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I'm not really sure what your point is here. And the reason to be pro-nuclear is the vast quantities of environmentally friendly energy. The argument isn't that Fukushima or Chernobyl won't happen again (although they probably won't) - the argument is that after including Fukushima and Chernobyl nuclear power is still, according to the evidence, safer and more environmentally friendly than solar or wind. The damage solar and wind does in terms of habitat damage, waste and effort required is underplayed.

This compares very poorly with a surveillance state, where there is no particular theory that a surveillance state ever does anything good. The nuclear industry base-case positive is 2.5 Petawatts of power a year enabling hundreds of thousands to millions of people to live first world lives. The nuclear industry downside is evacuating Fukushima once every 20 years, no fatalities.

The best-case positive for a surveillance state is people lose any expectation of privacy but a few hundred criminals a year get caught who wouldn't otherwise. The downside is enabling groups like the Chinese to genocide Uighers and effectively suppress resistance, or supressing political resistance in Soviet Russia, or hunting down Jews in Nazi Germany, or all the examples that weren't history-defining catastrophes in various dictatorships. Who knows what sort of damage it will cause in the Five Eyes countries next time a moral hysteria sweeps through the public, but I'd rather not find out.

The issue here isn't the form of the argument, it is the magnitude of the positives and negatives.

> This compares very poorly with a surveillance state, where there is no particular theory that a surveillance state ever does anything good.

Alignment. This is a thing which benefits those in power, not the general population; those in power always either think they are acting in the best interest of the people, or don’t care what the interests of the general population are. Either way, surveillance states support whatever goals the people at the top have.

> The best-case positive for a surveillance state is people lose any expectation of privacy but a few hundred criminals a year get caught who wouldn't otherwise.

If you think drugs are a serious problem (I don’t, but governments act like it is, and my brother’s in-laws (who are are Pilipino) support Duterte‘s drugs policy), consider: in the UK 2017-18 crime survey, 9% of 16 to 59-year-olds reported using a drug in the previous year[1].

If the No Drugs Party wants to end drugs forever, how tempting would perfect surveillance be for them? That’s not a mere few criminals, it’s a radical change to society that the No Drugs Party would want to actively pursue.

[1] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...

> the argument is that after including Fukushima and Chernobyl nuclear power is still, according to the evidence, safer and more environmentally friendly than solar or wind.

That's really not the argument, but also please don't pretend that this is a fact. This might of been true in the long ago past, but solar has and is innovating and advancing way faster than nuclear. Solar is also on the order of 10x cheaper to build per kWh, 10x faster to build, safer, and doesn't leave you with radioactive materials that you need to store safely for some 50-10,000's years.

300 years for dangerous nuclear waste, 2000 if you want to go to average mS levels.

You have your orders of magnitude wrong. Solar panels (as in photovoltaic energy) is the worst "green" energy when accounting for waste and probably the one that caused the most cancer with children near zinc/cadmium mines, but fear not, in the following years they will start killing people near landfills[0][1]. More wastefull in term of minerals too, but veolia might have something to say bout this (Best company working with renewable imo). Maybe in 50 years.

You can't smelt rare earth without a lot of energy, whereas you can reduce iron and CaCO3 with hydrogen and make steel and cement almost carbon-free. And as Fe and CaCO3 are present almost everywhere, you also don't have to globablize the production.

Ow, and if you evalutate the CO2 ton to be around 100$ (i think its at least 4 time this price), solar energy is twice as expensive to build and install as nuclear per kWh(and if we start reducing iron and cement with hydrogen, the difference will only grow). Thats only installed power, not produced power, also not counting energy storage.

I really like wind though and geotermic energy though, i think thermo solar is a good idea (not as good as passive) and maybe next gen solar won't use as much rare earth. Also if you're really interested, you should check how a power grid works.

[0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00489... [1] https://www.wired.com/story/solar-panels-are-starting-to-die...

One thing that is nice about solar is that it flips the entire idea of "power" on its head. Solar theoretically allows you to power your own life without needing to be a part of any power grid. That's pretty neat, and I think will be very useful in the coming decades.

But I think the argument here is a little convoluted. In my opinion, nuclear power is still the best "bang for your buck", and that's probably not going to change considering the same rules apply in the rest of the universe. Absorbing the energy of photons that were created by a nuclear reaction is going to net far less energy than simply using the full energy from the original nuclear reaction to power a turbine, no matter which way you slice it. On a large scale, nuclear makes sense. And even though there have been a number of high-profile incidents in the past 50 years, nuclear doesn't even come close to the amount of deaths and sickness people have suffered over the past couple hundred years by working in coal mines. I'd much rather take my chances with a bit of radiation than go into one of those mines, knowing that my lungs are going to be pitch black by the time I'm 45...and if it catches fire, I'm done.

This reply is spot on top to bottom.

