[Sacajaweau]

Nuclear power is safe....Tell that to the Russians...and the folks in Hiroshima.

[cuban leaf]

Not to put too fine a line on it, but my impression is that “fusion based” nuclear power, when things go wrong, results in a melt down, but “Fission based” nuclear power, when things go wrong, results in a rather large, uh, “things go boom”.

But I am no expert and could be wrong about this. I was wrong about something once in the third grade, so it’s possible.

[DaxtonBrown]

[Tell that to the Russians...and the folks in Hiroshima.]

Given that the technology used in both places was ancient (better than 50 years old) that is a moronic statement. Compared to current technologies, it is like faulting stone age technology for being inefficient. In fact, anti-nuke protestors have delayed the adoption of new technologies, and have guaranteed future deaths.
Thanks for nothing.

[GreyFriar]

by the same reasoning (or lack there of) bath tubs aren’t safe, just look at how many people have died in them.

[catbertz]

I don’t claim to be an expert, but I’ve read that both plants were very old tech. In addition both plants were poorly managed, and with safety protocols ignored, and especially at Chernobyl. There are apparently ridiculously safe methods now available. Question is maybe whether you can get them built.

[backwoods-engineer]

Nuclear power is safe....Tell that to the Russians...and the folks in Hiroshima.

Quite an ignorant point of view you got there. One of your examples is a reactor where the safety interlocks were disabled, and the other is the result of the Japanese war machine being locked into a struggle to the death with the West.

Nuclear power IS our future. Uranium is almost as abundant on earth as tin is, and there's more thorium than that. If we'd stop THROWING AWAY the products of nuclear power, and process our waste like France does, we'd have power that actually renews itself.

[DuncanWaring]

"...the folks in Hiroshima."

You mean the ones who live here?

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

Nuclear power is safe....Tell that to the Russians...and the folks in Hiroshima.

I must have slept through a news cycle. What reactor was it that failed and caused harm to the people of Hiroshima?

[aruanan]

Nuclear power is safe....Tell that to the Russians...and the folks in Hiroshima.

Two things:

1. Total background radiation throughout Ukraine from Chernobyl is substantially less than the typical world background radiation. And there are places in the world where background radiation is hundreds of times higher than the world background radiation with no ill effect. Chernobyl had a lot of ink devoted to all the horrors it would cause. They just never happened. More people died from being evacuated, placed on a pension, and drinking themselves to death than those who expired from a lethal exposure to radiation (about 31). Projections for late cancer deaths have been confounded by "a 15% to 30% deficit of solid cancer mortality" among the Russian emergency workers" and "a 5% deficit solid cancer incidence among the population of most contaminated areas." On the other hand, hydroelectric causes about 40 deaths per year.

2. Comparing nuclear power to Hiroshima is like comparing a vacation trip in a gasoline-powered car to getting hit dead on with a napalm bomb. Anyone who would try to draw equivalence between the two is either ignorant or dishonest.