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Comment by angersock | Hacker News Reader

We have nuclear power, but people are bad at evaluating risks, so here we are.

We were told that Fukushima will NEVER happen. So yeah, some people are very bad at evaluating risks.

Well, what happened? Last I heard the outcome is some land lost, no immediate deaths, and about 100 deaths due to cancer over the next 50 years. A tragedy, but not apocalyptic. (And minuscule compared to the deaths and destruction from the earthquake/tsunami itself.)

> A private think tank says the total cost of the Fukushima disaster could reach ¥70 trillion ($626 billion), or more than three times the government’s latest estimate.

But I guess you'll say that $626 bil is just 15% of Japan's GDP, totally manageable over the long term.

I'm sure the communities where future nuclear plants are to be build will love this argument: "if disaster strikes, remember, it's for the greater good"

What's the cost of rising sea levels over the long term?

And the expected number of Fukushima deaths is tiny compared to the deaths caused by climate change - this summer's heatwave has already killed that many people in Japan alone.

We've had a working reactor design that doesn't suffer from Fukushima's failure mode for over 20 years. Ironically, public opposition has made nuclear less safe than it would've been.

Fukushima was not supposed to have a failure mode. But it did. How are we to ever believe the "experts" that the new design won't fail in another way, after which we'll hear about an ever safer design.

Alternatively, if they knew that Fukushima wasn't safe, why didn't they shut it down? They kept on saying "yeah, the new design is much safer, but this design is also perfectly fine"

You know how they say, "fool me once, ..."

> people are bad at evaluating risks

People are easily emotionally manipulated. Show some pictures of cancer or disfigured babies and you can get everyone to rail against nuclear. Media does it all the time to skew our priorities. Think medical malpractice and healthcare is a big source of death in the US? Think again, bump stocks and crappy 3d printed plastic guns are the types of killers you should be worried about according to the media. Rinse and repeat.

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