The (stupid) talking points just flow from you.
“Do you know where those isotopes used in treating cancer and for medical imaging come from?”
They don’t feed patients uranium and plutonium. There’s NO comparison. Patients decide whether to receive radioactive therapy for cancer, and are given measured doses if they agree. We have never given our consent for the nuke industry to blow radioactive waste into the air/water and ultimately the food chain for hundreds of thousands of years.
“Do you realize you could stand on top of a cooling tower and nothing would happen to you...”
I know it’s just steam but so few people WANT to stand on top of a cooling tower and yet so many want to drink water and breathe air. There is no comparison between steam and radioactive wastes released into our food/water/air. NONE.
Granite counter tops and cat litter is radioactive.
Radiation is all around you, and if it’s that big of a concern, you better not go out into the sun or to a beach.
Radiation isn’t well understood, and yes you are right that you want to minimize exposure, especially from beta emissions, but in the real world it’s a matter of weighing the options, not eliminating it from our lives since that cannot be done. Many building materials are radioactive: https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/radiation/building.html#:~:text=What%20building%20materials%20contain%20radioactive,emit%20low%20levels%20of%20radiation.
Uranium used in a reactor is not man made or some synthetic product. It’s in the ground that you walk on every day. They simply concentrate it.
No, the area around Chernobyl isn’t dangerous and really is a wild life refuge, no you don’t have massive mutations, no there isn’t some danger living by a reactor, and there are areas in Colorado that naturally have higher radiation levels than ground zero at Trinity test site today, where they detonated the first atomic bombs and you can go visit: https://www.nps.gov/thingstodo/alamogordo-visit-the-trinity-site.htm
“Stupid talking points” are facts you cannot argue against, but have strong feelings about. So as usual, you use fallacies and rhetoric in an ignorant attempt to make a point.
Yes, they do feed patients radioactive isotopes, they inject them into their blood (contrast), put pellets into their prostate (seeding)... You might have smoke detectors in your home that use an isotope derived from nuclear power, and you likely don’t know it: http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2011/ph241/eason1/
There is no “radioactive waste released into our food, water and air.” A reactor is a closed loop. The uranium is not burned and released as with a chemical process which is the case with (((ALL))) fossil fuels. The cooling water is recirculated and you theoretically could go swimming in it (outside the reactor). The water which goes in and out of the reactor does not come in contact with the water used inside, the heat is transferred in the cooling process. The turbines run on the steam... point being is that unlike burning a fuel, nothing is released and it’s far cleaner.
Fukushima, an older reactor design and not built in the best location, ironically is an example of how reactors are safe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_nuclear_disaster How bad was it really? All the over exaggerated horror stories in the news are garbage. There is no rise in cancer, miscarriages or birth defects and you have folks watching, looking at it with a microscope. How many people really died? The few that did were injuries from the tsunami itself...
I live not to far from a reactor: Comanche Peak. Just about everything else concerns me more regards my health and safety, than that reactor. But because of all the idiots and fear mongering, getting a tour of that place isn’t even a remote possibility anymore :(
Of the two alternatives, nuclear power poses LESS of a health risk than building more gas and coal fired plants, period.