Hacker News Reader

Comment by roenxi | Hacker News Reader

That is blowing the risks out of proportion. Normal houses won't be earthquake proof, and people will actually be living in them and get squished if there is a bad earthquake. There will be death and destruction.

Whether or not the nuclear plant survives intact is a bit of a minor issue. It just has to fail without being orders of magnitude worse than the earthquake.

Citing Fukushima - Fukushima was bad. Bud the mounds of corpses caused by the natural disaster that also caused Fukushima are a far more important thing to spend resources preventing than Fukushima itself was.

View on HN

> without being orders of magnitude worse than the earthquake

You're overlooking the exaggerated panic-and-horror reaction of the public to literally any kind of nuclear incident. If you design merely for statistically acceptable results it's basically guaranteeing political blowback at some point.

The Dominant Media has an exaggerated role in this when they whip up paranoia for ratings (really no different than Facebook prioritizing angry posts in your feed — eyeballs get ads).

> when they whip up paranoia for ratings

Wait until you learn about a thing called COVID-19.

There was no media coverage done in time for the Chernobyl incident and no panic/horror. Apparently lack of these didn't help much.

IMHO being hit by a natural disaster is by far better than the same + also radiation (not even mentioning lack of electricity). I wouldn't mind a nuclear power plant to cost twice its normal cost if that could make the latter completely impossible.

But if you had to pick one to prevent, preventing the disaster is more important. So before earthquake-proofing the nuclear plant you should worry about earthquake proofing your home.

There is an objective ordering to what should be earthquake-proofed. Nuclear plants are not actually at the top of the list to worry about - places where people are likely to live and work are. Draw up a list of things that hurt people around the time of the Fukushima disaster. Fukushima barely makes the list. Fukushima might not even be on the list, the toll in human suffering of Fukushima is very small compared to the natural disaster that hit Japan that day.

We can also overbuild the nuclear plant because nuclear is so crazily efficient why not. There is only one plant to secure. But it isn't a blocker if it doesn't happen, and it is an irrational concern.

> But if you had to pick one to prevent, preventing the disaster is more important. So before earthquake-proofing the nuclear plant you should worry about earthquake proofing your home.

If I could, I would earthquake-proof and flood-proof everything even where the probability of these dissertation is near-zero. But this obviously isn't going to happen (in fact it baffles me how people insist on living non-proof way even in areas where disastrous floods actually happen every now and then).

Nevertheless I feel like I would prefer my home destroyed and even myself crippled over the neighboring nuclear power plant blowing up.

> Nevertheless I feel like I would prefer my home destroyed and even myself crippled over the neighboring nuclear power plant blowing up.

How much have you thought about it? Again, Fukushima, one of the worst nuclear disasters of all time. As far as I know nobody crippled.

I'd go for the plant meltdown myself, I like life, liberty and having use of my legs. It is reasonably likely that nobody would get hurt in a meltdown, the damage is largely economic.

I just fear the radiation which might come out. I believe loosing a home and a leg is better than getting irradiated. It would probably ruin my nighttime sleep for the rest of my life if my body would start glowing in the dark, you know :-]

I am a proponent of nuclear power generation nevertheless.

> I just fear the radiation which might come out. I believe loosing a home and a leg is better than getting irradiated.

Why? Even purely on that scenario you'r cutting off your leg to avoid a typically undetectable statistical risk.

We've got 50 years of records on the risk of plant meltdowns, a surprise earthquake hitting homes that aren't prepared is much, much worse than a nuclear plant meltdown. An earthquake will kill people. There will be deaths. Destruction. Suffering on a scale that is much worse than a nuclear meltdown.

You should earthquake proof your house if you think that is a possible risk.

consequences of having a considerable area contaminated and uninhabitable for basically forever are not to be understated. humanity does not have the tools to predict black swans which lead to such results.

Tschernobyl was practically the worst possible outcome. Yet it already is down to safe levels almost everywhere.

http://www.chernobylgallery.com/chernobyl-disaster/radiation...

So no, I do not buy into the "basically forever".

you're seeing what happened and extrapolate the future based on this. what didn't happen is equally important. Chernobyl was the worst accident, but it was by far not the worst possible outcome. e.g. if the core burned through concrete and contaminated ground water, it'd be way, way worse.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com