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8Splendiferous8 t1_is980i6 wrote

Reply to comment by CloudiusWhite in Ethics of Nuclear Energy in Times of Climate Change: Escaping the Collective Action Problem by CartesianClosedCat

I'm not against nuclear power. I'm just genuinely not sure. To me, it just doesn't seem like the slam dunk option that people often present it to be. I do recognize the best of the evils argument, I guess. But it doesn't seem consequence-free.

Would you be able to quantify, "not the big baddie that people keep thinking it is." How bad is it, and how bad would it be if scaled up to meet all our energy needs? I've never gotten a straight answer on that. Radioactive decay lasts an extremely long time, and nuclear power mishaps don't not happen. How can we be sure our plants are resistant against natural disaster (like Fukushima,) especially as natural disasters are predicted to increase in spate and severity? How can we be sure they won't be susceptible to accidental leaks (like San Onofre?)

As for your second point, you're assuming integration into the capitalist system by way of investors automatically implies the best results to humanity. Environmental sustainability is a goal for investors/private companies unless and until it interferes with the bottom line. Then it's a nice-to-have. Call me a cynic, but I type this from a phone with a lithium ion battery which, if designed as intended, should end up in a landfill right around when the next galaxy comes along. I suspect that advances in radioactive waste safety will improve until it's cheaper/easier to dispose of waste in the way that's worse for the environment (which after some point, it always is.)

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Sumsar01 t1_is9m86f wrote

Physicist here. Fukushima is the second worst nuclear plant disaster ever and its result is so minisucule that we cant measure any adverse results on environment or population.

There also already exist nuclear engines underground naturally, so its already unavoidable to have nuclear waste there.

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8Splendiferous8 t1_ise1vn9 wrote

I'm also a sorta physicist (if you consider a physics masters student a physicist.) That could be due to difficulty in isolating variables. But assuming it's true, would it continue to be safe if we assumed occasional nuclear disasters every few years if we scaled up during an era of more frequent natural disasters?

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Sumsar01 t1_isfc695 wrote

Nuclear power is currently the second safest energy scource based on death per joule. Caol kills about 15 times as many people every years as nuclear has done ever. Which thus leaves a pretty big margin to what we deem acceptable.

Nuclear disasters are pretty rare. There is chernobyl which was many mismanagement but besides that what happened was a explosion of the 300+ degrees hot steam. In never nuclear plant designs the water is emptied out if power is cut and thus such a thing could not happen.

Then we have fukushima. Besides it maybe not being to smart building a nuclear powerplant in the most active earthquake zone might not be to smart. Currently total death from radiation is 0 and no increase in cancer has been measured.

The leak of radioactive waste has also been deemed harmless. Probably mainly because water is pretty good at absorbing radiation, so it doesnt matter much to the fish.

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8Splendiferous8 t1_isfdacu wrote

This is very informative. Thank you for taking the time to explain it.

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Sumsar01 t1_isfgcz8 wrote

There is probably plenty of more details but i would have to provide real data and lecture notes. But what I can say is that all my nuclear physics professors where huge proponents for nuclear power and talked a lot about it in both the nuclear physics courses l took.

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8Splendiferous8 t1_isfivgk wrote

Same with mine. Just it was uncomfortable to ask certain genuine questions I didn't know the answer to, lest I be treated like I have a tinfoil hat. Nuclear was one of my least favorite subjects, so there were other more pressing questions to focus on for the exam.

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Sumsar01 t1_isfj3ji wrote

Well nuclear physics is kind of a everything goes meeting put because we cant efficiently compute QCD, so it is pretty wild.

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8Splendiferous8 t1_isfjmoo wrote

Yeah. It was a lot of, "Okay, we don't have any first principles for you, but here's the function that seems to be describing what's going on. Just memorize it." And there were so many patterns, and patterns of patterns to memorize. And it just wasn't fun or interesting to me at all, haha.

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Sumsar01 t1_isfotxx wrote

I read the russian lecture book for the exams of the seconds course. I like my books with a bit more math and a bit less hand wavy, but it helped a lot.

The first course was a mess.

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8Splendiferous8 t1_isfvez6 wrote

Yeah, I only took a single survey course and still hated it. I'll stick to E+M and quantum...those are more straightforward.

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Hohumbumdum t1_isffihl wrote

Sounds like BS. How can we not measure any adverse results. The popular understanding is that immense amount of radioactive waste was dumped directly into the Pacific. Is that not the case?

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Sumsar01 t1_isfhpgw wrote

Its the case a nuclear material was dunped into the pacific, and you can measure that and right after there was a lot of fear mongering about it.

However the emperical evidence does not seem to show that it is as bad as one might think. From "the environmental impact of the fukushima nuclear power plant disaster" paper: despite the significant increase in ceasium isotope levels in the water, their risk is below thode generally considered harmfull to Marine animals and human consumers.

The same goes for the japanese population, there has not been found an increase in the cancer rate after the incident. (At least last i checked) Thise who died mostly died from being moved and not from the actual incident.

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Hohumbumdum t1_isfil89 wrote

I’m all for nuclear power, but this sounds like absolute nonsense.

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Sumsar01 t1_isfixsa wrote

Well I cited a stanford paper. You can also go look what they the research groups monitoring the situation say.

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Jentleman2g t1_isada32 wrote

I'm going to refrain from turning to debate on this subject because kids take alot of energy that I just don't have atm. Go look up Kyle Hills videos on nuclear history as well as the potential future. There's also a video or two by Kurzgezagt.

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8Splendiferous8 t1_isdt36c wrote

There are less condescending ways to speak to people. I'm getting an MSc in physics. My PI is a computational nuclear physicist. He collaborates with Lawrence Livermore National Lab. And no one I've asked has addressed these points whenever I ask them beyond "lesser of two evils." Which if it is, then I'm willing to accept it. But things are still designed by fallible humans. Nuclear mistakes can't happen anywhere close to as frequently as oil spills do. And cleanup can't be as shoddy as what we see from oil companies (spreading chemical coagulant to sink massive blankets of oil onto the ocean floor, for instance.) And no one seems to have projections.

Also, if you're under the impression that this whole capitalism thing is good for public safety, boy do I have some pipelines, plumbing systems, pollution standards, global policies, safe contamination levels, and Healthcare systems for you, friend.

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Jentleman2g t1_isetxo1 wrote

I do apologize if that came off as condescending, my intent was far from it.

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