Automobiles operate within a limited two dimensional environment. They have to stay on the ground on a street. Airplanes do not. They operate in a three dimensional space without any clear markers. They can't turn at a sharp radius in normal flight and they can't stop until they touch the ground and they require long stretches of runway to stop safely.
In short, there is really very little comparison between automobiles and planes unless you are a passenger.
I am a windows user and haven't used Office in years. I use OpenOffice or Google Docs when I need a word processor or spreadsheet or powerpoint. That said, in an office environment there are a lot of specific applications like accounting programs that are only available for windows and most offices only want to support a single operating system. So even if young people like Chrome when they head off to college, it is going to be a long time before they find it on their desktop at work.
There really is no evidence that any level of radiation exposure is safe. The question appears to be not whether there is harm, but how much to how many people and what significance should we attach to it. There is also the issue of persistence, some radioactive elements have very long half lives that make them virtually permanent, others have short half lives and disappear quickly. Some elements are taken up into the body where they release radiation in internal organs, other element's aren't. The issue of the danger of radiation exposure is both complicated and not really settled science on much of any level.
I think we need to understand that nuclear power failed in the United States because of the market. It proved itself expensive and unreliable. And that was without considering the permanent waste storage problem that we still haven't solved.
There are lots of tortured arguments from proponents for why nuclear power is better than wind or solar. But both those technologies continue to be cheaper to build and more reliable in operation. Until that changes, it doesn't matter whether it floats or not, nuclear power is going to remain at the bottom of the list for new investment.
As for the "material" used by nuclear power, have you ever been to an open pit mine? Yes, it probably requires digging up less material than a coal mine for similar output. But why would we care?
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Automobiles operate within a limited two dimensional environment. They have to stay on the ground on a street. Airplanes do not. They operate in a three dimensional space without any clear markers. They can't turn at a sharp radius in normal flight and they can't stop until they touch the ground and they require long stretches of runway to stop safely. In short, there is really very little comparison between automobiles and planes unless you are a passenger.
I am a windows user and haven't used Office in years. I use OpenOffice or Google Docs when I need a word processor or spreadsheet or powerpoint. That said, in an office environment there are a lot of specific applications like accounting programs that are only available for windows and most offices only want to support a single operating system. So even if young people like Chrome when they head off to college, it is going to be a long time before they find it on their desktop at work.
There really is no evidence that any level of radiation exposure is safe. The question appears to be not whether there is harm, but how much to how many people and what significance should we attach to it. There is also the issue of persistence, some radioactive elements have very long half lives that make them virtually permanent, others have short half lives and disappear quickly. Some elements are taken up into the body where they release radiation in internal organs, other element's aren't. The issue of the danger of radiation exposure is both complicated and not really settled science on much of any level.
I think we need to understand that nuclear power failed in the United States because of the market. It proved itself expensive and unreliable. And that was without considering the permanent waste storage problem that we still haven't solved. There are lots of tortured arguments from proponents for why nuclear power is better than wind or solar. But both those technologies continue to be cheaper to build and more reliable in operation. Until that changes, it doesn't matter whether it floats or not, nuclear power is going to remain at the bottom of the list for new investment. As for the "material" used by nuclear power, have you ever been to an open pit mine? Yes, it probably requires digging up less material than a coal mine for similar output. But why would we care?