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Comment by Reedx | Hacker News Reader

> Germany is about to open a coal plant (partially) to take over from one of the nuclear power plants we're shutting down

When nuclear is shut down, it's often replaced by coal. See also Japan, with a lot of coal plants coming up:

"It is one unintended consequence of the Fukushima nuclear disaster almost a decade ago, which forced Japan to all but close its nuclear power program. Japan now plans to build as many as 22 new coal-burning power plants — one of the dirtiest sources of electricity — at 17 different sites in the next five years, just at a time when the world needs to slash carbon dioxide emissions to fight global warming."

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/03/climate/japan-coal-fukush...

And a lot of people aren't aware nuclear is the safest form of energy per TWh: https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy

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Maybe depends on how you define safest. Where I live in Sweden, there are parts of the country where it's still not safe to hunt and eat wild boar because of a nuclear accident over 30 years ago 3000 kilometers away.

If you just divide the number of meltdowns (5) with the number of active power reactors in the world (449) we learn that statistically 1% of reactors will have a core meltdown.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_power_accident...

Well, ~100% of coal plants do kill lots of people.

That's such a short-sighted argument. Same as with "more deaths through flu" we heard so often in February.

Think about fat tails and asymmetric risk. If you read in the newspaper next year: "Hundred thousand people dead/displaced due to power plant accident" - more likely to be coal or nuclear?

Please understand that no electricity generation technology has no risk.

> Think about fat tails and asymmetric risk. If you read in the newspaper next year: "Hundred thousand people dead/displaced due to power plant accident" - more likely to be coal or nuclear?

What's your evaluation of the probability of this event ? Without putting figures in the equation, I could also ask you in the same way to think about this event : if you read in the newspaper next year: "Billions of people dead/displaced due to one in a thousands year drought, leading to global famine" - more likely to be coal or nuclear?

> more likely to be coal or nuclear

Nuclear. Naive probability matters relatively little here. The risk of coal plants due to CO2 is a thin-tailed long term risk. No single coal plant will ever cause a headline (or an event) like this. Thin-tailed long-term risks can be mitigated and planned for and the result is always a sum of many smaller choices (albeit global warming is an existential risk for sure!).

Nuclear is different. 99,999% of time it's cheaper and cleaner than coal. Doesn't matter. The tail-risk is what matters and that's also, why (conventional) nuclear can't ever be economically competitive against any other power source without direct or indirect subsidies (there is no insurance that will insure a nuclear power plant).

Highly recommend Taleb`s paper on fat-tailedness [1].

[1] https://arxiv.org/abs/2001.10488

I sincerely don't understand your appreciation of risks. If you have a simpler introduction to this, please share.

There's no insurance that insures a hydro power plant against dam failure either, nor large chemical industries. It's nothing abnormal.

To my knowledge, this depends on the dam in question For large dams in developed countries it's relatively easy to contain that risk (move people a few kilometers away from thedanger zone) in contrast to a nuclear plant. Large chemical industries have no problems getting insurance as far as I know -or do you have credible sources stating otherwise?

I've never heard of countries considering the entire danger zone from a large hydroelectric dam uninhabitable. They're so large that it's simply not feasible. Take the largest hydro station in Sweden for example, Harsprånget[1]. The government assessment for what happens when that dam breaks assumes it takes out a very large geographical area, among other things the entire city of Luleå (which is near the coastline).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harspr%C3%A5nget_hydroelectric...

No large chemical industry handlng dangerous chemicals, in developed countries or otherwise, has an insurance large enough to pay for huge expensive spills. That's why the company usually defaults when it happens and leaves the cleanup for the government later on. This has happened on numerous occations in the US, Europe, and over here in Sweden.

No, it's likely due to hydro power. Hydro has had several large scale accidents killing and displacing hundreds of thousands of people, such as the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam in China.

Coal kills slowly but is the power source that's killed most people over time. Nuclear has killed the fewest by far.

That's preposterous. Wild boar is hunted, eaten and sold everywhere here in Sweden. The radioactivity (among other things) is measured and there are about a handful of animals above the limits for cesium-137 each year. It's important to note the limits are set very, very low.

The term "meltdown" means the core has melted. I don't know where you got the number "5" from, because it's not the number of meltdowns globally (there have been a lot, almost all of them contained) nor the number of accidents with widespread consequences (2: Chernobyl and Fukushima).

It's not entirely accurate, but it's not preposterous and you're whitewashing the whole thing.

