# Still support nuke power plants? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 14, 2011, 11:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/still-support-nuke-power-plants/574647 "2011-03-14T11:56:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 70
**Author:** ![levdrakon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/49beb7/32.png) [@levdrakon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/levdrakon)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2011, 11:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/still-support-nuke-power-plants/574647/1381 "2011-06-11T23:04:48Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > Well in this case the utilities paid a fee to have it handled and the government is obligated to do so. If I paid a waste management firm a fee every month to pick up my garbage and dispose of it, and then they did not for, say going on 30 years, I might want to stop paying too. And get my money back. Which in this case was up to $34.4 billion over a year ago. Um, no “might” about it. > > Compare this to the coal power plants which just dumps waste into the atmosphere without paying any disposal fees. Sure, and I’m all for monetizing all the true costs of each energy source and letting the different technologies battle it out on the market, in the open, with all the actual numbers on the table. Make sure they have to pay their own insurance, too. ---
**Author:** ![FXMastermind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fxmastermind/32/7289_2.png) [@FXMastermind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FXMastermind)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2011, 11:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/still-support-nuke-power-plants/574647/1382 "2011-06-11T23:19:39Z")
> [@levdrakon](#): > > Oh, and I’m pretty sure you were the first one to non-sarcastically refer to anti-nuke people as neo-Luddites and moonbats with their “panties in a twist,” over, “evil nuclear energy,” way back on page 1 of this thread. Oh I’m 100% sure of it. > [@xtisme](#): > > And if you moonbats hadn’t gotten your panties in a twist over evil nuclear energy perhaps we wouldn’t have 40 year old designs still in commission, and instead we’d have a lot more NEW designs in use that would be a hell of a lot … Of course then it was OK, because he was directly insulting other members, rather than being vague about it. ---
**Author:** ![gonzomax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@gonzomax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzomax)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2011, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/still-support-nuke-power-plants/574647/1383 "2011-06-11T23:54:18Z")
Sure we would have more and newer nuke plants in operation if people didn’t fight against them. But the original plants would still be here. The energy companies would still be getting licenses extended. to keep them on line. It would not have made us safer. It would have just added newer plants to the equation. Nuclear fuel processing was originally a system to extract plutonium for weapons. It does give us less waste but people concerned about nuclear proliferation were upset. The process is also very expensive. Nothing in simple in the nuke field, except it is a very expensive and potentially very dangerous way to heat water. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2011, 2:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/still-support-nuke-power-plants/574647/1384 "2011-06-12T02:18:53Z")
> [@FXMastermind](#): > > Of course then it was OK, because he was directly insulting other members, rather than being vague about it. NO. It was not OK, then. On the other hand, it was not Reported as a violation at that time and we Mods apparently were not reading this thread that closely. If it will make you really happy, I will now note: **xtisme, do not call Elucidator a moonbat in this forum.** That said, FXMastermind, your posts are a lot closer to general insults than xtisme’s one-off and you have now been told to back off–so back off. [/Moderating] ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2011, 2:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/still-support-nuke-power-plants/574647/1385 "2011-06-12T02:24:45Z")
[QUOTE=DSeid] Here we go. Cite please for a carbon cap and trade or tax leading to double or triple the cost for energy? [/QUOTE] No one knows what a carbon cap and trade tax might do, since it hasn’t been fully implemented. Regardless, I wasn’t talking about a carbon cap and trade tax…I was responding to the point that nuclear energy companies aren’t paying for all of the external costs (like for disposal of waste, or subsidies they are getting from the government tit, or health and environmental impacts, or final decommissioning of the plant…much of which ARE being paid by the nuclear power companies, though over long periods of time) by pointing out that coal power plants don’t either. If they DID have to pay for it (including the health impacts) are you seriously saying that energy wouldn’t cost more? Wouldn’t double in price? Or triple? Or more? [QUOTE=levdrakon] I want to see a cite the original plan was reprocessing. There was no such original plan. The first nuke plant opened in 1957 and immediately started piling nuclear waste up on site. [/QUOTE] And they had figured out how to reprocess waste in 1949. From [Wiki](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reprocessing): > [@](#): > > The first successful solvent extraction process for the recovery of pure uranium and plutonium was developed at ORNL in 1949. The PUREX process is the current method of extraction. Separation plants were also constructed at Savannah River Site and a smaller plant at West Valley, New York which closed by 1972 because of its inability to meet new regulatory requirements.