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A common response from defenders of nuclear when concerns are raised is to point to the impact of other energy sources, and say that nuclear is better in those

A common response from defenders of nuclear when concerns are raised is to point to the impact of other energy sources, and say that nuclear is better in those terms. But I just cannot get away from the thought that whilst in aggregate those other forms of energy (fossil fuels, etc) might be provably worse than well managed nuclear within a particular analysis, humanity does not seem capable of this good management of nuclear, and when things do go wrong with fossil fuels they don't have the same potential to go quite so spectacularly bad. Yes an oil spill can affect a large area, but you don't get harmful particles washing up on the coast of the US from a spill in Japan in the same way, for example.

notspanishflu 9y ago
I've been pro-nuclear (fission) most of my life but I changed my opinion when I saw that Humanity can't manage when things go south. Still waiting for nuclear fusion though.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
vtange 9y ago
Probably far off in the future but assuming we perfect robotics and A.I. wouldn't it be possible to manage nuclear with no human-hands? The thing then will be who takes responsibility for accidents caused by robots..
- gus_massa 9y ago
  I'm not so optimistic: * Fuckushima: A giant tsunami hit the plant, cut the external power lines and drawn the emergency generators. Not even waterproof robot will fix that. (You can blame bad design or not enough preparation, but robots will not solve that.) * Chernobyl: They disable a few safety system to make some stupid tests. Apparently the safety system were necessary. If you can override the orders of the robots with a password, they will obey stupid orders. (You can blame bad design here too, to make the accident bigger.) * Three Mile Island: Apparently it was partially an human error. Robots may have helped. (Let's blame also bad design a little.)
kingkawn 9y ago
I am not pro nuclear, but fossil fuels are presently responsible for the active die off of the earths oceans and melting of its ice caps, id say things are being managed catastrophically poorly for those fuels as much if not worse than nuclear. Fall out zones like Chernobyl seem to have vibrant resurgent nature once people are gone. I am making a twisted argument I suppose for meltdowns, but all I'm trying to say is that this argument against nuclear applies just as devastatingly to everything but renewables.
sathackr 9y ago
Just because there isn't a single event to point at and say 'that is the cause' doesn't mean that the damage wasn't done. Auto accidents probably kill a few orders of magnitude more people than a nuclear accident, yet you don't see the evangelical preachings against cars like you do nuclear. The other forms of power need to be well managed also, and they historically have not. I don't need to go into detail about the huge amounts of pollution the power industry has generated. What is worse? A handful of accidents that kill a few hundred people? Or several thousand people dying from various cancers and respiratory illnesses cause by decades of pollution from coal plants? Not to mention the dangers of mining it. Current where I live there is a huge push towards natural gas due to the increased supply/decreased costs thanks to fracking. I don't think we have even begun to understand the environmental impact of fracking, yet industry has unanimously declared it safe. Another huge mismanagement of our environment, in my opinion.
maxander 9y ago
As you note, both nuclear and traditional energy can fail spectacularly (e.g., Brightwater Horizon,) but a good comparison of these events can be tricky. Particularly, for nuclear "harm," careful how much is real science vs how much is merely the scariness of radioactive materials; yes, scientists could detect radioactive caesium and iodine from Fukushima washing up on California, but there's orders of magnitude difference between what is "detectable" and has any real chance of effecting you.
- ChuckMcM 9y ago
  I was going to point out something similar. Scientists can also detect the pollution from coal plants in China in California[1]. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/21/world/asia/china-also-exports-pollution-to-western-us-study-finds.html https://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/21/world/asia/china-also-exp...
intopieces 9y ago
It's not just "well managed" nuclear that is better than fossil fuels. It's the use of nuclear entirely, including the horrible accidents, that is still better than burning fossil fuels. We could have 100 more Fukushimas and not even touch the number of people who have died of respiratory conditions due to coal. Please don't let the outsized, dramatic media stories about nuclear sway you. It's a viable, efficient, almost limitless power source that should be a major part of the world's energy mix.
ori_b 9y ago
Keep in mind that the death toll from Fukushima was zero.
- fludlight 9y ago
  There are other considerations than immediate direct deaths. From Wikipedia: > though there have been no fatalities linked to radiation due to the accident, the eventual number of cancer deaths, according to the linear no-threshold theory of radiation safety, that will be caused by the accident is expected to be around 130–640 people in the years and decades ahead...in the most contaminated areas faced a 70% higher relative risk of developing thyroid cancer for females exposed as infants... > However, an estimated 1,600 deaths are believed to have occurred due to the resultant evacuation conditions... > Summarizing all responses to questions related to evacuees' current family status, one-third of all surveyed families live apart from their children, while 50.1% live away from other family members (including elderly parents) with whom they lived before the disaster. The survey also showed that 34.7% of the evacuees have suffered salary cuts of 50% or more since the outbreak of the nuclear disaster. A total of 36.8% reported a lack of sleep, while 17.9% reported smoking or drinking more than before they evacuated. > We know from Chernobyl that the psychological consequences are enormous. Life expectancy of the evacuees dropped from 65 to 58 years – not because of cancer, but because of depression, alcoholism, and suicide. Relocation is not easy, the stress is very big. > A frozen soil barrier has been constructed in an attempt to prevent further contamination of seeping groundwater, but in July 2016 TEPCO revealed that the ice wall had failed to stop groundwater from flowing in and mixing with highly radioactive water inside the wrecked reactor buildings, adding that they are "technically incapable of blocking off groundwater with the frozen wall"...every day 300 tons of contaminated water leak from the crippled nuclear plant... > On 22 August 2011, a government spokesman mentioned the possibility that some areas around the plant "could stay for some decades a forbidden zone". > The amount of compensation to be paid by TEPCO is expected to reach 7 trillion yen. Costs to Japanese taxpayers are likely to exceed 12 trillion yen ($100 billion). In December 2016 the government estimated decontamination, compensation, decommissioning, and radioactive waste storage costs at 21.5 trillion yen ($187 billion), nearly double the 2013 estimate. > In 2014 Japan enacted the State Secrecy Law. The Fukushima incident falls under this law and, as a "state secret", independent investigations and reports are forbidden by law. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disa...
