Nuclear Power? Good or Bad?

True, Iceland is in a similar position, and runs purely on clean and natural sources of energy. Of course, the population numbers in Iceland are very low, and it has a near unique position to profit from, but I think the world can still learn from those crazy bastards.

Yeah, I just don't think Japan can afford to run on nuclear, not with how volatile it's fault line is.

Well, the scale of the last incident probably won't be seen for a long time, not to mention they now know what they can expect. Once they replace the outdated facilities, they should be fine.

The thing about the incident that got to me the most (well, besides the Fukushima 50, those guys were fucking heroes) was the German reaction to it. "Oh, so they had one of the worst earthquakes in recent history, followed by a massive tsunami and then the outdated facilities melted down? And we're located in the middle of a tectonic plate with barely any coast, meaning we're in what is probably the safest place on Earth? FUCK WE'RE DOOMED DIG FOR COAL QUICK!"

Yeah, although I've got to say, their reactors really aren't more outdated than most, at least if you take the overall standard. Like here in the US, most of our reactors are from the 60's and only get minimal upgrades. Just south of where I live in Ohio there's this one reactor that has been notorious for poor management and close calls. I believe it's called the Davis-Besse power plant. The thing is most countries have not built new plants since the 70's.

Yeah, but then again, the US has little to worry about these kind of events. While parts of the country are geographically unstable, in general there's plenty of room to build a reactor and not worry about it for years.
Germany is in the same situation, and thus has little to worry, especially if they were to build newer, safer facilities.

That's exactly what I mean, I was just saying that Japan's facilities aren't really antiquated when compared to the ones most other countries are also using. Germany is definitely a good candidate for nuclear power.

Well, we can surely agree on that.

There was a fire at Chernobyl, which obviously caused the meltdown. I forget the cause of the fire off the top of my head though. To Google!

Think they turned off the security programs and overrode the backup safeties to make a stress test of the facility. Basically they made a reactor that was somewhat safe to a deathtrap, or at least a significant risk.

I believe from a documentary I saw the lead engineer pushed the test too far. When they realized they had let the reactor stay on auto cool too long they shut everything off and hit the emergency button that inserted emergency control rods. The design flaw then kicked in because it turned out the water was hotter than they thought it was, when the rods hit it there was an explosion.

Ah, I see.

Good, but you better be careful. Its like playing with fire.

I would agree with that.

Yeah, It's pretty safe when you consider the fact there are thousands of Nuclear Power Plants out there, but there has only been 3 incidents where there was a threat of a meltdown, and of those three, only one actually happened (Chernobyl). The other two of course were 3 Mile Island and Fukushima.
Though these are the only ones that I've heard of, so I could be wrong.

What do you mean with "actually happened", exactly?

I personally think we cant rely too much on nuclear energy, i think we should get energy from more natural sources like hydro electricity, wind, wave and solar power things we can be certain that we will be able to rely on as long as we live on a planet where these things exist

So you believe the power it provides outweighs the risk you' be taking if there was a large scale nuclear disaster, or in long term waste storage?

Where it was a complete meltdown, not partial or danger of one, like 3 Mile Island (partial) or Fukushima (risk). Sorry for my confusing phrasing. I was unclear.

Ah, ok, thanks.

We travel at ridiculous speeds every single day, where we take pretty big risks. Is being able to travel worth the risk of dying pretty much every day?