[exabrial]

>Downplaying the risks of nuclear power plants.... is easy to do, as long as it is far from your home

Please take a look at Wolf Creek, KS, nearby where I lived for many years.

> which are real

> Yes, engineering has progressed, yes, there are ever improving safe-guards

> As you're probably aware, in Japan, we had a major disaster 14 years ago

A 1960s reactor design is still not a valid comparison. In all empathy, I feel sorry this happened in your area; I wish that on nobody, and I understand how hard it is to have to pick up the pieces.

However, it is not just to the rest of the world to put red tape in front of modern designs because of what happened to a 1960s design. Modern designs need to be evaluated on their own merits.

We haven't banned modern cars because of the death traps of the 1960s; instead we iterated upon the designs even though many people experienced personal loss due to unsafe car designs. In fact, more people will die in a car accident this year 2025 than the totality of nuclear deaths from the time we began using nuclear power for power generation, with zero deaths from radiation or sickness at Fukushima.

[raxxor]

Nuclear power is expensive for Germany. Uranium would need to be imported and enriched, there is no storage capacity for waste, former solutions have failed massively.

Chernobyl irradiated a huge part of the whole continent of Europe and poisoned parts of the food chain. This is not the same risk dimension as unsafe cars.

And the radiation of Fukushima probably entered the food chain at different points as well. Contrary to popular belief, radiation doesn't homogenously disperse in the ocean. Measuring the negative effects isn't trivial. Sure, water is a very good radiation absorber, so you won't get problems from direct radiation.

I would totally buy the Enron egg for personal use but that is beside the point. And I still would have no means to recycle it, so I would make it a problem of future generations as well.

Of course coal isn't a solution, I am happy that nobody starts with ideas like liquifying it into oil. But I think nobody is disputing that.

[tagrun]

You offer condolences, and you say you understand. Thank you, but what do you think you understand?

Your analogy that somehow equates car accidents to nuclear disasters is not even wrong, and the fact that in your mind these can somehow be put into the same analogy is a testament that you don't understand.

1. With a car, you make a decision to use it or not given the risk factors. In contrast, the actual risks of a nuclear reactor built by a corporation in a remote area are not born by the company but rather by the town folks who have been living there and their descendants (an entire population) who have no choice in operating a nuclear power plant in their neighborhood.

And as we also see here, for few who dare to raise their voice, they are shut down by the corporation and local politicians with promises of a bright future or blamed with ignorance by some of their peers. Those same people who are not going to take responsibility when the nuclear disaster happens.

2. A car accident can kill a few people and financial damages are small and can be covered by an ordinary insurance company. A nuclear disaster can kill and make sick an entire population, destroy their livelihoods and poison the environment for generations, and caused damages are so great, well beyond the capabilities of any insurance or electrical company. In practice, the burden of the material damages fell upon the citizens of the entire nation.

As I already said, ever-improving nuclear reactors can result in a nuclear disaster, however "modern" they are. You can guarantee otherwise only in the imaginary world of spherical cows. As long as nuclear power plans are run, Fukushima disaster is not going to be last nuclear disaster the humanity has seen. And again, the question is not "will another nuclear disaster happen". This is Murphy's law. The question is "when it happens, what will its effect be?"

If a corporation wants to operate a nuclear reactor, they should build it hundreds of kilometers away from any human settlement, with proper containment and cleaning mechanism in place that can be deployed right after the failure.

I looked at Wolf Creek Generating Station on Wikipedia, what of it? I don't see a nuclear disaster happened there. I hope the day won't ever come, but I would be interested in hearing your opinion on the matter after Wolf Creek melts down like in Fukushima ---at which point you will actually understand.