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Comment by jshen | Hacker News Reader

I feel like this line of reasoning misses the point a bit. Nuclear waste is dangerous for a very very long time, while deaths from these other sources are front loaded. When can people move back to chernobyl? If we have significant radiation exposure in japan, how long will that land be uninhabitable? Nuclear waste we create today is dangerous for how long?

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Unless you have a negative discount rate, a few (hypothetical) deaths in the distant future is less bad than a few deaths now.

People currently live in the Chernobyl exclusion zone, 24 years later:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,412954,00.html

There was significant radiation exposure in Japan a while back. This is what it looks like today:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:HiroshimaNight.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nagasaki_C1414.jpg

couldn't it be a lot of hypothetical deaths? I also fail to see how dumping our waste on generations to come for our own selfish desires is less bad. I think it's less responsible to expect someone else to bear the risks in the future for a reward I want now. Maybe I'm not looking at this like a banker ;)

My default position isn't anti-nuclear, but I find a lot of the arguments and reasoning on the pro-nuclear side to be less than convincing, and in some cases disingenuous. Nuclear seems safer than coal, but the knee jerk reaction on this site from pro-nuclear people isn't helping that cause. Go read the comments on the posts the day after the earthquake, most of them said "everything is fine, nothing bad can possibly happen". Turns out that wasn't true.

> I also fail to see how dumping our waste on generations to come for our own selfish desires is less bad.

You're assuming that just because we consider it waste, they will too. Personally, I'm expecting that at some point some use will be found for the 'waste' -- maybe highly efficient reprocessing or materials for low-radiation (think 'easily traced') medical nanobots -- at which point future generations will thank us profusely for generating such convenient stockpiles of the stuff.

I'll begin dumping all of my garbage on your lawn. I expect at some point you will find a use for this "waste". At some point you will thank me profusely.

The reason you have the discount rate is uncertainty about the future. There are many things that could happen - we might be super wealthy and be able to easily dispose of waste. We might be dirt poor, and death of cancer at 65 rather than at 40 due to ulcers is the least of our issues. We might, as dstorrs speculates or as France demonstrates, consider nuclear waste to be a valuable resource to be harnessed.

I.e., there are many scenarios in which the deaths we hypothesize never actually materialize. Hence, discount rates.

but you're gambling with other peoples health, not your own. When you say "we" you really mean other people not including you.

You're doing the same thing. The only difference is that you are gambling with people who currently exist while I'm gambling with people who might exist in the future.

with whose health am I gambling?

The people at risk of "death from these other [non-nuclear] sources" (see 6 posts upthread).

You're either confusing me with someone else, or putting words in my mouth. I've never said that we shouldn't use nuclear, that nuclear is worse than x, or anything like that. Part of the reason I have a problem with the tone in the aftermath of this disaster is that you guys are seeing a boogie man behind every question. The only thing I did was question the logic and assumptions of a couple of arguments for nuclear power. I'm trying to figure this stuff out for myself, so I'm questioning things.

edit: in fact, if you read my early comment I said this, "Nuclear seems safer than coal, but the knee jerk reaction on this site from pro-nuclear people isn't helping that cause.". That doesn't seem to stop you from seeing a boogie man though.

My bad, I assumed you were saying more than you were.

Nevertheless, the meat of my comment remains the same. Choosing a power generation source with a front-loaded death risk is gambling with other people's lives today. Choosing something with a back-loaded death risk is gambling with other people's lives tomorrow. I see no compelling reason to believe one is better than the other.

there is also a third alternative, use less energy.

That's not a real third alternative, because even if you make less power, you still have to pick your power generation source.

if you burn less coal you put less shit into the air, right?

Is fallout from an atom bomb worse than fallout from a reactor meltdown?

Fallout from the WWII bombings was much greater than the fallout expected from the Daiichi plant. We'll have to wait until data come in to say how much.

How long would the atmosphere take to recover from CO2 emissions if we stopped burning fossil fuels today? How many people will have died as a result of climate change and lung problems before then?

Exactly. This whole chart is irrelevant because what we care about is the expected impact on our health in the future, not the impact on our health in the past.

