So only people who work in nuke plants etc are worthy of having a viable opinion. All the rest of us should shut up and eat Fukushima produce.
Okay.
You can eat whatever you want. I just want to know if the people spouting this stuff have any appreciation for the mathematics involved. Chernobyl is, statistically, physically and engineering-wise - NOTHING like Fukushima. Comparing the two is about like comparing the first A-bomb at Trinity to a 500lb bomb. You don’t want to live the house targeted by either one of them, but they’re not comparable bits of physics or engineering, and the two governments involved are nothing like each other.
However, I would dearly appreciate it if the people currently driving power generation agendas in the US towards such farcical twaddle like windmills and solar panels would STFU and allow engineers to run the show, because the windmills-and-unicorn-farts crowd are clearly either frauds or fools. If we want to replace coal-fired power (and I’m not entirely sure that it is necessary at this point in time, but let’s *assume* that it is), there is no other viable technology other than nuclear power generation that can or will do it.
The Germans have decided to spin down all their nukes as a result of this sort of greenie-weenie hysteria. While I think that this is “unsinn” (German for insanity), I’m a-OK with this agenda of Germany, because if they self-implode their economy... hey, that leaves more of the US economy for US producers. If the Germans want to live life back in the 1800’s with ephemeral power sources, more power to them.
If Japan decided to pitch nukes overboard, hey, I’m OK with that for exactly the same reason. Let them go play with windmills and other power sources which won’t handle base loads. Leaves more economic potential for the US.
But as far as our power portfolio - we have coal. We’re the Saudi Arabia of coal, bar none, hands down. No one has as much coal as we do, with the *possible* exception of the Canucks. If we want cheap power, coal is the way to go.
If we want cheap power not from coal, there is only one option: nukes. Period. If we multiply our nuke power portfolio by three (which is about what it would take to supplant coal and account for future growth), there’s going to be an accident, somewhere, somehow, at some point in time.
BTW — I’d rather eat Fukushima produce than organic sprouts in Europe. Which produce has killed more people? Looks like the organic stuff is racking up quite the death toll to me. And, BTW, these deaths in Europe are consistent with what we’ve seen in e. coli deaths in organic produce and fruit juice here in the US. Cow poop is bad for you.
The best way to eliminate these food born pathogens would be (massive drum roll please....) irradiation of the food. But we don’t do that. Why? Anti-nuke hysteria.