How bad is it really? Nuclear technology -- facts and feelings: Sunniva Rose at TEDxOslo 2013

In Germany there is a "Bundesamt für Strahlenschutz", the "Federal Bureau of Radiation Protection". They calculatet, that the highest amount of radiation to the average German comes from burning coal.

Her final remark is highly relevant. Indeed, climate change is why I'm pro-nuclear.

Fission until fusion. It’s the best way forward 100%

I want someone to love me as much as she loves to talk about nuclear energy xD

The more I hear about nuclear energy, the better it sounds. It has less environmental problems than even wind and solar. I liked the point you made about the earthquake and tsunami doing the majority of the devastation in Japan. People tend to forget about that. They focus on the nuclear plant only.

Dear Sunniva, don't be so dismissive of thorium gas mantles. One of the more distinct memories of my eight -year-old self was the Tilley lamp. For a short period, my family was living in a small house un-equipped with electricity, overlooking the coal mining town of Milngavie, with very sooty skies. We had candles, oil wick lamps, and two Tilley lamps. The Tilley was wonderful. Paraffin (kerosene to Americans) was forced by stored air pressure, refreshed at intervals not inconveniently short, through a fine jet, and burned to make the thorium oxide mantle incandescent. It was much the brightest light we had, and it could reliably by taken outside, there being a glass cylinder around the mantle that protected its light from the wind.

12:47 it was discovered in Norway but it was a Swedish Chemist named Jöns Jacob Berzelius who identified it and named it.

Outstanding! No doubt; if anyone makes it work well, it will be you. I've been researching "civil-defense", since 1983. Hoping you do this, so to retire me.

I would love a personal lesson from Sunniva Rose, about anything she's willing to teach. What a natural speaker, seems unrehearsed but heart-felt. Really enjoyed this.......

I hope that I will see thorium MSRs in my lifetime. An endless amount of nearly free energy that could be scaled to need would change humanity like no other event in human history. Imagine being able to live almost anywhere on earth or in space with the ability to grow, heat, cool, manufacture, create water and oxygen as needed.

I was expecting another TED's "Atoms are bad!" video. I'm definitely not disappointed, thank you very much!

We'd better start seriously reconsidering nuclear power. I've thought this for decades.

Nuclear energy has been supported for decades by James Lovelock, the originator of the Gaia hypothesis and father of modern environmentalism.

From what I’ve learned about nuclear power so far, I assume dealing with a bunch of canisters of nuclear waste is perhaps easier than trying to pull a mess of CO2 from the air. Although I’ve also learned that nuclear power, despite gathering more earnings over time, is a risky business venture due to the high cost of instillation.

How is it possible to worry about global warming and not be pro nuclear? Because they are delusional...

That's one perfectly fitted Countryman mic. It follows the contour of her face so well.

Great speech especially the last question! I’ve been wondering the same thing.

At this point thorium seems more near term than fusion. And wind/solar lack reasonable storage so it's sorta a forced hand. Though nuclear would aid space faring so extra bonus point to it.

Excellent talk. I would love to hear more from Ms. Rose, who explained the general outlines of Thorium better than any talk or video about Thorium I've seen. Bravo! Bravo! Bravo!

Hi there First to say I am a physicist, and, despite I do not work on the nuclear subjects till a long time Ithink I may express a reasonably informed point of view. That said i take the words of Sunniva Rose in the presentation Why science should be more pink "Chernobil accident was, and accidents in general are, a multidisciplinar subject event involving politics, economy, psychology, sociology, biology, medicine and of course physics..." as a good expression of the complexity of the nuclear subject, but not restricted to it. In fact, there are not the nuclear accidents alone that present that complexity. Every human activity and the respective impacts are equally complex and multidisciplinar, including nuclear plant construction, operation and maintenance, in particular when it is viewed as a business. So, the problem is not the physics involved, all this have to do with the human nature and the way we do things in general. Again this is a very complex subject since things are done with more or less care in in different parts of the world, but, on average, we do many things wrong. Seeing in a bit more detail our capacity to do it wrong: - Overpopulation is the main, but not the exclusive, source of most of the problems that people like Sunniva Rose are trying to solve by using nuclear. It is important to notice that overpopulation is not a natural incident, it results instead from a chain of cumulative mistakes, many of them originated from colonial interferences on the population dynamics of the, now, overpopulated territories. We have done it wrong. - Industrialization. Industrialization is not a bad thing on itself. It is possible to build things and not destroing the sorrounding ecosystems. But the common practice is a complete mess. We have done it wrong. It is possible to build things without massive wastes of energy. Industry consummes insane amounts of energy to build and sell products to replace fully functional ones because they are "outdated". We have done it wrong. -Monoculture farming. Polluted lands, lakes, rivers and oceans. Systematic and increasing events of extinction. Ecological disasters caused by the use of toxic agrochemicals and expected to increase as the GMO disperse in the ecosystems. We have done it wrong. etc. etc. We have done it wrong with all those things and I see a tremendous resistence to admit that. Even more resistence is put on trying to solve the problems from the root. Have you heard from any politician that we need to decrease the population (decreasing the birth rate of course). How many times you see a mainstream campain to lower the use of gadgets because of their ecological footprint. How many times have you seen people worried about the fruit they are buying travelled 10000 km? Anyone expects that we will do it right with something so critically exigent to be managed in a secure manner like nuclear. I sincerely dont.