How p-hacking built the world's most expensive safety regime | Hacker News Reader

How p-hacking built the world's most expensive safety regime

worksinprogress.news

17 pointsLihh277 comments

I've been noticing an uptick in these dumb attempts to convince the public that a little radiation is good for us. Just like PTFE, right? It's all about small doses.

Works in Progress (this "publication") is owned by Stripe, who seem to have an agenda they're trying to push, lately.

No, an attempt to educate the public on how safe nuclear power actually is. It even has lower radiation levels than coal. It’s insane we aren’t using nuclear power more for baseline.

I do think nuclear power is safe; I don't think we should relax safety standards to deploy it – the rigor is required for a reason.

But there is such a thing as too much safety. Imagine if we banned airplanes because there's a crash in a decade.

Ultimately, safety is not absolute and is about tradeoffs. The question, thus, is whether the tradeoff is worth it. The current safety standards for nuclear, if applied more broadly, would ban air travel.

This is an apples-to-oranges comparison.

Consider what a nuclear disaster (like Chernobyl) costs: the total price of that disaster is however many statistical lives are lost (look up "value of a statistical life" if you don't know what I'm talking about) plus the total current and future potential economic value of the land on which the disaster occurred. That number is insanely high.

The cost of a commercial airplane crash can also be extremely high (for example, if it ends up hitting tower filled with people) – but typically, it doesn't completely decimate the value of the land upon which the accident occurs and all surrounding natural resources. Those resources are recoverable. That's why we can (by comparison) YOLO with an aircraft, but not with a nuclear reactor.

Bear in mind that this article is talking, specifically, about daily radiation dosages, not nuclear accidents. Still, look no further than Fukushima meltdown and the potential loses already dropped significantly (only one casualty attributed to it, and for political reasons apparently). Some designs don't even have meltdown risks.

But I digress. I mentioned the loss of life due to occasional radiation-poisoning casualties for those working on/living near operating nuclear reactors. IIRC, the max amount of allowed radiation dosage is bellow the radiation dosage you get irradiated in a airplane flight, so that's why a mentioned it at the end.

It's right up there with all the propaganda to convince the public that vaccines are good, or that drinking paint thinner is bad for you.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com