One thing I cannot fully communicate with posts like this, is that it's not clear what the intention is. By these posts, I refer to posts which uses emotional summary, backed by human loss that has the subject involved. Then leave no trace of the actual rational conclusion from the facts.
It looks just like an intentional emotional manipulation, which plagued most US news reports. This type of approach, makes rational discussion very difficult to progress.
Edit: Look at the child reply. See what emotion brings to a discussion. From nuclear energy to illegal disposal of nuclear waste, then to holocaust. The emotion is increasing, but the subject of the discussion is dissolved in the process without any trace of respect to the other parties in the discussion.
Emotion sucks the rationality from the discussion, and literally deprive the common grounds between people. In the end, achieve nothing.
You go away from arguing about the topic on hand and instead proclaim that all your opponents arguments are not valid. It is basically a "You are stupid and I do not have to listen to your points".
Further true rationality does not define any goals, because it is just about using reason to come to conclusions or for deducting how to best get to a goal. People that claim to be ideology-free are very dangerous, as they are not ideology free, but cannot accept people seeing different goals.
You can see this romantic view of science in a lot of nuclear power advocates. Nuclear power has, standing for progress and a representative of science, become the goal in itself that is needed to be protected.
To come back to the dumping of nuclear waste: For a while that practice was not even illegal, contrary to what you claim. Nuclear power leads to nuclear waste, which has to be handled properly. Because that is expensive, there exists a high probability for improper handling to happen. Given how often improper handling of nuclear waste has happened, it seems like a systematic problem that is also very likely to happen again, as nuclear waste is an issue that stays for a very long time, which probably also means different political systems.
Your argument that improper handling is only the fault of the bad actors that in the end acted out the dumping is invalid. It ignores on one hand, that the responsibility for toxic waste lies with the producers. If they did not take care for a proper disposal it is their fault. On the other hand it ignores the reasoning of the people that do the toxic waste dumping. Usually that happens in poorer regions and people do it simply because they have no alternative way of earning money.
Then, years later, you read HN comments downplaying the effects and the affected with the same types of arguments as Holocaust deniers.
It's emotional, but it's not manipulation. It is the reality how it happened.
I promise you no mutant monster will arise from the earth to destroy civilization.
The hysteria over where we store this waste is really silly. Even if spray it into the air all over the planet, we'd still release 1/100 the amount of thorium and uranium than is currently being released into the air by the world's coal plants. Therefore even if we spray the waste into the air, it's still safer than coal. Burying it in the ground is much, much safer.
There is a big difference between the naturally occurring isotopes of thorium/uranium, and what comes out of a reactor.
> Mr Burns was the most environmentally responsible Simpson's character and likely a real scientific expert.
then you really need to watch the show again.
He hid nuclear waste in trees.
It doesn't necessarily mean nuclear is intrinsically bad, it means humans can be really bad at handling it.
You want characters like Burns handling a nuclear revival ? Then that's a really good argument to be against nuclear.
* Portrait nuclear energy tycoon as the only villain is sad. Because it reflects a unconscious strong mental imprint of nuclear being fearful.
* The show can portrait coal miner. Instead of hiding nuclear waste in the tree. Coal miner can pollute the sky as some form of "sky painting".
The setup itself is sad.
There is no intention to argue that that bad guy is good, or is better suited to revive nuclear energy.
> Mr Burns was the most environmentally responsible Simpson's character and likely a real scientific expert.
And it's clearly wrong.
Now:
> * Portrait nuclear energy tycoon as the only villain is sad. Because it reflects a unconscious strong mental imprint of nuclear being fearful.
From the top of my head the show had a corrupt and inept chief of police, a corrupt mayor, a crazy homicidal clown, a fat tony hanging around freely and an unstable clown. Burns was not the only villain.
He was not a villain because of being a nuclear energy tycoon. He was a villain because of his actions (greed and arrogance and grandeur disillusions).
Now of course by association you could defend the idea that's it's a full blown attack on nuclear. And yes there is a strong mental imprint of nuclear being fearful in the US but I'd argue it has more to do with real life events and... I don't know.. cold war era craze for home bunkers to survive an nuclear winter than a cartoon that started at the end of the 80's and uses a badly managed nuclear plant as a laughing device (humor device ?) not even present in every episode.
> * The show can portrait coal miner. Instead of hiding nuclear waste in the tree. Coal miner can pollute the sky as some form of "sky painting".
Are you trying to build the argument that being against nuclear means being for coal ?
Anyway, apart from that three eye fish I don't recall the springfield nuclear plant had incidents that had lasting consequences like Chernobyl or Fukushima had. So apart from being comical...
I don't see where in the show it transpires that the depiction of the springfield nuclear plant reflects a " strong mental imprint of nuclear being fearful".
