NTSA "thrilled" that 2008 automobile deaths were "only" 31,110.

[NNadir]

http://www.findingdulcinea.com/news/Americas/2008/December/U-S-Auto-Fatalities-Decline-Significantly-in-2008.html

Since the population of Harrisburg, PA is roughly 50,000, or would have been had the city not had every man, woman, child, hermaphodite, cat, dog and gold fish wiped out by the 1979 Three Mile Island accident, the automobile death toll is "only" roughly the equivalent of killing 60% of Harrisburg each year.

I, for one, am relieved, especially as so many anti-nukes here who worry incessantly about "dangerous nuclear power" are spending so much time talking about their theoretical solar powered and wind powered electrical cars which could work, although for as long as I've been here, 8 years, none of these optimistic predictions have panned out despite great enthusiasm and many thousands of energy consuming threads about them.

I'm sure that our saftey minded renewable car advocates can show readily that solar powered cars - should they exist someday - will be much safer than modern cars, which "only" killed 60% of a Harrisburg in 2008.

Driving a car of course is much safer than having a tritium atom decay every hour or so in some water in the Marianas trench.

[OneTenthofOnePercent]

1. With or without nuclear power, those automobile death would have occurred.

The statistics are unrelated and this (logically false) argument is pretty worthless. Unless one advocats non automobile transportation, these deaths will continue to ocurr independent of US principal energy generation methods. You cannot argue the social acceptability of death/risk based in comparison to the social acceptability of a totally unrelated death toll.

Example:
Around 800,000 US citizens die as a result of smoking. Ergo, it would be OK to burn people for energy so long as fewer than 800,000 people are burned - because, after all, smoking is acceptable while killing so many.

Do you see the fallacy of such logic?

[Dead_Parrot]

2. Tritium! Tritium! Tritium!

I don't care about those tossers, I want to to be able to drink untreated groundwater from a large industrial complex, dammit.

[FBaggins]

3. Tritium?

Is this the scare-of-the-month club?

[Dead_Parrot]

5. Feels like it, somedays.

Flick through the last week or so and you will find plenty of people bemoaning the fact that they're not allowed to eat the mud under Vermont Yankee.

Presumably, it was to be the highlight of their year.

[endless october]

4. and how many die because of the fossil fuel economy

and everything we have to do to maintain access to supply?

nuclear is much, much better.

renewables are optimal and development should be a top priority. until then, nuclear is the way to go.

we can conserve, but conservation won't provide energy for a growing population. we need a lot of electrical infrastructure, and we need it now. and, frankly, i think it should be built and operated by government, if that's what it takes.

and yes, you can put a nuclear power plant in my town.

[MercutioATC]

6. Nuclear power is no more risky than crossing the street.

Of course, if I have an accident crossing the street, people in Sweden don't have to stop eating vegetables...

[jpak]

7. The New Jersey Molten Salt Breeder Reactor will never kill anyone!!!1111

:rofl:

[NNadir]

8. Actually, as vast research into MSRs shows by thousands of educated scientists around the world

shows, MSR's are inherently safe.

They are almost certainly going to be safer than the solar fantasy, which is already killing people by introducing complacency and denial - which is involved with Germany's decision to build so many coal plants that will kill people in normal operations.

http://www.spiegel.de/img/0,1020,1151385,00.jpg

Actually the PWR and BWR are inherently safe nuclear power plants as is shown by their 50 year operating history, although if one listens to uneducated giggling fools, one would never know it.

Just before his death, the inventor of first MSR, Alvin Weinberg, which operated at Oak Ridge, said that he did not believe that nuclear power plants could be made "safer," since they were already the safest known energy technology. He was right of course.

However the MSR is superior to the PWR and BWR inasmuch as it is possible to improve the economics and neutronic efficiency - and thus the already remarkable energy to mass ratio of nuclear energy, the highest known - even further. This effect is enough to make nuclear energy the most sustainable form of energy ever known.

This is why it is worth building the MSR.

As is the case with ever other issue in energy, it is the uneducated, the myopic, and the morally vapid consumer class who try to suggest that 31,000 deaths are not as important as a death they can imagine some day somewhere from nuclear power.

In this space, there is NOT ONE "solar will save us" ass who is, in my view, doing anything other than working to make the world "safe" for coal, gas and oil interests - many of whom write the paychecks for prominent anti-nukes, and rely on the rest of the anti-nukes to giggle blithely and insipidly over the tragedy of their actions.