You know this really clarified something for me. So much fud on the internet is really about over simplification. If you take out all context and reduce something down to nothing you can make the conclusion whatever.
Radioactive materials really are the closest thing we have to ancient demons.
They can give you unlimited power, but it's always an uneasy bargain. They must be contained in special places where no human can go, and the people tasked with keeping them sealed must be vigilant, with never a moment's careless inattention, or they might get loose.
If anything ever goes wrong, they wreak havoc. And afterwards, that place is cursed beyond repair. No one can look upon it. No one can go there. If they do, they will die in horrible ways, with no hope of salvation. Machines that try to trespass will break. Film cannot develop, or is ruined. They must simply be left in the tomb, alone and undisturbed, forever.
That one grainy photo of the elephant's foot is absolutely chilling to me, like a monster from another world lurking silently underground.
You can also bargain with them to destroy the cities of your enemies. There is no limit to the power. Whole continents laid waste, simply by the right type of priesthood making the right incantations. But for almost a century, no one has dared to do it, because of what might come.
Eh, kinda. The largest uranium reserves in the world are in Australia, and the highest grade uranium deposits are in Canada. The western US has large reserves that don't require international trade (though they're mostly in federally protected land so it would take a lot of government action to actually start mining it).
That said, Kazakhstan does the most uranium mining at the moment by a wide margin and they're not exactly a shining example of democracy. They're responsible for 25% of US uranium imports.
Nuclear power is usually not abandoned for being dangerous, but because it's weirdly complex to keep it safe as compared to the alternatives. This makes it one of the most expensive ways to produce energy (at least given European regulations).
Also, the raw material is expected to be quite rare relatively soon.
I guess this may be more about the way caveman made their fire... and the multi-billion cavedollar structure for holding the magic stone can be annoying.
It's weird. In general, in the greentext community I just reply something stupid and move on. You guys are commenting what seems serious, at the same time there are a lot of people commenting about how we should have gone nuclear, etc. Now, I don't know if you're being serious or you are trolling as I would with a less apocalyptic topic.
Nuclear isn't apocalyptic, if that's what you're saying. It's caused far less harm than almost every other energy source (the only exception is large scale photovoltaic), including nuclear disasters, which we've learned a lot on how to prevent so will only become less common. They're already extraordinarily uncommon. Storage is also a solved problem and just needs implemented, and is pretty minor as is.
The apocalyptic option is to let dirty energy win the battle. They've been pumping tons of money into anti-nuclear movements to convince people it's dangerous. It isn't though. That's just what traditional energy companies want you to believe to protect their share of the market.
One caveat on prevention making accidents less common: cost-cutting gets in the way. It's a tale as old as time; a regulation is written in blood, a company disregards or lobbies to have the regulation removed in favour of cutting costs, and then the accident happens again.
Yes, we're that dumb. The China Syndrome, a movie about on out-of-control reactor meltdown, hit theaters 12-days (March 16, 1979) before the Three Mile Island incident (March 28, 1979). The US quit building reactors because of a Hollywood movie.
Just a reminder, coal power releases more radiation per year than the totality of radiation released by nuclear power including all nuclear accidents and disasters... And it's not even close.
It’s disingenuous to compare radiation which is diffused globally via the atmosphere with ground contamination which is localized and thousands of times too dangerous for human habitation.
You’re saying don’t worry about the toxic waste dump next door because there’s air pollution everywhere.
What if instead of scary magic rocks that release bad juju, what if we went back to the burney rocks that also put out even more bad juju than the scary rocks and makes the sky fairies mad and fired up? That would protect us from the scary event, even if it was much worse long term.
The evacuations were considered a mistake and caused more harm than good.
There was very little actual damage from the reactors.
In response to the station blackout during the initial hours of the accident and the ongoing uncertainty regarding the cooling status of units 1 and 2, a 2 km radius evacuation of 1,900 residents was ordered at 20:50.[67] However, due to difficulty coordinating with the national government,[68] a 3 km evacuation order of ~6,000 residents and a 10 km shelter-in-place order for 45,000 residents was established nearly simultaneously at 21:23. The evacuation radius was expanded to 10 km at 5:44, and was then revised to 20 km at 18:25. The size of these evacuation zones was set for arbitrary reasons at the discretion of bureaucrats rather than nuclear experts.
This was a failure of the government not anything to do with nuclear power.
There goes anon again, keeping the “idiot” in “idiot”. I’m torn between telling him to stop headbutting running buzz saws… and urging him to practice more.