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Comment by evilos | Hacker News Reader

Nuclear energy is so insanely safe that of the three worst accidents in its history, only one actually killed people and its on the order of hundreds of people. Hydro dam failures have killed on the order of hundreds of thousands but no one is trying to ban hydro.

Meanwhile, lawnmowers kill over a hundred Americans a year.

Nuclear energy is safe by any reasonable standard. The land around Chernobyl and Fukushima are for the most part usable today. It is only because we cling to the unscientific LNT standard that anyone thinks otherwise. Thankfully the misconduct and fraud that led to this state of affairs is becoming more known thanks to the work of Dr. Edward Calabrese.

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The real amount of victims of nuclear accidents is hotly disputed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl:_Consequences_of_the...

Fukushima: more than 2200 victims from the evacuation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_nuclear_accident

Hydro victims are mostly those of the Banqiao disaster, which is a fluke. In similar conditions anything would go boom with way less latency. It took place during the Chinese Cultural Revolution when most people were busy with the "revolution" which began in 1966 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure )

A well-placed expert whistle-blowing was totally ignored and even punished https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure#Whist...

This Revolution followed the "Great Leap Forward", with famines and millions victims. Moreover all this came after a civil war and violent Japanese invasion, during which dams were bombed, causing "massive flooding in Henan" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henan#Modern_Era )

In such a context an otherwise avoidable catastrophe may happen.

Then a huge typhoon closed the case ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typhoon_Nina_(1975) )

Predicting and adverting this catastrophe was possible, but given such a context nobody was able to do so. One may imagine what an active nuclear reactor would become/trigger in such a context.

Ah, the infamous NYAS hit job. It wasn't even peer reviewed, yet it was published on behalf of a supposedly scientific community. That should tell you everything you need to know.

Meanwhile, the UN Scientific Commissions and Harvard/Kyiv medical studies have found no increase in cancers due to Chernobyl.

https://www.unscear.org/unscear/en/areas-of-work/chernobyl.h... https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31454285/

The Fukushima evacuation was wholly unnecessary and was only done because of the illogical fear of radiation that is spread by anti nuke orgs. That blood is on the hands of those who uphold and spread these lies.

This book is an analysis of scientific literature, and the authors pedigrees seem convincing to me: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl:_Consequences_of_the...

Most authors of negative critics are authors of reports this book criticized, and other ones are weirdos. The book's authors answered to all critics.

One of the critics is Monty Charles. His own work, done for the UNSCEAR (a pro-nuke UN agency) in 2006, is heavily criticized in the book. He then criticized this book.

Another critic was published by Mona Dreicer, who worked for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) (another UN pro-nuke agency) and the book criticized her work.

Another one is M. Balonov, long-time contributor of reports published by UN-agencies, and the book criticizes his work.

S. Jargin, another author of a negative review, sees flaws in each and every publication criticizing a powerful industry. For example asbestos is in his opinion not a concern and its use unduly prohibited ( https://www.researchgate.net/publication/321527973_Asbestos_... ) His 'debate' with Rosamund Katz and Janette Sherman is surrealistic. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/278732482_Who_Is_Af...

The UN is notoriously pro-nuke, and the UNSCEAR only composed of nuclear-energy related nations (exploiting reactors, extracting uranium...). About the WHO: http://independentwho.org/

> The Fukushima evacuation was wholly unnecessary

During such a disaster very few are able to assess the real risk, in real time, and even less to predict it. Panic ensues. This is intrinsic to the underlying physical and biological phenomenon, and therefore to nuclear.

> illogical fear of radiation

If there is nothing to fear how comes Japan disburses hundred of billions in order to clean up the nuclear mess? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_disaster_cleanup

Many accidents have happened, most never heard of.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokaimura_nuclear_accidents

Hell, Hisashi Ouchi's death could just been handed down by a medieval like Ivan the Terrible.

Someone burned to death atop a wind turbine. Is this a reason why wind turbines should be banned? Of course not. What matters is costs vs benefits and nuclear is just as safe if not safer than wind/solar energy per TWh.

LNT: the controversy rages over... in each direction.

See for example: https://danielcorcos.substack.com/p/bca

It really doesn't. Even the BEIR radiation safety council has had to admit recently that LNT has no scientific basis. (They refuse to stop using it out of 'an overabundance of caution'). And this is the institution that basically started and promoted the LNT way of thinking.

We know the basic mechanisms of cancer, DNA damage. We also know that on average each cell in the human body experiences around 10,000-50,000 single strand breaks per day due to...

Cellular respiration, ie Oxygen.

This fact alone kills LNT because in order to take LNT at face value you have to assume that radiation damage is cumulative and never repaired. If that were true, we'd all be dead.

Yes, the dose rate (and type of exposure, bioaccumulation of radioisotopes...) is one of (if not the) key parameter. As for its role the document I referenced seems pretty convincing to me.

> Nuclear energy is so insanely safe that of the three worst accidents in its history, only one actually killed people and its on the order of hundreds of people

You're leaving out the cancer and birth defects part for generations to come.

Considering how few reactors there are in the world, I'd say the failure rate is unacceptably high. A single failure is enough to contaminate an area for hundreds and thousands of years.

Pls, show me the nrs of ppl with increased cancer risk from these accidents. I'm sure the number should already be calculated

> A single failure is enough to contaminate an area for hundreds and thousands of years.

A single coal seam fire can do that too. A dam failure can even render an area uninhabitable forever.

Nuclear isn't quite as green as many of its advocates claim but its environmental skeletons in the closet aren't born out of plant accidents (which are few, far between, and generally well contained in Western plant designs), they're born out of the chemical horror show that is the rest of the uranium fuel cycle.

> A single coal seam fire

Nobody wants coal anymore, this is about renewables vs. nuclear.

> A dam failure can even render an area uninhabitable forever

Source?

That is complete nonsense. The UN Scientific Commission, Harvard Medical School, Kyiv University found no evidence for increased cancer after Chernobyl.

https://www.unscear.org/unscear/en/areas-of-work/chernobyl.h...

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31454285/

Radiation simply isn't as dangerous as everyone has been led to believe. We live in a radioactive world and the most basic aspects of our biology is designed to deal with it. Even in a hypothetical world with zero radiation, every single one of your cells on average experiences between ten thousand and fifty thousand DNA breaks a day. Because of the Oxygen our cells need to produce energy. You have to be exposed to significant amounts of radiation before you start to even approach the damage from normal wear and tear of life.

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