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Comment by gregjor | Hacker News Reader

Stop watching so much popular media, with their sensational catastrophe scenarios. Why spend any time floating ideas like this that have no chance of making any difference? How about we don't build cities in possible war zones, since lots of people get killed in cities during war.

Look up Chernobyl. Ukraine already had a meltdown disaster. Spoiler: Europe survived.

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Not sure if "Europe survived" is what we should be striving for.

The exclusion zone which can't be inhabited for more than 3000 years to come is still 1,000 sq mi large. You can also still measure higher rates of radioactivity in mushrooms and game.

the exclusion zone is open to tourism and has accidentally become one of the most successful wildlife sanctuaries. most parts of the zone will expose you to around 1 uSv/hr or less, or about 1/500 the exposure from an hour in an airplane. people go there without PPE

You know we can have successful wildlife sanctuaries and big tourism zones without a nuclear power plant disaster right? It's called a national park.

you're moving the goalposts

So did you by retorting to a comment about the long term habitability of a region with an argument about short term visits.

i would be ok living somewhere with constant exposure at 1 uSv. that's half of the 20 mSv/year occupational limit for radiation workers which is way lower than it needs to be

If you have ever watched any urban exploring or tourist guide videos from the Chernobyl area you will notice that they always check for radiation and don't go into certain buildings or areas because radioation is not uniform.

There's places where there's almost no radiation, then you walk into a random building and the exposure is too high to stay for a longer time.

Not sure that's a place you really want to live in, easy to say from a comfortable chair behind a screen somewhere far away.

the built environment is obviously a big radiation sink that needs to be demolished and disposed of. no one's saying we should reinhabit pripyat stalinkas. more like reduce the exclusion zone to the area that's actually dangerous, which is the minority of it

We don't have more of them because they conflict with something else: human usace and occupation

People are still living in Chernobyl.

He'll, they're growing food there that gets sold to Europe, cos it has below the standard level of contamination.

> Look up Chernobyl. Ukraine already had a meltdown disaster. Spoiler: Europe survived.

That sounds like a bare minimum but not really a good argument for or against nuclear power plants. And if you do some research about the Chernobyl disaster, you might also want to look into the consequences that can still be observed today.

The officially acknowledged death toll is fairly questionable, primarily because of the "liquidators" and their extrem radiation exposure. The exclusion zone is still uninhabitable without facing serious health risks and the consequences can still be seen in countries other than Ukraine. In Germany in some areas the Caesium-137 exposure is still measurably higher than normal.

I totally understand the skepticism around nuclear power, especially in countries directly affected by the fallout in 1986.

Of course, statistically speaking nuclear power is fairly save (but still not without some major issues). But completely dismissing the emotional fear that has been directly shaped by personal experiences for many does a disservice to the whole debate.

> But completely dismissing the emotional fear that has been directly shaped by personal experiences for many does a disservice to the whole debate.

it's 35 years on and there is a preponderance of evidence that nuclear is safe. it may feel like dismissal because people on the pro- side have known and argued the facts for decades. at a certain point you realize the fear is trauma-based for some and cultural for most, and that accommodating it gets you nowhere. holding someone's hand doesn't make stumbling down the energy ladder any more comfortable

The people of Namibia and Niger disagree.

Low yield nuclear ore has lower usable energy density than coal, and being beaten by french and chinese mine owners then poisoned by heavy metal laden sulfuric acid isn't safe.

Edit: On reflection, if you use a modern reactor and modern centrifuges, then the ore from Rossing produces 28MJ/kg of electricity. This is double that of coal. So this is slight hyperbole -- but not by much.

This is simple downplaying of the situation. I mean it influenced even something so 'not important' as mushroom picking for decades (in case of northern part of northern Europe - it is still not safe [0][1]).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydnum_repandum#Constituents

[1] https://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blek_piggsopp#Radioaktiv_forur...

But right now we are replacing them with coal plants, which has an estimated death rate (only for power generation) of +100k/year.

It influenced mushroom picking because mushrooms absorb heavy metals like crazy.

They also absorb lead for instance. That's why you don't wanna pick shrooms near roads.

I would even say more. Ukraine had a meltdown disaster and all the Jupiter satellites survived so stop caring and refuge yourself under a picnic blanket. Saturn will be fine!.

Europe survived because has paid for very expensive and very urgent fixings. Oh, yes, you always forget that.

And we are again in the starting point, looking at our blankets

I'm not convinced that "The catastrophe was limited to 1000 square miles of Ukraine and Russia instead of all of Europe" is the positive selling point it might seem to be.

Just barely and only because the still functioning USSR prestig preservation urges kicked in and fed a million biorobots to secure the reactors and build the sarcophagus.

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