Hacker News Reader

Comment by _Microft | Hacker News Reader

We experienced fallout from Chernobyl (radiation levels of wild boar meat and some mushrooms are still under surveillance today) and we were designated nuclear ground zero in case that the Soviets tried to invade Europe. What attitude towards all things nuclear do you expect to arise from that?

View on HN

Oh, come one! I spent most of my childhood in Minsk, 380km north-west to Chernobyl. Now in Europe my only worry is the blackout plan in case of power shortages, not the nuclear plant 60km on the east.

I am always amazed how Germans are irrational about nuclear while nearby countries have a mostly pragmatic attitude. Even in Belgium the nuclear phase out is fake and every politician knows it can not be enforced until Netherlands build two new nuclear powerplants 20 years from now.

Nearly all the people I know in Poland who were children at the time of Chernobyl have thyroid issues, including my partner. It’s not accurate to say that it had zero health impact. Of course, coal has plenty of health impact, just not a good look to be so flippant about a major nuclear disaster.

Chernobyl was also a political/PR issue, and in typical USSR fashion, the general public wasn't even informed until over a week after the incident. Consider the half-life of iodine-135, by the time people were being recommended and provided with the necessary medication most of the damage was already done.

Indeed. I know people who found out because they had friends in the university physics department. General population was not told immediately.

How do you know those issues thyroid issues were not caused by fossil fuel pollution? Many more people have serious health issues or die every year due pollutants emitted from burning coal (and other fossil fuels but coal is by far the worst) than the total death count related to Chernobyl was, its not even comparable.

Poland is especially bad in this regard. It consistently has one the highest PM10 and PM2.5 levels in Europe (and I assume it should have been much worse in the 80's)

Indeed. We should also not forget that coal ash significantly contributes to radiation exposure in humans. Every winter it's the same all over Poland. There are places like Krakow that consistently rank among the most polluted towns in the world during winter [1].

[1] https://notesfrompoland.com/2021/12/15/polish-city-records-w...

Because there is a well studied link and a clear biological pathway has been identified. [1]

I’m not in favor of coal, I know it has health consequences, but the existence of coal pollutants does not negate the existence of health consequences from nuclear disasters. I’m also not against nuclear, but it is clearly dangerous, both to health and environment and for proliferation. Considering and balancing these risks as well as climate risk is good governance.

[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10626541/

Being target for nuclear bombs isn't related to nuclear power in the slightest.

The fallout sucked, but even that was a minor hiccup compared to the destruction pollution is bringing with it...

Fear doesn’t work that way.

I was forbidden from including a smoke detector in a school show-and-tell (UK, circa 1993) because of the radiation symbol, even though there was a detector just like it on the ceiling of the same classroom.

> Being target for nuclear bombs isn't related to nuclear power in the slightest.

There's a reason nuclear power plant technology is strictly controlled as "dual use": the same technology used for power production can also be used to produce the material for a nuclear bomb. So you can't say they're completely unrelated.

It's a bit more nuanced than that as there's just a subset of all possible nuclear power plant designs that needs the same enrichment facility than for military (bomb making) usage.

Nuclear waste from commercial reactors in the US is not fissile. Reprocessing would change that (producing plutonium), but that's why we don't have fast breeders in the US (personally, I favor changing that). I'm aware of no enrichment facilities co-located with nuclear power plants, certainly not in the US.

Perhaps one that is relevant to the future of your children rather than the fears of your parents?

Depends on how rational you are. Unfortunately, people are not very rational on average.

Well, one small accident 35 years ago and far away, that could have been much worse - is still the cause that large areas are contaminated here.

It is rational, to be sceptic of such a technology.

Most discussions about it are not, sure. Anti-nuclear is a strong dogma in green circles and not to be discussed about - but there are still real reasons, why it became a dogma in the first place.

Because nuclear energy is not as save and easy as it was promised. It is heavily subsidized, but socialised the risk - and the current storage solutions to the waste are sub-optimal. So expensive and dangerous.

I am open to have them run a bit longer, and rather close the coal plants, but they are not a magic bullet solution.

I'm not worried about new reactor designs failing. I'm more worried about storing and protecting waste that lasts 20,000 years.

Just seems like another opportunity to externalize costs onto future humans to me.

> storing and protecting waste that lasts 20,000 years

Earth core contains gazilions of spent nuclear fuel. Just burying spent nuclear fuel would not make anything worse.

But it is suboptimal, because spent nuclear fuel can be used in the future reactors.

I don't understand why people repeat this statement about spent fuel again and again why there's no problem.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com