Mummy, mummy, there's a nuclear monster!

[RC]

"But the only rational conclusion to draw is that an industry which can have an accident at the extreme top of its possible internationally agreed accident scale without killing a single person is already so safe that it probably deserves to relax its costly precautions quite a lot – rather than having them cranked up yet further, as seems all too likely.

If nuclear were allowed to be as dangerous as gas – that is, perhaps somewhere in the region of 400 times as dangerous in terms of deaths per terawatt-hour – there can be little doubt that electricity would become extremely cheap, maybe indeed too cheap to bother metering it for most users. Waste could be dealt with and supplies extended by many times by simply reprocessing fuel, something which the fearmongers have already managed to ban in many countries.

That would not only mean realistic prospects of low-to-zero carbon emissions: it would also mean no need to much care about the opinions of various unsavoury regimes around the world, or to funnel revenue to them to spend on weapons. Cheap nuclear energy would hugely boost economic performance. It would also offer effectively unlimited fresh water supplies, and realistic options for space travel beyond low Earth orbit.

Some of us at least are getting a bit sick of the idea that you simply aren't allowed to tell frightened people quite bluntly to act their age – and we're getting more than just a bit sick of irrational or unscrupulous fairytale-spinners making them frightened in the first place."

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/04/12/fukushima_ffs/