I think the root cause here is that people are afraid to live near nuclear plants, and would get mad at their political representatives if they got built in their area. Making these limits more stringent makes it look like the politicians are forcing the plants to be safer, when really they are just blocking the plants from being built in their districts at all.
I’m not an expert but I feel like there is an actual merit behind these regulations. I mean I just did a quick google for "Hanford Cancer Rate" and immediately see stuff like:
> study shows that Hanford workers were 11 times more likely to develop mesothelioma, a cancer of the lungs strongly tied to asbestos exposure, than in the general population.
I know that Hanford was an exceptionally bad Nuclear Plant, but it is also a plant which was build in the laxer regulatory environment of the military with an excuse that appeals to "national security". But that is kind of the point though, without the regulations I would expect these plants to be at least as bad as Hanford.
This rhetoric about nuclear power plants being to heavily regulated is starting to feel a bit conspiratorial.
Just going off your quote, I’d say asbestos exposure has little to do with radiation exposure? I’d imagine where there is radiation, there may also be asbestos, but that’s about it.
How many people working in that facility, too? Without ignoring safe working environments, his is a somewhat rare cancer and making precise statements about incidence may be tricky.
Finally, regardless of any of this, I’d probably rather work at a nuclear plant than a coal mine or oil platform.
> I’d probably rather work at a nuclear plant than a coal mine or oil platform.
For what it’s worth. You might only be saying that because the nuclear industry is regulated. Nuclear workers aren’t dying of new asbestos exposures any more (but the would be barring regulations). The coal and the oil industry are notorious for their lax regulations. Environmental disasters and bad working conditions are aplenty.
I don’t know any of the details and it is plausible to me that there might be a higher cancer rate. But maybe the mesothelioma was due to actual asbestos? That also seems plausible to me.
I literally just took the first search result. If you go down the list there is no shortage of studies linking cancer to nearby residents and workers. E.g. the same study which found the mesothelioma at 11× also found multiple myeloma at 3× the risk along the same workers. My second search result shows a study linking thyroid cancer to downwind residence.
Cancer risk is not the only thing that made Hanford a terrible site. They also systematically leaked radioactive water into the Columbia river for over 25 years. The cleanup effort is now one the the biggest employer in the region and the cost is estimated at $113.6 billion
I would expect that if the nuclear industry wasn’t as regulated that we would see numbers like these (including the deaths by asbestos) throughout the country.
I live in Europe. Currently, instead of the small risk of a nuclear plant going near me going bad (which even in the worst case scenarios has led to very limited loss of life), we're instead funding a country that is actively threatening nuclear retaliation for some of our policies.
So personally, I'd be happy to trade the small risk of a nearby industrial accident for the small risk of a massive fucking bomb exploding in my general vicinity.
Yes! Yes I would! I currently live about 4 miles away from a coal plant. I know it's giving us various health issues the slow way.
I'd much rather live next door to a nuclear plant. Even if you falsely assume we'd have a Chernobyl-style disaster every 10 years once we switched most of our coal plants to nuclear power (which would be extremely unlikely with competent system planning and operation, things we have learned well by now) - it would still be much safer with nuclear once you realize the health costs of coal plants - nuclear simply is the way to go.
Sorry - why not? I can think of definitely devastating infrastructure - I have experienced wind turbines, for example -, and I am not aware of issues related to living near a nuclear power plant (apart from the very rare critical accidents).
Do nuclear power plants cause pollution in the surrounding territory?
Well, my country sadly has virtually no suitable geography for "traditional" hydro. We have dams worth several hundred MW of generation (out of ~9 GW of average generation). So a dam suddenly getting built in your backyard is a non-issue here.
