this post was submitted on 05 Jun 2024
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United States | News & Politics
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@Umbrias @SirBoostALot @usa The Joshua trees are relevant because it's an indictment of the system that produces the incentives that make destroying a forest of them a good business plan. We have the technology to safely generate plenty of reliable, clean electricity nearby to where people will use it. Instead, we go out into the desert and then pick one of the worst spots in the desert just to cheaply conjure up some renewable energy credits and call it good for the environment. It's sickening.
@fathermcgruder @Umbrias @usa And where I disagree with you vehemently is on the "safely" part. I don't want to live anywhere near a nuclear power plant, and I think a lot of people feel the same way. I know you believe that Chernobyl and Fukushima were one off disasters that could not possibly happen in North America, but if you are wrong a whole lot of people could die very painful deaths, or very slow and painful deaths depending on the exposure level.
The Joshua trees are kind of a red herring; they are only incidental to the issue, and honestly few people actually care about them except perhaps those living in that area (and I'm not saying that is a good thing, but I'm just saying that most people would not think them a very desirable tree). We can have cheap, safe energy from the sun and wind but some people don't like that and would prefer to take the chance of exposing potentially millions of people to radiation sickness. THAT is what is sickening.
By the way, do you have any financial interest in, or are you employed by the nuclear power industry? There are not that many people who want to see more nuke plants built so I'm wonder what your reasons are for being so pushy about this.
Again fukushima had no radiation related health impacts to non workers. Not "millions of people", the worst case for that plant happened, and still no radiation poisoning.
@Umbrias So the lives of the workers were totally meaningless to you. Well they were not meaningless to their wives and children, or to theie friends and other family members. It is a terrible lie to say there was no radiation poisoning; workers there got radiation poisoning. That is not something that should happen to anyone, and it is not a risk that any worker should have to accept just to hold a job.
Also, I suspect that all the effects haven't manifested yet. As the people that were in the vicinity of that plat get older I would not be surprised to see "cancer clusters" form. Of course we may never know, particularly if the Japanese government is complicit in burying the actual effects,
Radiation related effects among workers was not high. Additionally, radiation workers do accept higher risk of dose due to direct financial benefit. A few workers received clinical doses of radiation, while the vast majority received much less than the alara linear no threshold exposure limits. You are at greater risk increase in general from things like working in a grocery store, or working a construction site, or any other industrial plant, than really any nuclear worker has of radiation poisoning. It's hilariously dishonest and misinformed with how paranoid folks are about radiation. Hilariously radiation workers generally receive less dose than the general public because they work in buildings with large amounts of voicers, metal, and incidental shielding!
The general public around fukushima is more likely to get cancer from red meat than they are from the fukushima event.
Regardless, fukushima and Chernobyl are entirely incomparable.