Despite all of the wailing and gnashing of teeth

[LucySky]

over whether nuclear power plants are safer than other energy sources, the argument boils down to one thing and one thing only in my mind.

Do other energy sources have even a slight potential of killing millions of people in one fell swoop?

[Duer 157099]

1. Well, the sun could if it suddenly hurled towards earth

But I bet that's not what you meant.

[NutmegYankee]

2. Even Nuclear can't kill millions in "one fell swoop".

Now, if you mean over a lifetime from cancer, then yes, nuclear, coal, and gas can all do this and the latter two have via pollution.

[LucySky]

5. one "event" certainly can cause the death of millions...

in much shorter than a lifetime.

[NutmegYankee]

9. Sorry, but you need to show some evidence for that.

Unless you are thinking of a nuclear bomb, which a power plant cannot do whatsoever, then the deaths from acute radiation poisoning would be far smaller. Now, the Cesium and such spread throughout the food chain would cause cancers for years (~200) but that isn't a "fell swoop".

[meow mix]

6. unless plutonium melts into the groundwater explosively, resulting in unmatched devastation?

please give me your predictions on this event.

[NutmegYankee]

10. Even then, the fallout would not be high enough to kill Millions right away.

I'm not challenging cancer deaths, but same day deaths would be far lower in all scenarios.

[pretzel4gore]

11. if terrorists ever got hold of a nuke plant

hide the economy! (gettit? The 'Terrorists' are Mister Pig, the rightwing goonsquad whose been running the planet since they offed FDR in 1945 to put m pig's stooge truman into WHouse, and re design the postwar world more to capitalist/racist/sexist pigs' ideal. The basic idea behind fission technology fyi, is BLACKMAIL; and using nuke waste storage to blackmail society into ENTRUSTING the pig with government authority always kept things quiet, in general, but with 'terrorist seize nuke plant' news option in the background, always available if mister pig felt threatened...)
The point is, when mister pig wants to declare martial law, he simply has to send a few trusted cops to the local power plant and...voila!
every year, 36000 american policemen retire with full publicly-funded pension benefits, cops NOT EVEN 40 YEARS OLD YET!
nation, yall been had! lol

[LWolf]

3. Or of poisoning the planet for the foreseeable future? nt

[LiberalEsto]

4. You've made an excellent point.

Also, do any of the other technologies have the potential to harm living creatures 100,000 or more years into the future?

Info from Wikipedia:

"All radioisotopes contained in the waste have a half-life—the time it takes for any radionuclide to lose half of its radioactivity—and eventually all radioactive waste decays into non-radioactive elements.

Certain radioactive elements (such as plutonium-239) in “spent” fuel will remain hazardous to humans and other creatures for hundreds of thousands of years.

Other radioisotopes remain hazardous for millions of years. Thus, these wastes must be shielded for centuries and isolated from the living environment for millennia.<2>

Some elements, such as iodine-131, have a short half-life (around 8 days in this case) and thus they will cease to be a problem much more quickly than other, longer-lived, decay products, but their activity is much greater initially."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste

[JVS]

7. Given that climate change is probably going to kill billions through famine, I really can't see...

how anti-nuclear people think they can stand there and shout "scoreboard!"

[suffragette]

8. Great point

K&R

[Zoeisright]

12. THAT is the point.

That is exactly, perfectly, precisely the point. Thank you.

[WatsonT]

13. In one fell swoop?

I think that's a bit of hyperbole but consider what coal is doing to china.

You may not killing millions in an instant but that many or more die every year from complications directly attributable to the coal industry. In addition to the thousands killed in mining accidents.

[LucySky]

15. relatively speaking----of course

a more accurate phrase might be "one tragic event"

[KT2000]

14. and making land unusable

for the forseeable future.

[lonestarnot]

16. K & R!

Rather use a campfire and torches and horses!

[jtuck004]

17. I have to wonder how many millions of people suffer from cancer

and other slower forms of death from the output of coal-fired plants that dot the East. In my thinking the big difference between past ages when we didn't have nearly the incidents of cancer and other slower forms of death is power production from old fuels, whether it is from coal-fired plants or automobiles. Coal-fired plants, and you have to consider the costs of production and transportation as well, have certainly been responsible for their own share of millions of deaths over time. It's not as dramatic, harder to see, but the effects are still there.

I try to avoid sticking wooden shoes in the gears due to a fear of the unknown future. That would be buying into superstition, something I try to avoid.

Although I understand there is danger, I have never seen any credible claims that the nuclear bombs we purposely used to kill people and destroy cities killed even half a million people, (their entire populations were less than 1/2 million to start with) so I think evaluating this in terms of "killing millions of people" at once is perhaps not fair. I am not a nuclear advocate, but to ignore the reality of the costs of our older and more conventional forms of energy is, in my mind, a mistake.

I do respect your skepticism, and I know nuclear has to be respected, but so far I haven't heard anything that isn't yet-to-be-resolve engineering problems complicated by greed and stupid.

[LucySky]

18. thanks for this response

your post makes a lot of sense.

i am a big believer that just about everything kills us...eventually.

i think the results of an unlikely, but possible, nuclear accident are so unacceptable because of the potential speed of illness or death. it is difficult for me to accept such a heinous MAN MADE risk.

now, what is the answer? i don't think anyone knows, but perhaps all of the talk and effort should be moved away from the development of a new energy source, but rather, be concentrated on the national reduction of energy usage.

why does a home need 3 TV's? why does a home need ANY TVs when computers are available? why does there need to be 40 light fixtures in a home? this is where the sacrifice has to be. finally, with the internet available to just about everyone, why do so many people need to commute to work? why can we not cut the number of commuting cars on the road by 50% or more, simply by providing gov't incentives for companies to find ways for their employees to work from home?