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Comment by lutoma | Hacker News Reader

Proponents of nuclear power labelling everyone who does not unequivocally support it "science deniers" is such infuriating populism.

Nuclear power obviously has immense benefits, but there are also undeniable risks associated with it. It's entirely possible to be in favor or against it while considering the exact same scientific facts depending on which of these you consider more important, no "scientific denialism" required.

I also don't see how nuclear power is supposed to be related to the economic left/right spectrum.

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Coal kills thousands of people a year in the US (13,000 if you believe the extreme estimates)

Less than 20 people have died in Nuclear related accidents in the history of this technologies use. And almost every single one of those were unrelated to the nuclear technology itself (electrocution, other workplace accidents that could happen in any power plant)

If you want to lump in Chernobyl and Fukushima we are still only talking 3-4000 deaths in history. And there's zero reason to believe these accidents are likely to ever occur in the US.

So yes, there are "undeniable risks", but they are vastly vastly overstated.

Especially when the "undeniable risk" of climate change is many millions of deaths whilst climate change activists insist we can't use the only technology that can almost entirely eliminate cooking the planet via coal, oil and natural gas.

I am generally in support of nuclear technology but statements like "Less than 20 people have died in Nuclear related accidents in the history of this technologies use" don't help the cause. That's just flat-out false, and you indicate in the following paragraph that you know that.

Leaving out the two most significant accidents in the history of the technology shouldn't be the default...

I was clearly talking about in the US.

Literally the previous sentence I was talking about the danger in the US of fossil fuels, then I wrote about the danger of nuclear and then move on to worldwide.

Nothing I wrote was false at all. It's almost like you're intentionally trying to misread my argument to paint me as disingenuous.

Maybe it’s my non-US viewpoint but I didn’t read it that way at all. The fact that you qualified the previous sentence with “in the US” made the next sentence seem intentionally broad.

I also don't understand why the number of people that have died in nuclear accidents only in the US is a remotely useful metric in the context of the discussion.

Why would I start talking about coal deaths in the US, then immediately broaden it to worldwide nuclear deaths. Lie about Nuclear deaths by only counting US, then immediately after lying bring up Chernobyl and Fukushima to prove I lied or something??

You're trying to ascribe malice and dishonesty because you happen to disagree with me. I don't know why the internet does this to people

> You're trying to ascribe malice and dishonesty because you happen to disagree with me. I don't know why the internet does this to people

Sigh. I made it clear in the first comment that I don't disagree with you. I would love to see wider adoption of nuclear power. The sentence that you wrote was inaccurate, and I felt that more accurate wording would improve the quality of the debate. I don't see the point in engaging any further on this.

You're Right!

The sentence devoid of context is misleading!!

But the thing is cherry-picking a single sentence without its proper context is misleading if not downright dishonest itself.

I was clearly talking about COAL/FF DEATHS IN THE US. Why would I then go on in the very next sentence to compare that to WORLDWIDE NUCLEAR DEATHS?

Then in the NEXT SENTENCE, I bring up Fukushima and Chernobyl and say basically "if you want to count them then...."

Nothing about my post was misleading.

In complex systems accidents do not tell the whole story, one has to also look at incidents and the "safety culture" of the organization (i.e. ~ how they avoid failure and how they react to failure).

Aviation for example has The Aviation Herald, where one can see that there's in fact quite many incidents that almost never result in accidents. There's lots of literature on safety engineering in aviation.

What's the equivalent for the nuclear industry? I was admittedly not very interested in this topic, so I'm only aware of the descriptions from Perrow's "Normal Accidents" book where he reported on several incidents which were actually published by the involved organizations. They didn't inspire confidence at all, on the contrary they were downright scary (and much scarier than one can find on the Av Herald).

Maybe the nuclear industry grew up, but it's absolutely necessary to have transparency here. Looking at global accidents is like trying to map a castle through a keyhole.

I'm not a nuclear engineer, although I have a couple friends that are and have assured me the risk is incredibly low. The scientific literature backs this up.

What annoys me is climate change activists that paint nuclear power as some terrible boogeyman we must never use lest we irradiate the entire United States.

They will never ever "show their work" and do the cost/benefit analysis of the ongoing thousands who die from coal and other carbon energy sources or the potential millions who will die from climate change.

No, no it's all just alarmist BS about nuclear being "dangerous" so let's just not use literally the only power generating technology that can replace almost every single fossil fuel plant in the US. Not even solar and wind can claim that!

So I think it's accurate to describe this view as "anti-science" at least for those who want to abolish the use of nuclear altogether (Green new deal types)

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