Nuclear power, the dream that failed

[Fledermaus]

our conclusion that the industry was “safe as a chocolate factory” proved something of a hostage to fortune. Less than a month later one of the reactors at the Chernobyl plant in Ukraine ran out of control and exploded, killing the workers there at the time and some of those sent in to clean up afterwards, spreading contamination far and wide, leaving a swathe of countryside uninhabitable and tens of thousands banished from their homes. The harm done by radiation remains unknown to this day; the stress and anguish of the displaced has been plain to see.

Then, 25 years later, when enough time had passed for some to be talking of a “nuclear renaissance”, it happened again (see article). The bureaucrats, politicians and industrialists of what has been called Japan’s “nuclear village” were not unaccountable apparatchiks in a decaying authoritarian state like those that bore the guilt of Chernobyl; they had responsibilities to voters, to shareholders, to society. And still they allowed their enthusiasm for nuclear power to shelter weak regulation, safety systems that failed to work and a culpable ignorance of the tectonic risks the reactors faced, all the while blithely promulgating a myth of nuclear safety.

http://www.economist.com/node/21549936

[Scootaloo]

1. Nuclear power; Same problems, worse shit at the end

One of the big problems with hydrocarbon fuel is its limited supply and hte ease with which that supply is monopolized owing to uneven distribution around the world. Uranium is no different, it's not exactly the most common element to find - and it's extremely hazardous to mine, hazardous to process, hazardous to refine, hazardous to use, and hazardous to dispose of.

In fact i'd have a guess that for the same amount of energy produced, reactor fuel rods are probably more environmentally harmful than hydrocarbons; Sure, oil is polluting, but the carbon does get trapped and locked away in a century or three. All that spent fuel however... even after it's ended its radioactivity life, still remains a deeply toxic metal.

Nuclear was never to be a solution - at best, a stopgap between hydrocarbons and sustainable energy methods, a "use it because we have to, for now" option.

[madokie]

2. Splitting atoms to boil water has proven to be not only illogical thinking

but stupid as well.