this post was submitted on 01 Jun 2024
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Nuclear technologies missed their window. The use cases where they are the best technical solution now are extremely limited, and that means you can get the investment going to improve them.
It’s a curiosity now.
There’s an alternative timeline where Chernobyl doesn’t happen and we decarbonize by leaning on nuclear in the nineties, then transition to renewables about now. But that’s not our timeline. And if it were, it would be in the past now.
So, essentially, nuclear power is like airships, except with worse disasters?
More people died in airship incidents than in civil nuclear power.
E: typo
Mmmm. Looking at:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airship
Roughly I'd say it's at most 200-300 people. Airships just didn't carry many at once.
If you look at:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_and_radiation_fatalities_by_country
You easily go past the airships estimate. One that surprised me was: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windscale_fire
"Estimated 100 to 240 cancer fatalities in the long term"
You can beat airships deaths will just one of big accidents.
https://ourworldindata.org/what-was-the-death-toll-from-chernobyl-and-fukushima
I explicitly wrote "civil nuclear power". I know there were big incidents, especially in early military nuclear sites. Windscale and Kyshtym are two of those.
Kind of academic as your still go past the small number killed in airships.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airship_accidents
For the total number of airships, the loss of life (and airships) is quite high...
I get about 450 (as kids bounce on me). It's not nothing, about the same as Chernobyl alone (many got thyroid cancer but lived). Let alone adding 2314 for Fukushima.
So we agree, airships and nukes are both outmoded, old tech.
also, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster_casualties
I never agreed that its outmoded or old tech.
At Fukushima Daichii died one worker of radiation poisoning and one in a crane incident. The evacuation killed 51 more. Scientific consense is, that the loss of life and cumulative lifetime would have been lower if there was no evacuation.
"No evacuation." Have you ever actually talked to people?
You know that nuclear power plant up the road? They just had a big accident, we don't know exactly what's going on, and at least one person is already dead from radiation. But it's fine, and you shouldn't worry or leave the area.
There was a massive tsunami in the area killing almost 20k people, the power plant was not their first concern.
The guy died 4 years after the accident from lung cancer, not very common in nuclear power.