Here's the point I'm trying to make with these links:
There are costs and risks to every form of energy. For fission power a lot of those costs are novel or at least unknown and unappreciated by the population at large (who, sadly, are woefully ignorant about such things). For coal, oil, wood, etc. those costs have been known and paid for so long that they have become accepted.
We render huge portions of land, collectively larger than the Chernobyl exclusion zone, uninhabitable by man or animal and we accept that as the cost of digging up coal. Millions of people throughout history have fallen to early deaths due to the smoke and pollution of wood and coal fires, and to gas and diesel smog, but we accept that as the way things are. London is not naturally a foggy city, but it has been densely inhabited for so many hundreds of years and has had a persistent smog for so much of that time that the term "London fog" has become part of the lexicon.
Simply put, we look at our energy sources and our eyes skip over their downsides, largely because they are so familiar, we could not imagine a world without them. Nuclear is new, some of the downsides have yet to be experienced (the Fukushima accidents being a case in point), but the question still remains: are the downsides less than those of other power sources? If you build nuclear reactors to the level of safety precautions of the old Soviet Union (within epsilon of the null-set) then perhaps not, but if you build more responsibly then perhaps so.
Comments
Here's the point I'm trying to make with these links:
There are costs and risks to every form of energy. For fission power a lot of those costs are novel or at least unknown and unappreciated by the population at large (who, sadly, are woefully ignorant about such things). For coal, oil, wood, etc. those costs have been known and paid for so long that they have become accepted.
We render huge portions of land, collectively larger than the Chernobyl exclusion zone, uninhabitable by man or animal and we accept that as the cost of digging up coal. Millions of people throughout history have fallen to early deaths due to the smoke and pollution of wood and coal fires, and to gas and diesel smog, but we accept that as the way things are. London is not naturally a foggy city, but it has been densely inhabited for so many hundreds of years and has had a persistent smog for so much of that time that the term "London fog" has become part of the lexicon.
Simply put, we look at our energy sources and our eyes skip over their downsides, largely because they are so familiar, we could not imagine a world without them. Nuclear is new, some of the downsides have yet to be experienced (the Fukushima accidents being a case in point), but the question still remains: are the downsides less than those of other power sources? If you build nuclear reactors to the level of safety precautions of the old Soviet Union (within epsilon of the null-set) then perhaps not, but if you build more responsibly then perhaps so.