[4] > [@](#): > > Reprocessing of civilian fuel has long been employed in Europe, at the COGEMA La Hague site in France, the Sellafield site in the United Kingdom, the Mayak Chemical Combine in Russia, and at sites such as the Tokai plant in Japan, the Tarapur plant in India, and briefly at the West Valley Reprocessing Plant in the United States. > [@](#): > > The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 is uh, from 1982. That’s quite a bit later than when the nuclear industry should have had a plan in place. There was no plan. There was never a plan. There still is no plan. Horseshit. There have been several plans. The most recent of which was the plan for long term storage of waste in Yucca Mountain. Never heard of it? Currently, the ‘plan’, such as it is, seems to be to simply keep the waste in local storage and I suppose entomb it (individually) when the nuclear power plants are decommissioned and shut down. That ‘plan’, like all the rest, is subject to Change™, depending on how the winds are blowing in Washington and with the electorate at any given time. BTW, from my cite above: > [@](#): > > In October 1976, fear of nuclear weapons proliferation (especially after India demonstrated nuclear weapons capabilities using reprocessing technology) led President Gerald Ford to issue a Presidential directive to indefinitely suspend the commercial reprocessing and recycling of plutonium in the U.S. On April 7, 1977 , President Jimmy Carter banned the reprocessing of commercial reactor spent nuclear fuel. The key issue driving this policy was the serious threat of nuclear weapons proliferation by diversion of plutonium from the civilian fuel cycle, and to encourage other nations to follow the USA lead.[5] . After that, only countries that already had large investments in reprocessing infrastructure continued to reprocess spent nuclear fuel. President Reagan lifted the ban in 1981, but did not provide the substantial subsidy that would have been necessary to start up commercial reprocessing.[6] See, they DID plan to reprocess…but they didn’t get the funding to do so. And, the thing is, civilian organization couldn’t be the ones to do the reprocessing, since, you know, the by product was weapons grade material that could be used for those atomic bomb things you might have heard of(??). They go _boom!_ and all. After that got the kibosh they started talking about a managed, centralized long term storage…and they started studying and surveying for various places to put the stuff. They settled on 3 final proposed sites, and chose Yucca Mountain (again, you should perhaps look it up). And after over a decade of fucking around and billions, the anti-nukes finally managed to kill it off. WOHOO! The bad guys won! Feel proud. So, now we are back to the default ‘plan’. > [@](#): > > Making the government take the waste, bury it under a mountain, and guard it for the rest of eternity is the sweetheart deal the nuke industry got away with, and that’s the government’s plan. The nuke industry doesn’t have a plan, and are content to let thousands and thousands (millions by now?) tons of nuclear material pile up on-site, at hundreds of sites around densely populated areas around the US, waiting for something we call “an accident” to happen. They do happen, you know. Nobody is MAKING the government do this. :smack: Where do you get this bullshit from? > [@](#): > > Oh, and I’m pretty sure you were the first one to non-sarcastically refer to anti-nuke people as neo-Luddites and moonbats with their “panties in a twist,” over, “evil nuclear energy,” way back on page 1 of this thread. Actually, ‘moonbats’ is a trademark of the 'luci corporation…all rights reserved. I can’t take credit for that one. I did say that anti-nukes (in general) were ‘neo-Luddites’…if you think I used that inappropriately then, by all means, inform a Mod so they can spank me. I took exception to FXM’s comment not because he was obviously calling me, directly, a ‘moonbat’, but because of the fact that 5 seconds of Googling would have shown him how ridiculous his post was. If you are going to call someone a ‘moonbat’ then, for the gods sake, at least do some basic research so you don’t look like a fool! Sheesh. -XT ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2011, 2:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/still-support-nuke-power-plants/574647/1386 "2011-06-12T02:31:06Z")
[QUOTE=tomndebb] xtisme, do not call Elucidator a moonbat in this forum. [/QUOTE] My apologies. It was supposed to be a joke, riffing off of one of 'luci’s favorite terms. But I shouldn’t have said that. Won’t happen again outside of the Pit. (FTR, I don’t think 'luci is a ‘moonbat’…nor have I ever thought that) -XT ---
