Hacker News Reader

Comment by pdonis | Hacker News Reader

> I've read Voices from Chernobyl

Chernobyl is not a good proxy for any commercial nuclear reactor. It was built by the Soviet Union for experimental purposes with a flagrant disregard for even minimal safety standards, even given the knowledge at the time. No other country has ever tried anything even remotely similar.

That said, even counting Chernobyl, the harm done by nuclear reactors per unit of energy generated is orders of magnitude smaller than the harm done by fossil fuels. [1]

> wind and solar, which carry infinitely less risk

This is nonsense. Nothing is zero risk. Per unit of energy generated, wind and solar are comparable to nuclear in terms of overall harm done. [1] In other words, they have about equal risk. They certainly do not have "infinitely less" risk.

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-p...

View on HN

Vs. fossil fuels is a red herring, the debate is whether or not fission is sustainable for the environment.

Statistically, you’re right. But the potential harm from a nuclear event is clearly infinitely greater than wind and solar. Chernobyl’s fallout restricted farming on 10,000 farms in the UK and affected 4 million sheep exceeding EU becquerel limits at the time. In the UK. In total a land area about the quarter of the size of California was contaminated with over 37 becquerel of radiation.

Statistically, it doesn’t happen. But the risk IS THERE. Wind power can’t take half of California's agriculture out of the picture over night.

You can’t say fission and wind have similar risk at the tail ends.

> the potential harm from a nuclear event is clearly infinitely greater than wind and solar

Nonsense. Your posts about this are pure FUD. Chernobyl is simply not a valid case when assessing the risks of actual commercial nuclear plants.

As someone who's been to Chernobyl, you're right. Terrible proxy.

Here's what's not: maximum risk. When something goes very wrong - and it will - the maximum damage is insane. This is why I'm against nuclear.

Oh you say, but what about this awesome new reactor, and it's got 4 domes and can withstand an earthquake and it falls into a pool of molten lava because it's on top of a volcano?

Here's the thing - you don't know what can happen. You can have the world's 2nd best army surround it and make it purposefully melt down and pollute half of europe. You can have a crazy florida christian elected by alligators and decide to pave the roads with spent fuel rods. You can have him fake all safety checks and pocket the money, till it blows up.

Your "risk per unit of energy" assumes risk is some small constant block of jello. It's not. The risk is "increased predictable risk of cancer from breathing worse air" versus "well, we didn't know a tsunami was going to hit Illinois after a lake overflowed after russia blew up their under-ocean nuclear missle sub off the coast of texas because they missed the ash tray.

Risk is not Jello. Risk is either "we're royally screwed for 10k years" or risk is "this isn't good"

Here's what I always find funny when guys like you have something happen, where they explain it's not the fault of their little plan. They give an explanation for how it happened, and expect people to say "oh, clearly that's the fault of the russian sub blowing up, not your awesome safety plan." Why would anyone think the Proud Boys would all get jobs at a nuclear plant as safety inspectors in a planned coordinated attack to make a blue state unlivable? Who would think of that - it's not your fault buddy.

Buddy, your logic, is that of a smart 14yo. The world does not care how, why, it just does it's random crap. There's nothing you can do about that, and nothing you can do to predict things. You do have to design safety for an unpredictable scenario causing maximum possible damage though. And that means nuclear power is not safe until we have a reactor that cannot destroy and irradiate tens of miles around it, even if someone tries to make it do that on purpose.

So are you going to ignore the maximum risk of other major industrial plants, or do you demand all of those be shut down too?

Please understand that coal has irradiated tons of land too, and in a way we can't even evacuate from. The maximum damage from coal is enormous even ignoring CO2.

Please show a coal plant that irradiated an area as large and as badly as Chernobyl or Japan. The radiation from what coal plant, is being eaten in fish caught across an ocean?

What you're saying is a lot of matches lit around the world is the same as a nuclear bomb going off in NYC because it's the same amount of energy released in little fireballs.

