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Comment by gmac | Hacker News Reader

If the US system is even slightly functional, the FAA will get beefed up and we'll be fine for a decade or two.

Then people will again start saying "we've had no accidents for years, therefore flying is really safe, so why all this burdensome regulation?". Regulation will get scaled back, something like the 737 MAX will happen again, the FAA will get beefed up, and so on, ad infinitum.

It's this sort of regulatory boom and bust that makes me feel humans shouldn't be allowed to do anything that's dangerous on a really large scale (such as nuclear power).

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> regulatory boom and bust

The root cause is pretty easy to describe: benefits are apparent and risks are hidden.

It's much harder for people to weigh things that might happen against things that will happen. Especially when the former is negative and latter is positive (positive outcome bias).

Consequently, in meeting after meeting, risk safeguards are erroded. Because each meeting has a relatively minor "Do we want this benefit, or to hedge this risk?" decision, and in aggregate, people pick the former.

Nuclear power is not that dangerous on a large scale compared to coal power. Or burning any fossil fuel for that matter.

Juggling chainsaws is not so dangerous compared to Russian roulette.

Well, I cannot undo years of pervasive anti-nuke sentiment in a small hacker news comment.

I was like you before, it's the "default" sentiment to feel like nuclear power is dangerous and dirty.

Please do your homework and collect information from reliable sources on the matter. It might change your mind, or at least give you a more balanced viewpoint.

Or do your homework and find that it’s actually far worse than pro-nuclear propagandists constantly claim. Huge increases in rates of multiple forms of cancer near nuclear sites, while the rest of the country is seeing decreases - but not attributed to nuclear. Huge environmental problems and costs pawned off on the US dept of energy and taxpayers, but not attributed to nuclear. Assassinated whistleblowers.

Nuclear industry is a textbook example of regulatory capture. If the renewable guys were anywhere near as good we’d see 0 deaths from solar and wind. “The solar panel didn’t kill him, it was gravity and a slippery ladder”

> Or do your homework and find that it’s actually far worse than pro-nuclear propagandists constantly claim.

Well, I did. And did not find any convincing claims. Try to take a step back and not see everyone as either anti or pro. Show me your evidence for your claims.

"Assassinated whistleblowers" is a pretty strong statement, it requires pretty strong evidence.

Karen Silkwood?

So far, no. But a single nuclear power plant has the potential for continent-wide devastation. Is the same true of the world's largest coal power plants (~6.7 GW)?

> But a single nuclear power plant has the potential for continent-wide devastation.

This is not true.

The space destroyed to make way for coal strip-mining in Germany alone, is larger than Tchernobyl exclusion zone.

A nuclear power plant from 50 years ago, yes. A new one can’t do that.

> It's this sort of regulatory boom and bust that makes me feel humans shouldn't be allowed to do anything that's dangerous on a really large scale (such as nuclear power).

You had a good comment except for the last line. Nuclear power is the safest form of energy production out there (and by far).

His point is not that nuclear power is not dangerous, his point is that according to his theory, humans will get complacent and walk-back regulations when nothing happens, leading to potential nuclear accidents that were needless.

How long do we have to wait to see this prophecy realize? Because nuclear power has been around for a long time already, and the industry remains extremely regulated.

> Because nuclear power has been around for a long time already, and the industry remains extremely regulated.

The industry was very heavily regulated globally before Chernobyl and Fukushima, but look what happened.

I’m not saying I’m against nuclear power (as I’m not). I’m not saying that any industry regulation is generally ineffective most of the time, especially when financials and greed gets involved (even though it appears to be true). I’m just saying humans are bad at moderating risk over long periods of time.

> The industry was very heavily regulated globally before Chernobyl and Fukushima, but look what happened

Gross incompetence and huge design issues 40 years ago on one hand, and complacency+incompetence that required a huge natural disaster to pose a problem, and even then it resulted in less death and destruction than the evacuation, the natural disaster itself or your regular fossil fuel power plant? Not sure that's a good example.

Is the Japanese nuclear industry really heavily regulated if they were still able to put Fukushima where it was?:

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

> The industry was very heavily regulated globally before Chernobyl and Fukushima, but look what happened.

Apart from Chernobyl which was poorly designed and managed to begin with, other plants have proven safe. Even Fukushima hardly caused any death while several thousands people were killed by a once-in-a-lifetime tsunami. Let's put things in perspective, please.

Arguably, non-nuclear fossil power is just as dangerous due to less regulation (pollution, climate change). And I wouldn't discount second-order effects from renewables either. And dam breaks can be far deadlier than nuclear accidents.

We are not really "fit" for any technology, but lack of technology wouldn't keep us safe from existential risks either. The solution is to transcend our biological substrate altogether.

> Nuclear power is the safest form of energy production out there (and by far).

Only on average. The potential worst case fuckup is the most spectacular compared to any other energy source.

Yes, and this is a perception issue. Most people don't understand statistics.

Not at all.

Dams failures are WAY worse in terms of deaths.

A battle of worst case scenarios. For science.

At least with a dam you can see the where the danger is after it fails :\

The biggest coal, gas and dam failures were all pretty bad and often on a level with nuclear.

The 'worst case' with a modern reactor is basically zero to very few people die and there is some leaked out radiation. This is what happened in Fukushima. Its hard to find a worse case with a modern reactor.

I do not know what you have in mind, but to my understanding Chernobyl was pretty much as bad as it can get. And the other energy sources... Well, if we are allowed to stretch our imagination on the potential worst case, I start thinking about fossile fuels, greenhouse gas effect and Venus. Or maybe genetically modified energy crops that break ecosystems...

No - Chernobyl would have been much worse if the people on the ground hadn’t stopped the meltdown. The miners? The divers? What do you think those sacrifices were about?

Somehow stuff like Centralia[0] always skips the mind when comparing Chernobyl to coal. Nuclear isn't the only source with long-lasting, damaging effects.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia_mine_fire

> The potential worst case fuckup is the most spectacular compared to any other energy source.

Just like plane crashes make for horrific headlines. Meantime, a lot more people die every year driving their car to work, and nobody talks about it. Your point is, we don't know how to grasp data?

Fine if humanity will never have to tackle anything complex for it's own survival, e.g. deflecting an asteroid on a collision course with earth (or evacuating the planet before it does), dealing with global warming, or some other planetary change (natural or otherwise), dealing with overpopulation / resources etc.

It would also require every other nation on earth to agree with the restriction, which isn't really compatible with the premise in the first place; if the regulations are self-imposed, people will stop following them.

I think it’s an optimization problem and incentives problem. We should be reevaluating level of funding over time, otherwise government organizations will grow indefinitely, but here’s where the incentives come in play, who would be interested in doing this evaluation gradually and with the backing of data? I believe the latter depends on the society and the politics.

> If the US system is even slightly functional

I have some bad news for you...

Nuclear power in western countries has been regulated to the crazy safety standards (not to confuse with the military fuckups).

> It's this sort of regulatory boom and bust that makes me feel humans shouldn't be allowed to do anything that's dangerous on a really large scale (such as nuclear power).

For more thinking along these lines, see the book “Normal Accidents: Living with High-Risk Technologies” (1984) by sociologist Charles Perrow (concerning nuclear power), the book “The Limits of Safety — Organizations, Accidents and Nuclear Weapons” (1993) by Scott Sagan concerning nuclear weapons, and the work of philosopher Hans Jonas on the “imperative of responsibility” (1980s).

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