Hacker News Reader

Comment by ravenstine | Hacker News Reader

I'd pick the occasional localized radioactive hazard over global destruction caused by anthropogenic climate change. That is if we even had such disasters again with current generation nuclear tech.

View on HN

Go live in fukushima's radioactive zone for a couple of months and then be so glib about nuclear disasters.

You'd get about a 1 mSv dose, and be fine. I'm more worried about the 200,000 or so daily premature deaths due to fossil fuel pollution.

Go live in an airplane crash for a couple of months and then let's talk again about whether we should continue to operate them? Or is the exhaust of a coal plant -- oh wait, that's worldwide, you're already more likely to get all sorts of stuff from air pollution -- a better comparison? This line of reasoning makes no sense to me.

Have you seen how much radiation from Fukushima has sailed out to sea? It's bad.

I really think we need to ban building heavy industry next to bodies of water or high in critical watersheds. We have enough transit infrastructure now that we should be looking at the precautionary principle when zoning for things that can get a free ride on the wind or waterways and therefore spread over heavily populated or critical nature corridors just due to inability to stop a problem the moment it is detected. It's designed for making a company's biggest mistakes into everybody's problem instead of theirs.

> Have you seen how much radiation from Fukushima has sailed out to sea?

Actually, Wikipedia tells me they've resumed fishing the sea next to Fukushima as of three years ago

> In February 2018, Japan renewed the export of fish caught off Fukushima's nearshore zone. According to prefecture officials, no seafood had been found with radiation levels exceeding Japan safety standards since April 2015.

And looking at a graph, it looks even less bad:

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

Seawater contamination seems to be back to safe levels two months later.

I'm no expert on seawater contamination or anything, perhaps it's the case that the two big nuclear disasters known to mankind had a combined effect on sea life greater than the fossil fuel plants and dams for hydro. But then please do make that argument rather than a vague exclamation about "have you seen how much".

You're talking about Fukushima harbor. I'm talking about the rest of us:

https://whalesandmarinefauna.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/nuc...

https://earthsky.org/earth/tracking-fukushima-radiation-acro...

When your externalities are global I don't think people really care quite so much about what happens to the locals.

Cesium ends up substituting for potassium, which means you ingest it and then have to worry about alpha decay.

[edit: although it seems the two isotopes are beta decay, but it's still being digested]

Considering the amount of concrete the goes into making a nuclear reactor, nuclear power is not a solution to our climate crisis.

No, nuclear has much better Energy Return on Investment (EROI) than any other energy source.

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

Don't get me wrong, it has other problems but EROI ain't one of them.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com