**Author:** ![FXMastermind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fxmastermind/32/7289_2.png) [@FXMastermind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FXMastermind)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2011, 2:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/still-support-nuke-power-plants/574647/1387 "2011-06-12T02:32:28Z")
I would agree it’s quite ridiculous to use insults to try and make a point. Something I noticed was happening here. Mods, I apologize and will refrain from the insipid practice of demonizing those who don’t agree with my views, insulting everyone with blanket statements and otherwise alluding that my fellow posters are of less than normal intelligence. The point has now been made, and such idiotic methods no longer would benefit anyone. Certainly you can grant me the small amusement that mirroring the behaviors rather than reporting them brought. ---
**Author:** ![FXMastermind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fxmastermind/32/7289_2.png) [@FXMastermind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FXMastermind)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2011, 2:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/still-support-nuke-power-plants/574647/1388 "2011-06-12T02:37:01Z")
It’s funny, while I strongly object to nuclear reactors located near population centers, and violently object to the storage methods, as well as the lack of long term methods of storing and safeguarding radioactive materials, I still support the naval reactors, which of all things use plutonium as fuel. The plans to use such reactors as local power sources is attractive, from a non polluting viewpoint. The problem is, even a buried sealed plutonium reactor is such an attractive thing to anyone who wants the plutonium for less altruistic goals, it means you have to spend so damn much money guarding them, protecting them, and otherwise being damn sure nobody can do anything to them, it’s just not cost effective. ---
**Author:** ![levdrakon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/49beb7/32.png) [@levdrakon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/levdrakon)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2011, 2:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/still-support-nuke-power-plants/574647/1389 "2011-06-12T02:39:53Z")
> [@xtisme](#): > > And they had figured out how to reprocess waste in 1949. From [Wiki](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reprocessing): In other words, you don’t have a cite that reprocessing was ever the original plan for doing anything with nuclear waste other than making more nuclear weapons out of it, and no plans at all for long-term storage. Got it. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2011, 2:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/still-support-nuke-power-plants/574647/1390 "2011-06-12T02:44:19Z")
[QUOTE=levdrakon] In other words, you don’t have a cite that reprocessing was ever the original plan for doing anything with nuclear waste other than making more nuclear weapons out of it, and no plans at all for long-term storage. Got it. [/QUOTE] IOW, you didn’t read what I wrote, didn’t read the cite, didn’t follow the argument, and you want to ignore the fact that they spent billions on ANOTHER alternative that eventually got put down by the anti-nuclear movement. Yeah…given all of that, you definitely ‘got it’. 😛 -XT ---
**Author:** ![levdrakon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/49beb7/32.png) [@levdrakon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/levdrakon)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2011, 2:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/still-support-nuke-power-plants/574647/1391 "2011-06-12T02:55:28Z")
> [@xtisme](#): > > IOW, you didn’t read what I wrote, didn’t read the cite, didn’t follow the argument, and you want to ignore the fact that they spent billions on ANOTHER alternative that eventually got put down by the anti-nuclear movement. Yeah…given all of that, you definitely ‘got it’. 😛 > > -XT So the nuclear industry does not have a plan for its thousands and thousands of tons of nuclear weapons material er, I mean “waste” it produces every year other than storing it on-site, in densely populated areas, and they never had any other plan other than, “something will work out before it’s a problem” and now it’s a huge and ever-growing problem. Why do you think all that fuel is sitting in pools at Fukushima, leaking and polluting the environment and costing what now, $250 billion, because Japan reprocesses? How is that working out for them? ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2011, 3:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/still-support-nuke-power-plants/574647/1392 "2011-06-12T03:05:47Z")