caio1982 9y ago
Think about it as daily car crashes and pollution-related deaths versus an Airbus A380 full of people exploding live on prime time TV. I bet my ass people will keep talking about flight safety for weeks, non-stop, which is absolutely nonsensical. How many times you noticed people talking about the fossil fuels at a waiting line of a random place?
mikeash 9y ago
The only reason fossil fuels don't have the same potential to go spectacularly bad is because humans don't consider enormous damage to be "spectacular" when it's spread out. Consider: coal alone kills about a million people a year. If those were all concentrated in a small area, we'd call it the greatest disaster the world has ever seen. But it's spread out over the whole world, so we just shrug our shoulders and say, eh, at least it doesn't go badly wrong like nuclear does. Put another way: coal kills more people each year than nuclear ever has over its entire history, including the nuclear bombs dropped on Japan. And yes, you do get harmful particles on the coast of the US from activity in Asia: http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/03/03/518323094/rise-in-smog-in-western-u-s-is-blamed-on-asias-air-pollution http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/03/03/518323094/... People are suffering and dying from fossil fuel pollution emitted half a world away. Pollution from Fukushima can only be detected on the US west coast with the most sensitive instruments, and has no health effects. Nuclear isn't perfect, but if you want to compare it with fossil fuels, you need to look at the constant deadly impact of fossil fuels, not merely look at big splashy accidents.
- colordrops 9y ago
  When a coal plant fails, it just turns off. When a nuclear plant fails, you've got to get the best people on Earth and tens of billions to contain (not fix) the problem, in one of the most advanced nations on Earth. It made a huge mess that spread to Europe when Chernobyl failed. If nuclear is wide spread, what happens when human incompetence causes a plant failure in a place like Nigeria or Venezuela? Edit: also, I frequently hear this argument about coal, but it's not a choice between nuclear and coal. Nuclear advocates promote investment in nuclear, but if we were to invest huge amounts into new energy infrastructure, we might as well invest in renewables, rather than another dirty hard to manage source.
  - mikeash 9y ago
    Nuclear plants sometimes kill people when they fail. Coal plants kill vast numbers of people when they work. And the latter number is far, far larger than the former. Why is that an indictment of nuclear?
gus_massa 9y ago
> Yes an oil spill can affect a large area, but you don't get harmful particles washing up on the coast of the US from a spill in Japan in the same way, for example. There is a natural level of background radiation, but it's not equal in all places. I think it's possible to detect some isotopes that crossed the ocean from Japan to USA, but if you compare the amount of additional radioactivity with the background level additional difference is tiny. I'd like to give some tranquility with some numbers that compare the amount of additional radioactivity with other sources. (If you leave with someone, he/she is slightly radioactive. Some food are more radioactive than other. And other radiation sources like X-ray, CT, plane flight, sunbath ...) Anyway, I prefer to post something to make you more nervous. "Coal Ash Is More Radioactive Than Nuclear Waste" https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-... Coal plants also emit a lot of radioactive particles that are distributed worldwide.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
jmhobbs 9y ago
Underground coal fires like the Centralia mine fire are an interesting and not as well known problem as oil spills. > The fire is burning in underground coal mines at depths of up to 300 feet (90 m) over an 8-mile (13 km) stretch of 3,700 acres (15 km2). At its current rate, it could continue to burn for over 250 years.[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia_mine_fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia_mine_fire
- Fej 9y ago
  Is there no way to put it out? Starve it of oxygen? Tons of water?
  - wbl 9y ago
    The area is cracked enough you would never be able to fill the whole seam.
  - DrScump 9y ago
    Sequester CO2 there? Helps on two levels.
Fej 9y ago
The only nuclear accident that has killed any significant number of people was Chernobyl: which used the most dangerous reactor design that had ever existed, had tons of corners cut, was being operated by barely-trained staff, and the safeties were turned off temporarily. This was the Soviet Union, where failure could end in the manager's imprisonment in the GULAG or even death. As a result, it was not exactly run properly... Today, Pripyat is perfectly safe except for the immediate vicinity of the reactor. People could live there.
justicezyx 9y ago
You have to be aware that Japan government took a very unprofessional approach to this disaster. Attributing the damage of this to general nuclear accident is inappropriate.
fit2rule 9y ago
> fossil fuels they don't have the same potential to go quite so spectacularly bad No, that's not quite right. In fact with all oil-based energy consumption, we get harmful particles. And its worse, because: oil-based consumption is massively distributed, and it is therefore harder to turn off. Apropros management of energy, we humans are surrounded by free energy we haven't yet learned to manage. If we will perish because of oil-greed, then the lesson learned in all of this is that we must continue to go "local" in production and consumption. (Myself, I'd be happy to transition to 100% solar-power, and I de-incentivize my own personal oil consumption, i.e. I ride a bicycle to work.)
ohyes 9y ago
See: global warming. Things are about to go very wrong with fossil fuels / you might say they already have.
itchy_eyelids 9y ago
Historically I was a supporter of nuclear power, but as time has gone on, I've been questioning this. My belief in the technology hasn't changed. It's my belief in humanity that has faltered. It's not the technology that needs improvement before it can be safely used.

