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Comment by timwaagh | Hacker News Reader

You think the energy transition can be achieved without harming people? Yes if you are a river fisherman you do not live in the right century. Nor do people living in mountain villages. There are those who will get cancer from working in a nuclear fuel reprocessing plant. Still it's not going to be that bad because the pollution from fossil fuel electricity generation is also causing a lot of disease and killing a lot of people.

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There are those who will get cancer from working in a nuclear fuel reprocessing plant.

It doesn't have to be this way, the engineering controls needed are well known. It requires the country in question to be financially committed to doing things right. For nuclear power this is already considered an essential prerequisite, yet coal power plants already release vastly more radioactivity and increase the cancer risk of everone around them. As far as reducing total cancer, nuclear is the way to go.

Mistakes have been made in the past. Just because something can be done safely doesn't mean it always will be. I am also a big fan of nuclear but that doesn't mean it's perfect.

Human activities harm people.

That doesn't imply we can't compare alternatives and say "This one will result in less harm than that one."

Personally I'd rather see something getting done than endless feasibility studies. That sort of stalling can really prevent countries from making any progress.

> Yes if you are a river fisherman you do not live in the right century. Nor do people living in mountain villages.

Tell me you're in a privileged western country without telling me.

Does knowing where someone is from disqualify him or her from having an opinion? This type of sentiment borders on racism.

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