Why are people so anti-nuclear power?

[Osmeric]

I don't think it's particularly feasible from an economic perspective to shoot the waste into the sun.

It isn't, now. Fortunately, it's perfectly feasible to store spent fuel in dry casks for several centuries. How cheap and safe will rockets be 300 years from now? Remember, Musk's BFR is promising ~$100/lb to Mars(!).

(And we'd shoot it out of the solar system or into, say, Jupiter, not send it into the sun, which takes more delta-V.)

[Jakisuaki]

Two words:

Chernobyl, Fukushima

[Biomega]

explosion itself is nothing compare what comes after it on nuclear explosion


Chernobyl Death Toll: 985,000, Mostly from Cancer

https://www.globalresearch.ca/new-bo...m-cancer/20908

And the WHO estimates a good 250,000 additional deaths per year due to global warming. Technologies have risks. Heck, cars alone kill a million people a year, give or take. And nobody is making that an argument to ban automobiles. But when it comes to nuclear power, suddenly it's OMG A MILLION DEATHS. Because spooky nuclear stuff.

Of course, that doesn't mean there aren't risks, of various kinds, or that nuclear power doesn't have its dangers. It does. Like everything does. It's about managing the risks and balancing them against the rewards and benefits. Like with everything.

[Zecora]

If they actually knew recent history they would still know it's the safest. You know niclear weapons exist regardless of nuclear reactors?

Nuclear power having enormous drawbacks has nothing to do with nuclear weapons, and everything to do with the risk of pollution and the problem of the waste materials and its safe disposal.

[Dsonsion]

explosion itself is nothing compare what comes after it on nuclear explosion


Chernobyl Death Toll: 985,000, Mostly from Cancer

https://www.globalresearch.ca/new-bo...m-cancer/20908

1. Karl Grossman is a professor of journalism at the State University of New York/College at Old Westbury and host of the nationally syndicated TV program Enviro Close-Up.

2. Alice Slater, representative in New York of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, comments: "The tragic news uncovered by the comprehensive new research that almost one million people died in the toxic aftermath of Chernobyl should be a wake-up call to people all over the world to petition their governments to put a halt to the current industry-driven "nuclear renaissance.' Aided by a corrupt IAEA, the world has been subjected to a massive cover-up and deception about the true damages caused by Chernobyl."

3. https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Globalresearch

That study is activist crap and you should feel bad.

[Delaios]

This is the reason.
/snip

Good thing a nuclear power plant can't explode like that.

[Dontrike]

When a oil processing plant explodes.....what HAS happened?

When a damn fails?
one disaster in which Typhoon Nina in 1975 washed out the Shimantan Dam (Henan Province, China) and 171,000 people perished

The Banqiao Dam flooded in the Henan Province of China due to heavy rains and poor construction quality of the dam, which was built during Great Leap Forward. The flood immediately killed over 100,000 people, and another 150,000 died of subsequent epidemic diseases and famine, bringing the total death toll to around 250,000—making it the worst technical disaster ever. In addition, about 5,960,000 buildings collapsed, and 11 million residents were made homeless.

When pipelines explode

With 1,082 deaths attributed to the blast, the 1998 Jesse explosion has the distinction of being the most deadly pipeline explosio

When coal...well is coal....Coal mining accidents resulted in 5,938 immediate deaths in 2005, and 4746 immediate deaths in 2006 in China alone... A coal-dust explosion at Benxihu Colliery in Japanese occupied China killed 1,549 making it the worst disaster in the history of coal mining superseding the 1,099 death toll of the Courrières mine disaster

or how about long term disasters caused like Chernobyl ?? The Centralia, Pennsylvania coal mine fire began, causing the destruction of a highway and forcing the gradual evacuation of the Centralia borough, it is now a ghost town. The fire continues to burn in the abandoned borough.

oil
Piper Alpha disaster. An explosion and resulting fire on a North Sea oil production platform kills 167 men.

1992 Guadalajara explosions in the downtown district of Analco Mexico. Numerous gasoline explosions in the sewer system over four hours destroyed 8 kilometres (5.0 mi) of streets.[25] According to the Lloyd's of London accounting firm, 252 people were killed, nearly 500 injured and 15,000 were left homeles

: The road Ibadan tanker truck explosion kills 100–200 when the petrol/gasoline tanker collides with a traffic jam and bursts into flames.

Congratulations, you found out that people die, that happens in all industries, especially these ones where potential disasters, small or large, occurs. You listed some damage, like in Pennsylvania, but that damage can be fixed. Yes, the town was abandoned, but damage to property can be fixed, with Chernobyl you had...

