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Revealed: three tonnes of uranium legally dumped in protected English estuary in nine years
(www.theguardian.com)
Thats some protection
this post was submitted on 22 May 2025
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And this is why I'm skeptical of all the "we need nuclear power" people. It's always "safe" until you account for the fact that some corporation is the one trusted to follow the safety standards that would actually make it a safe endeavor.
This article makes it clear that the company doing the dumping is following the law though. So the blame for this is on the environment agency that sets the limits, no? I'm not sure how your comment relates to either the article or the headline.
You don't see how a company dumping nuclear pollution relates to concern about the expansion of nuclear energy and further pollution?
I don't see how a company following the law is an indictment of the company. If you object to the amount of waste being dumped, your proper target for ire is the government agency that sets those limits.
I don't see how a company following the law is an indictment of the company.
The company dumping nuclear waste.
your proper target for ire is the government agency that sets those limits
My target was the industry producing said waste as described in my very relevant original comment. And if you want to talk about government, the industry is still hugely influential in establishing these limits you love so much. They have responsibility here too. I'm done explaining this to you. Have a nice day.
That problem isn't unique to nuclear. It wouldn't be newsworthy if a worn-out wind turbine blade was incinerated unsafely, and that's something that happens routinely and is much more damaging than dumping this quantity (about a beer crate full) of depleted uranium. The reason we're hearing about this incident is that the nuclear industry is held to a much higher standard than anything else in the energy sector. There are good reasons for that - the worst case scenario for a single fuckup is much worse - but a lot of it is just fear-mongering by fossil fuel companies who needed to lie to make something seem more dangerous than what they do, even before climate change was recognised.
Nuclear is so much better than fossil fuels that even if we cut every corner and accepted a Chernobyl-scale indicent would happen a couple of times a year, it'd still be preferable over the gradual phase out of fossil fuels and resulting climate crisis we're on track for.
the worst case scenario for a single fuckup is much worse
This is the problem. A single nuclear fuck up results in damage that lasts on a geologic scale. It takes other energy sources way more time to fuck the planet (see: fossil fuels). The concern is because weve watched how fossil fuel companies have fucked the planet. Why in the hell would we give more companies the ability to do worse? It's not like fossil fuel companies have been reined in.
even if we cut every corner and accepted a Chernobyl-scale indicent would happen a couple of times a year, it'd still be preferable
Preferable to who? I would love to see some data on this, because I absolutely do not believe that to be the case.
Even accounting for disasters, coal power puts more radionuclides into the environment into the environment than nuclear for the same amount of energy. If you dig lots of stuff up and spew it all into the air, the small amount of radioactive material that's in coal and the rocks around it is much bigger than the tiny amounts of nuclear fuel a nuclear power plant gets through. If the only concern is radiation that persists on geological timescales, then swapping all coal for nuclear is an improvement. Other things that release surprising amounts of radiation include making things out of granite (it's usually got uranium in) and importing bananas and Brazil nuts.
If it's changes on a geological timescale in general, then as fossil fuels form on a geological timescale (the clue's in the name), digging them up is going to take unfathomable amounts of time to undo. It won't even be as quick as the first time around, as most coal formed before ligninase evolved, so trees fell over and didn't rot and usually became coal, buy they're biodegradable now so need specific fossilisation-friendly conditions to become coal.