LogFAQs > #953456246

shadowsword87 posted...

I'm saying that argument is dumb, people get stuff they don't want in their backyard all the time.

People also complain that windmills are loud, but they're still going up.

To be fair, there's a HUGE fucking difference between "that dump/plant smells" or "those windmills are annoying" versus "That nuclear plant can theoretically give me cancer and shave years off my life, or potentially suffer a catastrophic accident and lethally irradiate a thousand square miles worth of land for essentially the next 20,000 years."

I'm fairly sure no coal plant or windmill has ever exploded and rendered an area nearly the size of Rhode Island completely radioactive for decades. About the closest you really get to a comparable disaster with non-nuclear plants is Centralia, which a) is a waaay smaller area, and b) is something the average person doesn't even know exists anyway. For fossil fuels in general you could point to stuff like the BP oil spill, but that's very much a "not my problem" sort of vibe for most people, in the same way most ocean dumping (whether trash or chemical) tends to get ignored.

The likelihood of a major accident actually happening or the degree to which safety is much, much, much higher in the average plant than it was in Three Mile Island or Chernobyl is utterly immaterial when you're talking about how people FEEL about something. Sure, the odds of a local nuclear power plant actually melting down might be lower than your odds of getting struck by lightning three times on the same day you win the lottery, but that's not going to matter to someone who is being asked to live within the potential radius of the plant.

Related to the "everyone wants one, not one wants one near them" comment earlier, it's sort of like the problems with self-driving cars - everyone can TALK about how much safer they are, or how much better they'd be in general, but almost nobody actually wants to be the first people to OWN them. Polls consistently show that tons of people who strongly support the introduction of automated vehicles are also more than willing to vote that they're completely unwilling to be early adopters themselves. So essentially they want OTHER people to have to make the sacrifices to accomplish what they see as a worthwhile goal, but will back down the moment they're expected to make the sacrifice themselves.

Which is fairly common in most socio-political and ideological discussions, honestly. The people who are always the most keen on the idea of change are almost always also the people who have absolutely nothing to lose, or stand to gain while other people lose. It's part of what makes compromise such a hard thing to really achieve.
---

"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family