Man thats fucking vague click bait headline. What isotope? How much activity? What was in the water? Nah lets not talk relevant details, lets just spread uninformed fear of the nuclear industry instead.
The clean-up operation is expected to take decades, with the most dangerous part — removing radioactive fuel and rubble from three stricken reactors — yet to begin.
Nothing to see here, people. We have everything under control. Like, we totally know what we're doing.
The Three Gorges dam displaced an approximate 1.3 million people, is of questionable structural integrity because of rushed construction, has had a huge impact on its immediate environment and in the event of a breach endangers 400 million people. While that monstrosity is an outlier, in most instances the construction of a dam will displace a lot of people and carries a sizable risk of breach if the construction isn't carried out properly. Should or shouldn't hydroelectric be considered environmentally friendly?
Wind and solar have relatively short material lifespans that are expensive or impossible to recycle. It's all a double edged sword. There is no single solution that will work everywhere on this planet.
Sorry if I was vague, I meant the person you were replying to doesn't know what nuclear power is, which is why they use a fear mongering term like "nukes" to describe nuclear power.
Nobody knows how long they're going to take because they still don't have a fucking clue about how they're going to do it. I'm not blaming the people working on this stuff, my point is that this technology is still uncontrollable despite what all the apologists keep trying to tell us.
It's more than apologists. For a number of years now, across most social networks, the nuclear lobby has planted astroturfers. You can't get humans to agree on shit, yet anyone touting nuclear power as the savior of humanity in the face of climate change is a transparently obvious corpo plant with all of the same talking points as each other. It was just a matter of time before the propaganda took organic roots in real people.
Let's never explore wind/solar/hydro power. Only nuclear.
How about we explore all of them instead of shutting down nuclear and replacing them with natural gas. Like they did in New York after Cuomo said nuclear was a part of New York State's green energy plan. Am I a corpo plant now? No corporation is pushing nuclear right now. It's too expensive and has way too long of a ROI.
While you're right about the nitty gritty specifics of the case, the nuclear industry needs no help spreading fear of itself. Fukushima happened 13 years ago. Not exactly ancient history. Worst nuclear disaster of all time.
That being said, I don't think the nuclear industry of today should be hamstrung by Soviet incompetence and corruption from the 1950s. I mean these guys at this location were running open loop cooling circuits into the lake and river. We know better than this nowadays.
And has since been learned from. That reactor design is no longer used, specifically because of that. It would take more than just negligence to get a modern reactor to fail. Spreading fear of nuclear benefits no one and harms everyone.