No form of energy generation causes zero deaths. Chernobyl was a reckless expirement that went wrong. Fukushima is in no way comparable to Chernobyl regarding the amount of radiation released. We could increase security by stopping to demonize nuclear power and make it possible to build modern plants instead of running decades old designs with known flaws.
Exactly. Let me know when you fix humans, companies and governments, then I'll trust nuclear.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_subsidies#United_States
This seems like the same risk-evaluation glitch that makes people drive long-distance instead of flying, because terrorism, even though driving is orders of magnitude more deadly even with terrorism factored in.
> [... l]et me know when you fix humans, companies and governments[.]
[1] e.g. washing machines that allow ~half of their population (usually women) to have the free time to get an education and contribute to the economy instead of spending all day hand-washing clothes/etc.
I think the issue is further complicated by the under siege mentality that many nuclear energy proponents feel. If they think that opponents don't appreciate the benefits and exaggerate the risks, then they will tend to publicly downplay risks, and possibly believe their own rhetoric rather than looking for vulnerabilities to the system and engineering in additional safety measures.
Finally, how many designs that we call relatively dangerous now, were called dangerous while being constructed and put on line?
My understanding is that Chernobyl and the Fukushima reactor were both built by cutting huge corners, and that these flaws ended up leading to the disasters.
On the other side of the spectrum, things like planes get built and work because we know that planes falling out of the sky is super bad! Would it not be possible to ,for lack of a better word, be more careful?
http://www.troutmansandersenergyreport.com/2009/02/nrc-requi...
But a mistake doesn't cost one generation, it costs many. The odds for an incident are supposed to be ridiculously low, yet I've seen two catastrophic meltdowns just in my lifetime. I don't feel any energy need is worth even risking the rightful inheritance of so many descendants, ...
(Addendum: And, yes, a good amount of money is still being spent to keep this disaster contained: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_New_Safe_Confinement)
Yet I don't see a scramble to shut down all hydro plants.
Without sounding like I'm belittling the scale of that disaster, I still think of flood recovery as being relatively "short term" (a decade or two) compared to the aftermath of a nuclear meltdown (decades, possibly hundreds of years). That Chernobyl wasn't(/isn't) a bigger problem is partly due to reasonably effective intervention by an international team. The potential here is frightening enough that I don't think we should need high body counts to weigh the consequences.
Chernobyl wasn't a bigger problem because of the personal sacrifice of the thousands of liquidators that cleaned it up. I strongly recommend watching "Chernobyl 3828"[1], a short (~30min) documentary about that cleanup, by people that were involved in it.
> The potential here is frightening
Which is why the danger - even at Chernobyl - is usually severely overstated. I'm not saying the situation at Chernobyl wasn't a huge problem (see [1]). It just wasn't the insane danger that many believe it to be. For example, many of the liquidators involved in the cleanup are still alive, fighting Russian bureaucracy for the healthcare coverage they were promised in the Soviet era. Cancer is a long term consequence of working as a "bio robot", but modern medicine is making that increasingly survivable.
Fear tends to suppress rationality, so remember to stick to the facts, and remember that reputable sources can be hard to find for any topic.
While slightly clumsy wording on my side, I was trying to say exactly this while trying to encompass the able help of outside experts and agencies that all worked (and still work) to contain this disaster.
>Which is why the danger - even at Chernobyl - is usually severely overstated.
Perhaps by others, but not by me. I was simply saying that the disaster area is still and will likely long remain an unlivable place. I find that an unacceptable risk. You are welcome to disagree.
>Fear tends to suppress rationality, so remember to stick to the facts, and remember that reputable sources can be hard to find for any topic.
This goes both ways. Arguing from the standpoint of reactor designs we're not using and setting arbitrary thresholds for "huge" versus "insane" to decide what's really worthy of our concern and using "modern medicine" as a catchall for improved chances for survival as if it were a solved problem aren't good talking points. The variation in survivorship among the liquidators has as much to do with how much exposure they had working on site. Most of those with larger exposures aren't fighting for healthcare--they're already dead.
Besides, this all stemmed from my original reply about whether there was any evidence for the disaster costing more than one generation. I'll "stick to the facts" by saying it did, it does, and even the very battle against Russian beaucracy for healthcare coverage you mentioned shows that even the care of survivors remain an issue for later generations.
In that same time:
-- Chinese businesses improperly dumped into a of silicon tetrachloride (and other nasty pollutants) waste from photovoltaic production.
http://spectrum.ieee.org/green-tech/solar/solar-energy-isnt-...
-- Multiple fly ash spills spread heavy metals (arsenic, chromium, mercury, etc) over large areas of land and into major rivers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingston_Fossil_Plant_coal_fly...
-- An incredible amount of CO2 was released, leading to accelerating risk of catastrophic climate problems.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14085030
That's just a handful of problems I can find links for in a few minutes. The impact even from nuclear isn't anywhere close to the same scale of damage that other types of power already did to the environment.
> But a mistake doesn't cost one generation, it costs many.
Even if this was a concern - it's not - we're still talking about a temporary problem, that gets much smaller each half-life. The metals from fly ash are a permanent problem.
No matter, I'm not sure why we're comparing Chernobyl against these and other environmental disasters when they should be lumped together--these are all sins of our species.
The point is not how long "temporary" is. It's incredibly hypocritical to complain that nuclear power has some sort of serious "nuclear waste problem" that must have some type of 10,000 year solution while conveniently ignoring the actual problems in other power sources.
There should even be much nuclear waste in modern breeder reactor designs, but even with the older style reactors that currently exist, the waste still tiny thanks to uranium having millions of times higher energy density[1]. That waste gets less dangerous as it decays, so the "temporary" isn't a consistent danger - it's bad initially, but the long tail is significantly safer.
> why we're comparing
deaths / kWh [2]
Far too many people panic about the "dangers" of nuclear power, while conveniently ignoring the larger dangers from other power sources. Even including Chernobyl, nuclear power is still safer than any[3] other source of energy.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density#Energy_densitie...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents#Fatalities
[3] Solar and wind are also very low, although dam failures and the dangers of working on rooftops to install solar cells make them slightly more dangerous than nuclear. We should obviously use these sources as well when possible. I'm sure we can also improve the safety of solar, such as installing during regular building construction instead of retrofitting existing roofs.
Yes, it would be hypocritical if that's what I was doing. Except, instead, I was simply submitting what I felt was an important concern with nuclear energy. Similarly, it's disingenuous to talk of breeder reactor designs and their "tiny" amounts of waste when these remain mostly experimental and undeployed. The original links you posted for some other environmental disasters are very real, otoh.