Well, there was Chernobyl.
Then Fukushima.
I'm all for Nuclear. But I think humans have shown repeatedly they can't really handle it.
So think the trepidation is justified.
But, I am hoping with all the technology advances in last 50 years, maybe Nuclear can be made safe. If we do learn from past.
Chernobyl was entirely a product of design compromises due to cost savings, combined by a totalitarian system suppressing the known impact of those design decisions. It was also a much older design.
Fukushima also seemed like a design mistake (I remember reading it that the generators or something like that were flooded with water) , but then caused by a natural disaster and flooding.
The nuclear plans (in on paper at least) we have now as a result of decades of additional knowledge, and are way more safe. Combined with the fact that we have incredible computing firepower to better simulate scenarios, all this has convinced me to feel much better about the prospect of nuclear power plants and their safety.
A glass-half-empty view of that would be that there isn't a single reason which could be fixed to avoid all future issues. Fukushima AFAIK didn't have the design and operational mistakes which led to the Chernobyl incident, but that wasn't enough to prevent it from having its own incident. Which other causes we might be missing which could lead to new severe incidents in other nuclear power plants?
(And, by the way, the bad part IMO was not "both were meltdowns", but "both were explosions"; if it were just the meltdown, it would stay confined within the power plant, while the explosions are what spread the damage. Yes, they weren't nuclear explosions, but even a non-nuclear explosion in a nuclear power plant is bad.)
Humans.
You mention both Cost Savings and Design Mistakes. Those are common, and will occur in future projects.
Don't think totalitarian Gov has any monopoly on hiding design problems. Every company does it.
Those are both things, drives, that the US has shown to be incapable of administering. All industry is rife with cost cutting. And "safety" is very much cut in the name of profits. It happens today, just not 'obvious'. We don't hear about it until there is a meltdown.
I do hope that new designs are better. But I am absolutely not confident that humans have learned anything and wont subvert any improved designs again for cost savings.
This sounds exactly like what could happen when a private for-profit company would exploit nuclear, which is already happening
The worst designed reactor that led to 60 deaths ?
> Fukushima
As in, the reactor that was struck with a generational earthquauke and where no one died?
________
Compare this to other energy sources
Coal - 1500 [1]
Coal waste -12000[2]
You can keep going down this[3] list. Nuclear disasters are a mere blip. Only solar is any safer.
[1]April 26, 1942: Benxihu Colliery disaster in Benxi, Liaoning, China. 1,549 workers died, in the worst coal mine accident ever in the world
[2] December 1952: The Great Smog of London caused by the burning of coal, and to a lesser extent wood, killed 12,000 people within days to months due to inhalation of the smog.
But also. I agree, Coal industry has a lot of deaths too. Far more year over year. And things like settling ponds should be more regulated. Lot of deaths from coal waste holding damns failing.
So. Think you are little cherry picking stats to show Nuclear "isn't that bad", and Coals "very bad". When truth is really somewhere in middle.
Think in this, the disconnect, you are discounting the potential much higher risk potential with Nuclear.
A coal damn giving way, kills everyone in the downstream town, maybe hundreds.
But if worst case Nuclear disaster, has much higher potential, millions.
Really in Chernobyl and Fukushima, we got lucky, they turned out to be bad, close calls, but in each we were saved at the last minute, so not so bad.
Both were minutes away from much higher releases. Both could have wiped out their entire country. Potentially, Ukraine and Japan could both be gone today, not exist as countries, by the time you factor into half the country farmland gone, and major cities un-inhabitable.
That sounds dramatic. But think that is what a risk matrix would point out. So how much risk can we tolerate? Is Climate Change risk finally in the public mind enough to overcome the Nuclear risk?