This is why all those people who say we shouldn't decide what to do about building more nuclear power plants until the events in Japan have stabilized are dumb, because the outcome in Japan has zero impact on expected future outcomes.

"because the outcome in Japan has zero impact on expected future outcomes."

Huh? Expected future outcomes are based on assumptions. Japan gives real data that we should use to recheck those assumptions, and we may learn that some of them were wrong.

It gives data about reactors that are, as I recall, 40 years old. That's entirely irrelevant to the designs of newer reactors.

I am pretty sure people in Japan had nevertheless been told those reactors are safe. They will be told new reactors are safe. Why should they believe it now? If you don't count it as a data point about safety of reactors, count it as a data point about the reliability of engineers and governments.

not if the new reactors made the same assumptions. Are you suggesting that it isn't possible, or highly unlikely, that we'll learn anything worthwhile to improve reactor design in the future from this disaster?

Yeah, more or less. We're learning more about what happens when it fails, but it's an old reactor, and we've seen them fail before. We also seem quite unlikely to learn anything especially revolutionary about how radioactive materials behave.

"We also seem quite unlikely to learn anything especially revolutionary about how radioactive materials behave."

But that's not what we need to learn about. We need to learn about how the systems that are supposed to contain radioactive materials stand up to major catastrophe.

The outcome in Japan may have no impact on the statistics, but it will have a massive impact on the opinons and beliefs of the human decision makers. Waiting for it to resolve will allow calmer heads to prevail.

People keep dismissing renewables. Well, they won't get anywhere if we don't invest in them, and that investment has to come from a decrease in spending on other sources. Like nuclear.

It should come out of coal. If we were willing to nationalize all of our energy, start phasing out coal plants, and go fully nuclear to replace coal, over the next 50 years we could get substantial savings over coal and put those savings into renewables.

And in any case, as this graph shows, renewables are not a panacea. Hydro dams cause significant environmental damage, and even wind turbines have their issues.

Sure, from anywhere it can. But a lot of people are talking about ramping up nuclear spending (and the costs are always understated).

Yes. Ramp up nuclear, ramp down coal. Potentially it is a very green technology, and at worst it's an improvement over the fossil fuel status quo.

I'd rather ramp up renewables, ramp down coal, and let nuclear dwindle on its own. Renewables aren't just "potentially" green, they are green, and without the extremely obvious risks that can contaminate a region for decades and increase the entire planet's risk of cancer. Renewables (and the advanced power grid that would support it) have huge room for improvement in generation, nuclear does not have huge room for improvement.

We do not have a nonfossil alternative that can make up the substantial power needs of the world other than nuclear power. --Glenn Sjoden

In other words, unless we litter the plains with windmills (a form of contamination IMO), we cannot get off of coal and NG.

Oh, look at me being downvoted because what I'm saying can't possibly be true...

Right... Renewables + energy savings. It is not that hard to save 15% energy. And it is such a magic field for startups currently. I don't understand why the startup crowd here isn't already working on making nuclear energy unneeded.

On that thread, it's important to look at new breeder reactors and Thorium reactors before denouncing waste from nuclear reactors as a permanent problem. We have technology that is much better, much safer, and less damaging than even what we have now.

Are those technologies what is being lobbied for in today's governments?

I am not sure how active it is but at least to some extent: http://www.ted.com/talks/bill_gates.html

About this talk: At TED2010, Bill Gates unveils his vision for the world's energy future, describing the need for "miracles" to avoid planetary catastrophe and explaining why he's backing a dramatically different type of nuclear reactor. The necessary goal? Zero carbon emissions globally by 2050.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traveling_wave_reactor TWRs differ from other kinds of fast-neutron and breeder reactors in their ability to, once started, reach a state whereafter they can achieve very high fuel utilization while using no enriched uranium and no reprocessing, instead burning fuel made from depleted uranium, natural uranium, thorium, spent fuel removed from light water reactors, or some combination of these materials. The name refers to the design characteristic that fission does not happen in the entire TWR core, but takes place in a fairly localized zone that advances through the core over time.

Right, + the US crowd majority here probably have a hard time that Japanese cannot move to the other side of the country in case of a major disaster. It's just too small, too full.

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