No, the only thing dangerous about Chuck Norris these days is his ego.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
When something goes really wrong on a plane, hundreds of people die. When something goes really wrong with a nuclear power plant, a handful of operators potentially have a statistically relevant increase in their chance of developing cancer later in their lives, and a few miles around the plant is marked as off limits.

True enough, true enough. It was more of an analogy than a statement of fact though.

Environmentalists can grind my gears on this issue... here is a clean and efficient way of producing energy and they'd rather have coal...

Plus I've read some pretty interesting articles about how the wildlife in Chernobyl has been doing rather well, with barely any increase in cancer rates and most mutations being "unseen".

It led to one scientist humorously remarking that we should dump our nuclear waste in the rainforests... it keeps the humans away ;P

Lord Scythican wrote:Check this out as well:


http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2690392/posts


Yes you read that right, windmills kill more people than Nuclear power.

See, I'm pro-nuclear but that is just so stupid. The point with nuclear power isn't that it's going to kill people every so often through mechanical faults, the point is that when a reactor does fail the results tend to be catastrophic. They know this. They just don't care because it's Free Republican and inventing disingenuous bs is basically their entire reason for being.

The realisation that more people need to have isn't that nuclear is actually completely safe (it isn't, because there will be disasters and unforeseen events), the realisation is that there's no alternative at this point. We can't continue relying on coal, because the emissions are going to do more and more harm every year. Nor can we pretend green technology is anywhere near the technological level needed to provide more than a fraction of our power.

That leaves nuclear.

biccat wrote:

BrassScorpion wrote:Um, that narrow (in more ways than one) article said, "Americans", not people world wide. Also, wind mills don't kill people for thirty years or more after they collapse due to residual radiation effects, poisoning the food chain and worse. I'll stick with the scientists, not the ideologists, thank you very much.

Well, only 35 people died due to the original Chernobyl incident.

In related news, toothpicks are more dangerous than the H-Bomb. No one has died to an H-Bomb.

Try thousands. Yes only 70 or so people died in the plant, but the cancer cases in the affected populations are still rolling in.

Mind you, coal still kills more people annually than Chernobyl's final total is likely to hit.

Requia wrote:

biccat wrote:

BrassScorpion wrote:Um, that narrow (in more ways than one) article said, "Americans", not people world wide. Also, wind mills don't kill people for thirty years or more after they collapse due to residual radiation effects, poisoning the food chain and worse. I'll stick with the scientists, not the ideologists, thank you very much.

Well, only 35 people died due to the original Chernobyl incident.

In related news, toothpicks are more dangerous than the H-Bomb. No one has died to an H-Bomb.

Try thousands. Yes only 70 or so people died in the plant, but the cancer cases in the affected populations are still rolling in.

Mind you, coal still kills more people annually than Chernobyl's final total is likely to hit.

Cancer occurs anyways. Aside from a handful of people who were too close when it happened, and were killed by radiation poisoning, and the workers at the sarcophagus, it's unlikely many people even got "statistically visible risk increase" doses. That's not to say some people didn't develop cancer because of it, only that the dose they received wouldn't have been abnormal, since we're constantly being irradiated by a number of different things, including food and sunlight.

The WHO puts the number of additional cases of Thyroid cancer at 5000 (that was back in 2005), mostly people who were children at the time.

Now, you might want to chalk that up to people getting cancer from lots of sources, but Thyroid cancer is quite rare in the absence of Iodine 131 exposure. In a population of 300,000 (around the number of people effected) you would expect to see a whopping 300 of them get thyroid cancer before they die.

So it jumped from an expected .1% to 1.6%, manifesting decades later? That still comes out pretty mild, for all its notoriety.

1.5% may be significant, but it's nowhere near devastating enough to throw away an entirely viable source of energy, especially in this day and age.

So, lets ignore the safety cut-offs that can be implemented nowdays, lets ignore the Thorium-321 reaction that is implemented with it's own power and is not self-sustaining. Lets ignore the fact that coal power also gives people cancer, being a carcinogen, AND kills a lot more people due to coal mining cave-ins. Oh, and there is a whole town in the USA thats a ghost town cause of a coal mining accident.

Let's ignore the gulf of mexico incident which caused billions of dollars worth of oil damage. Gas explosions. The fact that hydro and wind power are intermittent power sources and rely on other sources of energy as a fail-safe.

There have been 3 major nuclear incidents, 1 which requires one of the world's largest earthquakes to set it off. The 2nd a bunch of dumbass operators who wanted power over 9000. The 3rd was a radioactive fart basically.

compare that to the amount of accidents and fatalities that occur due to other sources of energy. I think nuclear power is safer, and more efficient and Australia needs it.

The thing about nuclear energy is that once the fecal matter hits the fan you have to repaint more than just one room, so to speak.

I can fully understand how people feel threatened by nuclear power due to the lasting effects (the question of disposal) and the severeness of the problems if some occur.