notspanishflu 9y ago

I've been pro-nuclear (fission) most of my life but I changed my opinion when I saw that Humanity can't manage when things go south. Still waiting for nuclear fusion though.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

vtange 9y ago

Probably far off in the future but assuming we perfect robotics and A.I. wouldn't it be possible to manage nuclear with no human-hands? The thing then will be who takes responsibility for accidents caused by robots..

gus_massa 9y ago
I'm not so optimistic: * Fuckushima: A giant tsunami hit the plant, cut the external power lines and drawn the emergency generators. Not even waterproof robot will fix that. (You can blame bad design or not enough preparation, but robots will not solve that.) * Chernobyl: They disable a few safety system to make some stupid tests. Apparently the safety system were necessary. If you can override the orders of the robots with a password, they will obey stupid orders. (You can blame bad design here too, to make the accident bigger.) * Three Mile Island: Apparently it was partially an human error. Robots may have helped. (Let's blame also bad design a little.)

kingkawn 9y ago

I am not pro nuclear, but fossil fuels are presently responsible for the active die off of the earths oceans and melting of its ice caps, id say things are being managed catastrophically poorly for those fuels as much if not worse than nuclear. Fall out zones like Chernobyl seem to have vibrant resurgent nature once people are gone. I am making a twisted argument I suppose for meltdowns, but all I'm trying to say is that this argument against nuclear applies just as devastatingly to everything but renewables.

