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8Splendiferous8 t1_ise1vn9 wrote

Reply to comment by Sumsar01 in Ethics of Nuclear Energy in Times of Climate Change: Escaping the Collective Action Problem by CartesianClosedCat

I'm also a sorta physicist (if you consider a physics masters student a physicist.) That could be due to difficulty in isolating variables. But assuming it's true, would it continue to be safe if we assumed occasional nuclear disasters every few years if we scaled up during an era of more frequent natural disasters?

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Sumsar01 t1_isfc695 wrote

Nuclear power is currently the second safest energy scource based on death per joule. Caol kills about 15 times as many people every years as nuclear has done ever. Which thus leaves a pretty big margin to what we deem acceptable.

Nuclear disasters are pretty rare. There is chernobyl which was many mismanagement but besides that what happened was a explosion of the 300+ degrees hot steam. In never nuclear plant designs the water is emptied out if power is cut and thus such a thing could not happen.

Then we have fukushima. Besides it maybe not being to smart building a nuclear powerplant in the most active earthquake zone might not be to smart. Currently total death from radiation is 0 and no increase in cancer has been measured.

The leak of radioactive waste has also been deemed harmless. Probably mainly because water is pretty good at absorbing radiation, so it doesnt matter much to the fish.

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8Splendiferous8 t1_isfdacu wrote

This is very informative. Thank you for taking the time to explain it.

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Sumsar01 t1_isfgcz8 wrote

There is probably plenty of more details but i would have to provide real data and lecture notes. But what I can say is that all my nuclear physics professors where huge proponents for nuclear power and talked a lot about it in both the nuclear physics courses l took.

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8Splendiferous8 t1_isfivgk wrote

Same with mine. Just it was uncomfortable to ask certain genuine questions I didn't know the answer to, lest I be treated like I have a tinfoil hat. Nuclear was one of my least favorite subjects, so there were other more pressing questions to focus on for the exam.

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Sumsar01 t1_isfj3ji wrote

Well nuclear physics is kind of a everything goes meeting put because we cant efficiently compute QCD, so it is pretty wild.

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8Splendiferous8 t1_isfjmoo wrote

Yeah. It was a lot of, "Okay, we don't have any first principles for you, but here's the function that seems to be describing what's going on. Just memorize it." And there were so many patterns, and patterns of patterns to memorize. And it just wasn't fun or interesting to me at all, haha.

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Sumsar01 t1_isfotxx wrote

I read the russian lecture book for the exams of the seconds course. I like my books with a bit more math and a bit less hand wavy, but it helped a lot.

The first course was a mess.

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8Splendiferous8 t1_isfvez6 wrote

Yeah, I only took a single survey course and still hated it. I'll stick to E+M and quantum...those are more straightforward.

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