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Comment by Dylan16807 | Hacker News Reader

> Would you like to live next to Chernobyl?

They weren't even acting as a power plant when they did that.

Buy yes I'll take a 1% chance of another 30x30 mile exclusion zone for 100k fewer coal deaths. Even if I have to personally live near it.

> Even with current standards there are a lot of nuclear power plants running just fine.

We could have a lot more of them making power for half the price and still hold them to very safe standards.

And if we focused on what was important while keeping costs under control, we'd get extra safety benefits by affordably rebuilding or replacing plants that were built in the 70s and 80s.

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chernobyl affected a lot more then the exclusion zone, most of eastern europe... cancer rates spiked because of it... and it could have been a lot worse.

Effects are long term, hence question if you would live there now?, what would happen if Paris or London or Berlin were contaminated?, would you still live there?, would you live in Chernobyl city now?

When a reactor can mess up a whole country/area long term you need to take all precautions.

In spite of this, there are reactors built with plans to extend (Romania with Cernavoda for example), but they cost a lot and take a long time to build, plus areas where they can be built are likely limited.

So it's not the standards that are the problem.

> cancer rates spiked

Still preferable to the amount of people killed by coal.

> what would happen if Paris or London or Berlin were contaminated?

You can avoid building adjacent to cities.

> would you live in Chernobyl city now?

Really? I go ahead and say I'll live next to it, so you move the goalpost to living in it?

Screw it. Fine. If it will get a lot of large nuclear plants built outside Asia, I'll trade a promise to live inside any disaster zone caused by not only them but any other plant built in the West this century. Is that good enough for you? Chernobyl itself was not an example of modern nuclear power and I'm not going there.

> When a reactor can mess up a whole country/area long term you need to take all precautions.

Even setting aside the issue of being so cautious you cause harm in other ways, a lot of the precautions don't affect the odds of a big disaster!

> So it's not the standards that are the problem.

There's so much nitpicking on an individual plant basis, so I think they are a big problem.

I didn't see how "there are reactors built with plans to expand" is supposed to show that standards aren't driving the cost?

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