sathackr 9y ago

Just because there isn't a single event to point at and say 'that is the cause' doesn't mean that the damage wasn't done. Auto accidents probably kill a few orders of magnitude more people than a nuclear accident, yet you don't see the evangelical preachings against cars like you do nuclear. The other forms of power need to be well managed also, and they historically have not. I don't need to go into detail about the huge amounts of pollution the power industry has generated. What is worse? A handful of accidents that kill a few hundred people? Or several thousand people dying from various cancers and respiratory illnesses cause by decades of pollution from coal plants? Not to mention the dangers of mining it. Current where I live there is a huge push towards natural gas due to the increased supply/decreased costs thanks to fracking. I don't think we have even begun to understand the environmental impact of fracking, yet industry has unanimously declared it safe. Another huge mismanagement of our environment, in my opinion.

maxander 9y ago

As you note, both nuclear and traditional energy can fail spectacularly (e.g., Brightwater Horizon,) but a good comparison of these events can be tricky. Particularly, for nuclear "harm," careful how much is real science vs how much is merely the scariness of radioactive materials; yes, scientists could detect radioactive caesium and iodine from Fukushima washing up on California, but there's orders of magnitude difference between what is "detectable" and has any real chance of effecting you.

ChuckMcM 9y ago
I was going to point out something similar. Scientists can also detect the pollution from coal plants in China in California[1]. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/21/world/asia/china-also-exports-pollution-to-western-us-study-finds.html https://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/21/world/asia/china-also-exp...

intopieces 9y ago

It's not just "well managed" nuclear that is better than fossil fuels. It's the use of nuclear entirely, including the horrible accidents, that is still better than burning fossil fuels. We could have 100 more Fukushimas and not even touch the number of people who have died of respiratory conditions due to coal. Please don't let the outsized, dramatic media stories about nuclear sway you. It's a viable, efficient, almost limitless power source that should be a major part of the world's energy mix.

ori_b 9y ago

Keep in mind that the death toll from Fukushima was zero.

fludlight 9y ago
There are other considerations than immediate direct deaths. From Wikipedia: > though there have been no fatalities linked to radiation due to the accident, the eventual number of cancer deaths, according to the linear no-threshold theory of radiation safety, that will be caused by the accident is expected to be around 130–640 people in the years and decades ahead...in the most contaminated areas faced a 70% higher relative risk of developing thyroid cancer for females exposed as infants... > However, an estimated 1,600 deaths are believed to have occurred due to the resultant evacuation conditions... > Summarizing all responses to questions related to evacuees' current family status, one-third of all surveyed families live apart from their children, while 50.1% live away from other family members (including elderly parents) with whom they lived before the disaster. The survey also showed that 34.7% of the evacuees have suffered salary cuts of 50% or more since the outbreak of the nuclear disaster. A total of 36.8% reported a lack of sleep, while 17.9% reported smoking or drinking more than before they evacuated. > We know from Chernobyl that the psychological consequences are enormous. Life expectancy of the evacuees dropped from 65 to 58 years – not because of cancer, but because of depression, alcoholism, and suicide. Relocation is not easy, the stress is very big. > A frozen soil barrier has been constructed in an attempt to prevent further contamination of seeping groundwater, but in July 2016 TEPCO revealed that the ice wall had failed to stop groundwater from flowing in and mixing with highly radioactive water inside the wrecked reactor buildings, adding that they are "technically incapable of blocking off groundwater with the frozen wall"...every day 300 tons of contaminated water leak from the crippled nuclear plant... > On 22 August 2011, a government spokesman mentioned the possibility that some areas around the plant "could stay for some decades a forbidden zone". > The amount of compensation to be paid by TEPCO is expected to reach 7 trillion yen. Costs to Japanese taxpayers are likely to exceed 12 trillion yen ($100 billion). In December 2016 the government estimated decontamination, compensation, decommissioning, and radioactive waste storage costs at 21.5 trillion yen ($187 billion), nearly double the 2013 estimate. > In 2014 Japan enacted the State Secrecy Law. The Fukushima incident falls under this law and, as a "state secret", independent investigations and reports are forbidden by law. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disa...

