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I've got news for you if you expect guarantees about every possible risk you might face in life: We've had not one but several nuclear disasters in the past se

by Nrsolis 10y ago

I've got news for you if you expect guarantees about every possible risk you might face in life: We've had not one but several nuclear disasters in the past several decades and in each case the sky hasn't come crashing down. The risks from a nuclear plant disaster are localized and controllable. The risks from runaway climate change are global and uncontrollable. The planet is going to be fine. Whether human society survives is going to be a whole different matter entirely.

cookiecaper 10y ago
>We've had not one but several nuclear disasters in the past several decades and in each case the sky hasn't come crashing down. Unless of course you're one of the people who lived in the nuclear exclusion zones created by Chernobyl and Fukushima, in which case, yes, everything you own and possess, very potentially including your long-term health, were destroyed in a matter of hours. Those residents can never go back for more than a quick temporary visit, and they can not take back their belongings because they've been irradiated. They will always be asking themselves if they got enough of a dose of radiation to cause early disease. Call that localized and controllable all you want, and if you propose building these plants in areas with no nearby inhabitants for many sq miles, maybe it works OK. The current system, where we say "Don't worry, it's all perfectly safe, we double-pinkie-promise that we won't make the mistakes those guys in Ukraine or Japan made, and if you disagree you're an idiot who hates science" is just not going to fly. This is not general alarmism about being unable to mitigate every risk in life. This is a comparative analysis of the potential risk profiles of fossil fuels and nuclear, and fossil fuels being much better because the cost of a catastrophic non-nuclear failure is much smaller than the cost of a catastrophic nuclear failure.
- Nrsolis 10y ago
  I would argue that if you compared the risk profiles of fossil fuels vs nuclear power you'd come to the conclusion that nuclear has and continues to have, by a wide margin, the safest profile of ANY energy source except maybe wind and solar. I'm only excluding solar because I don't think we fully understand all of the safety impact of the construction of large windmills all over the windiest parts of the planet nor do we fully understand the impact of solar panel manufacturing. When you account for the full lifecycle of fossil fuels, from the extraction, refining, transportation, and ultimate consumption and measure that impact in both short-term impact (coal-mining deaths) vs. long-term impact (climate change, pollution, cancer) you'd find that nuclear is the best option. I'd risk a %0.00001 chance of dying by cancer sooner living next to a nuclear plant vs. a 1.0% chance of dying in a road collision with a fuel tanker or a 0.05% chance of dying sooner with emphysema by living close to a coal-fired plant. (I made those numbers up by the way; but my order of magnitude is spot-on) As a person who worked in this industry, understands the economics of it, and has compared the costs of coal/wind/gas/nuclear, I can confidently say that nuclear can be safe and affordable as an energy source if we are committed to safe and conscientious use of it. (BTW, for a month, I slept next to a nuclear reactor that was approximately 500 feet away from my bunk. My total radiation dose for that trip was less than I'd get in the same time hanging out at Grand Central Terminal (a location that would it to be certified as a functioning nuclear reactor would be out of specification as emitting too great a dose of radiation to those who work there) http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/interact/facts.html http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/inter...
  - cookiecaper 10y ago
    >if we are committed to safe and conscientious use of it. Ding ding ding. This is always the caveat tucked away in nuclear discussions. "It will be fine, as long as everything is going fine." Things don't always go fine. When they don't go fine at a coal plant, things are bad, but they are recoverable; they can be cleaned up, and that land can be repurposed, even if its prior purpose is no longer feasible due to structural changes or pollution. There is no permanent, decades-long exclusion zone. >I'd risk a %0.00001 chance of dying by cancer sooner living next to a nuclear plant vs. a 1.0% chance of dying in a road collision with a fuel tanker or a 0.05% chance of dying sooner with emphysema by living close to a coal-fired plant. (I made those numbers up by the way; but my order of magnitude is spot-on) Not going to nitpick your made-up numbers, but the difference is that this is a bigger thing "than I want to take this risk". This is taking the risk that the area become a nuclear wasteland (from radiation, not explosion) for the next 100 years, an area that no person can enter without risking their immediate health just by being present. If you get too close to the hotspots without the right gear and monitoring, you will die quickly. Are other things dirty? Do other things have tradeoffs and downsides? Is there even some risk that nearby property will be damaged or destroyed? Sure. I'm not trying to say that other industrial accidents are no big deal. But nuclear is the only thing that can, almost instantly, take a big chunk of land and permanently and irrevocably irradiate it for 100 years (and, that's just the most severe risk with nuclear power generation; there are others that haven't been discussed). You can say that greenhouse gasses have the same potential non-local impact, which is fine, but quite the inverse of nuclear power, greenhouse gas emissions take decades to effect this impact and are measurable and controllable. We know it's coming and can do things to stop it. As far as I know, the most catastrophic failure at a conventional plant would impact local air quality temporarily. The most catastrophic failure at a nuclear plant can impact everything about the surrounding area (for loose values of "surrounding"; Chernobyl created a 1000 sq mile no-go zone) for generations. Those failures can and do happen overnight.
  - Spooky23 10y ago
    Risk assessment of probability of an incident and impact of an incident. Chernobyl happened. Fukushima happened. If a similar incident happened at the plant just north of NYC, the evacuation zone would include hundreds of thousands or millions of people.
abraae 10y ago
Why do people use this phrase? Yes the planet's going to be fine, in the sense that a spherical mass will continue to orbit the sun. But if every species but the cockroach is wiped out from runaway biological ecosystem collapse, is that really "being fine"?