That being said, no energy source is perfect.
They are either (as of yet) too inefficient or frak up nature anyway.

Solar power? Low output with high demand for room, quite reliant on steady weather.

Wind power? If it should pull it´s own weight it destroys habitats of sea life and birds (wind parks in the north sea for example), again reliant on room and steady wind.

Water power? Again, limited room (you only have so many useable shores, seas or rivers) and low output.

Fossilised fuel? CO² and limited amounts.

Burning garbage/wood etc.? CO² again, inefficient.

Nuclear power? Question of disposal, grave results of problems at times.

Yes, once renewable ressources like wind, water or solar power are developed enough (if they can reach a satisfying level of efficency at some point) we can begin actually getting rid of other power sources.

Until then we´re fraked anyway.

Vimes wrote:The thing about nuclear energy is that once the fecal matter hits the fan you have to repaint more than just one room, so to speak.

That depends on how well designed the reactor's safety systems are and the nature of its surrounding terrain.

sebster wrote:See, I'm pro-nuclear but that is just so stupid. The point with nuclear power isn't that it's going to kill people every so often through mechanical faults, the point is that when a reactor does fail the results tend to be catastrophic. They know this. They just don't care because it's Free Republican and inventing disingenuous bs is basically their entire reason for being.

You still see the need to attack people of the opposite political persuasion even when they agree with you. You might have a problem.

It's not "disingenuous bs," it's like any other stupid statistic that's thrown around:
"You're more likely to get attacked by a polar bear and a grizzley bear in one day than to win the lottery"
"You're more likely to die in a car accident than an airplane accident"
"More children die from accidental drowning than from gun accidents"

These things don't change people's actions, and aren't intended to do so. They're intended to show the absurdity of the subject: playing the lottery, fear of flying, fear of guns.

In this case, the point isn't that nuclear power is safe (because no energy technology is safe with an average output of 400+ MW), but that the fear of nuclear power is unreasonable and absurd.

sebster wrote:

Lord Scythican wrote:Check this out as well:


http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2690392/posts


Yes you read that right, windmills kill more people than Nuclear power.

See, I'm pro-nuclear but that is just so stupid. The point with nuclear power isn't that it's going to kill people every so often through mechanical faults, the point is that when a reactor does fail the results tend to be catastrophic. They know this. They just don't care because it's Free Republican and inventing disingenuous bs is basically their entire reason for being.

The realisation that more people need to have isn't that nuclear is actually completely safe (it isn't, because there will be disasters and unforeseen events), the realisation is that there's no alternative at this point. We can't continue relying on coal, because the emissions are going to do more and more harm every year. Nor can we pretend green technology is anywhere near the technological level needed to provide more than a fraction of our power.

That leaves nuclear.

I don't understand the stupid comment, but oh well.

It was just one of those things to post regarding how people treat Nuclear as the worst thing in the world. The post was to enlighten someone's perception of the danger in a peculiar way. Sort of along the lines of saying that bicycles kill more people than airplanes.

Ah, the Onion... always a smile waiting with every click of the mouse.

biccat wrote:You still see the need to attack people of the opposite political persuasion even when they agree with you.

Is everything about left and right to you? That's just weird.

It's not "disingenuous bs," it's like any other stupid statistic that's thrown around:
"You're more likely to get attacked by a polar bear and a grizzley bear in one day than to win the lottery"
"You're more likely to die in a car accident than an airplane accident"
"More children die from accidental drowning than from gun accidents"

Those are single events, where one lottery winner in a year is not likely to cause more lottery winners at other times in the year. As such, the number you get from year to year are an excellent approximator of the numbers you'll in future years. Nuclear power is an event where if there is one death from a meltdown, there's likely to be lots more, and immense loss of property as well.

The comparison would make as little sense as saying tsunamis weren't dangerous to Japan, because from 1980 until 2010 there were no deaths from tsunamis. Except that when comes, you get a whole lot of disaster.

The trick the original comparison made should have been obvious. I have little doubt if it were a similarly manipulative effort aimed against nuclear power, then you would have spotted the trick in one second. But it wasn't, so instead you missed it and seem to have gotten all bothered that I pointed it out.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Lord Scythican wrote:I don't understand the stupid comment, but oh well.

The comparison was playing a fairly obvious trick, it was pretending that nuclear power disasters are akin to the mechanical deaths you'll see from an industrial death in a windmill. That is, when there is a disaster you'll see a lot of deaths all at once.

It was just one of those things to post regarding how people treat Nuclear as the worst thing in the world. The post was to enlighten someone's perception of the danger in a peculiar way. Sort of along the lines of saying that bicycles kill more people than airplanes.

I think the case for nuclear is strong. I think we need to point out that people have somehow gotten accustomed to the constant environmental damage from coal, but remain utterly paranoid of the risk of nuclear. But that case won't be made by weak comparisons like the above.