Is it just me, or does nuke power have some serious downsides? I mean, I know it’s in use here and elsewhere. I know it’s a handy way of producing energy, but I mean, I’d rather have more coal plants than have this kind of problem.
Vastly more people have died from coal accidents than nuclear accidents. Not just from colliery disasters and coal-heap slides but also from the toxic effects from smoke (e.g. the deaths in the 1950s London smog).
That said: cheap energy sources like either coal or nuclear have saved vastly more lives that they cost.
For me the initial downside with nuke power is that it is an industry propped up and too intertwined with the federal government. Nuke and Feds working together does not seem to be a good idea - that’s why industries are usually monitored or kept in check by regulators but in this case - the nukers and feds have too much control, too much power over the futures of the citizenry - it’s really an unholy alliance going back to it’s inception and I believe it came about because of nuke power’s use as a weapon. It’s a way in which the feds/nukes get to dictate to the populace and taunt them as ignorant when the public objects and chastise them as untrustworthy when the public wants specific information and access to records.
The second problem is that coal never changed the fates of so many people over night. The Soviet union and it’s nukers have done a great job of distorting the truth about Chernobyl but the devastation is awe inspiring (in a bad way) and remains fully lethal and capable of it’s on going damage for the foreseeable future- and I haven’t seen coal do that. Ever have a disaster at a coal plant that caused the need to immediately relocate approx 2 million people, cannot be cleaned from the soil, is that damaging to eat in food grown or raised in soil that can’t be cleaned? For an idea of what I mean, I recommend the comprehensive report created by 3 scientists who compiled hundreds of reseearch studies and medical records from the affected region in Chernobyl - the results are shattering and I found it quite suprising to learn just how many different health ailments are caused outside of the ones we normally hear about. Shattering, really. The report is a PDF and I’ll also include a wikipedia description (link) of the report if you’d like more information before deciding if you want to read it.
Description of the report -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl:_Consequences_of_the_Catastrophe_for_People_and_the_Environment
The report itself - http://www.strahlentelex.de/Yablokov%20Chernobyl%20book.pdf
So Chernobyl is still killing and maiming populations but at least its emissions were stopped, at great human cost, in a matter of days or weeks. Fukushima has been pouring it’s radioactive toxins into the environment for four months and it will continue to do so for who knows how long because no one has ever contained 3 molten cores before. Coal you can pick up and handle - nuke plants in Fukushima are currently radioactive volcanos that the workers can only get near with caution and risk and remain near it for minutes at a time. What would life be like if Fukushima were a coal plant that exploded? I think people would have crawled all over the site like ants (wearing respirators) and the problem would be manageable. The way radiation contaminates damage food source over night and renders them toxic for generations or longer has not been seen. Radiation gives no time to react and no end of the problem. A professor has predicted a fall ‘panic’ when the Japanese realize just how contaminated the rice paddies are, the soybean crop is, the beef, produce etc. I haven’t seen an explosion at a coal plant put the economic survival and physcial suvival in jeapardy like nukes. There is a theory, first faced by the Soviets, of the molten cores reaching the water table and rendering large regions undrinkable. The soviets said their water table would extend into Europe - it’s why they threw their cleanup crewman lives into the mix at such great numbers - it was a future ender for them. Now the Japanese face this question -will the cores reach the water table? Will there be the theorized steam explosions that will vent tons more radioactive wastes into the air without warning, leaving no time to evacuate etc. How much of the water table would then become unusable. There is a speed and irreversible nature to nukes that is hard to fathom. Charles Dickens’ England featured Victorian home exteriors that were blackened by the soot from coal burning. So people made laws to reduce emissions and England is blackened no more. Can’t do that with Fukushima.