this post was submitted on 05 Mar 2024
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Unpopular Opinion

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 14 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I am 100% supportive of nuclear and still disagree with OP. Not supporting nuclear does NOT automatically mean you are not an environmentalist. That is just beyond stupid to me.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

ok but i think there’s a big distinction between “not supporting” and being anti-nuclear energy, which is what OP actually said.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 6 months ago

I disagree. I think it's a small, nitpicky distinction. OP made his meaning clear.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

From your link:

How many lives were lost in these accidents?

So they are just looking at deaths from nuclear accidents, and not construction or mining? You would have to do the same for the others. What kind of wind and solar "accidents" are there (excluding construction and mining)? Was the sun or wind too powerful one day?

You're going to have to do better than that. Nuclear plants are guarded by barbed wire and guys with guns. Wind turbines are guarded by sheep. The solar panels on your roof are guarded by squirrels and crows. It's pretty obvious which one is more dangerous.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

You’re going to have to do better than that.

No I’m not. You are moving the goalposts. The source of the article I linked specifically speaks to mortalities from accidents and air pollution. Asking that statistic to do overtime and somehow speak to mining fatalities is whataboutism and totally ignores that coal mining has exactly the same problem. Mining fatalities are significant and not to be ignored, but to cite them as a reason to prefer coal over uranium is foolish.

It’s pretty obvious which one is more dangerous.

Self-reporting that you didn’t even read the article lol. The cited graphic clearly indicates that more than 4x as many individuals have died from rooftop solar accidents, such as electricution and falls than have died from nuclear power, per unit of energy. Statistics like “look who is guarding the power source” are obscenely unfit to describe the situation in comparison to raw numbers of human deaths.

[–] [email protected] -5 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

4x as many individuals have died from rooftop solar accidents, such as electricution and falls

Those are from installation and construction. Your statistic doesn't include construction deaths for nuclear plants. So the metric is biased. People fall doing any type of construction, including nuclear plants and solar panels.

Also, construction of solar panels has more deaths because of the workers involved. The "construction team" adding panels to your house may be just two guys on meth. If the same two guys worked on a nuclear plant, they would have equally high fatalities. If you used the construction workers from a nuclear plant to do a basic home solar panel installation, it would virtually eliminate fatalities due to better safety.

You can't prove your point with flawed metrics, no matter how many times you repeat yourself. Nuclear plants are expensive and require constant maintenance. Solar panels are literally mounted on top of elementary schools. They're cheap and easy to put up and take down. Wind turbines need a little more maintenance and construction but they are also simple compared to nuclear plants. These are facts.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Also, construction of solar panels has more deaths because of the workers involved. The "construction team" adding panels to your house may be just two guys on meth. If the same two guys worked on a nuclear plant, they would have equally high fatalities. If you used the construction workers from a nuclear plant to do a basic home solar panel installation, it would virtually eliminate fatalities due to better safety.

Even if every construction worker was hopped up on whatever you can imagine, it wouldn't even matter.

It takes 2 workers to install 10 kW in solar panels that (might) last 15 years. That's 75 kW-years of energy per construction worker.

It takes 1200 construction workers to build a 1000 MW reactor which will operate for (at least) 50 years. That's about 42 MW-years per construction worker, or 42000 kW-years per construction worker.

Nuclear construction could have over 500x the accident rate of rooftop solar installation and still be safer. Try again.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago (1 children)

lol your meth comment made me lose all interest in this conversation. that was gross. im blocking you and standing by my words until someone who can actually cite a stat in good faith comes through, because i have based all my arguments off the best reasearch i can find and you have provided nothing but baseless assertions. take care ❤️

[–] [email protected] -5 points 6 months ago

For other people reading this: yes, roofers take meth. I don't advocate doing roofing work on meth (or meth in general), but they do it. It's reality.

Reality is more than just numbers on a page. If anyone has fatality stats for different energy generation methods that stand up to mild scrutiny, please post them.