Comment by acidburnNSA | Hacker News Reader

Comment by acidburnNSA | Hacker News Reader

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I'm sure you understand the argument for commercial flight being safer per mile than most other forms of travel despite the potential catastrophe of a plane crash. The argument for nuclear is identical.

The combustion of fossil fuels regularly kills 4.2 million people per year, year after year and counting. The combustion of renewable biofuel kills 3.8 million/year (WHO numbers [1]).

Chernobyl directly killed between 60-80 with acute radiation syndrome and caused up to 4000 cancer deaths [2]. Fukushima radiation killed between zero and one person, depending who you ask [3]. TMI killed zero.

[1] https://www.who.int/health-topics/air-pollution#tab=tab_1

[2] https://www.unscear.org/unscear/en/chernobyl.html

[3] https://www.unscear.org/unscear/en/fukushima.html

So, running the numbers, you see that fossil + biofuel kill the entire death footprint of the entire commercial nuclear industry very 7.5 hours and counting. Thus, from a safety perspective, nuclear is a no-brainer, despite the fact that it seems overly hazardous due to the way the stories come out.

I am not sure this is a good argument, if only because the upper bound potential for damage is so much higher.

> the combustion of fossil fuels regularly kills 4.2 million people per year, year after year and counting. The combustion of renewable biofuel kills 3.8 million/year (WHO numbers [1]).

Your link is on air pollution, NOT fossil fuels. Fossil fuels are gross, dirty, and far-too-lobbied. However, even in your own link, there is reference to cook fires, and I would be willing to bet that a lot of that pollution is from industrial processing and lack of regulation as opposed to just fossil fuel.

> Chernobyl directly killed between 60-80 with acute radiation syndrome and caused up to 4000 cancer deaths [2]. Fukushima radiation killed between zero and one person, depending who you ask [3]. TMI killed zero.

The numbers you site are not in your link. It says 6,000 children with thyroid cancer, and I would be willing to bet the actual damage is way, way higher than reported. Esp due to the nature of the soviet union and the fallout and radiation spread across Eastern Europe cannot have a counterfactual for cancer rates.

The real issue is that the potential of Nuclear is to make whole swaths of the planet uninhabitable. This is also where your flight analogy falls apart. The upper bound of death for a single plane crash is ~300 people on the flight + (a few thousand, god forbid) if it hits something critical as it falls. The upper bound for nuclear is... unimaginable?

Edit/afterthought. In your profile, I saw that you are a nuclear scientist. I think you should disclose that career bias when you argue for this.

DISCLAIMER: I am a nuclear expert who got into nuclear to help fight climate change.

> if only because the upper bound potential for damage is so much higher.

Chernobyl was a nuclear excursion that blew the roof wide open and shot fuel out into the air. Air rushed in and ignited a nearly inextinguishable graphite fire that propelled the nuclear fuel high into the atmosphere. There was no containment structure around the core. And yet this killed 60+ people, caused up to 4000 early cancer deaths, and (yes) did cause a bunch of thyroid cancers. (Fortunately, thyroid cancers are usually treatable. Not saying they're ok, but not fatal like fossil + biofuel air pollution).

I would claim that Chernobyl is a reasonable example of a nearly-worst-case nuclear reactor accident. With modern reactors having containments, it's hard to postulate radiation releases of that magnitude. Case in point, Fukushima was 3 meltdowns and had much less radiation release and therefore health impact. I don't think saying nuclear reactor accidents are nearly unbounded wildly beyond Chernobyl is reasonable.

And again, fossil + biofuel kill a Chernobyl's worth of people every 7.5 hours...! The WHO numbers linked are due to the fossil fuel + biofuel. I'll link more detailed meta-analyses below.

Also, the area around Chernobyl is not really uninhabitable at all [1]

[1] https://thoughtscapism.com/2019/05/08/what-about-radioactive...

As for thinking the UNSCEAR values on deaths are a sham, yeah I mean Greenpeace has been saying against all scientific consensus that the impacts are way higher for years. But the science does not support that. UNSCEAR is basically like the IPCC for nuclear.

I highly recommend listening e.g. to Gerry Thomas on this topic for details. [2]

[2] https://www.titansofnuclear.com/experts/gerrythomas

As for air pollution, see this [3] for more specific attribution to fossil fuel and biofuel.

[3] https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy

Thanks for the resources.

> I am a nuclear expert who got into nuclear to help fight climate change.

I think that is very noble. I am thinking of eventually moving my career to solar or wind for the same motivations.

Chernobyl was partially contained, it could have gone far, far worse. IIRC only 1 of 4 reactors exploded? I suppose hypotheticals are not extremely useful, but what is the hypothetical upper bound on the most catastrophic nuclear scenario?

The hypothetical upper bound of a reactor accident is that 1 radioactive atom gets inhaled by each creature on Earth and the decay of that atom causes a fatal cancer and every living thing dies.

There are ~equally unlikely life-ending upper bounds of all energy sources. For example, you could have world-ending wars and famines from solar and wind if a superlarge volcano largely blocks out the sun for a few years. Or they could lead to world-ending land wars over sunny and windy areas.

Today, in reality, we have clear and present and known dangers like fossil and biofuel that are currently killing millions and also causing climate change. These things make 84% of our primary energy as a world today. Shifting away from these things to the things low on the ourworldindata graphic above (low carbon, low risk) is a net benefit. Worrying about exceedingly unlikely worst cases is not necessarily productive or useful. Considering them is well and good, sure. But IMHO one must dismiss them quickly based on 60 years of operational experience.

In other words, if someone is currently attacking you and you can pepper spray them, it's probably better to do so than to worry about whether or not the pepper will cause the house to combust.

I'm wondering whether the point you're making can be made even stronger.

I would phrase your argument as simple as: you estimate the world is much more likely to become uninhabitable if we don't use nuclear.

What's the worst case of not using nuclear? It's the same as the best case of using it. Best case, nuclear would enable us to entirely phase out fossil fuel energy production, reducing the world's CO2 production by 25%, reducing green house emissions to the point that large parts of the planet no longer become uninhabitable.

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