this post was submitted on 16 Nov 2023
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Chernobyl had such a far-reaching environmental impact. Beyond even the radioactive pollution stuff, it scared everyone away from nuclear power and back to fossil fuels for energy production. I sometimes wonder where we'd be wrt CO2 levels if nuclear energy adoption had continued along the same trend as it was before Chernobyl. Would we have had substantially more time to mitigate climate change? Maybe we'd have been in the same boat (or an equally bad boat) due to other factors; maybe it would have stymied renewables even more due to already having a readily available and well-established alternative to fossile fuels in nuclear power. Idk. But if someone wrote one of those what-if alternative history novels about the subject, I'd read the heck out of it.
Imagine if every oil spill was taken as seriously
Wow. Well fucking said, my friend. You are absolutely right.
Or every preventable death from coal.
Or all the deaths resulting from our decision to rely on Russia for energy.
Damn. This one is so spot on. Definitely remembering that one for the next time the Chernobyl argument comes up.
Ironically, the main direct impact (i.e. excluding the indirect, but far more important, policy impact you talked about) is that it basically created an involuntary nature preserve.
a nature preserve with fancy radiaton-eating mushrooms, to boot! (the jury is still techinically out on whether or not they are "eating" it, but in the immortal words of Fox Mulder, I want to believe)