Apparently, this is true.
Just WTF.
Mr Musk was talking about nuclear power with the former president when he said people have an unfounded fear of nuclear electricity generation. It is the “safest form of electricity generation”, he argued.
“People were asking me in California, are you worried about a nuclear cloud coming from Japan? I am like no, that’s crazy. It is actually, it is not even dangerous in Fukushima. I flew there and ate locally grown vegetables on TV to prove it," he said during the interview on his social media platform X on Monday.
Don’t know about solar but I know nuclear at least used to be statistically safer than wind per MW just due to injuries during construction. Gotta remember, it takes a lot of solar or wind to make the same amount of power as a nuclear plant and that means a lot of construction work. But I also haven’t seeen those stats for a while so it may have changed.
Nuclear is very safe assuming you don’t build the plant in a tsunami prone area which also happens to be practically on top of 4 different fault lines.
Here’s the argument. The byline every conservative I’ve talked to falls back on is “there’s no way to recycle the materials and they don’t last that long”. “Where’s my recycling?” “Same with wind turbine blades”.
You start to notice the repetition of the same statements across republicans when you talk to any number of them.
The repetition is a bit creepy, but this is how conservative talk radio works. They are fantastic at mobilizing their peeps and this is part of how they do it.
Remember, Trump thinks windmills give you cancer.
https://www.factcheck.org/2019/04/trumps-faulty-wind-power-claims/
Although he is far from a great person and his comparison with Hiroshima and Nagasaki is at best tactless and a downplay of a humanitarian catastrophe caused by the US, he got a point there…
Nuclear energy is by far the cleanest and one of the safest forms of energy generation. We have a problem with the spend fuel, but that is mostly due to the „not in my backyard“-Attitude and outdated informations regarding long term storage. Nuclear radiation is scary but handling it in a responsible way is much safer than perceived. On the other hand, the huge number of respiratory diseases and accompanied deaths are much more diffuse and not directly attributed by the public to fossile fuels. I think „Kurzgesagt“ has a really good video series covering nuclear energy.
It is a little sad that with all the necessary (and important) regulations the building process of a nuclear power plant is really long and public support (at least in Germany) is non existent. It could have covered our butts during the transition from fossile fuels to renewables.
404 that clip not found 🤔