[QUOTE=levdrakon] So the nuclear industry does not have a plan for its thousands and thousands of tons of nuclear weapons material er, I mean “waste” it produces every year other than storing it on-site, in densely populated areas, and they never had any other plan other than, “something will work out before it’s a problem” and now it’s a huge and ever-growing problem. [/QUOTE] Today? Yeah, that’s basically it. Hope the problem goes away, or that in the future the political climate changes, or the anti-nukes finally die off, or that they can feed it to the magic ponies. Pretty stupid, no? You can think the anti-nukes for this. Yucca Mountain SHOULD have been done a decade ago, and the waste should be being deposited there from all over the country, where it could be monitored, secured and guarded. Sadly, that project was killed, after we spent billions on it. As I said, the bad guys won. Feel proud. > [@](#): > > Why do you think all that fuel is sitting in pools at Fukushima, leaking and polluting the environment and costing what now, $250 billion, because Japan reprocesses? How is that working out for them? Well, AFAIK, the spent fuel pools aren’t the major contributor to the nuclear material that’s leaking out into the environment (due to the plant being hit by the worst earthquake and tsunami that’s hit that area in several centuries)…and the $250 billion is simply an estimate of what it MIGHT cost, over the lifetime of this problem (and only a fraction of what the entire disaster is going to cost the Japanese both in immediate economic and recovery terms, and in the long term)…and the Japanese don’t reprocess fuel, since they definitely do NOT want weapons grade material to build bombs of their own. I’d say that, based on the fact that in the entire history of nuclear power in Japan that they have had one major disaster that seems to be pretty well contained, that overall it’s working out pretty well for them. What’s the death toll up to now due to radiation? Still at zero? How many died in the earthquakes and tsunami again? 10’s of thousands? -XT ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2011, 3:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/still-support-nuke-power-plants/574647/1393 "2011-06-12T03:26:58Z")
> [@xtisme](#): > > No one knows what a carbon cap and trade tax might do, since it hasn’t been fully implemented. Regardless, I wasn’t talking about a carbon cap and trade tax…I was responding to the point that nuclear energy companies aren’t paying for all of the external costs (like for disposal of waste, or subsidies they are getting from the government tit, or health and environmental impacts, or final decommissioning of the plant…much of which ARE being paid by the nuclear power companies, though over long periods of time) by pointing out that coal power plants don’t either. If they DID have to pay for it (including the health impacts) are you seriously saying that energy wouldn’t cost more? Wouldn’t double in price? Or triple? Or more?.. Now now XT. You made a claim. Responding to > [@](#): > > we should monetize carbon emissions you said > [@](#): > > Do you WANT to pay double, triple or more for energy? Seems to me that you have an obligation to back that estimate up. Cap and trade is an attempt to monetize carbon and the estimate of its effect on power cost is not doubling or trebling it. Hardly. Best estimate is $175/average household per year. Yes, that is the best “estimate”, not something we “know” as it has not happened yet. But you say you didn’t mean that … you only meant coal prices would increase. Well as to that more narrow claim - would power from coal double or treble in cost if we fully monetized its real costs, including the costs on health and on climate change? Well perhaps you should be finding the cite to support claim of yours that rather than me, but [what the heck](http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf68.html), I know where to find it. (Look under “External Costs”.) Yeah, possibly so, if the information from the nuclear industry is to believed anyway. _If_ accurate those are its real costs and monetizing it so that it competes fairly, rather than by having its costs not made explicit, would allow other sources to compete without explicit subsidies. No, costs for power overall would not need to go up dramatically because more cost effective sources would win the competition instead of coal. Maybe nuclear, maybe renewables, maybe natural gas, maybe less dirty coal cofired with biomass, depending on the specifics of the locale and market dynamics of the time. The market could decide what is _actually_ least expensive in total real costs. Yes, fairly monetize the external (implicit) subsidies, stop the explicit ones (like loan guarantees for new nuclear plants, etc.) and let the battle commence. May the _true_ cheapest power sources win! ---
**Author:** ![levdrakon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/49beb7/32.png) [@levdrakon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/levdrakon)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2011, 4:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/still-support-nuke-power-plants/574647/1394 "2011-06-12T04:37:11Z")
> [@xtisme](#): > > Today? Yeah, that’s basically it. Hope the problem goes away, or that in the future the political climate changes, or the anti-nukes finally die off, or that they can feed it to the magic ponies. Pretty stupid, no? You can think the anti-nukes for this. Yucca Mountain SHOULD have been done a decade ago, and the waste should be being deposited there from all over the country, where it could be monitored, secured and guarded. Sadly, that project was killed, after we spent billions on it. As I said, the bad guys won. Feel proud. No, not today. The nuke industry never had a plan to begin with. Their policy was to put it off for the future to deal with and we are now that future and there is no plan to deal with the ever increasing waste and then they want to build even more subsidized nuke plants to produce even more waste. > [@](#): > > Well, AFAIK, the spent