"Who knows what sort of damage it will cause in the Five Eyes countries next time a moral hysteria sweeps through the public..."

That moral hysteria is NOW and every day since mid-march.

> The concept is the bedrock of many religions anyway. It’s something that a lot of people want.

This is exactly the reason communist systems have to destroy religion and replace it with the state. Because if people realise they're not being watched over by some all powerful benevolent entity, and that it is just a bunch of other (self-interested) people, they lose "the faith" pretty quickly.

Nit pick - the best science at the moment suggests that radiation from Chernobyl killed just two hundred people, and Fukushima zero. Your point is a good one but the specific example turns out to be untrue.

I don't want to get into a death toll deal discussion but people killed by KGB and Stasi is just as low.

A politician here a journalist there, people looking at death toll statistics must be wondering what was the big deal about Stasi, Chernobyl, KGB, Fukushima and so on.

> I don't want to get into a death toll deal discussion but people killed by KGB and Stasi is just as low.

You cant be serious.

Please correct me If you believe otherwise. But no indirect deaths please, the nuclear folks don't count these too. No inconveniences, life altering, career ending troubles, those don't appear on the only "few died due to nuclear accidents" statistics too.

To be clear, I am not anti-nuclear however I don't buy the "Chernobyl and Fukushima are note big deal" message that the low death toll numbers convey.

The death toll from the KGB and associated state violence is likely in the millions, not a few dozen people: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_repression_in_the_So...

That link doesn't mention the KGB, the deaths and executions it refers to (largely of Communist Party and Red Army personnel) occurred before the KGB even existed, and nothing like what is described happened during the KGB era (1954-1991).

KGB is the direct successor to MGB, which was spun off from punitive branch of NKVD, which itself was a reorganized CheKa.

Huge swathes of KGB operatives worked through all of its organizational incarnations. They did (and Russian FSB still does) refer themselves as 'chekists' informally. Their professional holiday is the CheKa foundation day.

Huge swathes of post-war German police, judiciary, political personnel were Nazi Party members[0], but we don't attribute crimes carried out in the Third Reich to West (or East) Germany or its institutions.

If you want to pretend the KGB, or the regime it operated under[1], was just the same as the NKVD under Stalin, then please provide examples of the same crimes (mass killings) occurring from 1954-1991.

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

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De-Stalinization

Do you really suggest that West German police was basically Gestapo that changed the name? Because that's what MGB to KGB transition was. The status was changed from Ministry to Committee, that's it.

The policy has been changed under Khrustchev, but thousands of the same butchers that committed massacres of 1930s were serving (often in the same offices) until late 1970s.

Okay since you want to pretend you don't understand my point: if around 40 members of the embryonic BND came from the SS, even by the head of the BND's own admission[0] in 1953, does that mean "the BND killed millions of people" is a reasonable statement?

Of course not, it's as ridiculous as claiming the KGB, the intelligence agency of anti-Stalinist USSR, killed millions of people, just because an utterly different (Stalin) regime did so while employing some of the same personnel.

If the KGB is just a name change, as you keep trying to pretend, then as I already asked, where are the mass killings perpetrated in the KGB era (1954-1991)?

[0] "Reinhard Gehlen, head of the Org and later president of the BND, [stated] that around 40 of his employees came from the SS and SD ... If there was ignorance on the matter, it was only because no one wanted to know"

Apparently even today, on Hacker News, some people still don't want to know and prefer their own fantasy version of history instead.

"Many Nazi functionaries including Silberbauer, the captor of Anne Frank, transferred over from the Gehlen Organisation to the BND ... Instead of expelling them, the BND even seems to have been willing to recruit more of them"

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

"The then-opposition leader and SPD head Kurt Schumacher [...] described the Gehlen Organization as 'riddled' with former members of the murderous Sicherheitsdienst (SD), the SS's intelligence agency"

While relevant to your initial question:

"The British press at the time openly mocked the 'Gestapo boys' working at the BND's headquarters in Pullach, near Munich."

https://archive.is/uKG93

People working in KGB did not "come" from MGB, it was the same bloody organisation, and referring to KGB for NKVD purges is perfectly semantically correct. Also the analogy for "Nazi members" would be CPSU members, who were anyway in all positions of power in USSR. It makes no sense, you are being intentionally obtuse.

Intentionally obtuse is pretending that Nazi Party members in West German institutions simply concerns random citizens who filled out a membership form between 1933-1945, because it was good for their career/life.

We both know the issue is members of the SS, SD, war criminals continued to work in (West) German institutions, including its intelligence service, after post-WWII regime change.

I've already asked you twice, if "KGB" is nothing but a name change from "NKVD", simply state when, in its ~37 year existence, did it engage in the same actions (mass killings) as the NKVD.

We both know this too, though, that the KGB did not kill millions of people, as was the claim, because it was for all intents and purposes a different organization, with different objectives and under different orders from a government diametrically opposed to the Stalinist regime of the NKVD era.

