For the most part, this is a good, informative video about the advantages of nuclear energy.
Then, at 9:00 they talk about the danger of nuclear weapon proliferation. Obviously, this is a scary subject and requires scary footage. Guess what they chose?
Nuclear weapons test footage?
No.
Muslims praying.
Marg Bar The Economist.
wtf do Muslims have to do with nuclear weapons?
God damn it. I hate how they always have to have an other. The west needs to fix its own problems before it starts pointing at others.
The US and Israel have spent the last 30 years scaremongering about Iran and Iraq and WMDs. The Iraq invasion was predicated on it.
Not that they've done anything wrong, but it is an unsurprising take from the economist.
Behind the obvious racism hides something much worse: "We will not change the economic system. We must put more uranium on the fire until the entire planet is a bright green blob."
Nah. They're right about nuclear energy. The Soviets recognized its potential, they were just bad at it.
Maybe the technology will be developed to a harmless level in 500 years, but we don't have that time.
I'll hear you say that when they drop a bomb on a long term nuclear waste storage, or when the Marshall Islands flood. Maybe you have a different standard or "harm" but I'm happy to hear it.
I’ll hear you say that when they drop a bomb on a long term nuclear waste storage
They being...?
Like, no one would actually do this and no one who would will ever have the capacity to do so.
Does it matter? The US dropped nukes before , what would stop them from bombing a waste site?
I'm getting the sense you know absolutely nothing about nuclear energy and nuclear waste storage.
You don't even need to bomb them, but whatever. I'm getting the sense you are trolling. Boy, bye!
Tell me how a metal rod encaced in concrete, burried thousands of feet underground, surrounded by radiation shielding, in the middle of the desert, is going to hurt you.
- You still need to transport them there, so there's plenty of time before they reach the destination.
- Radiation reaching groundwater etc. and destroying the ecosystem.
- You really trust capitlalist corporations to follow proper process handling all this?
You still need to transport them there, so there’s plenty of time before they reach the destination.
And yet this has never caused a problem in the decades-long history of nuclear energy production.
Radiation reaching groundwater etc. and destroying the ecosystem.
And yet we have the technology for safe containment.
You really trust capitlalist corporations to follow proper process handling all this?
No, which is why you have state-run nuclear power systems. Besides, your concern was the technology, which objectively does exist to the level we can generate nuclear energy safely.
Chernobyl was also impossible until it happened.
Where was my concern the technology?
We've have the technology to generate safe nuclear energy production. We had that when Chernobyl was constructed. Chernobyl chose not to use that technology.
Chernobyl was the only nuclear reactor design capable of failing like that, and even then they had to shut off all the safety systems and sabotage the stop mechanism to actually have a disaster.
Maybe the technology will be developed to a harmless level in 500 years, but we don’t have that time.
The time is now. The time is the 1960s actually.
Maybe I phrased it badly then. New technology only matters if you use it, so in my eyes in 1986, even though research was ahead, the new models were not built, so talking about that new technology leads nowhere. If even a state run nuclear power plant doesn't use supposedly safe technology, what are our options?
I'm also cautious about handing capitalists, quite literally, infinite power. Why wouldn't they get greedy and run the plants over the limit and cause unforeseen disasters?
Safe nuclear technology wasn't "research" at the time. It's always been safe. People had been building safe reactors since the 60s.
Reactors are not prone to exploding. You have to try to make a reactor even capable of exploding, then make it actually explode. That's what the Soviets did. They made an incredibly stupid in their design, knowingly deviating from an established standard, knowingly introducing these possibilities, then a dozen oversights and stupid decisions to actualize the failure.
Nature has, on occasion, just happened to arange Uranium deposits in such a way as to create a sustained fission reaction and these did not explode. Nuclear safety is anprim level technology.
You are severely misunderstanding the state of nuclear technology and how nuclear systems are run.
Fukashima was technologically safe, but then it broke. The technology to prevent such damage to the reactor does exist. Sea walls and inland regions have existed for centuries, and most nuclear reactors use them.
Fukashima is addressed in the video actually (which I'm assuming you didn't watch).
The video had like 3 irrelevant sentences about Fukushima, not sure what you mean? If such preventative technology existed, why didn't they use it? Besides the "human factor", it's almost like technology only exists within the economic system that decides whether to devote resources to it. 🤔
And then there's the building time. By the time we finish any new "safe" plants, would not the window for averting runaway climate change have passed anyway?
The points they made:
-The actual reactor failure only killed one person
-Nuclear power is the safest of any reliable power supply
-Compared to coal usage, nuclear power generation has saved millions of lives
-Nuclear would have done more, had it not been for misguided environmentalist concerns
Existing plants need to be kept open for one.
Second, while new plants are major projects, they can be completed within the timeframe it will take to phase out coal. Wether that's fast enough is another question, but late is better than never.
Finally, even after a transition away from fossile fuels, nuclear power will be worth investing in. A reliable, constant power supply will always be better than a variable one (even with tons of batteries).
I guess the key is comparing it to coal then.
Only measuring immediate explosion deaths gives me "gomulizm killd 100 gorillion" vibes, it still caused massive environmental destruction, which affects human health as well.
Real "opening credits of the Dawn of the Dead remake" hours
The most dangerous thing to a soulless liberal is a normal human being who is devoted to a transcendent higher power.
It's scary to me too and I am a communist. A lot of organized religions encourage people to be happy and complacent with their station in life, because only the afterlife matters. Not to mention the many archaic laws and revelations these religions still cling to that create a toxic culture of fear and oppression in the lives of billions of voiceless people in the world.