fuel pools aren’t the major contributor to the nuclear material that’s leaking out into the environment (due to the plant being hit by the worst earthquake and tsunami that’s hit that area in several centuries)…and the $250 billion is simply an estimate of what it MIGHT cost, over the lifetime of this problem (and only a fraction of what the entire disaster is going to cost the Japanese both in immediate economic and recovery terms, and in the long term)…and the Japanese don’t reprocess fuel, since they definitely do NOT want weapons grade material to build bombs of their own. So which is it? Does Japan reprocess or not? Do you read your own cites? Reprocessing was not the original plan nor has reprocessing been shown to be a better solution to long-term burial now. All it does is turn radioactive waste into even hotter more concentrated radioactive waste that has to cool for 150 years, vs. about 50 years now. It creates intermediate waste that needs to be safely isolated from the biosphere for 500 years. Don’t pretend reprocessing eliminates nuclear waste or something. Hardly. > [@](#): > > I’d say that, based on the fact that in the entire history of nuclear power in Japan that they have had one major disaster that seems to be pretty well contained, that overall it’s working out pretty well for them. What’s the death toll up to now due to radiation? Still at zero? How many died in the earthquakes and tsunami again? 10’s of thousands? > > -XT How big is the evacuation zone again? How long is that area going to be uninhabitable? How many people has this displaced into shelters? What has this done to the area’s agriculture and fishing industries and economy? But it’s all worth it and such a deal, 'cause people aren’t dying yet. ---
**Author:** ![FXMastermind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fxmastermind/32/7289_2.png) [@FXMastermind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FXMastermind)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2011, 4:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/still-support-nuke-power-plants/574647/1395 "2011-06-12T04:50:27Z")
The real question, which is hard to get an answer for, to the supporters of nuclear reactors for power generation, the real question is this. How many people have to be killed by a nuclear accident before you change your mind? Just give us a number, a real figure. How many kids dead from a nuclear accident, would it take to change your mind? Is there even a number? ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2011, 2:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/still-support-nuke-power-plants/574647/1396 "2011-06-12T14:31:31Z")
Not quite a supporter or a detractor, but I’ll take a stab at an answer. The number has to be more (or as much as) than the number that would be caused by generating power without that much nuclear. That’s why “the supporters” have a point to keep coming back round to coal. Until all coal plants have either been made in a way that their associated death rate is less than nuclear’s per TWy (or GWh, whatever) or have all been otherwise replaced by a safer means, such as a variety of renewables, that is the comparison. So long as every plant that stays in operation, replaces one that comes off line, or comes on line, is allowing that much less of the dirtiest most dangerous coal power to be in the mix, then that rate is the only fair figure. According to the nuclear industry source coal is at about 342 deaths/TWy for energy related accidents alone and nuclear is 8. (42 times more for coal.) [Another source](http://www-958.ibm.com/software/data/cognos/manyeyes/visualizations/2e5d4dcc4fb511e0ae0c000255111976/comments/2e70ae944fb511e0ae0c000255111976) comes up with 161 deaths total/TWh for coal and 0.04 for nuclear. (Over 4000 times more for coal.) [Yet another source](http://www.catf.us/coal/problems/power_plants/existing/) claims 13,000 premature deaths associated with coal in America alone, and that’s a huge improvement from their past numbers. By that rational metric nuclear, which provides half the power to the US that coal does, could result in over 6,000 American deaths a year and still be a positive if shutting it down means that many more coal plants would need to stay up and running. Do you still not yet get that concept? There is no realistic moderate term future path for renewables to completely replace coal on their own. Even adding in natural gas built up as much as possible won’t do it. To the degree that realistically they will not every nuclear plant running is allowing a next dirtiest coal plant to be shut down and saving lives. In that realistic circumstance every nuclear plant shut down, or aged out without having replacement nuclear capacity put on line, is forcing the next dirtiest coal plant to stay in operation, killing more every year, and that harm is much greater than the harm from nuclear, by orders of magnitude. So long as going nuclear means fewer deaths than not going nuclear I would say that safety is not a rational argument against it. ---
