this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2024
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[–] [email protected] 149 points 1 month ago (20 children)
[–] [email protected] 58 points 1 month ago (19 children)

Mr Musk was talking about nuclear power with the former president when he said people have an unfounded fear of nuclear electricity generation. It is the “safest form of electricity generation”, he argued.

“People were asking me in California, are you worried about a nuclear cloud coming from Japan? I am like no, that's crazy. It is actually, it is not even dangerous in Fukushima. I flew there and ate locally grown vegetables on TV to prove it," he said during the interview on his social media platform X on Monday.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 month ago

Although he is far from a great person and his comparison with Hiroshima and Nagasaki is at best tactless and a downplay of a humanitarian catastrophe caused by the US, he got a point there…

Nuclear energy is by far the cleanest and one of the safest forms of energy generation. We have a problem with the spend fuel, but that is mostly due to the „not in my backyard“-Attitude and outdated informations regarding long term storage. Nuclear radiation is scary but handling it in a responsible way is much safer than perceived. On the other hand, the huge number of respiratory diseases and accompanied deaths are much more diffuse and not directly attributed by the public to fossile fuels. I think „Kurzgesagt“ has a really good video series covering nuclear energy.

It is a little sad that with all the necessary (and important) regulations the building process of a nuclear power plant is really long and public support (at least in Germany) is non existent. It could have covered our butts during the transition from fossile fuels to renewables.

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