Comment by sweeneyrod | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sweeneyrod | Hacker News Reader

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This position is not justifiable, and the author must surely know that based on his experience and the lack of any quantitative comparison. In other words, he's lying and his lies will kill people if we listen to him.

> Coal and natural gas do not create this kind of acute accident hazard, though they do present a different kind of danger.

Around 1000-2000 people died in Japan as a result of Fukushima. Around 5000-10,000 people died in Germany in the following decade because Fukushima scared them into switching back to coal (https://www.wired.com/story/germany-rejected-nuclear-poweran...). It's absurd to imply that coal and nuclear are remotely similar in level of direct danger; it's like (as in, the relative risk is similar to) writing a thinkpiece describing flu and Russian roulette as "both dangerous things". And that's ignoring climate change.

> And solar, wind and geothermal energy pose no safety threat at all.

This is just untrue. Solar and wind quite arguably kill more people than nuclear (https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy). Even if you take the higher estimates for the risk of nuclear (the ones that assume it hasn't got safer since Chernobyl), they're certainly not different enough that you can claim renewables post "no safety threat at all" in an article about how spooky nuclear is.

And not really the same thing, but:

> without producing a single electron of power

This guy does have have a physics PhD right? He must know that you don't measure electricity in electrons, surely?

With respect to deaths attributable to renewables I believe people have deep psychological reasons for preferring those deaths over nuclear deaths.

Workplace accidents happen on a human scale; that is, they are within the experience of people and in the small seem controllable and within human agency. Furthermore, although this is a somewhat callous perspective, it seems too obvious not to mention that workplace deaths do not impact the energy consumer. Very few people experience ethical qualms around wood use, despite forestry being a dangerous occupation.

Nuclear accidents, while rare, tend to be larger scale and take away people's agency. They are not in fact even fully comprehensible to most people. For better or worse people do not feel on a personal basis that they are able to control for the risk.

Overall people tend to be happier with higher risks where they feel they have agency (e.g. driving) over smaller risks which are completely out of their control (say, flying).

First off, you're definitely cherry picking -- or to put it more bluntly, and to use your own measuring stick: "lying" -- if you try to sum up fatality risks of nuclear by referring only Fukushima, and including (in that part of your post) any mention of Chernobyl.

For which, using the same website you used (ourworlindata.org -- I'll let you find the link) we have estimates of up to 60,000 worldwide fatalities due to the radiation release from that incident.

Seconds - when the author brought up "acute risk" he was referring to the 30 km exclusion zone and forced evacuation of 150,000 people (after Fukushima).

In other words - you're accusing the author of making unbalanced comparison (and not only that, basically calling him out as a fraud and/or idiot for doing so). But apparently not even attempting to make a balanced comparison yourself.

> if you try to sum up fatality risks of nuclear by referring only Fukushima, and including (in that part of your post) any mention of Chernobyl

Good thing I'm not doing that then! I'm sure what would give you that impression, since I do quite clearly say "Even if you take the higher estimates for the risk of nuclear (the ones that assume it hasn't got safer since Chernobyl)". But in case there's any confusion, whether or not you include Chernobyl doesn't change things that much. The two studies in that link give figures of 0.07 and 0.01 deaths/TWH for nuclear. In comparison, wind is 0.035. Coal is 25.

I assume they left Chernobyl out because it was due to out of date technology that is no longer in use today and essentially cannot happen with the way nuclear power plants work today.

Another way of looking at disasters like Chernobyl and Fukushima is not so much as failures of technology -- but of bad policy, and it's generalization: hubris.

For which there doesn't seem to be an expiration date.

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