And the fear about nuclear contamination has directly lead to projects to shut down reactors in Germany and other European countries, even though the real potential damage of nuclear power stations pales in comparison to the direct (human health) and indirect (impact on climate) of traditional energy sourced. That fear is directly created through anti-nuclear discourse (AND public ignorance, but that’s always a given in these subjects).
I do agree with some of the @MrGrumpy comments, though, but there is a line of blame here that we need to acknowledge.
Public ignorance? Did you somehow miss the events at Tchernobyl and the fact that Tokyo, with a more unfavorable wind direction, nearly became nuclear wasteland just like the areas around Fukushima. The cost of this latest incident are now estimated at nearly 200 Billion Dollars.
And currently we have global climate change which can be linked to a no small amount of death and destruction, not to mention well poisonings in Pennsylvania, and mines that destroys ecosystems. As a person that gets power from three mile island, I do wish we had a few more power plants of that are fission in nature, as opposed to coal or gas.
There was a great study out there that looked at perception of risk and specifically nuclear power. It was interesting because it looked at how people often conflated likelihood and scale of a disaster.
Anyway, in the study, people were given one of two articles about nuclear power. One emphasized the benefits (less pollution, stable source of energy and over all less radio active waste then a coal power plant let out). The other emphasized the scale of what a disaster would look like if it occurred. Neither talked about the odds of occurrence, but it was found that emphasising the disaster caused people to over estimate the chance of an occurrence, while emphasizing the benefits caused people to under estimate the occurrence of a disaster. Basically, people confounded chance of an event with it’s benefits or it’s costs.
Anyway, you see it all the time in life, people focusing on the positives (like winning the lottery) more likely to predict a good outcome regardless of the chances, and of course the opposite is true as well.
Anyway, as some opposed to radioactive waste being in the atmosphere, I do prefer fission to coal plants, that do release small amounts of it all the time.
You know what else is happening? Pollution, carcinogens, global warming, and poisoning of our water supply. Just because those don’t happen in one big event like Fukushima doesn’t mean they aren’t happening.
Yep. That was bad. I’m just glad that’s an outdated design and modern reactors aren’t susceptible to the same issues.
Exactly. Every disaster and bit of damage incurred by man’s quest for energy adds up. The fewer we make, the better off those grandchildren of ours will be. Nuclear leads to fewer (note I’m not saying “none”). Non-nuclear has led to losses of entire towns, as well as widespread damage to the ecosystem.
Good news, everyone! We may have bigger things to worry about than carbon emissions.
OK, I know, volcano prediction is basically at the Magic-8-ball level of rigor. But if it does happen, a Yellowstone caldera eruption would be one hell of a climate impact. As for taking steps to prepare…I’d be pretty shocked if anything significant was done.
I agree with Ginger. There isn’t much you can do to deter that except get out of the zone for it. And the zone for that is estimated to cover most of North America.