During tests of felled wild boar in early 2019[0][1] showed that around 70% of the ones from Gästrikland (the region in Sweden that was hit hardest from the Chernobyl fallout) contained caesium-137 concentrations way above the 1500 Bq/kg guidelines, above which the animal is considered unsellable, ungiftable, and meat from such animals, for private use, should only be consumed at most a few times a month (up to 3000 Bq/kg), or not at all (>10 000 Bq/kg).

Several animals (unclear how many) had caesium concentrations of over 40 000 Bq/kg, so there's a huge variation. Cannot find more exact figures than that.

There are some interesting updated figures here, but not as big a study: https://krets.jagareforbundet.se/gavlesodra/cesiumrapport/

There's a debate[2][3] about who should pay for testing these animals, because any animal above 1500 Bq/kg should be destroyed, and radioactivity tests are really expensive. Hunters want the government to pay. The government wants none of it. As it looks right now, wild boar hunting in these regions for the purpose of selling the meat is not economically feasible. This might change [4] (taxpayers will foot the bill).

It's not only in Gävleborg/Gästrikland either. This map is from the Swedish Radiation Safety Authority's tests from 2018, mostly south of the really problematic areas: https://www.stralsakerhetsmyndigheten.se/contentassets/90ef7...

Sources: [0]: https://www.svt.se/nyheter/lokalt/gavleborg/mer-an-vartannat... [1]: https://www.livsmedelsverket.se/livsmedel-och-innehall/oonsk... [2]https://www.svt.se/nyheter/lokalt/gavleborg/mer-an-vartannat... [3]: https://www.thelocal.se/20191222/should-sweden-foot-the-bill... [4]: https://www.svt.se/nyheter/lokalt/gavleborg/staten-kan-bekos...

Sorry, yes, "a handful" was stretching it, but it's not a big issue. Wild boar meat is hunted and sold all over Sweden and the radioactivity is measured.

If you look at the sources more closely, you'll see the "70%" figure was the number of wild boars that have measurably higher levels of radioactivity. Not the number above the limit.

This has been a big thing for the Hunters association since the limits are very low and fallout was very localized, hunters in some areas are very much affected since they could not sell the meat.

It's a pity, since even Livsmedelsverket themselves say 1.5 kBq/kg is safe to eat several times a month[1]. The limits are set very low. Granted, they state above 10 kBq/kg should not be eaten, but there were very few animals above that value.

[1] https://www.livsmedelsverket.se/livsmedel-och-innehall/oonsk...

That link was in my sources. And no, 70% were over 1500 Bq/kg.

100% of animals (only 8, because of limited funding for testing) tested in 2020 by the Southern Hunter's Circle in Gävle (that embedded link in my post) in were over 1500 Bq/kg, with an average of 6263 Bq/kg.

SSI/Livsmedelsverkets's irradiation limits are "low" (your opinion) for a reason, because we just don't really know much about the long-term effects. These limits have not been changed since 1986 in Sweden, but what I do know is that they're 3 times higher than, for instance, in Germany, which sets the limit at 600 Bq/kg. The US: 370 Bq/kg. Japan (implemented in 2012 after the Fukushima incident, because there were no prior legal binding limits): 100 Bq/kg. Yeah, what a "pity", as you say.

The original post was not "preposterous".

I know that this is a big issue for some people, and I understand that. However, the limits are set way below the level considered dangerous and are political. Countries with lower problems or that want to be seen as taking the problem seriously set lower limits.

To put some perspective into it, an average banana contains about 150 Bq/kg from radioactive K-40[1]. K-40 is pretty comparable to Cs-137 biologically but nobody even considers limiting the amount of banana eaten. Bananas are regularly given to infants (which are the population most vulnerable to radiation damage) from six months of age, but nobody bats an eye, because 150 Bq/kg gives you such an extremely low dose.

Wild boar is safe to hunt and eat in the entire country, so yes I'd say your original statement was preposterous. If I was a very prolific hunter and my staple food was boar, I'd be concerned if I lived in one of those areas, but not otherwise.

But then again, in Sweden we live in houses built on granite bedrock with walls made from radioactive lightweight concrete. The radon gas emitted from them gives you a dose magnitudes larger than eating wild boar, mushrooms and berries your entire life.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_equivalent_dose

A localized problem which is still nowhere close to the worldwide problem of mercury levels in fish attributed to fossil burning and coal plants.

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