Nuclear Power (spun off from Japan earthquake discussion)

[MistressStevie]

Originally Posted by smc

[Y]our examples are patently false equivalencies -- although I must give you credit for the cleverness of referencing planes dropping on people on the ground rather than mentioning the risk to actual passengers on airplanes.

Hey, it was early and the coffee had not worked. My examples are not all the way patently false as they do involve other people doing things for a profit that impacts somebody else in their normal course of daily activities. I was not intending that they be on the same order of magnitude. So far the greatest damage from a western (including Japanese) nuclear accident has been minimal releases of radioactivity--AND NO (zero) deaths. Japan may change that death total by a number slightly and we will have learned how to build safer power plants everywhere as a result. All deaths bug me. But keep perspective here--Bhopal and the Union Carbide accident there were responsible for around 5,000 deaths, tremendous suffering, and so forth.

I am pro-nuclear power if that is not already evident. But more than anything I am totally against not learning how to do things better next time. And if we want to have power for our computers, it has to come from somewhere. I want that somewhere to be clean safe and cheap. If nuclear cannot compete on that it should go away. Coal is the only thing cheaper that we know of right now and it is fraught with dangers also.

-mS