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I'm no expert on Chernobyl or power generation. But I think Chernobyl was the result of under-investment and poor management, whereas many of the deaths from co
by blowski 10y ago
I'm no expert on Chernobyl or power generation. But I think Chernobyl was the result of under-investment and poor management, whereas many of the deaths from coal are an unavoidable consequence of burning coal. Hence, you can say nuclear is safer as long as it's managed well.
- lostlogin 10y agoWhere is it managed well?
- blowski 10y agoI have no idea. I don't even know if it is practically possible to manage well enough to guarantee zero disasters. But there are many nuclear plants around the world that have operated with no problems. As I said, I'm no expert.
- LoSboccacc 10y agonew design exist that in case of disaster self contains under most conditions, trouble is it's very hard to obtain certifications needed for operation today as opposed to decades ago, so we're mostly stuck with old designs.
- ekianjo 10y agoby design already. all recent reactors have containment tanks to prevent radioactive leakage in a meltdown event.
- cjrp 10y agoThe UK seems pretty good at it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_the_United_Kingdom#Accidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_the_United_Ki...
- adrianN 10y agoChernobyl was the result of turning off all safety mechanisms and running the reactor outside of its design range to see what would happen.
- mirimir 10y agoThat was more-or-less my impression. Edit: See https://www.damninteresting.com/chernobyl/ https://www.damninteresting.com/chernobyl/
- davrosthedalek 10y agoIsn't the point that even with the current mixture of managment, it's safer? However, I don't know if these numbers include the long-term risk from storing/processing the spent fuel.
- vidarh 10y agoYes, we've demonstrated that you can basically mismanage plants into meltdown, and even then nuclear still ends up killing fewer people.
- blowski 10y agoOver a period of 50 years, you can mismanage a couple of plants and still kill fewer people. But not the entire industry.
- vidarh 10y agoI don't know what you are trying to say. 50 years of operation of hundreds of plants. We could have had a repeat of all of the accidents every year and it would still be one of the safest alternatives. Heck, we could have Chernobyl every year, and even based on the current worst case estimates of reduced life expectancy and counting every one of them as a death, we'd still not compensate for 1 Banqiao failure, or more than 1-2 years worth of coal. But we're not having a Chernobyl every year. What we are having is vast numbers of preventable deaths due to other types of power generation. We're talking millions dead over the last 50 years due to other types of plants.
- chadgeidel 10y agoI'm not saying you are wrong - I actually want to believe this statistic, but has anyone actually compiled the data to back this up? Specifically - "we could have Chernobyl every year ... we'd still not compensate for more than 1-2 years worth of coal"
- davrosthedalek 10y ago
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- Recurecur 10y ago"But I think Chernobyl was the result of under-investment and poor management" Chernobyl was extremely poorly engineered, Soviet Union style. Its major flaw was no containment vessel. Even then, it took real effort to make it fail, and it was all totally unnecessary. It was probably the worst testing-related disaster in history.
- petre 10y agoThe other major flaw of RBMK reactors is a dangerously high positive void coefficient of reactivity, which self reinforces the nuclear reaction in case of a loss of coolant accident. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Void_coefficient https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Void_coefficient