Nuclear power leaves a long and toxic legacy.
Mr Ruskell said: “There is nothing safe, secure or green about nuclear energy, and many people across Scotland will be dismayed and angry to hear that the Secretary of State is seeking to open a new reactor in Scotland.
“Aside from the brazen entitlement and the message this sends, it ignores that people in Scotland have long rejected nuclear energy. I hope that all progressive parties will unite in condemning this environment wrecking overreach.
“A new reactor would not only be unsafe, it would be extremely costly and would leave a toxic legacy for centuries. It would also distract from the vital work we need to do to boost clean, green and renewable energy.
“That is why I hope all progressive parties can rule out any return to nuclear power once Torness has been decommissioned.
“The Hinkley point shambles has exposed the UK government’s total inability to deliver nuclear programmes on budget or on time. We would be far better investing in the huge abundance of renewable resources that we already have here in Scotland.”
Nuclear plants are designed to withstand a passenger jet flying into them, as well as minor direct missile barrages.
And with modern reactors, they can’t really have Chernobyl-style meltdowns — if the cooling system fails, the fission stops by itself with no active involvement required.
I.e. you have to actively keep modern fission reactors going otherwise it stops on its own, as opposed to actively keep it cooled and safe, like the reactors of the 60s/70s.
Nuclear energy has, by a staggering margin, the lowest death toll of any form of energy generation per kW produced. And almost all of these come from Chernobyl, where 31 people died due to the explosion, then a further 46 died due to radiation poisoning from the cleanup.
By far the biggest issue with modern nuclear is the cost and them taking 7-12 years to deploy, as opposed to safety. SMRs are supposed to help with that aspect, but not enough have been rolled out to get a very good picture of that.
Really we have two choices, because renewables can’t provide 100% of our energy mix yet:
build out nuclear as a base energy load and massively decrease fossil fuels in the short term
ignore nuclear and temporarily build out more fossil fuel plants, hoping that planet-scale energy storage will become cheap and extremely ubiquitous in a very short timeframe.
The number of people that died on the spot, could be as low as you say. 77 people is far from being the death toll of the Chernobyl disaster, and that is taking into consideration the fatality numbers are disputed.
That green party estimate is so laughable I’m not even going to comment on it further.
The WHO states it could be up to 4,000 in the long term, but may be substantially lower. The UN Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation concluded that even this figure is far too high.
Harvard university says that 8.7 million people die from greenhouse gas emissions each year. And that doesn’t even account for direct accidents from generation and coal/gas extraction. Having a nuclear base load would save millions of lives, and do a huge amount to curb fossil fuel emissions. But “greens” want us to keep burning fossil fuels.
I find it difficult to follow your reasoning. Initially you said 77 people died from the Chernobyl disaster.
Now you have opinions related to the different estimations but talk about thousands of people, without retracting your previous position.
77 people died directly. Up to 4000 (although that’s a very high estimate) may die in the long term.
Millions die from fossil fuel emissions each year.
It’s not hard to follow at all. You want the death toll to increase, I don’t.
At that point i already stopped reading since it emphazises that you got no clue.
Yes the fission stops. But the fuel still have to be actively cooled for month or years, because it still produces a lot of heat:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decay_heat
Guess what happened in Fukushima. The reactors shutted down successfully, but the power supply for the cooling failed due to the flooding.
You rely on the official Russian death tolls for Chernobyl? Are you serious?
No I rely on the UN numbers.
This hits the nail on the head! It’s rare to see a sane and realistic take on nuclear online.
You find “sane and realistic” to claim that 77 people died due to the Chernobyl accident?
It appears to be a widely quoted official figure and have no insight on if it is realistic. I am also aware that this does not consider the considerable environmental impact of the disaster, nor the economic cost to clean up the mess.
My comment was more relating to the facts about the current state of renewables.
The 2 options this comments OP provides at the end are what I mostly agree on, where we either go 0 carbon now and accept nuclear (with its flaws) as base load, or continue with carbon intensive tech as base load and continue to build out renewables on top.
That’s some wild take on Soviet propaganda.
Soviet propaganda? What the hell are you on about?
That’s not soviet propaganda though. That’s UN numbers.
Maybe if you weren’t such a fucking moron you’d be able to look into it yourself.
lol It’s the official numbers provided by the SU. But your ad hominem projection really shows that you don’t have any argument in this anyway. Fucking clown.
And it’s the numbers the UN have verified. Moron.
You’re honestly so fucking stupid. Keep gobbling fossil fuel industry cock, dipshit.
Your insults & attacks just underline your lack of understanding of politics and the castrated nature of the UN. But keep on spewing bullshit propaganda for terrorist states.