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Comment by taylorius | Hacker News Reader

"Meltdowns are the real fear, and rightfully so."

Just build the plants well, in a safe part of the world (no quakes, tidal waves etc), and have some well paid, high I.Q people running them. They'll be fine. Nuclear power is such a gift to humanity. As much power as we need, and comparatively little waste. But no, some people fear it, so we have to build endless bullshit windmills, and strip mine Africa for the elements required for solar panels (branded as "sustainable energy", though both just go into landfill when they reach the end of their life).

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> have some well paid, high I.Q people running them

Unfortunately even well-paid and high IQ people have been known to cut corners and take risks. Look at the space shuttle among many examples.

Yeah I mean, look at that article. High IQ people carrying around subcritical chunks of plutonium. But it’s OK mum, I put them in different pockets! Isn’t physics amazing!

What do you mean I picked up the wrong coat?

“Just build the plants well” is the civil engineering version of “No True Scotsman”.

I'm admittedly not a nuclear engineer - but I hear a great deal about how much modern nuclear plant design has advanced since the days of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, and that our modern designs would not be susceptible to such catastrophes. Assuming this is somewhat true (I am just assuming that) we are erroneously allowing the ghosts of those terrible old events to stop us from investing in modern, safe nuclear energy.

...or strip-mine Africa for Uranium, as France does?

And defining any operators of nuclear plants with serious accidents as low-IQ, as you imply, is very convenient - yet doesn't make any sense.

At least France get a decent amount of base load energy for the strip mined Uranium. And I'm not defining operators of nuclear plants with serious accidents as low IQ - my point is that there are lots of dangerous, complicated industrial plants that are run safely, and there is no reason that the same can't be true for a nuclear power station.

> strip mine Africa for the elements required for solar panels

We strip mine much more to get the freaking coal and oil and other fossil fuels - we consume them in billions of tons a year.

For sure. But that's a point in favour of Nuclear power, wouldn't you say?

Given that Iran is the world's 8th largest CO2 emitter, how many nuclear plants should they be allowed to build to counteract that?

As many as they can afford? or is Iran supposed to be scary bad country and prove nuclear is bad?

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