raisely / NoHarm

Do No Harm software license - A licence for using software for good
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Remove "nuclear energy" #41

Closed Shchvova closed 6 years ago

Shchvova commented 6 years ago

Nuclear Energy is by far safest and least toxic power source humanity has access to. Other energy sources have dramatically larger ecological footprint (solar, wind especially). Coal power plants lead to over a million human deaths every year.

Also, it would prevent using your software on rowers like Curiosity

Edit: it would be most hypocritical or arrogant to include "nuclear" but omit coal, natural gas, solar or wind energy.

jeznag commented 6 years ago

See discussion in https://github.com/raisely/NoHarm/pull/13

katyannflowergirl commented 6 years ago

Nuclear Fission would reduce waste, but as of now there is tremendous waste, not to mention current incentives under capitalism to use nuclear energy at the detriment of public health.

tommaitland commented 6 years ago

Thanks for the comment @Shchvova – we do exclude fossil fuels (coal + natural gas) in 4.b of the license. The reasons nuclear has been excluded are here: #30

I haven't heard the argument before that nuclear has a smaller ecological footprint than solar and wind. Do you have peer-reviewed research you can point to that substantiates that?

dbwiddis commented 4 years ago

I haven't heard the argument before that nuclear has a smaller ecological footprint than solar and wind. Do you have peer-reviewed research you can point to that substantiates that?

Not the OP but stumbled on this issue and figured I'd look it up. This peer-reviewed research is summarized in this article. Quoting from the summary, as I do not have direct access to the article:

The study finds each kilowatt hour of electricity generated over the lifetime of a nuclear plant has an emissions footprint of 4 grammes of CO2 equivalent (gCO2e/kWh). The footprint of solar comes in at 6gCO2e/kWh and wind is also 4gCO2e/kWh.

While the nuclear/wind show equality at this unit, visual inspection of the graphic does appear to show nuclear is lower. So I believe @Shchvova's claim of "lower" is true in both cases. image