talking about miopic

http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-pro...

:(

fearmongering works wonder against an uneducated population.

Yep. What really astounds me is that, when I was younger I used to associated with a lot of self-proclaimed environmentalists, the sort of people who would go to anti-<whatever> protests. They were strongly against nuclear.

Ah the irony! It is the environmentalists themselves who are directly to blame for the situation we find ourselves in now. We could have relatively-carbon-free electricity today if they had supported nuclear power.

But, putting my tin-foil hat on for a minute, I am lead to believe that the anti-nuclear movement is actually perpetuated by the fossil-fuel industry. Or maybe my B12 dependant psychosis is playing up again.

Absolutely. We Greens (I am a loyal Australian Greens voter) scoff and roll our collective superior eyes at the stupid Libs and their proven boken models and then we demonise the one solution we have and have had for 60 years, and I wonder if we are so different from those we despise.

I used to vote for the Australian Greens, until I had the realisation I wrote about above.

Now I'm not sure what to do. At this point in time I believe drawing penises on the ballot paper provides the best value.

Nuclear plants in normal use release less radionuclides into the environment than coal. But is this still the case with malfunction?

It is fairly common that huge amounts get released. E.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascó_Nuclear_Power_Plant

How about Fukushima and Chernobyl. Do you have numbers to back up your claim?

As a sibling comment pointed out, you may have selected a poor example there.

However, you raise a good point with the Fukushima and Chernobyl examples. It's not hard to imagine that if we had, globally, built nuclear power plants as enthusiastically as we have coal power plants, there would likely have been a lot more serious incidents. It's a sobering thought for my usually rose-tinted view of nuclear.

While I could probably have found a more dramatic reference, this one[1] is a bit more calm saying that the risks of adverse health affects from radiation exposure from coal vs nuclear are, in both cases, very slim. It would seem, then, that coal would have other negative health affects before the radiation exposure aspect became a problem. You have to live extraordinarily close to either a coal or nuclear plant to have higher than background radiation exposure from either, under normal operating conditions.

1. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-...

Coal have unavoidable casualties in human health and environmental degradation built into normal operations. Nuclear much less so, so while I also wear those specs, I still believe the argument for Nuclear is sound.

Another thing I like to point out is how much of a wildlife haven Chernobyl is compared to any moderate city. The fear that keeps the humans away, has transformed a "safe" dump into a paradise.

"Huge amount" which is not even considered a serious incident?