Quote:
Originally Posted by Dr. Drib
The construction of nuclear power plants has virtually stopped, due to regulatory redtape, safety issues, and world economies.
[SNIP]
There are safety concerns, and there will always be safety concerns. The major accident in the U.S. - Three Mile Island - occurred in 1979. Perhaps the most famous accident was at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant near Kiev in the Ukraine, where the top of the containment building blew off. That was in 1986.
I'm just wondering if nuclear power is a feasible alternative anymore, considering cost, political opposition, and danger.
Don
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Well -- in the U.S. the total radiation released at Three Mile Island (TMI) was negligible. If you'd camped at the downwind edge of the perimeter fence for the entire duration of the problem you'd have gotten less than one-half of a chest-xray in terms of dosage.
As for Chernobyl, it's completely incorrect to say that "the top of the containment building blew off." Soviet plants flat out
didn't have a containment vessel in the sense that US plants do!
What blew off was the top of the (completely ordinary) building housing the plant. There's a
HUGE difference between those statements.
As for the danger, I observe that the death toll from nuclear power is a pittance compared to the death toll from coal. And that's assuming the most pessimistic estimates of long-term deaths from Chernobyl actually pan out.
Coal mining is dangerous, coal is very dirty, and the air pollution it produces is really nasty stuff. And that doesn't even consider CO2 emissions possibly contributing to global warming! I'll take nuclear in a heartbeat -- as long as the plants weren't designed or constructed in the Worker's Paradise, that is.
Xenophon