The hysteria over this is caused by the anti-nuclear people and groups trying to use this as a case against nuclear power, blowing everything out of proportion before any facts are known.
I think a few articles calling for calm balances the shrieking cries of "meltdown imminent".
Nuclear power produces waste that is dangerous for thousands of years. How can anyone say, with a straight face, that they have a plan for that? All of us will be dead and every government in the world will have changed. Our current languages won't be spoken anymore. The location of the waste deposits will likely be forgotten. There is absolutely no way to predict what will happen to the waste, and it seems awfully selfish to foist that kind of problem on people in the future to solve our very short-term energy needs.
If there is a form of nuclear power that completely expends its fuel to the point where its demonstrably not dangerous TODAY, or if we can launch the waste into the sun, I'm all for it. But lets not pretend we can control the damage from things that will persist for thousands of years after we're dead.
Apples and oranges.
Although there is a lot more net radiation coming from all the fly ash we produce that there is from our nuclear reactors, the EPA doesn't bother to treat fly ash as hazardous waste, so most people don't think it's scary. This means we already have a bunch of radioactive waste dumped into our landfills without much oversight at all.
While nuclear waste is very dangerous, there isn't a whole lot of it, and it's quite safe when it's stored properly in a radiation-sealed container. It doesn't end up in our landfills, or our air supply. It's a point source of pollution, which makes it much easier to take care of, and it is much nicer to leave future generations some concentrated, shielded radioactive waste in remote areas than to leave them tons of low-level waste in their water supply.
I'm an advocate of solar energy, and nuclear power is a hell of a lot less safe than I'd like. But as long as we're burning coal, we should be worried more about the risks of that, even though they may be less scary-seeming, because they truly are more dangerous.
I don't understand how someone can make such a bold denouncement about something as crucial the system that keeps us alive...
Much of the hardcore environmental movement is using it as a substitute for religion, except in an even more insane way.
There were many provisions for crop failure, including crop variety, raising animals, preserving food, fishing and trading with luckier regions. Like today.
Pro-agrarian looking to set the record straight. I'm also in favor of nuclear power!
But you are right about Three-Mile Island.
I myself thought just that until recently after investigating it.
What makes nuclear power unsafe is human error more than technical failure. That's the aspect the naive technocrats (like the guy who wrote this article) always ignore.
"But other reputable scientists researching the most radiation-contaminated areas of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine are not convinced. The International Agency for Research on Cancer, another UN agency, predicts 16,000 deaths from Chernobyl; an assessment by the Russian academy of sciences says there have been 60,000 deaths so far in Russia and an estimated 140,000 in Ukraine and Belarus.
Meanwhile, the Belarus national academy of sciences estimates 93,000 deaths so far and 270,000 cancers, and the Ukrainian national commission for radiation protection calculates 500,000 deaths so far."
"Models predict that by 2065 about 16,000 (95% UI 3,400–72,000) cases of thyroid cancer and 25,000 (95% UI 11,000–59,000) cases of other cancers may be expected due to radiation from the accident, whereas several hundred million cancer cases are expected from other causes. Although these estimates are subject to considerable uncertainty, they provide an indication of the order of magnitude of the possible impact of the Chernobyl accident. It is unlikely that the cancer burden from the largest radiological accident to date could be detected by monitoring national cancer statistics. Indeed, results of analyses of time trends in cancer incidence and mortality in Europe do not, at present, indicate any increase in cancer rates—other than of thyroid cancer in the most contaminated regions—that can be clearly attributed to radiation from the Chernobyl accident."
He's not right about TMI, either. The results of TMI are debated to this day with some studies claiming minimal or no adverse health affects and some studies claiming significant adverse health affects.
NYT, Guardian, Spiegel, Mother Jones, The Atlantic (every online publication there is), every news TV channel (except Al Jazeera). Greenpeace are all over the place with their campaigning.
The hysteria isn't imminent - it's happening right now. If people don't fight the campaign to stop nuclear energy, the factoids are going to dominate the discourse in many years to come.
In a way, I see this event as an opportunity. It's just been demonstrated that Nuclear Energy is safe enough (at least, that's how I see things) but I still believe we deserve greener energies.
I don't mean to be rude, but this isn't a playground. Solar power will not get a complex if nuclear is chosen instead. Our way of life depends on energy, and just hoping other sources will work out seems naive at best.
I think we'll run out of economically extractable ore deposits of nuclear fuels a little before Sol goes supernova. Perhaps that's it.
Also, unless he edited, he said that Nuclear was "safe enough" not that it was the best option. Even if it were the best primary option I wouldn't want to rely on it exclusively; personally I consider that "renewable" sources are better. Fusion would appear to be the best if we can get it to work effectively but I'd still look to diversify to some extent.
I don't think it's fair to characterize the opposition's arguments so flippantly (as "factoids"). I'm far from an opponent of nuclear energy, but there are a lot of damned good reasons to be contemplative about a system where one bad day can injure thousands of people, and simultaneously make thousands of square miles of land unfit for human habitation for hundreds of years.
We (humans) seem to have a remarkably bad ability to correctly estimate the likelihood of "improbable" events. When that unfortunate trait crosses with the potential for out-sized, long-term impacts on the environment, it's right to be wary. It isn't totally irrational to argue that an extremely conservative position on risk is appropriate in that situation.
Lying for the sake of truth is a bad idea.
As it stands, a meltdown is a definite possibility (not necessarily probable.) Perhaps a better stratergy would be to say "It might meltdown. In which case the reactor will be ruined, but no radioactivity will be released. Or the primary vessel might be damaged, in which case this would be a Chenobyl style disaster, except we have already evacuated the area as a precaution, so the estimated death toll would be 10 (or 100 or whatever.)"
I'd say people fear what they don't understand; having lots of people, especially scientists and politicians, say "there's nothing to worry about" only increases peoples' worry – especially when bits of the plant keep exploding.
This isn't lying, it's accurate according to the information that we have acquired over the last 60 years on the use of nuclear technology. Should these predictions turn out to be incorrect then the information we have needs to be updated. I'm hoping it turns out well, there are of course no guarantees but the chances of things going even further south are low.
It's an ongoing meltdown.