But the truth - which is that nuclear power, while not 100% safe, is still vastly safer than coal power over the long term - would have done just as well. No form of power generation is 100% safe. I mean, the clue's in the word. "Power". Raw power is always intrinsically dangerous and has to be controlled in some way before it can be used. Even environmentally friendly power sources are dangerous if not properly run - think of a hydroelectric dam bursting.
I personally view nuclear power as a useful stopgap to enable us to stop using nasty dangerous non-renewable coal while we develop more renewable and less dangerous forms of power generation to the point where they're cost-effective. And, believe me, coal is dangerous - more dangerous than nuclear power by a factor of literally thousands, and that's just the deaths. I live in what used to be one of the biggest mining areas in the UK. Everywhere you go round here, you can spot the surviving ex-miners. They all have wheezes that make my asthma, even on a bad day, sound positively healthy by comparison. They have chronic bronchitis, COPD, emphysema, the works. And those are the ones who haven't died young from that set of illnesses or from various forms of cancer brought about by exposure to coal dust (lung cancer being, I think, top of the list there).
The reason we don't have massive scares about the dangers of coal power is, I think, exactly the same as the reason we don't have massive scares about the dangers of motor travel, which of course is another big killer. It's because we had got used to it being there, and were using the benefits, before we found out about the risks. If nuclear power had been invented in Victorian times and regularly used since then, nobody would be bothering their heads about the risks and coal would have been phased out altogether many years ago.
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Date: 2011-06-29 01:22 pm (UTC)From:I personally view nuclear power as a useful stopgap to enable us to stop using nasty dangerous non-renewable coal while we develop more renewable and less dangerous forms of power generation to the point where they're cost-effective. And, believe me, coal is dangerous - more dangerous than nuclear power by a factor of literally thousands, and that's just the deaths. I live in what used to be one of the biggest mining areas in the UK. Everywhere you go round here, you can spot the surviving ex-miners. They all have wheezes that make my asthma, even on a bad day, sound positively healthy by comparison. They have chronic bronchitis, COPD, emphysema, the works. And those are the ones who haven't died young from that set of illnesses or from various forms of cancer brought about by exposure to coal dust (lung cancer being, I think, top of the list there).
The reason we don't have massive scares about the dangers of coal power is, I think, exactly the same as the reason we don't have massive scares about the dangers of motor travel, which of course is another big killer. It's because we had got used to it being there, and were using the benefits, before we found out about the risks. If nuclear power had been invented in Victorian times and regularly used since then, nobody would be bothering their heads about the risks and coal would have been phased out altogether many years ago.