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this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2023
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Asklemmy
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Living near a nuclear plant.
Little do they know, that they get more than 50x more radiation effect from the natural surroundings and the rocks in earth than from the nuclear plant 🤭 And our body is really capable of dealing with that since the beginning of our evolution (DNA repairs and co).
https://pages.vassar.edu/ltt/files/2011/04/Screen-shot-2011-04-21-at-1.18.09-AM1.png
here is a chart showing radiation intensities for various sources of radiation
Living near a coal plant, on the other hand, is really, REALLY bad for you.
Woah, this one is actually surprising to me. Even though I am in favour of nuclear power, I do have some fear of living in close proximity of such plants, especially seeing how even the clothing used in the facility is mixed into the barrels of radioactive wastes.
Would you rather the clothing get washed at your local cleaners? Or washed on-site and the water drained into the city sewers?
Seems like a sensible precaution
Yeah, you are correct. It is just that it never occurred to me how careful they take their operations to be. That is why I assumed they would even disallow residential buildings to be built close to them.
Not all the clothing anyone wears in a plant. Clothing special for contamination areas. They also do scans at thresholds and anything you carry with you that gets contaminated is confiscated. Nuclear plants genuinely have a level of safety in the us that is pretty hard to comprehend, it's all done out of an abundance of caution more than a genuine need for it. Not quite security theater, just a very high degree of security.
I remember reading about a guy who worked at a nuclear plant that was tripping their radiation detectors on his way into work but not on his way out at the end of his shift. Turned out he had a radon problem in his home that needed to be addressed.
generally, if in doubt, do the math
it's not the background radiation that worries people, it's the risk of a Fukushima-type incident.
Ehhhh, those are the ancient light water designs. Fuck light water, even though it's actually pretty safe. Advanced sodium reactors are where it's at. One loop is molten salt and nuclear fuel. The salt makes it less dense so it can't melt down like a traditional reactor. A second loop of salt is what steals heat from the fuel, which loops around to a water boiler further away. In essence, it's airgapped. While corrosion can be an issue, the lack of water in the salt loops helps a ton.
Solar towers with molten salt generators also work in the same way. The salts are molten and continue pumping out power for 12 hours after the sun has set, which makes them an excellent source of power for cities :)
I'd live next to a nuclear plant any day of the week! Especially if the homes are less expensive because of it :D
While the modern technology is relatively safe, it’s not a technical issue with the reactor design. It’s a trust issue with the humans, particularly for-profit companies, that operate it.
And even then, despite the catastrophe it was, it only had 1 death attributed to it.
TIL. That's a good point. 20k deaths due to the earthquake but only 1 due to the power plant itself.
While true when everything works, people don’t want to live near a nuclear power plant because sometimes there are accidents. They are rare, but severe when they happen. Also because nobody wants to live in sight of one, it affects how easy it is to sell land and property.
The probability of such accidents are waaaay to overestimated by the general population. Take a look at this: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-production-per-twh
it shows the deaths per kWh for various sources of energy. Nuclear power is really as safe as wind and solar. Nuclear power is sooooo safe honestly. But coal? We have global climate change, dirty air, smog, .... and radioactive materials in the atmosphere due to the coal 😅 Fun fact: Way more radioactive materials are spewed into the atmosphere due to burning coal than is actually by nuclear power plants.
The human emotions are waaaay too inaccurate in this situation here
Not disagreeing. We need more nuclear. Just saying people are scared of a major event than the constant low grade radiation.
I love that chart and I've posted it in several discussions about the safety of nuclear. A lot of people have weirdly volatile reactions to it though. It's really hard for them to believe that nuclear is on par with renewables.
I read somewhere that suggested that background radiation is actually (ever so) slightly lower near a nuclear plant, because all the shielding effectively casts a 'shadow' in the background.