-4 square miles of forest died, called the Red Forest
-Even now animals being raised or hunted can be so radiated that they can't be used as food
-The entire area won't be safe for in life in another 20,000 years
-They have had to restrict movement of sheep to make sure they didn't come near others, this lifted in 2010
-Reports that around 6,000 people died trying to clean up and basically quarantine the area.
-Upwards of 150,000 abortions were done in fear of the radiation mutating the unborn.
-19 miles in all direction are still closed off for being unsafe.
-Forests that catch on fire that were affected by the event can spread the radiation through the smoke.
-People can only go there once a month for 5 hours and need 15 days to recover from it if they are needed to work there.

I want to make it very clear though that I'm not personally afraid of it, but understanding the huge risks that could come from them is important. Yes, disasters happen with dams, mines, or anything else that is used to get us our energy and supply us with power, but the ramifications of those means the area surrounding it will be usable given a brief amount of time maybe only a few months to a few years, but something like Chernobyl happening again could be far worse.

As I said before, it's all about risk and reward. While the reward of nuclear power plants is great the risk is far greater and many would rather not risk something like Chernobyl happenings again.

[vipers]

And the WHO estimates a good 250,000 additional deaths per year due to global warming. Technologies have risks. Heck, cars alone kill a million people a year, give or take. And nobody is making that an argument to ban automobiles. But when it comes to nuclear power, suddenly it's OMG A MILLION DEATHS. Because spooky nuclear stuff.

Of course, that doesn't mean there aren't risks, of various kinds, or that nuclear power doesn't have its dangers. It does. Like everything does. It's about managing the risks and balancing them against the rewards and benefits. Like with everything.

truth can be too harsh for someone to grasp

[Zecora]

And yet they seem strangely oblivious (or outright in denial) of the enormous drawbacks of fossil fuels.

Really. Because the people I see protesting nuclear power aren't very pro-fossile fuel. On the contrary, they tend to be the same ones that say that we should invest in exploring renewable fuel sources.

The ones who applaud nuclear power however, seem to be overlapping to a great degree the same ones who are in denial...sorry, are "sceptical" about the whole climate change issue.

As for the "plane crash" analogy, it is anything but apt, unless you add "and where the plane crashed as well as for miles and miles around, people won't be able to live for decades at best, milennia at worst. Also, the plane leaves behind spent fuel that no-one has found an entirely safe way to dispose of".

[Lochton]

It's the most efficient source of energy we have to this day and the most reliable, so why are so many people against it?

We can increase the efficiency tenfold, if not more, from the same amount of fuel compared to old reactors if we would build new ones today. We could develop reactors that can use the waste of the reactors today as fuel. We could reduce the waste to only last centuries instead of millennia.

Unlike solar or wind energy, nuclear power is far more reliable and does not rely on good weather conditions to produce power.

I can't explain fully why, I myself, just don't like it. Mostly due to being a big natural resources fan. But wanted to ad, wind or solar doesn't demand good weather, just optimal conditions.

[Zecora]

Oh, and why do you think scientists (and I mean non-nuclear scientists, physicists and non-physicists alike) hugely favour nuclear energy. Because they're stupid?

No, because they are short-sighted and suffer from the common diseases called "Oh, but it won't happen here" and "we'll find a way to dispose of it safely".

[diarx]

There's still no easy way to process waste, pretty much everything sounding like it would be prohibitively expensive, risky or on paper theorycraft.

I don't believe long term "secure" storage of waste is a good enough option either, the laws of time and probability guarantee that future bad storage disasters will happen. But hey, let those people 1000 years+ from now worry about that. As humans, we've proven time and time again that even the best laid plans can go awry (apply that to storage methods and transportation), whilst Mother nature on the other hand has proven it can destroy any man made structure given enough time, of which nuclear waste has plenty.

The worst part is that ongoing storage and guaranteed future probability for disaster will cost future generations great amounts of money and prosperity in dealing with a mess they didn't make (oh hey millennials, can you relate to that?).

People seem to bank on science eventually finding a way to easily and cost effectively deal with the waste, but what if they simply can't, or find no method financially viable? What if nuclear waste is just a cancer that we'll never be able to solve, and our current method of sealing into steel drums in some underground concrete bunker is the best we'll ever get? Guess future generations can stop eating their $25,000 a pop nano avocado space toast to pay it off.

