Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by javcasas | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

javcasas

The problem with nuclear is not the ultra-low probability of incidents, but the potential size of the incidents.

And then you have bad faith actors.

No one would ever put graphite tips in the control rods to save some money, wouldn't they?

No one would station troops during war in a nuclear power plant, wouldn't they?

No one would use a nuclear power plant to breed material for nuclear bombs, wouldn't they?

Finally, no CxO would cheapen out in maintenance for short term gains then jump ship leaving a mess behind, right?

None of that has never ever happened, right?

View on HN

> The problem with nuclear is not the ultra-low probability of incidents, but the potential size of the incidents.

This is also not as bad as people think. Chernobyl was bad, but the real effect on human health was shockingly small. Fukushima is almost as well-known, and its impact was negligible.

Even if we had ten times as many nuclear disasters - hell, even fifty times more - it would still be a cleaner source of energy than fossil fuels.

Meanwhile the amount of overregulation is extreme and often absurd. It's not a coincidence that most operational nuclear plants were built decades ago.

> This is also not as bad as people think. Chernobyl was bad, but the real effect on human health was shockingly small. Fukushima is almost as well-known, and its impact was negligible.

Yeah the final outcome was pretty negligible, especially if we ignore to huge exclusion zone that can’t be occupied for a few hundred years.

But even in those disasters, we often got a lucky as we got unlucky. The worst of the disasters was often avoid by individuals taking extreme risks, or even losing their lives to prevent a greater disaster. Ultimately all of the disasters demonstrated that we’re not very good a reliably managing the risks associated with nuclear power.

Modern reactor designs are substantially safer and better than older reactors. But unfortunately we’ve not building reactors for a very long time, and we’ve lost a huge amount of knowledge and skill associated with building reactors. Which drives up the cost of nuclear reactors even further because of the huge cost of rediscovering all the lost knowledge and skill associated

Except for Chernobyl clean up workers, no one lost their lives taking a deliberate risk in any other nuclear incident. And Chernobyl clean up workers didn't die within months either - in fact the story of their health outcomes is quite nuanced, but yes they most definitely took high risks.

In fact Chernobyl is incredibly badly remembered, because the firefighters who died responding to the initial blaze died of sepsis related to beta radiation burns from spending hours wearing their firefighting coats covered in radioactive dust.

Had they been removed promptly and hosed down, those people would've survived because they would not have received essentially a third degree burn over their entire body. And that's the point: they died of sepsis related complications, not any type of unique radiation damage and the Soviet doctors who treated them did get better at it once the protocols were established.

Life of hundreds of millions were/are/will be affected by Chornobyl. Nobody can calculate real death toll of Chornobyl accident because it's impossible to control radiation. Moreover, nobody wants to pay for those deaths or partially lost health.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190725-will-we-ever-kno...

Millions, sure. Hundreds of millions? Probably not. And don't forget that a LOT went wrong in Chernobyl, it's literally impossible for another disaster of this magnitude to happen again.

Multiple millions by thousands of years. Probably yes.

> Chernobyl was bad, but the real effect on human health was shockingly small. Fukushima is almost as well-known, and its impact was negligible.

Was this not due to the expensive clean-up effort in each case respectively? Nuclear reactors may be a lot cleaner than fossil fuels operationally, and reducing their regulation to allow them to replace fossil fuels may well be cleaner on average. But if the once-in-a-blue-moon incident requires huge amounts of money in clean-up costs, then maybe those health and safety regulations would prove themselves cheaper in the long term.

Perhaps the real question is why we do not demand such stringent health and safety standards on fossil fuels, which are operationally dirty and prone to disaster.

Mostly, yes, but also consider that both were exceptional circumstances that happened to outdated reactors.

IIRC Fukushima didn't actually leak enough radiation out to cause any significant environmental harm - quite possibly, most of the evacuations weren't even necessary, and the total toll among responders was only 25, with only 1 death.

Chernobyl was much worse, but other than responders and the high incidence rates of thyroid cancer in young children close to the disaster area, the total casualties were also lower than people assume. A lot of the early estimates were massively inflated.

Honestly it's quite possible that in both cases, we could have done much less relocation and evacuation, especially the fukushima response was largely driven by Japan's fear of nuclear technology.

Agreed that lumpiness is an issue and so in practice you wouldn’t want to argue for coal levels of death-per-MWh.

This concern is, I believe, the crux of why folks are overly-conservative - the few well-known disasters are terrifying and therefore salient.

Plus it’s hard to campaign for “more risk please”. But we should bite the bullet; yeah, more of the stuff you list would happen. And, the tradeoff is worth it.

> yeah, more of the stuff you list would happen. And, the tradeoff is worth it.

Next to you and your family, then, since you’re happy trading with their risks.

I don't know why people think this is a "gotcha"?

I would happily live next to a nuclear power plant, the reason not to is mostly to do with "it's still an industrial site". But like, lakeside land where I'm up or down stream from it but can clearly see it nearby? Sure.

It's one of the rare forms of industry where if I was ever worried about contamination a cheap portable device will warn me remotely. Unlike say, Asbestos and heavy metals...one of which there's a bunch in my current backyard.

If being next to a nuclear plant meant id NOT be next to a coal plant, and therefore have better air and better health, I’d gladly take that trade.

Climate change is planet wide. No nuclear incident has ever had such a widespread effect.

Have you heard about low-background steel? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel

It became scarce because of some very widespread effect.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com