This is kind of why I’m not 100% behind nuclear in general. The technology is pretty sound, and even the waste generated pales in comparison to what’s up with atmospheric pollution right now. My problem is with corner-cutting and having failure modes that create disasters in the first place. The standards for success are necessarily incredibly high and must be adhered to without fail over the lifetime of the plant. As they say, learn from history: humanity’s track record with those requirements is not good.
There are better options on the horizon though, like thorium reactors that are smaller and don’t create big problems when they break. So, the idea of another 3 Mile Island, Fukushima, or Chernobyl may eventually be a thing of the past.
The lesson that people learned from Chernobyl is that these things need to fail safely. Modern reactors will automatically wind down their reactions when a problem appears, without intervention. If someone is dumb enough to build a reactor that has runaway reaction problems like Chernobyl… that’s on them
Look at how much taxpayer money has been used to clean up oil and gas wells.
It’s a lot more money than it has been for nuclear incidents. The only major (and I use that term lightly. Largest?) incident in the US was Three Mile Island. Go look at the cost for that vs all the oil and gas issues.
The thing about Three Mile Island is that it was a nothing burger. Hell, Unit 2 was operating up until 2015, and is now being refueled to be restarted. Even when you look at Chernobyl, it’s now one of the biggest and best nature preserves in Europe. Life still lives there, just not people.
It’s not some toxic contaminated wasteland covered in a miasma of chemical filth and devoid of life.
The containment structure did its job, what it was designed to do and contained the partial meltdown. No contamination was released and no meaningful amount of radiation escaped the site.
The oil and gas lobby then took it upon themselves to pour resources into anti nuclear crusades, to further ingratiate the fuels they have a financial interest in maintaining the demand for.
This is kind of why I’m not 100% behind nuclear in general. The technology is pretty sound, and even the waste generated pales in comparison to what’s up with atmospheric pollution right now. My problem is with corner-cutting and having failure modes that create disasters in the first place. The standards for success are necessarily incredibly high and must be adhered to without fail over the lifetime of the plant. As they say, learn from history: humanity’s track record with those requirements is not good.
There are better options on the horizon though, like thorium reactors that are smaller and don’t create big problems when they break. So, the idea of another 3 Mile Island, Fukushima, or Chernobyl may eventually be a thing of the past.
The lesson that people learned from Chernobyl is that these things need to fail safely. Modern reactors will automatically wind down their reactions when a problem appears, without intervention. If someone is dumb enough to build a reactor that has runaway reaction problems like Chernobyl… that’s on them
It is not on them, thats the problem, someone else dies cleaning up their mess and the disastercleanup is paid by the taxpayers
Look at how much taxpayer money has been used to clean up oil and gas wells.
It’s a lot more money than it has been for nuclear incidents. The only major (and I use that term lightly. Largest?) incident in the US was Three Mile Island. Go look at the cost for that vs all the oil and gas issues.
Im hardly arguing replacing aging nuclear with more gas and oil nor adding more gas and oil to fuel even more meatproduce or datacenterspawns duh…
…that’s a good point 🤔 Corporations can never fix the systemic problems they cause
The thing about Three Mile Island is that it was a nothing burger. Hell, Unit 2 was operating up until 2015, and is now being refueled to be restarted. Even when you look at Chernobyl, it’s now one of the biggest and best nature preserves in Europe. Life still lives there, just not people. It’s not some toxic contaminated wasteland covered in a miasma of chemical filth and devoid of life.
The containment structure did its job, what it was designed to do and contained the partial meltdown. No contamination was released and no meaningful amount of radiation escaped the site. The oil and gas lobby then took it upon themselves to pour resources into anti nuclear crusades, to further ingratiate the fuels they have a financial interest in maintaining the demand for.