Why I changed my mind about nuclear power | Michael Shellenberger

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciStnd9Y2ak

I never thought about the fact that air pollution from coal fire plants is responsible for deaths every year while nuclear power is responsible for none. That chart near the end is very useful

Some of those bits of information were very surprising. I thought a lot more deaths occurred form exposure at Chernobyl for example.

Last I heard, the exclusion zone actually isn't that bad. I think they found out that fallout doesn't last nearly as long as they originally thought. There's plenty of wildlife thriving in Chernobyl that are healthy, still no radiation is better than some I guess.

Is it though? I mean, the easy go to example is how it's healthy to be exposed to some amount of sunlight for vitamin D production. Moreover, it's not really possible to avoid all ionising radiation. I think the mantra that any amount is bad tricks people into thinking that exposure is this yes-or-no question as opposed to a spectrum (no pun intended). This really clouds our ability to judge the risk of exposure on our wellbeing.

I meant mostly unintended radiation poisoning. Rads are everywhere , but fallout obviously has more radiation than a sunny day.

That was a really good point that he made about nuclear waste.

Im for nuclear power but I found it interesting that he completely ignored the economic and time issues of nuclear power. You can't just slap down a power plant, they take 5-10 years to build and during that time they are costing someone a lot of money, until that plant is actually running its effectively a money sink and to anyone wanting to invest or promote nuclear power thats a serious issue. It also means if something happens that requires a great deal more power the quick fix is to just use a more readily available tech such as coal power, which as is proven in pretty much everything humans touch, will end up being the fix because once the quick fix is applied, no one will bother to put the real fix in place and then remove the quick one. The way forward for nuclear is pretty clear but to actually get the ball rolling is a lot harder for nuclear than something like solar/wind power just because of how expensive it is. I do like the argument for the nuclear waste though, everyone I've ever met that is against nuclear always cites the waste as a big reason not to go nuclear but absolutely none of them have a retort when you explain that when they say "storage of nuclear waste" they have themselfes just noted that the waste IS storable and manageable unlike pretty much everything else.

Actually reactors taking ages to build is a new problem. Building reactors in less than 5 years used to be pretty common.

Another point which wasn't raised in the video is that with Integral Fast Reactors and the like, existing uranium can essentially be taken out of storage and reused. Not only does this save on mining & processing costs, but also reduces the time it takes for the waste to decay, dramatically. They're also far more efficient, using up 99% of their energy storage instead of just 1% like with traditional reactors

http://www.euanmearns.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/constructiontimeage.png If anything the average time to build has technically gone down, theres just more outliers in recent years which is explainable by the GFC taking its toll on pretty much all large scale projects. That being said the number of plants constructed has gone down too so its reasonable to assume any that are built would take less time given there would be less demand for the services they require.

radiation is good for healthy

One thing he glossed over is that Nuclear power doesn't mean getting rid of ICE cars. Don't get me wrong we ought to get to more environmentally responsible options but waste heat from nuclear power can be used for plenty of things including desalination, municipal water heating and near carbon neutral liquid fuels generation that can replace propane and diesel.

i'm generally pretty pro nuclear, but a lot of people seem to forget the all powerful force called human stupidity when they say there can't be another chernobyl

Simple solution - if our whole infrastructure is centered around one huge mega-plant, most people will die due to lack of infrastructure before radiation poisoning can!

Even if there can, does it matter? Coal (and pollution and particulates in general) is actively killing thousands of people right now. Where-as nuclear just has a minuscule chance of killing a small number of people.

LFTR reactors are nice. You should take a look.

Even if there was another Chernobyl, its effects wouldn't be nearly as bad as the effect of air pollution from coal. I can't take Germany seriously as the "leader of the green energy movement" when they were at the front lines of pushing against nuclear power.

It sucks that we're on newpunch and don't have access to old user titles anymore. You know the one I'm talking about, with the complete slam down proving how safe nuclear is? I can'tr find it at the moment.

I'm surprised almost half the people who took the survey thought over one million people died in Fukushima solely due to radiation, in fact even a complete death toll of over one million is absurd