Ask HN: Is nuclear energy *actually* safe? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Is nuclear energy actually safe?

2 pointsjakobov8 comments

I have seen all the statistical arguments as to why nuclear energy is safe. Statistical arguments are misleading as nuclear disasters have a long tail.

The question is how bad could a nuclear disaster be? What is worst case scenario?

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Making large landscapes uninhabitable, the food chain gets enriched by radioactive elements which cannot be controlled. There are regions today hundreds of kilometres from Chernobyl were eating certain fungi is not recommended. While the legal limits are quite strict, it still is an additional burden. The explosions are mostly due to hydrogen building up. This can take radioactive particles beyond thousands of kilometres.

Aside from the danger from tsunamis, Fukushima had the 'luck' to be near water as water absorbs radiation quite effectively. People have calculated that if that radiation is diffused evenly in the ocean, that it would not pose a threat. But it did not diffuse evenly and probably is now part of some food chain as well. Tracking it is quite difficult.

But it isn't just disasters, processing plants are not allowed to dump barrels into the ocean anymore, but they very well are allowed to dump their waste water. Cancer rates are significantly increased in these regions. Uranium is a finite resources as well, at least in economical proportions and even then the energy is quite expensive. Building a plant takes decades.

Only this or last year we got the first and still only permanent storage of used nuclear fuel. Some people say the problem is solved, but it isn't really. Yes, you could dump it in an old salt mines. That was done and the ground water got contaminated so it has to be waste has to be excavated which in turn will again cost billions.

Chernobyl is as close as it can get to the worst case.

The estimation of amount of victims depends on who you ask. There's no dispute about ~30 people who died of radiation. There is a huge dispute about others, with figures going all the way between tens of thousands and about a million.

In Fukushima's case, it's also argued that more people died as a result of evacuation than would have died of radiation (if no evacuation would have been ordered).

Pro-nuclear groups pull their estimates to one side, anti-nuclear to the opposite side.

Also you have to compare safety to the alternative of coal

The worst nuclear disaster is far, far better than burning fossil fuels, when you consider all of the costs and impacts.

The worst nuclear disaster made several ghost towns in one night and became the last straw on the USSR's back.

Nuclear accidents are rare events with huge impact, while fossil fuel deaths are common, with relatively small impact, killing by a thousand cuts. That doesn’t imply burning fuel is less deadly, though.

By some estimates, fossil fuels kill more people each year than nuclear _ever_ did (including the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki)

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-23853-y says over a million each year. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00139... increases that to over 8 million (with huge uncertainty)

Now, nuclear provides is a few % of global energy, so you’d have to scale it up, and many of those early deaths due to pollution may be not _that_ early, but it definitely isn’t a given that nuclear is more dangerous than burning fossil fuels.

Maybe but nuclear and fossil fuels are not the only options

No source of energy is safe.

https://www.seas.harvard.edu/news/2021/02/deaths-fossil-fuel...

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