Quote:
Originally Posted by XutvJet
Don't forget about 3 Mile Island. Sure there are many redundancies and safeguards designed into nuclear power plants, BUT in the event of a catastrophe, the result could mass death and destruction. 3 Mile Island was likely minutes away from a full meltdown and possible large explosion which could have killed thousands (possibly hundreds thousands over time) and rendered a massive area surrounding the plant uninhabitable, think Chernobyl, but on an even larger scale. It took 15 years and nearly $1B to cleanup Three Mile Island.
We've had three major nuclear disasters in 43 years. That's not a great track record for a system that is supposed to be "safe", full of redundancies, and ran by high qualified personnel. There are countless small accidents and near misses at plants across the country and world, likely many not reported and/or the risk grossly underreported, as was the initial case with Three Mile Island, Fukushima, and Chernobyl.
Nuclear power is an amazing technological advancement, but a sane person should question the risk vs reward factor when it comes to larger facilities like nuclear power plants.
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Well, it’s not even those so much IMO, it’s the numerous other close calls that few people know about. I’m not saying there won’t be stuff that is impossible to plan for, just that mitigating it’s down to a non-event takes a lot…of money especially. There was a plant that just closed down because natural gas in the area basically put it out of business. The reason was the cost required to make the nuclear plant “run”…