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Comment by anoncake | Hacker News Reader

> Nuclear plants do not "blow up".

The reactor of Chernobyl did blow up. Just not like a nuclear bomb, if that's what you meant. Which may be a bad thing, Hiroshima is actually inhabitable.

>People are unreasonably scared of nuclear energy, and we might lose a planet because of this.

People are quite reasonably scared of nuclear energy. What's unreasonable is that they are less scared of global warming.

Your data is not convincing -- in fact, I think it does not address the danger of nuclear and fossil energy at all. Using fossils kill a fairly predictable number of people each year. For a country, let alone humanity as a whole, that is not a danger but a cost.

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The reactor that blew up in Chernobyl was because of the design of the reactor itself. Even at the time it was built, the west never would have green lit the reactor design.

Good thing nuclear reactors are only being built in the West then.

Chernobyl is the worst possible example. The RMBK reactor is an irresponsible politically motivated design without containment and a highly positive void coefficient, meaning that runaway nuclear reaction is possible. The reactor that blew up also had a design fault (which was fixed), it is quite unstable at low capacity and there was also human error that triggered the accident.

http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fue...

Chernobyl was caused by human error and irresponsibility. We have to assume that the design and operation of all reactors, present and future, will involve these factors. Everything humans do does.

That's why SMRs like NuScale Power's aim to reduce the number of staff and replace it with automation and passive safety features.

Which again is written by humans. Boeing anyone? All you can do is reducing the risk not eliminate it. Chernobyl was clearly on the high risk side of things. Doesn't mean new reactor types are zero risk so.

Nothing is zero risk. It's just facts of life that we have to deal with. We can do risk mitigation so that the risks are minimized as much as possible. There is also the risk of smog deaths, heavy metal posioning and climate realted disasters if we continue to burn coal. Would you rather have the risk one nuclear accident per 3704 cumulative reactor-years of commercial nuclear power operation [1] or the guaranteed risk of 800,000 premature deaths per year globally [2] attributed to normal coal power operation?

1. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00963402.2016.1...

2. https://endcoal.org/health/

Risk implies uncertainty. A "guaranteed risk" is not a risk. And of course I prefer a small decrease in life expectancy to the risk of rendering millions of people homeless.

The equation does change when taking climate change in account. But that does not mean renewables are preferred to nuclear merely for "political reasons". Being better than coal does not remotely make it acceptable.

The reactor in Chernobyl was a soviet RBMK-type reactor. These haven't been built anywhere for many decades and I don't think even a single one was ever built anywhere in the West.

Nuclear plants do not "blow up".

> Nuclear plants do not "blow up".

Chernobyl was a coal plant them I guess.

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