Comment by thebeefytaco | Hacker News Reader

Comment by thebeefytaco | Hacker News Reader

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Nuclear power is by far the cleanest and safest, including wind power.

>In England, there were 163 wind turbine accidents that killed 14 people in 2011. Wind produced about 15 billion kWhrs that year, so using a capacity factor of 25%, that translates to about 1,000 deaths per trillion kWhrs produced (the world produces 15 trillion kWhrs per year from all sources). -- https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2013/09/29/forget-ea...

Nuclear power has 0.07 deaths per TWh. (https://ourworldindata.org/what-is-the-safest-form-of-energy)

1 TWh = 1 billion kWh, so multiply by 1,000 to get trillion kWh and you have ~70 deaths for nuclear, compared to 1,000 for wind per trillion kWh.

Fairly small sample size for wind power deaths vs nuclear (someone let me know if you find a better source), but I'd be very surprised if it didn't hold up with a more complete set of data. There have only been a trivial amount of nuclear power related deaths throughout history, with less than 10 deaths in the last 33 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_and_radiation_accident...

These are cooked numbers. How many died constructing nuke plants? How many mining, refining, processing, transporting fuel and fuel handling equipment? How many died of radioactive krypton gas poisoning after 3MI? (No, not zero.) Zirconium refining, alone, accounts for plenty of deaths.

The author clearly has access to far better information than defenders posting here.

Just the fact that all nuke plants in operation were designed to withstand much less severe weather and flooding events than are now expected, with no requirements or plans for improvement, justify shutdown.

Then you have to play fair. How many died constructing wind turbines? How many mining, refining, processing, transporting the construction materials and equipment? How many died of pollution generated in the manufacturing process. Etc...

Admittedly, I don't know the actual data, but as far as I understand, people have made attempts to factor in these kinds of side costs, like estimating deaths caused by Chernobyl, and even with those factors, nuclear still comes out looking a lot safer.

https://ourworldindata.org/what-is-the-safest-form-of-energy

>How many died of radioactive krypton gas poisoning after 3MI? (No, not zero.)

Can you actually prove anyone died as a result? The American Nuclear Society concluded:

>"The average radiation dose to people living within 10 miles of the plant was eight millirem, and no more than 100 millirem to any single individual. Eight millirem is about equal to a chest X-ray, and 100 millirem is about a third of the average background level of radiation received by U.S. residents in a year."

>"Several health studies found there were no long-term adverse effects on the health of the population living around TMI."

http://www.ans.org/pi/resources/sptopics/tmi/whathappened.ph...

More studies:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2389745

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1405170/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2029040

I welcome any evidence to the contrary.

>The author clearly has access to far better information than defenders posting here.

If that's the case, why doesn't he share them? Just sounds like an appeal to authority. Regardless nuclear is safer by a massive margin, and again I'd be very surprised if that still wasn't the case even factoring all of that in. Even if you did have evidence of thousands of people dying, it'd still be safer than all other forms of generating power, not to mention much cleaner.

>with no requirements or plans for improvement,

The only reasons we're not improving plants and building new ones is government regulations preventing it.

Imagine if nuclear energy did kill the same number of people as wind energy does. Would that change your opinion? Of course not, and nor should it. Because both sources of energy are ridiculously safe compared to coal. Wind is safe enough.

But there is still a difference between wind and nuclear. In terms of public safety wind energy is far easier to model and design safely. Just make sure that the wind turbine is placed far enough away from roads and buildings. So that if it falls over (massively unlikely) it will not hurt anyone. A wind farm can be designed safe by a cad technician with 15 mins of training. A nuclear reactor requires an entire industry of scientists and engineers triple checking each others work. You can check the safety of a wind farm with a ruler. Obviously offshore wind is more complicated, but you get my point. Nuclear energy is hard.

For the record, I do think we should invest in nuclear energy. But these kind of arguments seem a little intellectually dishonest. Renewables are good enough on many of the metrics in which nuclear excels.

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