NUCLEAR’S REPUTATION
A story of war and bad marketing
1945
The United States drop two nuclear bombs on Japan. The world is shocked
1945
The beginning of the nuclear arms race between the USA and the USSR
1953
The first nuclear powered submarine is brought online. Given the name Nautilus by the American navy,
1961
The Cuban missile crisis almost ends the world as we know it. Never before had the threat of nuclear war seemed so real.
1979
The three mile island accident takes place in the US. Very little damage is actually done but the media antagonises the nuclear industry and the “nuclear bogeyman” era officially begins.
1986
The Chernobyl disaster takes place. Its still the worst nuclear disaster in history. A direct result of negligence and lack of honesty along with a spell of bad luck, it almost ends the entitle industry and ends up setting it back decades
1994
The US brings its last nuclear power plant, up to today, online. Two decades before it led the nuclear industry by quite a margin.
DID YOU KNOW?
Nuclear energy is actually one of the safest energy sources in the world both in terms of CO2 emissions and in terms of deaths caused directly and indirectly per unit of energy produced. In fact it comes in only behind wind and solar and by a very tiny margin. In the case of CO2 emissions it beats even these two. Even considering this it’s still by far the most unpopular source of energy in the world specially in the developed world. Why is this?
THE DISASTERS AND THEIR AFTER EFFECTS
Despite being one of the cleanest and least harmful energy sources in the world it still carries one of the most negative reputations in the entire energy sector only behind maybe coal and that is due to the disasters for the most part. Chernobyl in particular almost took down the entire industry with it. But was the media fuss all that justified? Does the loss of life in this and other disasters justify nuclear’s current reputation?
THE ANSWER IS NO
IN CHINA ONE DAM COLLAPSE IN 1975 KILLED UP TO 250,000 PEOPLE
Chernobyl was a major disaster with long lasting consequences for the countries involved, but to hold it up on a pedestal as the greatest energy related disaster in history is just ridiculous as the data shows
The 1975 Banqiao Dam failure was the collapse of 62 dams, including the Banqiao Dam, in Henan, Chinain August 1975 under the influence of Typhoon Nina. The dam failure created the third-deadliest flood in history which affected a total population of 10.15 million and inundated around 30 cities and counties of 12,000 square kilometers (or 3 million acres), with an estimated death toll ranging from 26,000 to 240,000.
