This is the one side of the aisle I think Bernie is always on the wrong side of. Nuclear power of some form will be required for a full transition away from fossil sources, and it should be telling how fast other nations like China are dumping money into it. It is cleaner and causes fewer accidents per GWh than any fossil source ever has- it’s just been demonized for decades by those who stand to benefit from it being restricted.
And our primary examples of its danger come from countries that are famed for either overworking staff or under-regulating industries. We’ve always done better, but honestly I wouldn’t trust nuclear if Project 2025 took hold.
It should be said that most of our accidents don’t result in Chernobyl like death tolls, but then, Chernobyl is in a class all its own.
As bad as TMI was, and it’s the first one that came to my mind, it didn’t have any direct deaths. It was ridiculously close to having a massive death toll, and it cost like 2 billion to clean up over… decades…?
Pretty sure people kill more people than any other cause combined.
Could be wrong. Depends if you count manufactured famine and healthcare crises as part of that.
We should get off fossil fuels, but I don’t see nuclear as a way of doing that. Solar, wind, and hydro (tidal is interesting. Micro hydro could have uses without destroying entire ecosystems.)
all reactors are built near water and susceptible to some sort of flooding though. i realized that after German Biblis was hit by a flood earlier this month
This is the one side of the aisle I think Bernie is always on the wrong side of. Nuclear power of some form will be required for a full transition away from fossil sources, and it should be telling how fast other nations like China are dumping money into it. It is cleaner and causes fewer accidents per GWh than any fossil source ever has- it’s just been demonized for decades by those who stand to benefit from it being restricted.
And our primary examples of its danger come from countries that are famed for either overworking staff or under-regulating industries. We’ve always done better, but honestly I wouldn’t trust nuclear if Project 2025 took hold.
We have not in fact always done better
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Rock_uranium_mill_spill
We have not in fact always done better
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident
57 major accidents-
It should be said that most of our accidents don’t result in Chernobyl like death tolls, but then, Chernobyl is in a class all its own.
As bad as TMI was, and it’s the first one that came to my mind, it didn’t have any direct deaths. It was ridiculously close to having a massive death toll, and it cost like 2 billion to clean up over… decades…?
There are industrial accidents, like fossil fuel plants catching fire and/or exploding, with more casualties than every nuclear ‘disaster’ combined.
Pretty sure people kill more people than any other cause combined.
Could be wrong. Depends if you count manufactured famine and healthcare crises as part of that.
We should get off fossil fuels, but I don’t see nuclear as a way of doing that. Solar, wind, and hydro (tidal is interesting. Micro hydro could have uses without destroying entire ecosystems.)
all reactors are built near water and susceptible to some sort of flooding though. i realized that after German Biblis was hit by a flood earlier this month
Nuclear is the most expensive energy technology used, so expansion is only useful if all renewable sources are already built out to the limit
This is not the case, so investing in renewable is the smarter choice environmentally and fiscally
Of course, the route we took in Germany reducing nuclear to upscale coal is even stupider, but it is far too late to reverse that