Young climate activist tells Greenpeace to drop ‘old-fashioned’ anti-nuclear stance

sv1sjp@lemmy.world to World News@lemmy.world – 2185 points –
Young climate activist tells Greenpeace to drop ‘old-fashioned’ anti-nuclear stance
theguardian.com
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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kashiwazaki-Kariwa_Nuclear_Power_Plant

the largest fission plant was literally working 5 years after construction started

fission plants are just more expensive now because we don't make enough of them.

I guess safety standards changed but even wind power kills more people per watt than fission so ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

Nuclear could've easily worked if people didn't go full nimby in the past few decades

Sorry. How does wind power kill anyone? Okay, every once in a while you hear about a technician falling off a windmill, but are there any fatalities in regard to the effects of wind power?

Fewer people die to nuclear than wind power.

deaths per TWh https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-production-per-twh

Nuclear is scary because you hear about it, not because it is actually deadly.

"in 2011 coal produced about 180 billion kWhrs in England with about 3,000 related deaths. Nuclear energy produced over 90 billion kWhrs in England with no deaths. In that same year, America produced about 800 billion kWhrs from nuclear with no deaths."

The only two major nuclear-related death incidents were Chernobyl and Fukushima. But Fukushima only killed one person, the rest were killed by the tsunami and being relocated from the exclusion zone. But many people blame the Japanese government for fucking up the evacuations, while other people criticize the government for actually evacuating people.

In any case, those 2,300 Japanese people were not killed by the actual nuclear incident, they were killed because they were very old and could not adapt to moving into a new apartment that's a government provided them. Chernobyl is believed to have killed about 500 people.

I should also mention that the Fukushima exclusion zone has largely been lifted, and many people have moved back home.

So it isn't wind at all, but lacking safety standards.

Lacking safety standards specific to the use case of wind turbines. For example, there was a fire during installation and someone jumped to their deaths to get away. They had quick decent harnesses but couldn't use them because of the location of the fire.

And? Those safety standards for constructing and maintaining wind turbines can be increased just as much as the safety standards for any other type of heavy labor. For example by mandating that wind turbines must have fire suppression systems installed or that wworkers must be able to rapel on the outside of the wind turbine.

Makes you wonder if the same thing couldn't be done for nuclear plants!

Okay, so increase those safety standards on wind then get back to us with price per kilowatt and project lead times.

Got me there, bud! Rapelling gear surely will make wind turbines unprofitable! Checkmate renewables!