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> the public is too science illiterate to understand that nuclear isn't anywhere as big of a deal by comparison. Science illiteracy has nothing to do with it.

> the public is too science illiterate to understand that nuclear isn't anywhere as big of a deal by comparison. Science illiteracy has nothing to do with it. The industry has a history of non-trivial reasons for mistrust. Regarding coal plant deaths, I'm not in favor of coal either. The sooner we can move away from fossil the better.

kemiller 10y ago
Statistical innumeracy is what causes the exaggerated categorical fear of nuclear's risks vs the empirical and very present risks posed by fossil fuels. You don't get to just "be against" fossil fuels; you have to propose a credible alternative. Wind and solar are just now starting to become credible, and aren't even all the way there yet. If we had had a less hysterical nuclear policy 40 years ago we would not be in as bad shape now as we are. AND we would also not be stuck with 1960s reactor designs.
avar 10y ago
Yes it is science illiteracy. It's being blind to a much larger diffuse harm in the face of some concentrated but much smaller harm. It's arguably the most harmful kind of science illiteracy because it has the biggest impact on public policy. Everything from people opposing mandatory seat belt laws, to being overly concerned about e.g. genetically modified food or cell phone tower radiation. I'm sure you mean well, but really, people who hold exactly the opinion you hold are in the aggregate the reason for literally millions of deaths that didn't need to happen worldwide since WWII. We had all the data to indicate that burning fossil fuels was causing massive diffuse harm, nuclear was realistically the only alternative in most cases, but people didn't go for it because they were afraid, even though all the science showed that there was little to worry about in comparison to what we were already doing. Sure someone installed a reactor backwards, but how are minor incidents like these at all relevant compared to literally tens to hundreds of thousands of deaths per year because we keep using the alternative?
- theseatoms 10y ago
  And you're not even counting the lives saved from increased wealth due to cheaper electricity.
- pragmar 10y ago
  I'm from the only remaining US state without a mandatory seat belt law, New Hampshire. As far as I can tell, we pair off equally with our neighbor to the west, Vermont, in road fatalities[1]. The two states are very similar in geography and population distribution, neither having much in the way of public transportation or large cities. Regardless of the law, people are wearing seat belts at roughly the same rates. This is to say, at least in my corner of the world--seat belts save lives, but seat belt laws don't. People oppose these laws on philosophical grounds; the role of the state, acceptable levels of police discretion, etc.. Policy is messy, but at minimum must accommodate the values of those it represents. [1] http://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/t/general-statistics/fatalityfacts/state-by-state-overview http://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/t/general-statistics/fatalit...
vidarh 10y ago
In the meantime, in real world nuclear decommissioning currently increases the dependence on fossil fuels, and so every nuclear plant decommissioned in practice has a significant cost in lost lives from fossil fuels. E.g. Germany's rush towards decommissioning after Fukushima has had a massively detrimental effect in Europe for this reason. The death toll as a direct result of fearmongering against nuclear is by this point likely to be far larger than the total death toll of all nuclear incidents. If we hadn't had nuclear in first place, the cost in lives lost to other forms of plants would have been far greater than that again.
- Chathamization 10y ago
  > E.g. Germany's rush towards decommissioning after Fukushima has had a massively detrimental effect in Europe for this reason. This says that German emissions from electricity generation were down, but that was offset by heating increases from a cold winter and emissions from increased good transportation: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/germany-reiterates-g20-climate-focus-energy-transition-conference-0/transport-and-cold-weather-cause-emissions-rise https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/germany-reiterates-g20-...
  - vidarh 10y ago
    Two problems with this: 1) you can not look at Germany in isolation. You need to take into account the import/export market. Decommissioning nuclear plants at a faster schedule substantially altered that, which affected other countries dependency on fossil fuels. 2) Germany is to their credit aggressively trying to get rid of its fossil fuel dependency, but the decommissioning of nuclear meant they needed to offset a significant shortfall. To the extent that hole was plugged by new clean energy capacity, that meant delaying decommissioning of far more lethal coal plants. Until fossil fuels is at 0, decommissioning nuclear is bad policy.
    - Chathamization 10y ago
      This seems to indicate that German electricity exports are actually up: https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/en/press-media/news/2016/germanys-electricity-exports-surplus-brings-record-revenue-of-over-two-billion-euros.html https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/en/press-media/news/2016/germa...
smsm42 10y ago
Moving away from fossil is very hard. Essentially we have two power sources available to us - Sun and nuclear. We are not very good at capturing sun energy directly, and doing it on massive scale requires both huge investment and global size actions that would have very serious consequences on global scale - from trivial cases like dams changing the terrains to more subtle like massive wind/solar installs changing wind/reflection/heat patterns and thus influencing the climate. I don't think we have any good data on how that would work on the scales needed to replace fossil fuels. With fossil fuels we essentially are using solar energy accumulated for millions of years. Very long term there's an obvious problem there, but on shorter term if we want to make do with only solar energy that is incoming right now, we need to become drastically more efficient in capturing it, and I don't think current technologies are there yet, and that we know how to deal with it on scales required to cover all present energy needs.