**Author:** ![FXMastermind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fxmastermind/32/7289_2.png) [@FXMastermind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FXMastermind)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2011, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/still-support-nuke-power-plants/574647/1397 "2011-06-12T15:01:09Z")
Thank you for you answer. I’m not clear what the number is, but you seem to be saying if nuclear accidents killed slightly less than the coal plants they prevent from running, you would till support nuclear. Is that right? ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2011, 3:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/still-support-nuke-power-plants/574647/1398 "2011-06-12T15:50:34Z")
Close enough. In terms of safety I am in favor of fewer being killed and it doesn’t matter to me if they are dead because of a nuclear accident that gets press or from the effects of coal that does not. They are just as dead. (I am not quite a supporter of nuclear however. I support allowing nuclear to compete fairly by adequately monetizing the GHGs and other implicit operational subsidies while eliminating explicit ones. I would expect nuclear to maintain a moderate role under such a circumstance and both renewables and natural gas to gain share more dramatically.) Do you have some reason to place a higher value on the lives lost from a nuclear cause than lives lost due to coal? How many people need to die in a plane crash before you’d no longer support air travel? How many children? Your question is like that. ---
**Author:** ![gonzomax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@gonzomax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzomax)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2011, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/still-support-nuke-power-plants/574647/1399 "2011-06-12T16:42:00Z")
Sixty Minutes did a program a few years back on the Yucca Mountain repository. The cost over runs were enormous. The welds on some the equipment were bad and a lot had to rebuilt. The build quality was not what the tax payer was paying for and safety demands.were not being met. Once we get get done with the fleecing of the tax payer and the mountain repository gets built, then phase two. We have to get the waste there. You don’t empty a pool and toss the fuel rods in the back of a flat bed. It will be expensive and dangerous to get hot waste to Yucca. It will be coming by road and rail from all over the country. I am sure pro nukers will guarantee no train or truck will fail or crash. Hell they might require military escort too. Nuke just has insurmountable ,ongoing problems that will not go away. It is an endless problem with no real solution. Then we have to guard it forever.It might be a nice terrorist target. Then of course, we have enough waste now to fill it immediately. So then we start the whole process over again. Where? ---
**Author:** ![levdrakon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/49beb7/32.png) [@levdrakon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/levdrakon)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2011, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/still-support-nuke-power-plants/574647/1400 "2011-06-12T19:18:04Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > Close enough. In terms of safety I am in favor of fewer being killed and it doesn’t matter to me if they are dead because of a nuclear accident that gets press or from the effects of coal that does not. They are just as dead. > > (I am not quite a supporter of nuclear however. I support allowing nuclear to compete fairly by adequately monetizing the GHGs and other implicit operational subsidies while eliminating explicit ones. I would expect nuclear to maintain a moderate role under such a circumstance and both renewables and natural gas to gain share more dramatically.) > > Do you have some reason to place a higher value on the lives lost from a nuclear cause than lives lost due to coal? > > How many people need to die in a plane crash before you’d no longer support air travel? How many children? Your question is like that. I don’t know. Except for small children, most people choose to fly and they’re okay with the odds. Besides, dying in a plane crash is easy. No, don’t try this at home, but seriously, dying in a plane crash is barnyard simple. Living with the consequences in terms of health, the environment and shockingly high financial cost of a nuclear accident/terrorist attack is hard. It’s damn hard. As far as the average lifespan being shortened slightly from air pollution or shortened slightly from mutation and/or cancer, I think I’ll opt for air pollution. It’s not the 60’s and 70’s anymore, and the air is pretty darn breathable most modern places. Take your vitamins everyday, watch your diet a little better, and get a little extra exercise and you’ll do far more good for your health, happiness and lifespan than air pollution takes away. Cancer and mutation? Not so much. Well, maybe some forms of cancer are somewhat preventable by a healthier lifestyle, but genetic mutations not so much. Like I said, dying is fairly easy. Life is harder. We don’t need the additional danger, expense and all-around hassle that is nuclear. Take the money wasted on nuclear and put it towards researching better renewable energy technologies and broaden and deepen the science of coping with global warming, 'cause it ain’t going away, regardless. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/still-support-nuke-power-plants/574647.md?page=69) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/still-support-nuke-power-plants/574647.md?page=71)