Nuclear Energy in 2019

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Is Nuclear Energy Screwed?

Yes
2
20%
No
3
30%
Maybe
2
20%
I don't know
3
30%
 
Total votes: 10

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Red
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Re: Nuclear Energy in 2019

Post by Red »

Hey do you guys think that the new HBO series is anti-nuclear propaganda?
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brimstoneSalad
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Re: Nuclear Energy in 2019

Post by brimstoneSalad »

Red wrote: Tue Jun 11, 2019 5:51 pm Hey do you guys think that the new HBO series is anti-nuclear propaganda?
Unintentionally. It's complete garbage science.

Thunderf00t did a video on it, though I have not watched yet I trust he knows his stuff here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsdLDFtbdrA
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Re: Nuclear Energy in 2019

Post by Red »

brimstoneSalad wrote: Tue Jun 18, 2019 12:15 am Unintentionally. It's complete garbage science.

Thunderf00t did a video on it, though I have not watched yet I trust he knows his stuff here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsdLDFtbdrA
Thunderf00t is great. His channel is the spiritual successor to Penn and Teller's Bullshit!. He works in a nuclear power plant doesn't he?

Maybe the people behind the new series are proponents of Solar Freakin' Roadways?

BTW I saw the Vlogbrothers made a video about Chernobyl, but I didn't see it yet. How many deaths were from Chernobyl? I heard some estimate it at 50.

Also I want to add, do you ever get the feeling that sometimes supporting something ends up being in vain?
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Minos
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Re: Nuclear Energy in 2019

Post by Minos »

brimstoneSalad wrote: Tue Jun 18, 2019 12:15 am
Red wrote: Tue Jun 11, 2019 5:51 pm Hey do you guys think that the new HBO series is anti-nuclear propaganda?
Unintentionally. It's complete garbage science.

Thunderf00t did a video on it, though I have not watched yet I trust he knows his stuff here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsdLDFtbdrA
He also did another video on his second channel - https://youtu.be/Pz8UQX3m7YI


Reasoning for my poll vote:
I'm afraid, that in EU the nuclear energy is screwed. Chernobyl is quite close and the new HBO series doesn't help either. Germany doesn't even buy electricity, which could come from nuclear power plant. Also the global fear mongering results in implementation of new and new safety measures, which increases costs of building new power plant. Our country was considering it, but probably it's not financially viable.
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Re: Nuclear Energy in 2019

Post by Red »

Minos wrote: Fri Jun 21, 2019 7:19 am Reasoning for my poll vote:
I'm afraid, that in EU the nuclear energy is screwed.
I thought Europe was more intelligent and scientifically illiterate. It seems they are just more left-leaning. :(

At least France is good on Nuclear.
Minos wrote: Fri Jun 21, 2019 7:19 amGermany doesn't even buy electricity, which could come from nuclear power plant.
I hear Germany is trying to go full Solar, which I doubt is practical.
Minos wrote: Fri Jun 21, 2019 7:19 amAlso the global fear mongering results in implementation of new and new safety measures, which increases costs of building new power plant. Our country was considering it, but probably it's not financially viable.
Same in the US, like this one I just read last night:
https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-coll ... -0150.html
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Jamie in Chile
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Re: Nuclear Energy in 2019

Post by Jamie in Chile »

Red wrote: Tue Jun 18, 2019 12:21 am
BTW I saw the Vlogbrothers made a video about Chernobyl, but I didn't see it yet. How many deaths were from Chernobyl? I heard some estimate it at 50.
The number of people killed by Chernobyl is in the hundreds or thousands. It's difficult to get an exact number because it's difficult to know of the people that died from cancer which were Chernobyl caused and which got cancer for another reason.

The number of people that were killed by nuclear on that one day, the worst accident in nuclear history, is about the same as the number of people that die from fossil fuels every day.
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Re: Nuclear Energy in 2019

Post by Red »

Jamie in Chile wrote: Sat Jun 22, 2019 9:03 pm The number of people killed by Chernobyl is in the hundreds or thousands. It's difficult to get an exact number because it's difficult to know of the people that died from cancer which were Chernobyl caused and which got cancer for another reason.
Are you referring to this?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl ... nvironment

This was proven to be extremely exaggerated, based on assumptions and pseudodata. George Monbiot discredits it pretty well:
George Monbiot wrote:A devastating review in the journal Radiation Protection Dosimetry points out that the book achieves its figure by the remarkable method of assuming that all increased deaths from a wide range of diseases – including many which have no known association with radiation – were caused by the accident(15). There is no basis for this assumption, not least because screening in many countries improved dramatically after the disaster and, since 1986, there have been massive changes in the former eastern bloc. The study makes no attempt to correlate exposure to radiation with the incidence of disease(16).

