this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2024
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I did not expect there to be so many "nuclear is scary!" idiots here.
I live in Italy. I may even trust nuclear power (even though I'm not sure if waste management has improved), I don't trust actual human beings handling contracts, funds, and maintenance.
A bridge collapsed in Genoa, killing 43 people, splitting the city in two, and crippling the economy because Autostrade per l'Italia skirted the pesky issue of maintenance.
And yet I bet you're not up in arms about every bridge ever built.
Ok, fine. I bet you don't even think you should be up in arms about every bridge ever built. In fact, I bet you're perfectly okay with the concept of bridges, and feel no guilt or any emotion whatsoever every time you cross one. I bet the morality of the existence of bridges are a complete non factor in your thinking.
And yet, for nuclear plants...all of that matters. For some COMPLETELY INEXPLICABLE reason.
Curious indeed.
Unfortunately it's like the lottery, and fear of flying. You can explain the odds and the history until you're blue in the face but it doesn't mean anything when somebody sees a documentary and it fills their whole psyche with terror. And you can try to explain that there are safer plant designs out there and that being careful about where you put a plant is a big deal, but the only thing they're going to walk away from the conversation with is Chernobyl, Fukushima in Three Mile Island.
I hadn't realized until I hung out on a Europe forum that anti-nuclear-power positions are very strong in Germany with the center-left.
Western Austria also has a history here. At one point, they infamously built an entire nuclear power plant -- which is where the real costs of nuclear power come from -- and then shut it down via a referendum driven by the anti-nuclear-power crowd before ever actually using it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zwentendorf_Nuclear_Power_Plant
Yeah and lemmy is more European leaning than I'm used to. There's a huge European contingent