• French minister of ecology resigns, citing incompatibility with neoliberal govt.
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It's also pretty terrible at, you know, generating electricity. Nuclear's advantage is that it's pretty good at actually generating electricity on a very small footprint. You can't just casually cover entire mountain ranges with wind or entire deserts with solar. You can slap down a city block-sized nuclear power plant that'll generate an equivalent amount of energy.
With more privatization brings more efficient tools through competition. In the second quarter of 2015, renewable electricity generation exceeded 25% and coal generation for the first time in the UK. 25% is not a number to scoff at, especially when the widespread implementation is still in it's stages of infancy. I'm done for now, we're going round in circles and I keep repeating myself and people keep accusing me of fearmongering a tech I understand just fine without apparently looking into anything I've said about nuclear power specifically in any real detail, I've said all I need to say, I guess we can see who the experts side with over the next 5 years and what path the French and UK governments take respectively and I'm good for round 3.
How about we phase out the other 30% in favor of more reactors? Better solution hands down. The only limit to how much one NPP can supply is the grid itself, literally, they are capable of producing such astronomic amounts of electricity that the actual physical wires leading from the plant to your wall socket can't transmit it all. And they do it while producing zero greenhouse gases, in all weather, 24/7/365, with a near zero chance of a fatality of any sort. Coal kills more people in one month than nuclear power has killed since inception. Why the fuck you'd question its safety is beyond me.
With how much shit you posted I'm going to add you to my list of stupid people not to engage with. It's clearly not worth talking to you.
Is it time to bring back that lovely post @Snowmew made a few years ago? ALFRED
God damn, some of the posts in this thread are appalling... Could facepunchers please have nuanced stances, for once? Sure, in and of itself nuclear energy is the safest and least damaging energy source we have at the moment, and the best candidate for a transition to stable and efficient renewables. But it doesn't mean you should spread blatant falsehoods to try and prove your point. Good fucking job adressing his point mate. How mature of you. Based on your behavior it seems you're not worth talking to either. I'm going to have to add you to my list of insufferable people. Are the firefighters who died to radiation poisoning in Chernobyl not deaths that are a direct result of the incident? Official estimates for Chernobyl range in the thousands of people, actually. For Fukushima, while there were no reported deaths as a result of radiation, deaths were attributed to the ensuing evacuation. So to say that it killed no one is misleading as well. The quote in its context: As a whole, if all Facepunch users were to use coal-powered energy, we would kill around 1 person a week on average. If we were to all use nuclear energy, even if Chernobyl happened every 50 years, we would still statistically never kill a single person. There's a radical difference between the size of FP's userbase and the global world population. The quote, taken out of context, is misleading. You guys know that the statistical argument still stands if you use the actual numbers rather than deflate them, right? Not even the fiercest pro-nuclear lobbies would go to these lengths to minimize the perceived threat. In all weather Technically not true, nuclear power plants depend on their environment for cooling purposes. EDF had to temporarily shut down four reactors recently because the heat wave caused the water in the river to be too warm to be used as coolant while respecting environmental regulations.
god In peer-reviewed publications UNSCEAR has identified 49 immediate deaths from trauma, acute radiation poisoning, a helicopter crash, and from an original group of about 6,000 cases of thyroid cancers in the affected area. 49 identifiable deaths, not thousands. Any estimate of long-term cancer deaths in Chernobyl is not only wildly inaccurate but generally statistically insignificant. Any estimate of long-term cancer deaths in Fukushima will probably be both inaccurate and statistically insignificant as well. How is my quote misleading? Those are the numbers for coal and nuclear even if you include the thousands of deaths inaccurately estimated. That was the context that you didn't bother to check before calling him out for hiding it. That analogy actually gave you the numbers you want to claim that I believe to be statistically insignificant.
I don't disagree with either of your first two points. The posts I was responding to were claiming that both incidents respectively caused "a few hundreds" and "no" deaths, which is false. Your original statement is not misleading. What is is Janus leaving out the part where you say "if all Facepunch users were to use...", implying that if the entire world population were to use nuclear power, and even if we had a Chernobyl type incident every 50 years, we statistically wouldn't have a single nuclear-related death, which is obviously false for the reasons you gave.
That is quite literally not what the quote is meant to say. What are you on about? You must go to the store and ask for a loaf of bread, and they say it's a dollar, but you counter, "aha, but that implies that if I bought all the bread in the store, it would also be a dollar, which is obviously false!" Yes? Because nobody's talking about the whole store, just like how nobody's talking about the entire world population. The point of the quote is to emphasize that coal is overwhelmingly more deadly than nuclear, not that nuclear will never kill anyone.
Thyroid cancer has a fatality rate on only a few percent. So yea, 6000 thyroid cancers equalling few hundred deaths is accurate. Fukushima is no deaths due to radiation.
That's exactly my point? Janus leaving the first part of the quote out implies that you're talking about the entire world population ("If we were to all use nuclear energy..." first appears to refer to everybody on Earth) when you're actually referring to a population the size of FP's userbase ("If all Facepunch users were to use coal-powered energy..."). I have decent reading comprehension skills, I got your point the first time.
You're right, I apologize, I didn't read Janus's post correctly, he misquoted me like you said.
