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Comment by trhway | Hacker News Reader

seems that there is more progress on Mars than at Fukushima. That illustrates the true scale of risks/dangers/difficulty of dealing with nuclear disasters. Basically we have no technology to deal with nuclear disasters. All we can is just to wait for the radiation to decrease while for example in Belarus several thousand people die per year from Chernobyl related cancers (plus associated birth defects, etc.). And we can do nothing. This is why the only way we have is like Germany - getting rid of nuclear completely. While nuclear is our best bet in space, on Moon/Mars/etc., it just cant be used on Earth as we completely lack necessary technology.

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That is a lie.

According to the WHO (https://www.who.int/ionizing_radiation/chernobyl/20110423_FA...), a "large fraction" of 6000 thyroid cancer cases (to 2005), of which 15 were fatal, are attributable to radiation exposure. No other health impacts are supported by evidence.

As such, the actual figure for deaths (at present, over 30 years since the incident) resulting from the Chernobyl incident is somewhere between zero and one per year.

Even if it was thousands of deaths per year (which it is not), that would still be far below the number of deaths caused by burning coal.

>As such, the actual figure for deaths (at present, over 30 years since the incident) resulting from the Chernobyl incident is somewhere between zero and one per year.

and that can't be farther from the Belarus reality. For example https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16506213

" In addition, a significant 2-fold increase in risk was observed, during the period 1997-2001, in the most contaminated districts (average cumulative dose of 40.0 mSv or more) compared with the least contaminated districts"

Breast cancer in general is the most frequent one - 1 in 8 women will get it over lifetime. Now double that. That is the reality of life in Gomel and Mogilev regions which took the brunt of the Chernobyl accident.

Russia and Ukraine have the same cancer rates, while Belarus - same people, same habits/lifestyle/etc. - have 1.5x cancer rates of Russia/Ukraine resulting in about 15000/year extra cases and the majority of those extra cases are in the Gomel and Mogilev regions. The cancer mortality in Belarus is 30%-50%. Do the math.

>According to the WHO (https://www.who.int/ionizing_radiation/chernobyl/20110423_FA...), a "large fraction" of 6000 thyroid cancer cases (to 2005), of which 15 were fatal, are attributable to radiation exposure. No other health impacts are supported by evidence.

that is a lie. The minimally honest WHO report would at least added something like this:

"There is a significant increase in cancer rates in the most contaminated districts. WHO sees no evidence connecting it to the contamination. Correlation is no causation. Pure random distribution. What are the chances!"

At this point I'd rather take the risks and costs of nuclear instead of the sure problems of coal and gas. Until it is all replaced with renewable (hopefully very soon) we should definitely keep everything possible running.

To your point, the effect of Fukushima is two-fold in Japan. On top of the meltdown and its consequences, since most of its 50-odd nuclear plants were stopped with only half a dozen restarted since, and with Japan lagging quite a bit in renewable energy projects, most of the energy needs have been since then met with a substantial increase in coal and gas use.

I think it is important to remember that the number of nuclear-related deaths is unrivalled compared to the mortality from oil-related conflicts or mortality from coal pollution. Mortality per kilowatt for electrovoltaics is very high due to accidents during the installation of solar panels on roofs. Germany is certainly not a good model on this.

I expect that's true on a "per kilowatt-hour" basis.

BUT, the potential for harm from nuclear accidents is vastly higher, and also lasting (though one can make a competitive case for fossil fuel impact on global warming).

In any case, "the big one" hasn't happened yet. It may not ever happen, but if it does, ONE incident can cause incalculable harm.

I think potential for harm needs to be assessed in addition to just death per kilowatt hour.

No, it can't. This isn't magical technology; it has limits. The harm that can come from a single accident is constrained. Chernobyl and Fukushima represses pretty much the worst case, beyond what is even possible with better, more modern designs. Yet even in these cases the impact to human life is minimal when compared with other technologies, as noted by others.

While I understand where you're coming from, consider that there were initially hundreds of thousands displaced; tens of thousands still to this day. PTSD, depression, and profoundly disrupted lives. Many lost everything, and many will never return home. From this one incident.

Edit : I am specifically replying to the phrase "the impact to human life is minimal" when referring to Fukushima. I am not comparing harm of nuclear versus harm of fossil fuels, etc. Fukushima's consequences were, and still are now to a very large number of people, including displaced, farmers, fishermen, and even the effects on commerce and relations between Japan and neighbouring nations ( Taiwan's food ban, etc ), anything but minimal. How much cancer cases increased is not the relevant measure point here.

As opposed to the crippling health effects of fossil fuels? Fossil fuels are causing harm on a global scale orders of magnitude more than nuclear. And not just physical harm to humans, but ecological and economic harm as well.

Nuclear is by far the lesser of the two evils, providing baseload level amounts of carbon neutral energy with nearly a century lifespan, highly regulated and being far, far safer than any competing energy source.

I'm largely supportive of nuclear power, except for one problem: All new plants seem to require large public subsidies, both direct and indirect.

To get Hinkley Point C built, UK taxpayers have to guarantee an electricity price well above market rate, and the taxpayer has to underwrite all the loans, and the taxpayer will be on the hook for any accident cleanup costs above the reactor's $1bn insurance, and the taxpayer will be storing the waste, and guess who'll be paying for the decommissioning? That's right, in all probability it'll be the taxpayer.

In nuclear is the future, we're in for a very expensive future.

Are you under the impression that fossil fuels aren't similarly subsidised?

> While I understand where you're coming from, consider that there were initially hundreds of thousands displaced; tens of thousands still to this day. PTSD, depression, and profoundly disrupted lives. Many lost everything, and many will never return home. From this one incident.

This was in part (or, from what I read some time ago, mostly) caused by irrational fear and overrreaction to the incident, causing an evacuation much larger than necessary.

Well, there was definitely a bigger overreaction from foreigners living here, in fact. Thus the term fly-jin, thrown around quite a bit in those days. Pervasive PTSD and depression amongst the many thousands still displaced today ( specially the elderly ) is very real. There was an excellent article somewhere from a couple of years ago that I can't quite find right now.

    > Chernobyl and Fukushima represses pretty much the worst case...

No, they do not. Each of these could have been much worse.

And yet, even now people are still trying to piece together the scope of the damage that was done. These accidents were already incalculable in the harm they've done.

Both are examples of accidents which are physically impossible to happen on modern passively cooled designs.

One thing that I try to keep in mind is that the quantity of energy that we're trying to extract from the natural world is orders of magnitude more than any animal has every tried before. There's going to be unexpected costs of wandering off nature's beaten path, whether it's radiation, airborne particulates, or runoff from PV manufacturing

For a beautiful illustration of this, I HIGHLY recommend:

https://www.stuartmcmillen.com/comic/energy-slaves/#page-1

Awesome comics, thanks!

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