Comment by ebbv | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ebbv | Hacker News Reader

This is THE statistic that nuclear proponents love to cite. There have been articles blasting about nuclear’s low fatality number as long as I’ve been on HN. And just as long I’ve been pointing out it’s a bogus, stupid metric.

Solar gets a higher fatality rating because of folks falling off their own roofs. It’s a tragedy sure but does that mean solar is dangerous? Of course not. Climbing up on the roof of your house is dangerous and everybody knows that.

It’s also a number that tries to gloss over the worst parts of nuclear; the extremely long lived impact of nuclear accidents. The areas around Chernobyl and Fukushima are destroyed for generations to come. Finding responsible, safe ways to store spent nuclear fuel continues to be an issue.

Renewables are cheaper and cheaper all the time. More countries are finding they can power a larger portion of their needs with renewables every year. Frankly we just don’t need nuclear and it’s serious risks and downsides.

"It’s a tragedy sure but does that mean solar is dangerous? Of course not. Climbing up on the roof of your house is dangerous and everybody knows that."

That danger is sure a relevant factor when evaluating energy policy. People can know the danger all they want, they'll still do it more often if governments subsidize or otherwise promote rooftop solar.

I think it's fair game to compare those deaths to radiation poisoning deaths from nuclear spills.

> The areas around Chernobyl and Fukushima are destroyed for generations to come.

Along with basically every surface mine in the world. Garzweiler mine (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garzweiler_surface_mine), which I'd never even heard of until I spent 30 seconds on wikipedia, is nearly a tenth of the size of the Fukushima Exclusion Zone.

> Frankly we just don’t need nuclear and it’s serious risks and downsides.

I guess you're not from India or China. It is coal that nuclear should displace, not renewables.

Except the solar/wind mix is a better solution than either.

Except baseload from wind and solar does not really work. Some energy storage facility have to be included, and then we would have to factor in human/money cost of that facility as well.

Sure, or throw in a quick response gas fired generator.

It’s a very effective combination, especially pumped hydro.

Frankly we just don’t need nuclear

You lambast the actual statistics cited, but fail to provide anything yourself. How much TW is currently produced globally by Nuclear, and how much Solar or other renewables? What is the timeframe until there is parity?

The biggest risk posed by nuclear power is that we don't build it and carbon levels rise to stratospheric heights.

Some quick google-fu shows that renewables have already surpassed nuclear worldwide...

Eyeballing [1] (from 2016) it looks like renewable will surpass nuclear sometime this year. [2] shows that "other" sources already has, but I think that includes hydro-electricity.

[1] https://www.iea.org/newsroom/energysnapshots/oecd-electricit...

[2] https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/data/browser/#/?id=2-IEO201...

True, but great majority of the renewables cited into the report is hydro, which is not very portable and cannot be considered as way forward.. not even mentioning all the flooding it causes

Read the first link again. That splits out hydro and shows other renewables are (as I said) about to surpass nuclear.

If we keep turning off nuclear power plants just like Germany.

By my eyeballed guess, it doesn't need any reduction in nuclear power for the renewable sources to surpass it. The nuclear line looks more or less horizontal to me.

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