Its publication seems to have arisen from a confusion about whether the Annals was a book publisher or a scientific journal. The academy has given me this statement: “In no sense did Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences or the New York Academy of Sciences commission this work; nor by its publication do we intend to independently validate the claims made in the translation or in the original publications cited in the work. The translated volume has not been peer-reviewed by the New York Academy of Sciences, or by anyone else.”(17)

Failing to provide sources, refuting data with anecdote, cherry-picking studies, scorning the scientific consensus, invoking a cover-up to explain it: all this is horribly familiar. These are the habits of climate change deniers, against which the green movement has struggled valiantly, calling science to its aid. It is distressing to discover that when the facts don’t suit them, members of this movement resort to the follies they have denounced.
https://www.monbiot.com/2011/04/04/evidence-meltdown/

BTW Helen Calidcott is an evil waste of a human being (probably one of the worst people alive right now) who should be locked up and thrown to rot in jail. I'm personally in favour of rehabilitation over punishment, but here I'd make an exception for this bitch, since it doesn't seem like she'll ever change her mind. She's been in this anti-nuclear shit for years, I highly doubt she hasn't heard the counterarguments for her bullshit.
Jamie in Chile wrote: Sat Jun 22, 2019 9:03 pmThe number of people that were killed by nuclear on that one day, the worst accident in nuclear history, is about the same as the number of people that die from fossil fuels every day.
Nuclear has actually caused less deaths than solar and possibly even wind, too. I'd happily take a Chernobyl every year rather than building more solar and wind farms if we're concerned about deaths.

ETA: I thought Jamie wrote hundreds of thousands, not hundreds or thousands, so that was my bad. Still, the Monbiot article is still worth a look, since most cases of cancer were thyroid cancer, which is readily treatable. The death toll is still less than 100.
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Jamie in Chile
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Re: Nuclear Energy in 2019

Post by Jamie in Chile »

It sounds like you know more about it than me.

My view is that Chernobyl killed hundreds or thousands so perhaps it was 100 or perhaps it was 3000 and it can't be known for sure because we know x people died from cancer but we don't know what portion would have died from cancer anyway because of the nuclear accident.

That was my conclusion from some research some time ago. I don't remember the sources.

In a way it doesn't matter whether the number is <100 or whether it's thousands because either why it's a tiny fraction of the total fossil fuel deaths.

Similarly it doesn't matter whether nuclear or wind kills more. Even if one kills treble the number the other does, it's still tiny numbers compared to fossil fuels.

I'd like to see nuclear and renewable advocates focus less on fighting each other and more on joining up to defeat fossil fuels. Rather like the two brothers in Double Dragon who fought all the enemies together and when all the other enemies were dead at the end of the game did they turn on each other for the final battle.
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Re: Nuclear Energy in 2019

Post by Jamie in Chile »

Here's the problem in a nutshell:

"How many people has Chernobyl killed so far?
We’ll probably never know. That’s partly because even 40,000 cancer deaths are less than 1 percent of the cancer mortality expected in the affected population. Statistically, the deaths are undetectable. Even if they weren’t, science usually can’t say that a particular cancer was induced by radiation rather than something else."
Source: https://slate.com/technology/2013/04/ch ... ation.html

More detail here:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/ful ... /ijc.22037

Anyway, even if it were in the tens of thousands, which is possible and can't be ruled out...that's still a lot less than fossil fuels. Plus, you have the arguments about how modern nuclear power stations are much safer.

Also, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_du ... l_disaster seems to be a well done page at first glance.
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Re: Nuclear Energy in 2019

Post by Lay Vegan »

Unnatural Vegan recently uploaded a great video on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8_u5TqnznA

I like that she addressed the confusion on relative vs. absolute risk of developing cancer from radiation exposure.

Reminds me of the nutty vegans charging that people who eat processed meat have an 18% increased risk of developing colorectal cancer, but that fails to consider that out of every 1,000 people, 61 will develop colorectal cancer due to a number of variables. Assuming you’re eating 50 grams of meat per day, your risk would increase by approximately 1%, (so your lifetime risk would be around 6.6%). And those who eat the lowest amount of processed meat (etc. vegans) are likely to have a lower lifetime risk of about 56 cases per 1,000 low meat-eaters (or 5.6%).

I think knowing the difference between relative and absolute risk of developing developing cancer from nuclear radiation might help to clear up some of the fear. Especially when you consider how much better governments are getting with screening and prevention methods.
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