I’m not especially in favor of commissioning nuclear plants to be built by the existing nuclear industry, because they’re expensive to start with and nuclear industry cost claims have routinely been wildly optimistic.
But this idea that nuclear power plant disasters cause measurable harm anywhere but Chernobyl is just ignoring every bit of epidemiology I’ve ever seen.
And, even at worst-case-Chernobyl, where they took a terrible design and turned off all the safety features, the idea that negative effects last more than decades is ludicrous. The atoms with short half lives are the dangerous-to-human-health atoms; after decades they’re gone.
I’m with you on centralizing power production having socio-political ramifications, but... we’re going to have a grid any which way. Unless we get Shipstone-level inexpensive batteries, we’re still going to have to maintain an electrical grid.
My anti-nuclear friends hate me for it, but I tend to think if we have any hope of limiting carbon forcing in mid-century, we’re going to need nuclear.
"In other words, within 10 years of the disaster, the small mammal populations were apparently showing no ill effects from the radiation."
"There have been a lot of radiobiological studies over the decades to find out what it takes to really damage animal populations, to do some serious reproductive damage. And across most of the exclusion zone, the doses aren't really high enough to have that effect."
> ... research with [Anders Pape Møller & Timothy Mousseau] has shown that voles have higher rates of cataracts, useful populations of bacteria on the wings of birds in the zone are lower, partial albinism among barn swallows, and that cuckoos have become less common, among other findings. Serious mutations, though, happened only right after the accident.
The idea that a 10x spike in population is at all surprising in the wake of removal of humans from the region is silly. Of course short lived animals with large litters would have population spike. Futher, as the Exclusion zone is a 30km diameter circle around the blast. A very large amount of it only sees low sums of radiation, and with the removal of human influence many species will skyrocket.
All this is moot though. You wouldn't go and live there, because you as a human would die within a few years unless you stayed on the very edges and outlying areas of the blast zone. This attempt to minimize the impact of Chernobyl by suggesting that some species managed to find a way to live in the environment is bizarre. You're not defending that generation of reactor design. It's not even clear to me why you want fission when RTG piles are much more practical for anything but the most heavy of industrial use.
Chernobyl being a place "where if most mammals go they die in agony" is patent nonsense. I quoted from the article linked above your post to suggest as much.
What on earth does RTG have to do with this discussion?
You're quoting contested science and I'm offering a summary of the counter opinion. It is far from a consensus that Chernobyl has been a net good for the animals living there.
As for RTGs, I'm sorry did you lose the plot about power production at the top of this thread?
But this idea that nuclear power plant disasters cause measurable harm anywhere but Chernobyl is just ignoring every bit of epidemiology I’ve ever seen.
And, even at worst-case-Chernobyl, where they took a terrible design and turned off all the safety features, the idea that negative effects last more than decades is ludicrous. The atoms with short half lives are the dangerous-to-human-health atoms; after decades they’re gone.
I’m with you on centralizing power production having socio-political ramifications, but... we’re going to have a grid any which way. Unless we get Shipstone-level inexpensive batteries, we’re still going to have to maintain an electrical grid.
My anti-nuclear friends hate me for it, but I tend to think if we have any hope of limiting carbon forcing in mid-century, we’re going to need nuclear.