So, only about 14% of those killed by the Vajont dam disaster:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vajont_Dam

Tom

Not only deaths but also radioactive pollution is mich higher for coal than for nuclear. A nuclear plant only emits radioactive pollution when something goes seriously wrong. The radioactive residues from coal seams are being belched out of smoke stacks every day and cumulatively it is way way more

But if somebody randomly catches cancer, people dont tend to think of that so deaths by coal are probably under reported

I for one can claim that my bio blueberries last much longer with nuclear around.

exactly. a solution for nuclear waste would be to incinerate it and release it into the atmosphere like we do with coal.

We've been doing that for years!

https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/radiation/smoking.htm

Nuclear power was statistically the safest and cleaner in the past century - that's just numbers cast in stone. But the past is not 100% of the story, unfortunately.
I think it is important to consider what could go wrong, even if it leads to discuss some highly-unlikely event. And I don't think it is reasonable to just say "Bhopal or Kathrina generated more deaths than Fukushima, therefore nuclear is safe and you shouldn't even talk about possible accidents".

Is it so intellectually repugnant to think about what are the risks, to think about what has never happened before?

There are guys studying this as a job, e.g.: https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/worst-c...urope/44977606
Swissnuclear described the study as "unrealistic event", that's fine, it's part of the debate. Someone makes a model, someone else criticises it. It would have been a bit sad if they just declared "ah, ignore that, it's scaremongering".

Cheers :-)

Basically, the only thing wrong with nuclear power is that one is using a cruise missile to ring a door bell.
There are simpler and safer ways to make a turbine spin.

Thorium is a far safer solution, but was never adopted as the arms race required nuclear bombs which is not a product/bi-product of Thorium reactors.

Unfortunately in Switzerland we have decided to phase out Nuclear Power stations, so no new ones will be built and once the end of life is reached, they will be decommistioned.

Just wonder once Thorium reactors are being used globally if we would consider this technology. Guess it would require another referendum.

As we get about 50% of our energy from Nuclear, it will be difficult to replace with renewable energy in the remaining lifetime of the power stations. So we will have to buy it in from other European countries, some of which will be using fossil fuels.

Nuclear is the best option to help reduce Global warming.

History is not a one way street but a pendulum. Every good idea can turn into a bad idea when you get too much of it and the pendulum will swing back. Maybe not back to conventional nuclear power but to something that involves centralized large blocks of non polluting generation. Maybe it will be thorium. Maybe something else.

Nuclear power is currently probably the cleanest source of fossil energy. However:

1. We have in the last 60 years not been able to sort out what to do with the dangerous waste the technology produces. The Americans are "storing" the waste in containers next to the power station, we Europeans pay the Russians to park them in leaky containers somewhere in Siberia…

2. A lot of the power stations we have in Europe are way beyond their originally intended life span. Why does that matter? Radiation does not just kill organisms, it weakens even reinforced concrete. So a power plant that has been used much longer than originally planned has a lot of structural risks. It is much more likely to leak radiation. When researchers had a good look at some of the older ones in Belgium did they find thousands of "microfractures" in the concrete around the reactor. The Swiss ones are some of the oldest running plants in the world. So I would claim the exact opposite of Loz - if we are serious about nuclear, lets scrap the 1960s reactors and build some new ones which are more efficient, a lot safer and cleaner... but try to get that idea through politically…

3. There is a fundamental risk with nuclear technology. I am not going into terrorism, but the allegedly fail-safe procedures that would cause only one incident per Millenium have failed repeatedly. We dont just have Tchernobyl, we have Fukushima and a few more… so while nuclear can help to reduce climate change is there always a risk for the next major Desaster.

Ive always wondered whether burning stuff is actually also nuclear energy... maybe fuel plus oxygen has less weight than the resulting water and co2, to the count of the produced energy ...?

Nuclear power ain't fossil

And why can't we get that idea through politically?

Because some people, who probably weren't too good at science themselves when they were at school, have pushed a populist agenda that was not about facts but just about scaremongering, meaning that one of the best solutions available cannot be discussed objectively without a lot of populist hysteria.

These very same people, however, are pretty much at the forefront of accusing others of being the populists and of spreading fake or misinterpreted facts.

But I digress.

Well, you can argue that all this organic stuff wouldn't be able to grow in the first place if it weren't for all the nasty radiation we're getting from that huge evil nuclear reactor at the centre of the Solar System.

And neither would we have solar energy, or wind energy, or hydro energy .. or geothermal even.

Well, you know... E=Mc^2 and all that.... but then don't be confounding weight with mass, you'll get shortchanged when you go to the Moon

Being Dutch and all, at my age im happy i can remember the english words...

I cannot speak for Switzerland but in Germany was it clearly not the Greens who made the decision… but the conservatives. I personally had the impression that the coal lobby was simply smarter at using their influence than the nuclear one… but that might just me. The nuclear lobby has the problem that they cannot answer where the trash should be stored. That makes them pretty unpopular with the people who live in the areas which are candidates for it. Coal exhausts on the other hand kill pretty much everyone evenly...

Surely, any answer to where the trash is to be stored is better than, in the air all around us ?

Even if technically the German Greens can claim that they were innocent, they did nevertehless lobby precisely for this for a long time and thus they contributed to the general atmosphere of fear and hysteria that made it possible, and they have basically hijacked all discussions on the topic, reducing what should be a complex and nuanced discussion to a bleating of good versus bad, and are winning that disussion by virtue of shouting the loudest.

That is precisely the definition of populism.

The discussion about storage of waste has been similarly afflicted by hysteria. The Greens have been instrumental in continuously raising the bar by inventing new conditions, so that in the end no site anywhere is suitable for storage. The result is that waste is being stored in temporary solutions which are actually less safe.

Radioactivity is a natural thing. Lots of rocks and soils and other things around us are radioactive. A lot of mildly radioactive waste is only marginally more radioactive than this natural stuff and will over time fall to within the limits of natural radiation. Only a small part is highly radiocative and I am sure that with some goodwill a suitable safe and secure long term storage can be found. Especially if you explain to people that the alternative, coal, is much more dangerous than the coal lobby makes out.

Yeah sure... lots of idiots are protesting against trash that is so mildly radioactive that it just blends in with nature. Quick question: When the first castor transports from France reached northern Germany did the protesters throw eggs at them. That "used up" fuel is encased in glass with metal around it. the glass layer is a heat isolator... They are so "mildly" radioactive that they still produce 120C heat on the outside of that isolation... so the eggs get fried instantly. How natural... (nowadays do they wrap them in some tarps to prevent the egging.)


When I look out of my window do I see the artificial cloud produced by the French plant put right on the border here... and yes, I am worried. Mostly because the EdF constantly has issues with their reactors. And I know that even the Japanese dont manage to run those plants safely... so I dont actually want to know whats happening inside a French or Belgian power plant. Let alone any eastern block ones still running. Its not some hysteria or theory... we had plenty of security issues in those reactors the past decades and its not really a good plan to reduce climate change but risk another Tchernobyl. I am not against nuclear in principle, but when I see how easily the life span of plants got extended "on paper" do I wonder if security really always comes first.