You get it - right? Do you? Chernobyl will happen again - for some reason. Imagine it happening in the middle of the US, and 1/3 of the country not being livable for 10k years. That's the maximum damage from nuclear.

France has lots of reactors. What happens when Hungary's dictator joins Russia, and sends two hundred dispursive cruise missles at 5 reactors in France? Yes, this can happen. It almost happened in Ukraine recently - have you, umm, read Any news in the last year? Big panic in all of Europe.

You don't know what can happen.

You do with coal.

You know how you are warned not to eat too much of some types of fish that come from the sea because of getting too much mercury? That is due to mostly mercury from burning coal. If coal was discovered today and people tried to create coal burning power plants in the US there is no way they would be approved with all of the problems with burning coal.

You know how fish caught in the US across the ocean from Japan were irradiated after their reactor meltdown? You should read about that.

We are comparing risk when something goes wrong. Your risk is.... "Don't eat more than two pounds of ocean fish per week." Chernobyl risk is 1000mi^2 is uninhabitable for 10000 years, and a radioactive cloud rained on half of Europe.

Do you remember last year when the entire EU was freaked out because the Russians were bombing a nuclear powerplant, cutting off it's coolant path, and a meltdown would have caused most of Ukraine, and half of Europe to be irradiated?

But yeah, that's the same as your fish thing. It's easy to think like that when you're on a comfortable sofa and not at risk of this. Until the political climate changes or a natural disaster happens - and then you are. But you aren't with coal. With coal, you have predictability, known ways to mitigate, and it's slow so you can adapt.

Both are bad. One is dangerous, unpredictable, and risky.

> Please show a coal plant

It's not the output from one plant, it's the amount you get from a big pile of coal plants versus the same amount of nuclear power, even with a very high projection of nuclear plant release.

The coal plants release radiation at a moderate speed but never stop.

> two hundred dispursive cruise missles

Lol okay dude, cruise missiles don't have to aim at nuclear plants to do the same damage.

got it. you have no answer.

light background radiation, present already everywhere is not the same as chernobyl (1000sqmi), where no one can live for 10000 years. i didn't think my matches example could possibly not be understood by even a talking monkey, but here we are.

a cruise missle does not damage an area of 1000 miles^2 for 10000 years. it blows up a part of a building. I have to ask - I thought the demographic here was older proffessionals. How did you find yourself here from the high school edgy teen subreddit?

I'd rather have all the radiation in one spot where people can avoid it, myself. An increase to background radiation is far form harmless.

A few big missiles can release as much radiation as chernobyl over a large area if that's what they're designed to do.

I hope insulting me makes your day better.

Vs. fossil fuels is a red herring, the debate is whether or not fission is sustainable for the environment. That’s not an argument for “fission is ecologically sustainable”, that’s an argument for “even though it’s not, we should still build dams and fission power plants anyways”.

Which is a fine argument. It’s just a different debate.

> Here's the thing - you don't know what can happen.

With this attitude towards risk, we should outlaw all energy sources. And everything else, for that matter.

> You can have the world's 2nd best army surround it and make it purposefully melt down and pollute half of europe.

I've already responded to this elsewhere in this thread. We should not be restricting what we build in the US because Ukraine is currently a war zone. (As I pointed out elsewhere in the thread, France gets the majority of electricity from nuclear even though it was invaded in WW II.)

> Your "risk per unit of energy" assumes risk is some small constant block of jello.

It does no such thing. What it does do is force people to look at the actual cumulative harms over time objectively, instead of fixating on particular one-off incidents and ignoring other long-term effects just because they take time to accumulate. If you think it's perfectly OK to kill millions of people over time by air pollution, while protesting vehemently about thousands of people killed by one particular accident and its aftermath, even though it was the only such accident over the same time period that millions of people were killed by air pollution, you are the one who has an irrational attitude towards risk.

> nothing you can do to predict things

Nonsense.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com