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Comment by icarus_drowning | Hacker News Reader

While it is true that there are many people attempting to call the crisis "over" without adequate evidence that this is the case, I think it is equally obvious that there are many people who are doing the opposite: namely, attempting to make the case that the crisis is far worse than the incomplete facts indicate.

I applaud your more measured approach, but I must say that, as someone who has read most of the stories and comments regarding this topic that have hit the front page, I do feel that you are decidedly in the minority. There are plenty of people rushing to call this a horrendous disaster, who are privy to the same limited information, and who are likewise doing very little to contribute to the discussion.

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I mostly agree, but we have to assume the absolute worst and be rewarded with good news, rather than assume everything's fine and be surprised when a large number of Japanese citizens get thyroid cancer. Even though I think "oh my God, Chernobyl!" is uncalled for at this point, the fact is that the limited information doesn't change that we might be in a horrendous disaster (and arguably are).

The information we do have tells us it's bad; the information we don't have doesn't tell us how bad.

unless we're nuclear engineers, there is nothing we can do about the situation besides donate to relief organizations. with no productive actions to take, why should we assume anything?

There are productive actions you can take to try to prevent this from happening again:

1 - work to close existing nuclear plants

2 - work to make sure no new ones are built

Even though this is a Fairly Bad Thing, I think crafting an anti-nuclear agenda out of it is a poor move for society as a whole.

Nuclear power has overwhelmingly been shown to be safe, and something can be safe and have unexpected Big Deals at the same time. That's a non-binary attitude that this polarizing subject doesn't exactly favor, as shown by this thread in numerous places.

I mean, that's part of being human, isn't it? Nuclear power is safe. Humans build nuclear power. There will always be a human element...

I disagree. It has not been shown overwhelmingly to be safe. It has not been shown as something that can be safe.

Statistics disagree with you.

If those are the only productive actions I can take to ensure this won't happen again, then I think I don't want this to not happen again. Not saying I want this to happen again, but nuclear power is still safer than most of the alternatives.

Of course, you're presenting a vastly incomplete list. We can also do things like:

3 - advocate extra layers of redundancy

4 - analyse what could have been done up-front to eliminate the possibility of this happening given the conditions of the earthquake+tsunami and implement the findings

5 - work to replace older nuclear reactors (with less-safe designs) with new reactors with state-of-the-art safety features

...

Also, we can solve traffic fatalities by getting rid of cars.

That might not be a bad idea. Not only would there be far fewer fatalities, but we'd be much less reliant on fossil fuels.

That, in turn, would not only forestall global warming, but possibly prevent some of the "hard crash" scenarios that could happen on the way down from the oil peak.

Unfortunately, getting rid of cars would probably be much harder than getting rid of nuclear power plants.

So I'd vote to start on something that's realistically accomplishable in the relatively near term: get rid of existing nuclear power plants, and keep new ones from being built.

So how do I expect to travel 30 miles to work again? Bike my way there?

Jobs would necessarily have to be much closer to home.

The onset of global warming and the oil peak are starting to prove that building economies around suburbs, highways, and long commutes is unsustainable anyway.

See this great documentary, "The End of Suburbia":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3uvzcY2Xug

I prefer:

1. Work to close the existing nuclear plants, most of which have been sitting around 30+ years.

2. Work to replace that aging technology with newer, safer designs like the pebble bed reactors.

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