A United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) study estimates the final total of premature deaths associated with the disaster will be around 4000, mostly from an estimated 3% increase in cancers, which are already common causes of death in the region. That's official UN figures, so that doesn't seem to be the case. 6000 thyroid cancers only equating a few hundred deaths seems to only be conjecture on your part, I wouldn't describe it as accurate. Your original statement is: Which doesn't mention specifically killing people through radiation. If you want to compare death rates by energy source, you have to consider all causes of death, not cater to radiation.
This entire conversation has been surreal. It's like being screamed in the face "Guns don't kill people, people kill people" over and over again.
Nuclear energy is currently the best non-fossil energy source we have.
Well French and UK infrastructure experts are currently disagreeing with you, as I've posted, as the thread indicated. They are moving over for cost efficiency as it has become more of a valid source over the past 2 years, which I've stated 4 or 5 times, but people seem to be stuck in their arguments they had with people 5 years ago.
the single worst ecological disaster caused by a power station failure, as well as the one which has killed the most people, is the 2009 Sayano-Shushenskaya disaster: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Sayano%E2%80%93Shushenskaya_power_station_accident However you didn't hear about it because 1.) Hydroelectric isn't scary 2.) Michael Jackson died a couple months earlier
Why do you keep assuming we are saying it's inherintly dangerous to human life, nobody has been saying that. We've just been saying that people HAVE died when people are making wild claims that they did not, or are under representing the numbers because they are not attributing the conditions caused by the plant being hit as a a cause of death, for example in Fukushima, people did die because of the plant, just not from radiation. Nobody is arguing it's more dangerous over other sources.
The point you keep ignoring is that, renewables physically can not replace conventional power generation. What we've been arguing from the very start, is that western countries need nuclear, or the alternative is coal or gas. You keep arguing that renewables offer more jobs, is cheaper and safer, which is fine, but the underlying issue is it can not replace conventional power generation.
It's still zero. The only people who died at Fukushima were people unnecessarily evacuated due to scaremongering and two guys who drowned due the the tsunami. Blaming the plant for that is like blaming a cinema because some screamed "fire".
Fear of the radiation emitting power station that has broken to pieces is a pretty normal reaction for the average Joe. The death count wasn't a few people, it was in the thousands that a report, and a japanese one at that, took the numbers of PLANT RELATED DEATHS over a thousand. Plant related meaning, response workers, evacuations and people being left behind as a result of the hysteria caused by the plant. Whether you like it or not, if the plant wasn't there, less people would have died, it's as simple as that, however roundabout you might see it.
What the hell are you on about now? Evacuation is standard safety procedure in case of large leaks of radioactive material, as described by the ASN. Are you telling me that you know better than the agency tasked to ensure the safety of the population, in the country that makes the most use of nuclear power, no less? Are you accusing them of fucking "scaremongering"? Of course you feel smart now, with the power of hindsight and data at your disposal. But nobody knew the extent of the contamination at the time, nor what the greatest spikes of concentration were. The decision not to evacuate may very well have caused more deaths. When faced with the unknown, authorities have to make a choice, and they're more informed on the matter than some armchair crisis "expert". The extent to which you're enclined to shift the blame is just childish. Should we accept coal shills going "you can't say that our power plants caused that many cancers, car pollution plays a big role too" or renewables advocates making claims such as "well that worker didn't follow safety regulations, wind power is not to blame"?
I can't believe I have to say this about Resonant of all people but everyone is just setting up strawman versions of his points to score sick dunks on, it's really embarrassing.
Which strawmen? That resonant is playing up the dangers of nuclear power and nuclear waste, even in these worst case scenarios and also attributing people trampling each other because of fear mongering, it's still safer, than the alternatives. Or a lack of understanding on how our energy grid actually works? Is that a strawman as well? Let me try this again. This graph shows you power consumption over 24 hours. The actual numbers for this is irrelevant, but the point is during certain hours energy demand will spike. https://www.mpoweruk.com/images/elec_load_demand.gif This is what that energy curve looks like when you apply solar power, what happens is you get a risk of overgeneration when solar is at it's peak power efficiency, this means all general power generation needs to heavily ramp down which is killer for economic efficiency. This can obviously be mitigated and safeguarded, but the problem arrives when night time comes and solar power dies out. Suddenly you need peak power generation which, neither wind or solar can manage, and you need 24/7 power generation tools like gas, coal or nuclear to ramp up like crazy. For 24/7 power stations, this ramp down and ramp up every single day is not something they are designed to do, and that will kill their efficiency and economy. https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/-H20RX1uDIjgW47rWhCe90d1V1c=/0x0:873x633/920x0/filters:focal(0x0:873x633):format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/6025169/caiso-duck-curve.png This is grid energy capacity factor, it measures how reliable power output is over time, wind and solar have these waves where they will produce a lot of power, or they'll produce 0 power, this is the key problem. Going back to the main topic at hand, France is in a perfect spot to make full use of nuclear power and renewables. 70% nuclear and 30% renewables along with battery storage for those ramp up times makes all of this a lot more viable. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/89/US_EIA_monthly_capacity_factors_for_renewables_2011-2013.png https://s3.amazonaws.com/user-media.venngage.com/324468-62023985cce140e6696feee542e4471e.png
Refer to my previous post. Evacuation in case of major leaks is not fearmongering, it's standard emergency procedure.
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