For me, the day cost effective large scale processing of waste into a safe stable form actually starts happening without trashing the environment further is the day I'll support nuclear.

[Zecora]

There's still no easy way to process waste, pretty much everything sounding like it would be prohibitively expensive, risky or on paper theorycraft.

I don't believe long term "secure" storage of waste is a good enough option either, the laws of time and probability guarantee that future bad storage disasters will happen. But hey, let those people 1000 years+ from now worry about that. As humans, we've proven time and time again that even the best laid plans can go awry (apply that to storage methods and transportation), whilst Mother nature on the other hand has proven it can destroy any man made structure given enough time, of which nuclear waste has plenty.

The worst part is that ongoing storage and guaranteed future probability for disaster will cost future generations great amounts of money and prosperity in dealing with a mess they didn't make (oh hey millennials, can you relate to that?).

People seem to bank on science eventually finding a way to easily and cost effectively deal with the waste, but what if they simply can't, or find no method financially viable? What if nuclear waste is just a cancer that we'll never be able to solve, and our current method of sealing into steel drums in some underground concrete bunker is the best we'll ever get? Guess future generations can stop eating their $25,000 a pop nano avocado space toast to pay it off.

For me, the day cost effective large scale processing of waste into a safe stable form actually starts happening without trashing the environment further is the day I'll support nuclear.

Now this is a good post, which coincide well with my own view on the matter. Kudos!

[Dsonsion]

Really. Because the people I see protesting nuclear power aren't very pro-fossile fuel. On the contrary, they tend to be the same ones that say that we should invest in exploring renewable fuel sources.

The ones who applaud nuclear power however, seem to be overlapping to a great degree the same ones who are in denial...sorry, are "sceptical" about the whole climate change issue.

As for the "plane crash" analogy, it is anything but apt, unless you add "and where the plane crashed as well as for miles and miles around, people won't be able to live for decades at best, milennia at worst. Also, the plane leaves behind spent fuel that no-one has found an entirely safe way to dispose of".

Most people that support nuclear power do not deny cliamte change, to my knowledge. They also aren't against green and renewable energy either. But the issue to be considered here is that the power grid and it storage system aren't all that well-equipped to deal with bursts of energy, like the ones obtained via solar or wind, and the technology behind batteries isn't in a pristine condition, either.
You know, as of now we're still using mostly lithium ion batteries for storing the energy and those batteries don't have such great efficiency or a long life. So we'll be discarding large quantities of them, and unlike nuclear fuel, which is closely watched, those batteries can go many places where they shouldn't be, like water reservoirs, posing a great risk for human health.
We could have green energy, and we could have nuclear energy. They're not exclusive, they could very well complement each other and satisfy our energy needs.

[Darkeon]

Lots and lots of bad PR.

[Osmeric]

Lots and lots of bad PR.

True, if by "bad PR" you mean "cost overruns on an epic scale".

The other thing that happened was alternatives got cheaper. The free market can be a rat bastard for advocates of specific technologies.

[Theodarzna]

IF stored correctly
and if not, you poison an area for thousands of years

one jackass can cause a mess that lasts generations

Generations is an understatement. We are talking the entire span of human history and some significant change.

[Darkeon]

True, if by "bad PR" you mean "cost overruns on an epic scale".

The other thing that happened was alternatives got cheaper. The free market can be a rat bastard for advocates of specific technologies.

That too. But one can't deny that it has way worse public opinion than it deserves.

[Deleted]

Thanks for the snarky comment, if you could read you would see the sentence had two parts to it as it was referring to two events at the core of nuclear hysteria. The "risk" you take with nuclear works out to far less dead people than any renewable source, part of the "reward" of nuclear is that you get less dead people.

Might be snarky, but the point stands. Sometimes things happen that no amount of training will help, so suggesting more training is a moot point. Also, who dies due to solar energy? Or wind generated energy? Sure, a worker might fall off a windmill or drown now and then, and that's tragic, but that's a calculated risk and part of taking on that particular, dangerous job. What it doesn't do, however, is render of several miles around it completely useless for generations if it does fail, and the safety area of a windmill is significantly smaller than a nuclear reactor. Nuclear energy is preferable to coal, but several nations have demonstrated that it's entirely more possible by the day to get by with water, wind and solar. So why keep it up?

[Osmeric]

That too. But one can't deny that it has way worse public opinion than it deserves.

I can deny that. If the bad public opinion is based on the economics, it deserves all the scorn.

Advocates of nuclear like to pretend the economic issues don't exist, and focus on how the public is too squeamish about safety and such.