> Through decades the population was told by the government that nuclear radiation was the evil silent killer.
Well, two out of three's not bad: it is silent, and it can kill.
> people are now irrationally scared of nuclear radiation from power plants
You may not fear nuclear energy, but it's not irrational to do so.
Even the current generation of reactors rely on active safety systems, and can't just be shut down. Even with multiple redundant systems of this sort, things will go wrong, since making these systems truly independent — including in the face of floods, earthquakes, human error, etc. — is effectively impossible.
So plants will continue to melt down from time to time, irradiating large areas of land. Bad luck if those areas are near you: in the best case, you'll have to leave your home and neighbourhood for decades.
Sure, it's a low probability event for each of us, but in my opinion those consequences are unacceptable for essentially any probability of occurrence.
> Sure, it's a low probability event for each of us, but in my opinion those consequences are unacceptable for essentially any probability of occurrence.
This is not rational fear. The non-nuclear energy industry is not perfectly safe. Coal mining results in many deaths both from the dangers of mining and the pollution caused. Oil mining results in some deaths and a fair few major ecological disasters. Solar power and wind power kill people as well (falling from a roof or having a turbine fall on you are both potentially life-ending).
According to this site (http://nextbigfuture.com/2008/03/deaths-per-twh-for-all-ener...), Nuclear is the safest in terms of human death by far. This is just a blog post, so grain of salt, but it illustrates that your "unacceptable for essentially any probability" claim is not rational.
I find it similar to the risk of an airplane death. Both of those are deemed by 'rationalists' as irrational fears, as airplanes are by and large, safer than driving cars. However, considering the outcomes the fear is not as irrational; there are a significant chance of surviving a car accident, but almost none at all of a plane one. It also comes with a bonus of a few minutes of horrifying fall into your inevitable doom, too.
Nuclear plants can be safe, but when they fail the results are often catastrophic. People prefer to live with many small dangers rather than one giant but very unlikely one, and while it may be called out as irrational in the strictest definition of reason, it's perfectly human.
there are a significant chance of surviving a car accident, but almost none at all of a plane one.
I think this demonstrates the overarching point well because the chances of surviving an air related accident are surprisingly high.
The NTSB figures for people involved in commercial airline accidents between 1983-2000 show that 95.7% of people survived: http://boingboing.net/2012/11/05/surviving-a-plane-crash-is-... .. even narrowed down to only the "worst accidents", the overall rate was 76.6%.
Which highlights the problem with fear - when you look down the list of leading causes of death, you basically have a million terrible diseases (cancer, heart disease, alzheimer's etc.)... but once you get out of the "disease" territory, the big killer? Cars.
Probably the most avoidable, most pointless way to die... but we think nothing of driving everywhere, of putting our kids in cars (children don't get much in the way of heart disease or alzheimers, so automotive accidents are pretty close to the top for them).
So yeah, I have trouble respecting the public's perception of danger.
I'm old enough to remember chernobyl. at the time, we were assured it was a dodgy old design, and that they future models would be foolproof. Then fukushima, and we started hearing the same soothing stories of fantasy designs that could never cause such havoc.
Ever since day one, this industry has over-promised and under-delivered. Remember "power too cheap to meter"?
It's right and appropriate that we make decisions based on the realities of the industry's present day detriments, not their promises for tomorrow.
Well 4 nuclear plants were affected at Fukushima, 3 of which had been operational and melted down, the 4th had used fuel cells right near exploding gantries... and zero deaths, zero illnesses.
This is a stark, stark constrast to Chernobyl (which was a Soviet weapons production design quickly converted for power generation use with very little, if any, regard for passive safety principles) and should if anything reinforce what people were saying about the uniqueness of Chernobyl.
The Fukushima plants were the "dodgy old designs", by the way. Fukushima Dai-Ni's 2 operational reactors were hit by the same tsunami, only a few km down the same shoreline from the afflicted reactors, and both achieved safe shutdown... they were of a slightly less old dodgy design.
The design improvements are not fantasy. They've already happened, have been around for years, but no one builds them but India and China.
Better designs aren't "just around the corner". They're 25 year in the past.
We aren't building them because people are too afraid to build new plants. We're keeping plants based on 50 year old designs around because we need the power. These plants require weapons grade uranium. They are inefficient. They are expensive to run. They are physically able to melt down. They produce more waste than needed. Their waste can be used to make weapons.
These are all solved problems. They were solved decades ago. It's about time that they werer implemented.
and, whats the bet the industry's supporters will be offering that same unhelpful rationalisation, come the next reactor failure.
I don't accept that the significant disqualifications you raise are all 'solved problems'. some are solved. some mitigated. I do accept the scenario I think you're describing: the US[a] is choosing to extend licenses to old plants instead of building safer ones.
But beyond the US[a], I'm concerned we're illogically facilitating development of more conventional reactors that offer none of these benefits, in part under the cover of promises that the industry is moving in the right direction. That's the disconnect I see between promises and realities.
Well, two out of three's not bad: it is silent, and it can kill.
> people are now irrationally scared of nuclear radiation from power plants
You may not fear nuclear energy, but it's not irrational to do so.
Even the current generation of reactors rely on active safety systems, and can't just be shut down. Even with multiple redundant systems of this sort, things will go wrong, since making these systems truly independent — including in the face of floods, earthquakes, human error, etc. — is effectively impossible.
So plants will continue to melt down from time to time, irradiating large areas of land. Bad luck if those areas are near you: in the best case, you'll have to leave your home and neighbourhood for decades.
Sure, it's a low probability event for each of us, but in my opinion those consequences are unacceptable for essentially any probability of occurrence.