by Nrsolis 10y ago

cookiecaper 10y ago

>We've had not one but several nuclear disasters in the past several decades and in each case the sky hasn't come crashing down. Unless of course you're one of the people who lived in the nuclear exclusion zones created by Chernobyl and Fukushima, in which case, yes, everything you own and possess, very potentially including your long-term health, were destroyed in a matter of hours. Those residents can never go back for more than a quick temporary visit, and they can not take back their belongings because they've been irradiated. They will always be asking themselves if they got enough of a dose of radiation to cause early disease. Call that localized and controllable all you want, and if you propose building these plants in areas with no nearby inhabitants for many sq miles, maybe it works OK. The current system, where we say "Don't worry, it's all perfectly safe, we double-pinkie-promise that we won't make the mistakes those guys in Ukraine or Japan made, and if you disagree you're an idiot who hates science" is just not going to fly. This is not general alarmism about being unable to mitigate every risk in life. This is a comparative analysis of the potential risk profiles of fossil fuels and nuclear, and fossil fuels being much better because the cost of a catastrophic non-nuclear failure is much smaller than the cost of a catastrophic nuclear failure.

Nrsolis 10y ago
I would argue that if you compared the risk profiles of fossil fuels vs nuclear power you'd come to the conclusion that nuclear has and continues to have, by a wide margin, the safest profile of ANY energy source except maybe wind and solar. I'm only excluding solar because I don't think we fully understand all of the safety impact of the construction of large windmills all over the windiest parts of the planet nor do we fully understand the impact of solar panel manufacturing. When you account for the full lifecycle of fossil fuels, from the extraction, refining, transportation, and ultimate consumption and measure that impact in both short-term impact (coal-mining deaths) vs. long-term impact (climate change, pollution, cancer) you'd find that nuclear is the best option. I'd risk a %0.00001 chance of dying by cancer sooner living next to a nuclear plant vs. a 1.0% chance of dying in a road collision with a fuel tanker or a 0.05% chance of dying sooner with emphysema by living close to a coal-fired plant. (I made those numbers up by the way; but my order of magnitude is spot-on) As a person who worked in this industry, understands the economics of it, and has compared the costs of coal/wind/gas/nuclear, I can confidently say that nuclear can be safe and affordable as an energy source if we are committed to safe and conscientious use of it. (BTW, for a month, I slept next to a nuclear reactor that was approximately 500 feet away from my bunk. My total radiation dose for that trip was less than I'd get in the same time hanging out at Grand Central Terminal (a location that would it to be certified as a functioning nuclear reactor would be out of specification as emitting too great a dose of radiation to those who work there) http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/interact/facts.html http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/inter...
- cookiecaper 10y ago
  >if we are committed to safe and conscientious use of it. Ding ding ding. This is always the caveat tucked away in nuclear discussions. "It will be fine, as long as everything is going fine." Things don't always go fine. When they don't go fine at a coal plant, things are bad, but they are recoverable; they can be cleaned up, and that land can be repurposed, even if its prior purpose is no longer feasible due to structural changes or pollution. There is no permanent, decades-long exclusion zone. >I'd risk a %0.00001 chance of dying by cancer sooner living next to a nuclear plant vs. a 1.0% chance of dying in a road collision with a fuel tanker or a 0.05% chance of dying sooner with emphysema by living close to a coal-fired plant. (I made those numbers up by the way; but my order of magnitude is spot-on) Not going to nitpick your made-up numbers, but the difference is that this is a bigger thing "than I want to take this risk". This is taking the risk that the area become a nuclear wasteland (from radiation, not explosion) for the next 100 years, an area that no person can enter without risking their immediate health just by being present. If you get too close to the hotspots without the right gear and monitoring, you will die quickly. Are other things dirty? Do other things have tradeoffs and downsides? Is there even some risk that nearby property will be damaged or destroyed? Sure. I'm not trying to say that other industrial accidents are no big deal. But nuclear is the only thing that can, almost instantly, take a big chunk of land and permanently and irrevocably irradiate it for 100 years (and, that's just the most severe risk with nuclear power generation; there are others that haven't been discussed). You can say that greenhouse gasses have the same potential non-local impact, which is fine, but quite the inverse of nuclear power, greenhouse gas emissions take decades to effect this impact and are measurable and controllable. We know it's coming and can do things to stop it. As far as I know, the most catastrophic failure at a conventional plant would impact local air quality temporarily. The most catastrophic failure at a nuclear plant can impact everything about the surrounding area (for loose values of "surrounding"; Chernobyl created a 1000 sq mile no-go zone) for generations. Those failures can and do happen overnight.
- Spooky23 10y ago
  Risk assessment of probability of an incident and impact of an incident. Chernobyl happened. Fukushima happened. If a similar incident happened at the plant just north of NYC, the evacuation zone would include hundreds of thousands or millions of people.

abraae 10y ago

Why do people use this phrase? Yes the planet's going to be fine, in the sense that a spherical mass will continue to orbit the sun. But if every species but the cockroach is wiped out from runaway biological ecosystem collapse, is that really "being fine"?