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Comment by jtolmar | Hacker News Reader

Has anyone discredited the old deaths per kilowatt hour metric? [1]

If not, nuclear is still the safest source of power, even including disasters like Chernoble and Fukushima. The major disasters come to mind more readily because they receive heavy media coverage, but this is in part because they're so rare, unlike the utterly routine problem of coal ash ponds spilling. Outside of major disasters, nuclear power produces so much energy that it's safer than wind power, which only kills people via construction and maintenance accidents.

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-d...

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Yep. Coal plant deaths are local news.

A nuclear power plant failure (however minor) is global news for weeks and weeks.

Nuclear power plant failure, like Chornobyl, _can_ make whole continent inhabitable for thousands of years.

Chernobyl made a large area a restricted zone, but nowhere near a continent scale. Besides, I really dislike people bringing up Chernobyl as an example of dangers - the RBMK reactor type like the one in Chernobyl still operates in 10 reactors producing electricity(and they will until 2024 at least). Even Chernobyl itself operated into 2000s before the last reactor block was shut down. And the only catastrophic fault with them happened because of an idiotic test that basically was meant to test what happens if you switch off all cooling and disable all safeguards - well, the reactor explodes, that's what. The test itself was criminal.

Sure, if we exclude everything that could go wrong, we have a very safe system.

Unfortunately, it happened. It really happened. And "only those stupid Russians could have done it" doesn't comfort me.

Nobody said that Chornobyl hit whole continent, but it's because some people sacrificed their lives to stop continent scale disaster[1], not because it was small scale disaster.

Chornobyl operated till 2000s because cheap atom blasted huge hole in budget of Ukraine. They stopped when Ukraine received financial help to close these reactors. Tax payers and international aid covered these expenses and will continue to cover them for next few centuries at least. Closure of single reactor costs significant part of budget of small country. Closure of bunch of reactors can eat whole budget or two.

If one stupid can devastate whole continent, then better to switch to something else, because it doesn't look like we will breed out stupid people in near future.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=raB80HRA1IQ

It's not inhabitable but if you have a choice between living in a contaminated area or a non contaminated area then you will always choose the latter. The animals ib chernobyl actually thrive because of the lack of human intervention.

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