We will never discover which models are "best."
In life there are no "best" models, only those that work.
There will be nations that expand their nuclear generating capacity, but the United States will not be among those nations. Is this a good thing, or a bad thing? Time will tell.
The original post was "Chernobyl question: how many square miles uninhabitable?"
The horrible answer nobody ever wants to admit is "None."
The majority of humans would find certain areas "uninhabitable" but wildlife finds these areas to be quite attractive simply because humans are excluded. Apparently human beings are more hazardous than an burning reactor full of toxic nuclear waste.
Nature simply shifts slightly and takes advantage of the new situation. That's what nature always does. Nature adapts to nuclear contamination faster than it adapts to a human occupation.
Whenever I argue with anyone I'll often fight in ways they perceive to be dirty or unstructured; Truthfully, I am not much interested in academic sorts of debates with clearly defined boundries. I always try to understand the foundation someone is arguing from, and see if I can't shake that foundation up a little.
If I am arguing with a Creationist, it is pretty pointless to argue any ordinary scientific facts. Clearly a typical sort of Creationist does not have a firm grasp of the facts, or they would not be a Creationist. It is always far more interesting to understand the foundations on which the Creationist builds his Faith.
I tend to respect the Creationist who has built upon some very firm foundation. At the end of these arguments I always find their faith exists outside the shpere of ordinary physics, outside our normal perceptions of time and space. Therefore, to them, evolution becomes a visible but confusing artifact of something we cannot possibly understand; it is a
mystery.
Evolution as a scientific study is ultimately irrelevant to this sort of faith. I personally find this point of view absolutely infuriating, but I can respect it.
Then there are Creationists who are always jumping around from one shifty foundation to another. One argument falls apart, and they jump to another. Eventually, I suppose, they hope the hunter will give up the chase. (No, I did not name myself hunter, my parents did!)
And these are exactly the same sorts of arguments I have with many anti-nuclear activists. There are those with the very strong faith that nuclear power is bad magic. Their reasoning has little to do with the various tidbits of random facts they've collected together, and everything to do with some solid foundation of personal philosophy, perhaps their faith that humans are not capable of handling nuclear power. We are all two year olds playing with matches and gasoline.
Okay. I can accept the basis of that argument. Human beings are too stupid to handle nuclear power. Once you state that, you don't need argue much further. Humans have proven in many ways that we really are too stupid to handle nuclear power. There is no need to exaggerate the damage done by nuclear weapons or various nuclear power programs.
This would be the sort of faith I could respect, no matter how much it infuriated me.
But my own faith was never that firm, even as I was skulking through the dumpsters, public records, and actual physical plants of the nuclear power industry. Furthermore, I have seen far too many anti-nuclear activists lie or distort the facts to support their position. I grow weary of it.
Chernobyl question: how many square miles uninhabitable?
Answer: It depends. I myself wouldn't stay around there too long, nor would most humans. We don't like to increase our odds of dying sooner from some cancer. How long is too long? Unknown. There are people living and working there whose cigarettes and vodka will kill them long before the radiation does, just as there are people who will die early as the result of Chernobyl's pollution.
Other creatures, used to living in a very much more dangerous world, may find their chances of survival increasing in the areas contaminated by the accident.
Should we worry about mutations in wildlife? The answer to that question is also unclear. Gil Ast's article, "The Alternative Genome" in the April 2005 Scientific American states:
"The old axiom of one gene, one protein no longer holds true. The more complex an organism, the more likely it became that way by extracting multiple protein meanings from individual genes."
If multiple proteins are being extracted from each gene, it seems more likely than we thought that mutations are immediately fatal to the cell in which a mutation occurs. Maybe we should have been paying more attention those genes that don't appear to mutate. Something complex is going on here.
But clearly we do not want our own genes to be "mutated," especially those genes we might pass along to our children. Just as clearly, Mother Nature doesn't care. If the mutation works, fine, if not the cell dies, probably before it is ever noticed.
On a larger scale, if some population dies out because a pond becomes too radioactive, then another population that is not so sensitive to radiation will take it's place. That is the nature of other toxins as well.
I always begin any argument about "nuclear waste" with the premise that all toxins are of the same nature, whether they are radioactive or not.
Others see radioactive toxins as something fundamentally different in than non-radioactive toxins, but I cannot detemine a basis for that understanding. Radioactive toxins are nothing new on this earth.
There are places all over the world where humans do not live because of environmental toxins, and there are places humans live despite very obvious toxins. When I was a kid living in Los Angeles the air was obviously toxic. It was full of lead, diesel soot, and plenty of other toxins that killed people. There was radioactive tritium, strontium, iodine, etc., mostly from weapons testing, but some from nuclear research in the hills above the San Fernando Valley, but these nuclear wastes were only a very minor component of the toxic brew we breathed.
This did not stop people moving to Los Angeles.
The coal industry destroys more land, and pollutes more air and water, than the nuclear industry. The coal power industry is like a great continuous Chernobyl accident spread out over vast distances. If I had to choose between coal or nuclear power, I would choose nuclear.
I'll repeat this: To the extent my anti-nuclear activities are more successful than my anti-coal activities, I am harming the earth, and I am harming my fellow man.
It is a matter of fact that it is far easier to frighten people with the threat of radioactive toxins than it is to frighten them with non-radioactive toxins. The fumes from a typical blend of gasoline are just as toxic as some sorts of radioactive waste. You could do an experiment to determine just how a "whif" of gasoline fumes compares to a "whif" of air containing tritium. At some level the toxins in the gasoline will do the same sorts of damage as the tritium.
A comparison of gasoline to nuclear power is perfectly valid. An electric train is almost certainly safer than an automobile, even if the electricity for the train comes from a nuclear power station.
Everything is related.
Chernobyl question: how many square miles uninhabitable?
Where do you draw the line?
I do not believe nuclear power is a "magic bullet." Nor do I believe that nuclear power is "bad magic." If the United States does not build any new nuclear power plants, and if we manage to keep our economy running just well enough to prevent the collapse of our society, then perhaps we will be able to see what happens to nations that do build nuclear power plants.
If they start doing much better than we are, then I'm sure we will restart our nuclear power programs just as soon as we can marginalize the opposition. If these nuclear powered nations are doing worse than we are, plenty of people will be there saying "We told you so!"
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
