Nuclear Power and Radiation: Fukushima and beyond

I'm currently writing a sociology of science paper (and procrastinating) on the debate of the Liner-No-Threshold (LNT) Radiation model, which in simple terms equates radiation dosage (eg. Sv) vs risk as a straight line, such that any dose creates an increase in risk of mortality. The massive divide between what the bulk of scientific papers support v.s. the reaction of the media and many 'scientists' to the events of Fukushima makes me curious to what you all think about the safety of Nuclear power: what is safe radiation? and what do you think is the future of Nuclear power (and Nuclear technology?).

Now my knowledge on nuclear power is very limited but whenever I see people in the media talking about how bad nuclear power is I always get the feeling they hardly know what they are talking about either. Same with all those people protesting nuclear energy, I doubt that many of them can actually explain how a nuclear power plant works.

And well the Fukushima power plant was hit by a massive earthquake and a tsunami, go figure stuff went horribly wrong. I mean would we start phasing out sky-scrapers when one of them collapsed and killed everyone inside? I think that most politics and media portrayals of nuclear energy largely revolve around fear-mongering and incorrect information.

What is the future of nuclear energy? My friend you have it all wrong, nuclear energy IS the future.
Specifically: Nuclear fusion.

I think why people freak about nuclear power is that they think of this

FOOLS!

That is exactly the reason plus the Chernobyl disaster...

The whole controversy I'm delving into shows very credible evidence that the effects of Chernobyl have been grossly exaggerated due to flaws in the model used to predict mortality. But I concede the psychological impact of the unseen killer at the time, and how the reaction to the disaster has persisted in public understanding of radiation.

If people argue against nuclear power then they are fools.

I think a lot of people think that nuclear power causes climate change and all that stuff when really it just produces steam. Which again links to almost every thread on this website of people having louder opinions on things they don't understand.

Trololo in a hundred years or so. For now fission is much more efficient.

We need to figure it out first.
My view on this is that nuclear power is perfectly safe just don't put where your prone to natural disasters.

Yeah but Japan is basically a fault line. That's why the island exists so you can't really blame the Japanese for putting Fukishima on a fault line.

We can fault them for not sufficiently upgrading the old reactor protection, the vast majority of the newer plants shut down with little issues, the Daiichi plant was not designed to deal with a so called '100 years' Earthquake (only for normal moderate/large quakes) and for fairly small Tsunamis in comparison to ones they experienced.

Its like designing a bridge to hold 1000 cars because thats the maximum load under current traffic, when future traffic could consist of 10 000 cars.

Design criticism aside, the melt-down has been managed fairly well, with no major leakage. The question is now a problem of cleaning up inside the reactor and IF radiation guidelines will allow them to do so. There are even volunteer groups of senior citizens who want to go into the reactor to clean it up, Kamikaze radiation workers if you will.

except their not in planes and blowing stuff up while they take others down with them

Turns out, when your massive nuclear power plant is hit by one of the biggest Earthquakes in recent history shit happens.

They had earthquake measures in affect they just weren't prepared for one the biggest in history.

This why not drive behind a truck carrying toilets.