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Comment by DrBazza | Hacker News Reader

> they _really_ hate nuclear

The general public don't understand nuclear. And we can thank CND, Greenpeace, and the mainstream press of the 60s onwards for regurgitating their misinformation and poor science as fact.

Modern designs are effectively melt-down proof. Nuclear waste storage is also hilariously funny. People understand not to tread on a railway line or get electrocuted and die, but somehow have a problem with burying waste at the bottom of a sealed mine in a geologically safe area many miles from the nearest village or town (never a city) in containers that have been tested to literal destruction is somehow a problem.

The sad irony is these eco-people's opposition to nuclear for decades has resulted in gigatons of CO2 from coal/oil/gas power stations.

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People have a problem with spent fuels sitting in pools for decades, as happens in Sellafield.

"Originally constructed in the 1940s, 50s and 60s these facilities - two ponds and two concrete silos - no longer meet the safety requirements that are required today and present some of the most difficult decommissioning challenges - not just in the UK - but in the world."

The industry does not have a good reputation, and it only has itself to blame for that.

https://www.onr.org.uk/our-work/what-we-regulate/sellafield-...

The opposition to nuclear waste hazards isn't so much about "now" as about the far future. Hot alpha emitters which stay that way for 2K, 10K, 100K years.

Granted, there's other stuff in deep mines and mountains whose chemical toxicity and carcinogenicity is perhaps the equal of plutonium's radioactivity (lead, asbestos, mercury) and whose harms are similarly subtle and hard for unsophisticated people to detect, but as an environmental pollutant it's worse if it gets out due to sheer persistency.

And also granted, where long-term views are a concern, CO2 is going to continue to screw things up for at least 200 years, maybe not 2000.

But most of the eco-folk have argued for energy efficiency, for not treating the planet like something we can just do whatever we want to. Unfortunately the trend is in the other direction, with capitalism demanding endless growth even when the gains are negligible. So people buy trucks even when the marginal utility over a compact car with 25% of the energy consumption is wafer-thin, and fly long-haul for almost no advantage over a short-haul trip.

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