kemiller 10y ago

Statistical innumeracy is what causes the exaggerated categorical fear of nuclear's risks vs the empirical and very present risks posed by fossil fuels. You don't get to just "be against" fossil fuels; you have to propose a credible alternative. Wind and solar are just now starting to become credible, and aren't even all the way there yet. If we had had a less hysterical nuclear policy 40 years ago we would not be in as bad shape now as we are. AND we would also not be stuck with 1960s reactor designs.

avar 10y ago

Yes it is science illiteracy. It's being blind to a much larger diffuse harm in the face of some concentrated but much smaller harm. It's arguably the most harmful kind of science illiteracy because it has the biggest impact on public policy. Everything from people opposing mandatory seat belt laws, to being overly concerned about e.g. genetically modified food or cell phone tower radiation. I'm sure you mean well, but really, people who hold exactly the opinion you hold are in the aggregate the reason for literally millions of deaths that didn't need to happen worldwide since WWII. We had all the data to indicate that burning fossil fuels was causing massive diffuse harm, nuclear was realistically the only alternative in most cases, but people didn't go for it because they were afraid, even though all the science showed that there was little to worry about in comparison to what we were already doing. Sure someone installed a reactor backwards, but how are minor incidents like these at all relevant compared to literally tens to hundreds of thousands of deaths per year because we keep using the alternative?

theseatoms 10y ago
And you're not even counting the lives saved from increased wealth due to cheaper electricity.
pragmar 10y ago
I'm from the only remaining US state without a mandatory seat belt law, New Hampshire. As far as I can tell, we pair off equally with our neighbor to the west, Vermont, in road fatalities[1]. The two states are very similar in geography and population distribution, neither having much in the way of public transportation or large cities. Regardless of the law, people are wearing seat belts at roughly the same rates. This is to say, at least in my corner of the world--seat belts save lives, but seat belt laws don't. People oppose these laws on philosophical grounds; the role of the state, acceptable levels of police discretion, etc.. Policy is messy, but at minimum must accommodate the values of those it represents. [1] http://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/t/general-statistics/fatalityfacts/state-by-state-overview http://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/t/general-statistics/fatalit...

vidarh 10y ago

In the meantime, in real world nuclear decommissioning currently increases the dependence on fossil fuels, and so every nuclear plant decommissioned in practice has a significant cost in lost lives from fossil fuels. E.g. Germany's rush towards decommissioning after Fukushima has had a massively detrimental effect in Europe for this reason. The death toll as a direct result of fearmongering against nuclear is by this point likely to be far larger than the total death toll of all nuclear incidents. If we hadn't had nuclear in first place, the cost in lives lost to other forms of plants would have been far greater than that again.

Chathamization 10y ago
> E.g. Germany's rush towards decommissioning after Fukushima has had a massively detrimental effect in Europe for this reason. This says that German emissions from electricity generation were down, but that was offset by heating increases from a cold winter and emissions from increased good transportation: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/germany-reiterates-g20-climate-focus-energy-transition-conference-0/transport-and-cold-weather-cause-emissions-rise https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/germany-reiterates-g20-...
- vidarh 10y ago
  Two problems with this: 1) you can not look at Germany in isolation. You need to take into account the import/export market. Decommissioning nuclear plants at a faster schedule substantially altered that, which affected other countries dependency on fossil fuels. 2) Germany is to their credit aggressively trying to get rid of its fossil fuel dependency, but the decommissioning of nuclear meant they needed to offset a significant shortfall. To the extent that hole was plugged by new clean energy capacity, that meant delaying decommissioning of far more lethal coal plants. Until fossil fuels is at 0, decommissioning nuclear is bad policy.
  - Chathamization 10y ago
    This seems to indicate that German electricity exports are actually up: https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/en/press-media/news/2016/germanys-electricity-exports-surplus-brings-record-revenue-of-over-two-billion-euros.html https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/en/press-media/news/2016/germa...

smsm42 10y ago

Moving away from fossil is very hard. Essentially we have two power sources available to us - Sun and nuclear. We are not very good at capturing sun energy directly, and doing it on massive scale requires both huge investment and global size actions that would have very serious consequences on global scale - from trivial cases like dams changing the terrains to more subtle like massive wind/solar installs changing wind/reflection/heat patterns and thus influencing the climate. I don't think we have any good data on how that would work on the scales needed to replace fossil fuels. With fossil fuels we essentially are using solar energy accumulated for millions of years. Very long term there's an obvious problem there, but on shorter term if we want to make do with only solar energy that is incoming right now, we need to become drastically more efficient in capturing it, and I don't think current technologies are there yet, and that we know how to deal with it on scales required to cover all present energy needs.