• wewbull@feddit.uk
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    7 days ago

    There was still 164,000 people who needed to evacuate 230 square miles. The land is contaminated and cleanup is proving difficult. Japan will be dealing with the environmental impact for a century I’d wager.

    • GreyEyedGhost@lemmy.ca
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      7 days ago

      Look up fly ash storage ponds. That’s just normal coal usage. Then look up fly ash spills. Then look up how much radioactive material is released into the atmosphere each year from burning coal. Compare that to the estimated amounts of radioactive material released into the environment from all the nuclear plant accidents, and tell me we still wouldn’t be better off switching all coal off and using nuclear.

      Now, we don’t really have to do that, because we have other options now. But we definitely should have used more nuclear 50 years ago, just for the reduced cost of human lives.

      • wewbull@feddit.uk
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        5 days ago

        I think you misunderstood what was written:

        The Katsurao village official said about 337 square kilometers of land in seven Fukushima municipalities are deemed “difficult-to-return” zones. Of those, just 27 square kilometers in six of the same municipalities are specified reconstruction zones.

        27 km² are the worst areas. The other 310km² are still “difficult-to-return”.

    • LandedGentry@lemmy.zip
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      7 days ago

      Put them in more appropriate places (not like everything has to be nuclear) and don’t act like the USSR.

      Nuclear is a very valuable component of a mixed energy structure. There are absolutely use cases for it and we should not avoid it.

      • wewbull@feddit.uk
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        5 days ago

        They need cooling water, so “on the coast” is a reasonable location. Or do you mean “not in Japan”? A country without many great options for clean energy generation. Frankly Japan is one of the places nuclear makes sense to me. There’s not many options.

        It doesn’t make sense to me in the US where there’s a sunshine belt across the country 5 timezones long, large windswept plains and shallow coastlines. The US is rich in options and nuclear falls down the list.