

Beware the fear of Nuclear fear - Anchor
http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=beware-the-fear-of-nuclearfear-2011-03-12

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cal5k
I think it's an amazing testament to the safety of modern nuclear plants (and
the plant in question was commissioned something like 40 years ago) that in
spite of being hit by both the largest earthquake in Japanese history AND a
tsunami, the worst-case scenario is probably not going to be all that bad.
Sure, it will be very expensive to fix, but it looks very likely that even in
the case of a complete meltdown there will not be a catastrophic release of
radiation into the surrounding environment.

Contrast this to Chernobyl when an OPERATING reactor suffered an explosion
INSIDE the containment vessel, and you see that this does not even come close.

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ChuckMcM
This is a great article, which restates the obvious, the people are lousy at
understanding 'risk'.

Time, after time, after time. Every single study on every single metric shows
that energy from Nuclear power is the safest and cleanest source of energy we
currently know about, and yet the 'risk' boogie man is always at the
forefront.

And in a weird way, by stopping implementation of power plants, we have sort
of 'frozen' the perception of the risk based on experiences from the 70's.
Have you ever compared the safety of a car you drove in the 70's with a car
you drive today? Any different?

How do we 'grow up' past our 20th century fears and step up to save people,
the planet, and our sanity by taking a more 'grown up' view of the risk /
benefit analysis of nuclear power?

I really give Bill Gates credit for putting significant funds into the
travelling wave reactor concept. He's looking at being able to take advantage
of a safe way to generate power and consume left over waste products. How cool
is that. But we have to get past a collective fear that the idea has the words
'nuclear' and 'reactor' in the title.

