Isn't that because of regulation (which was put in place in part because the population demanded it)?
And not to forget: some things are freakishly dangerous. For example, spent fuel rods provide deadly amounts of radiation in basically no time to people around them.
You know what's deadly in a nuclear plant? The industrial machinery, the heavy plates of metal, the rotating devices at high speed, the trucks crossing the plant to ship heavy stuff, the dears crossing in front of the cars of the night shift workers.
All of this kill and maim workers from time to time, like in every factory in the world. But you don't care about them. You just care about fantasies of fluorescent green stuff killing people with deadly invisible radiation, even though it barely ever happened in the real world (and it's not fluorescent green either).
And, yes, it tends to glow blue, not green.
But you are not seriously alleging that radiation from spent fuel rods isn't deadly, do you?
No, it doesn't glow at all. Water under irradiation do glow (Cherenkov effect), but the rods themselves don't glow.
> But you are not seriously alleging that radiation from spent fuel rods isn't deadly, do you?
They aren't. They would be very deadly if they were out of water with people around, but it doesn't happen under any circumstances, so the risk you're talking about doesn't exist. It is as nonsensical as saying wind turbines are deadly because “if you got hit by a rotating wing you'd be cut in half”.
Even when transported after storage in water they do emit copious quantities of radiation, hence the rather cumbersome transport "cases". You might want to familiarize yourself with the dangers during the lifeycle.
Btw., people die from wind turbine blades in accidents (when they break, for example).
Perhaps you might want to work in a reactor for a bit to get more of a feel for the dangers and the many things done to contain radiation related risks (instead of just shouting how it is all a non-issue).
True, but it's a thousand time less luminous, and actually it's still not the rod that glows.
> You might want to familiarize yourself with the dangers during the lifeycle.
In fact, I studied nuclear engineering before deciding to do computer science. There I met a bunch of good friend who works a several place of the nuclear supply chain, and also my wife who's now working at the plant 8km away from were we now live. So I'm very, very familiar with nuclear stuff.
> Perhaps you might want to work in a reactor for a bit to get more of a feel for the danger
Fortunately, nobody works “in a reactor”, as it would be indeed by dangerous (300°C and 155bar isn't compatible with human life, without even talking about the radiation levels ;).
But I take your point that you never worked in the field.
Granted, the pressure and temperature are technology dependent, but it's never human suitable conditions in any case. And that's no sophism, the problem with your reasoning is that you call something “deadly” where it is in fact never in contact of a human in the first place, and could never be.
> It is also not the water that glows as such
What do you think glows? It's literally water molecules that glows from de-exitation.
> take your point that you never worked in the field.
Sure, but neither did you, and your vision of nuclear is much less based on reality than it should to have a discussion on the topic.
And, unlike you, I have worked there.
You might want to look up how Cherenkov radiation works, btw. - it's depolarization.
Anyway, it is good that you are kept away from nuclear technology given your lax and aggressive attitude towards risks there (anyone thinking accidentsare impossible has no place there). Good choice.
Yes, from afar, at CEA but I don't think anyone was working inside it.
> You might want to look up how Cherenkov radiation works, btw. - it's depolarization.
Would you mind expanding? Because Wikipedia seem to agrees with what I remembered:
The charged particle excites the molecules in the polarizable medium and on returning to their ground state, the molecules re-emit the energy given to them to achieve excitation as photons.
> Anyway, it is good that you are kept away from nuclear technology given your lax and aggressive attitude towards risks there (anyone thinking accidentsare impossible has no place there). Good choice.
Well, I see you're angry, but that's kind of a funny thing to say to someone who's started this very thread by defending safety regulation in the first place[1].
FYI There's a big difference between having a “lax attitude towards risks ” or “thinking accidents are impossible” and noting that you're completely making up risks that simply don't exist like “spent fuel rods provide deadly amounts of radiation in basically no time to people around them”. If you have people “around” spent fuel rods in the open air, you have a serious organizational problem: what are you trying to do in the first place?! (researchers in many fields are known to be completely oblivious to any kind safety measures, so maybe that's the kind of thing you did in your lab, but in an industrial setting I doubt anyone would have be doing that after at least the 70s).
The special risks with nuclear have nothing to do with the deadliness of things like hot fuel rods, and much more about broad environmental impact with moderate increase in cancer rate spread over a big populations (be them workers in contaminated areas or general population in the wide place around an accident). This is a big topic. But when it comes to immediate death risks on a nuclear plant, the radiations coming from radionuclide simply isn't one of them.
[1]: see also this comment in a sibling thread for another even more explicit example https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37935638
In many other countries in Europe it was because of the strong public backlash against nuclear after Chernobyl , and because of the oil glut in the 80s which made fossil fuel affordable again for decades.