this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2023
3 points (100.0% liked)
Asklemmy
43853 readers
1775 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- [email protected]: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Oh, I have two good ones:
Nuclear power causes less deaths (per energy unit produced) than wind (source)
You get less radiation when living near a nuclear power plant, than if that nuclear plant hadn't been there.
To explain the second: A major misconception is, that nuclear power plants are dangerous due to their radiation. No they aren't. The effect of radiation from the rocks in the ground and the surroundings is on average 50x more than what you get from the nuclear power plant and it's fuel cells. (source). Our body is very well capable of dealing with the constant background radiation all the time (e.g. DNA repairs). Near a power plant, the massive amounts of isolation and concrete will inhibit any background radiation coming from rocks from that direction to you. This means, that you'll actually get slightly less radiation, because the nuclear plant is there.
Regarding the dangers of nuclear disasters. To this day, it's been very hard to find out, if at all any people have even died to Fukushima radiation (ans not other sources such as tsunami/earthquake/etc.) Nuclear radiation causes much more problems by being an emotionally triggering viral meme spreading between people and hindering it's productive use and by distracting from the ironic fact, that the coal burned in coal power plants spew much more radiation into the atmosphere than nuclear power plants themselves. (source)
Additional fun fact. There has been a lot of research and activity dedicated to potentially switch coal power plants to nuclear. Currently, they cannot do it, because the coal plants and all the equipment associated produces far more radiation than regulations allow a nuclear plant to emit.
Therefore, unless they could find a practical way to decontaminate the radiation away from existing coal equipment, or regulations change for transformed plants, they can't do it.
Did you know, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's only mandate is to ensure the safety of nuclear power, not to promote its implementation. Many regulatory bodies have a dual mandate to stop them from just shutting down what they're supposed to regulate.