[PaulDavisThe1st]

> Nuclear is the safest energy source.

The cited link shows that deaths directly attributable to nuclear power thus far is the lowest based on the data used.

This is not the only definition of safety, and should not be portrayed as such.

The primary objections to fission nuclear power has been the many-thousand-year half-life of the waste products, not that it would kill people while being built or while running. We have no way to project what the tally will look like in 10k years time.

[Yoric]

That is absolutely true.

However, we also risk an extinction event if we don't get carbon emissions under control, so turning a known 100 year risk into a several thousand years possible risk feels like a good bet.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

I don't know of anyone suggesting that climate change is going to be an extinction event. Changing patterns of human settlement, and the state of human civilization? Certainly. Extinction? Doesn't seem likely right now, from everything I've read.

[lacerrr]

It's certainly going to be, and is already, an extinction event for many other species. While it's true that humans probably won't go extinct as easily, billions of lives may be lost to collapsing ecosystems. We can't feed ourselves at large scale without an ecosystem to support us. At this point, that risk is looking much, much worse than the risk carried by nuclear waste in the long term.

[ohgodplsno]

>Changing patterns of human settlement.

That's an awfully cynical way of saying that billions of people will be displaced and die because of lack of food, floods, that migratory crises might lead to actual live weapons getting used for first countries to "defend themselves".

But sure, it's not an extinction event. Just billions of deaths over the next century and an upheaval of our society. No biggie.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

I'm not trying to downplay the scale and scope of climate change. I just prefer to use accurate terminology. If it was going to or was likely going to lead to the extinction of humanity, I'd want people to say that. Instead, it seems likely to lead to billions of people dying and billions more being displaced and a total reorganization of most nation states/cultures worldwide, along with (as noted above) significant extinction for many other species.

I lived through the fear (and shared it) in the 1970s about a variety of world- and civilization-changing transformations, and while I believe that the talk of them then was largely well-intentioned, the sloppy language that was used then turned into linguistic weaponry to be used against those arguing for the much-more-likely-to-be-true climate change that we are now facing.

[Yoric]

Fair enough. I should probably have phrased it differently.

[isoprophlex]

So you'd rather see -- worst case -- the CO2 concentration explode and biomes altered radically, than having some local hotspots of radiation?

[isoprophlex]

Well if the alternative is keeping gas and coal online, we also have no idea what our planet will look like in 10k yrs if we callously keep dumping CO2 into the atmosphere

[PaulDavisThe1st]

I am not for 1 moment suggesting that gas&coal should be the alternative.

I'm not even arguing against continuing to use nuclear fission. I just don't like descriptions of it like "the safest power generation method" that elide the complex nature of the word "safety".