Allegedly 1800 people is not a

> Huge [swath] of post-war German police, judiciary, political personnel

And the Braunbuch is very dubiously sourced.

Living in denial and refusing to accept (historical) facts because you don't happen to like them is really not healthy.

"It's one of the country's worst-kept secrets. Yet questions still surround the presence of former Nazis and war criminals in West Germany's police, secret service (BND) and politics."

https://www.dw.com/en/stasi-files-shed-light-on-west-german-...

> I don't buy the "Chernobyl and Fukushima are note big deal" message that the low death toll numbers convey.

Why not? What evidence is there to the contrary? These death tolls vary by a lot, but even the high end is quite low compared to fossil fuels.

The fear people have of radiation seems to be much greater than reality would justify. This causes very serious problems, like evacuating hundreds of thousands of people unnecessarily after an accident, destroying their lives due to mostly paranoia[1], as well as slowing down considerably our efforts to lower CO2 emissions (like Germany shutting down all its nuclear facilities even if that causes thousands of deaths due to increased pollution[2]).

[1] https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Japan-nuclear-sh... [2] https://grist.org/energy/the-cost-of-germany-going-off-nucle...

Because direct death at the accident is not what makes it big deal but the numbers are used to argue just that.

what is a big deal then? Unusable area? Mining coal or rare earth for solar panel already do that for you on a two order of magnitude difference at least (not counting detroyed montaintops and water pollution). Population displacement? Yeah, again an order of magnitude inferior to dammage caused by mining (this time counting water pollution). Not counting when hydro power fail: two order of magnitude differential just counting china barrage failure.

Would you dissmiss hydro power because of the barrage incident then? Because last time i checked, the death toll, the displacment toll and the lost land caused by hydro power were a lot more than nuclear for sensibly the same power production.

Is it waste that grind your gear? Yeah, speak to the people who live near cadmium mines where nothing can grow anymore. Also a Co2 surplus in high atmosphere last around 100 000 years (order of magnitude here). Compare that to the dangerous radioactive waste. Also, coal mining and burning cause the area around to be more radioactive than the area around fukushima, or French uranium mines. Weird, no?

You know why you really don't like nuclear power? Its because with solar panel, oil and coal, the externalities are paid by poor populations in China, India, Africa or south America. So its better for you (or me). Its because hydro power failure only happened in poor countries. Or rather, country you don't really know or care about. Italia, Brazil, China barrage failure each have death toll superior to fukushima + chernobyl counting displacement caused deaths (avoidable deaths).

"what is a big deal then?"

You probably don't know that, but the radioactive cloud from chernobyl contaminated large areas of central europe.

To the point, that I still cannot pick and eat mushrooms out of the forest as much as I like and that every wild boar meat has to be checked for radioactivity and lots of it has to be thrown away. And that a generation had to avoid open playground for some time.

That is a huge impact from just one accident 34 years ago. Which happened far away from us. And also one of the reasons, why nuclear power is not liked very much in germany. Nobody wants a radioactive cloud on a bigger scale.

So I am not for turning all nuclear power plants off now, but as soon as they can be replaced by regenerative energy.

Lots of whataboutism here. In that vein let’s re-introduce asbestos because smoking kills much more people and doesn’t even insulate anything.

Anyway, the big issue is that it could have been(and still can be) much worse. it’s a scalable disaster with consequences outlasting human generations. If you need heroic efforts and enormous resources to contain something and there’s a possibility of that not succeed then you don’t want it happen and it’s a big deal.

> Lots of whataboutism here.

Yes, but im sorry, the discussion is not "nuclear or not nuclear", its nuclear energy or another form of energy

> Anyway, the big issue is that it could have been(and still can be) much worse. it’s a scalable disaster with consequences outlasting human generations. If you need heroic efforts and enormous resources to contain something and there’s a possibility of that not succeed then you don’t want it happen and it’s a big deal.

No, no civil nuclear incident can't be worst than Chernobyl. Right now or in the future. There is no reactor that is using graphite anymore. Even if we lost suddenly all knowledge. Fukushima however, why not. But if its not happening in the next 50 years, it won't happen after with Gen3 and Gen3+ designs. You can argue than gen3+ designs have a greater surface of attack and are no better than gen3 and i could reluctantly agree, however i think a core catcher is a must have on new designs. We never know what can happen, what if we suddenly lost all knowledge on how to operate a fission plant?

This is an extremely good observation! I think this likely gets to the heart of how dubious institutional objectives get passed down and realized through truly well-intentioned people.

What a good point.

And every individual at each level within the system rationalizes that they are doing the right thing (because in many ways, they are doing things that can be justified as genuinely useful, within a limited perspective - which coincidentally, is the one that most people see), or doesn't think about such things because they have enough shit to worry about in their lives right now.