caio1982 9y ago

Think about it as daily car crashes and pollution-related deaths versus an Airbus A380 full of people exploding live on prime time TV. I bet my ass people will keep talking about flight safety for weeks, non-stop, which is absolutely nonsensical. How many times you noticed people talking about the fossil fuels at a waiting line of a random place?

mikeash 9y ago

The only reason fossil fuels don't have the same potential to go spectacularly bad is because humans don't consider enormous damage to be "spectacular" when it's spread out. Consider: coal alone kills about a million people a year. If those were all concentrated in a small area, we'd call it the greatest disaster the world has ever seen. But it's spread out over the whole world, so we just shrug our shoulders and say, eh, at least it doesn't go badly wrong like nuclear does. Put another way: coal kills more people each year than nuclear ever has over its entire history, including the nuclear bombs dropped on Japan. And yes, you do get harmful particles on the coast of the US from activity in Asia: http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/03/03/518323094/rise-in-smog-in-western-u-s-is-blamed-on-asias-air-pollution http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/03/03/518323094/... People are suffering and dying from fossil fuel pollution emitted half a world away. Pollution from Fukushima can only be detected on the US west coast with the most sensitive instruments, and has no health effects. Nuclear isn't perfect, but if you want to compare it with fossil fuels, you need to look at the constant deadly impact of fossil fuels, not merely look at big splashy accidents.

colordrops 9y ago
When a coal plant fails, it just turns off. When a nuclear plant fails, you've got to get the best people on Earth and tens of billions to contain (not fix) the problem, in one of the most advanced nations on Earth. It made a huge mess that spread to Europe when Chernobyl failed. If nuclear is wide spread, what happens when human incompetence causes a plant failure in a place like Nigeria or Venezuela? Edit: also, I frequently hear this argument about coal, but it's not a choice between nuclear and coal. Nuclear advocates promote investment in nuclear, but if we were to invest huge amounts into new energy infrastructure, we might as well invest in renewables, rather than another dirty hard to manage source.
- mikeash 9y ago
  Nuclear plants sometimes kill people when they fail. Coal plants kill vast numbers of people when they work. And the latter number is far, far larger than the former. Why is that an indictment of nuclear?

gus_massa 9y ago

> Yes an oil spill can affect a large area, but you don't get harmful particles washing up on the coast of the US from a spill in Japan in the same way, for example. There is a natural level of background radiation, but it's not equal in all places. I think it's possible to detect some isotopes that crossed the ocean from Japan to USA, but if you compare the amount of additional radioactivity with the background level additional difference is tiny. I'd like to give some tranquility with some numbers that compare the amount of additional radioactivity with other sources. (If you leave with someone, he/she is slightly radioactive. Some food are more radioactive than other. And other radiation sources like X-ray, CT, plane flight, sunbath ...) Anyway, I prefer to post something to make you more nervous. "Coal Ash Is More Radioactive Than Nuclear Waste" https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-... Coal plants also emit a lot of radioactive particles that are distributed worldwide.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

jmhobbs 9y ago

Underground coal fires like the Centralia mine fire are an interesting and not as well known problem as oil spills. > The fire is burning in underground coal mines at depths of up to 300 feet (90 m) over an 8-mile (13 km) stretch of 3,700 acres (15 km2). At its current rate, it could continue to burn for over 250 years.[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia_mine_fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia_mine_fire

Fej 9y ago
Is there no way to put it out? Starve it of oxygen? Tons of water?
- wbl 9y ago
  The area is cracked enough you would never be able to fill the whole seam.
- DrScump 9y ago
  Sequester CO2 there? Helps on two levels.

Fej 9y ago

The only nuclear accident that has killed any significant number of people was Chernobyl: which used the most dangerous reactor design that had ever existed, had tons of corners cut, was being operated by barely-trained staff, and the safeties were turned off temporarily. This was the Soviet Union, where failure could end in the manager's imprisonment in the GULAG or even death. As a result, it was not exactly run properly... Today, Pripyat is perfectly safe except for the immediate vicinity of the reactor. People could live there.

justicezyx 9y ago

You have to be aware that Japan government took a very unprofessional approach to this disaster. Attributing the damage of this to general nuclear accident is inappropriate.

fit2rule 9y ago

> fossil fuels they don't have the same potential to go quite so spectacularly bad No, that's not quite right. In fact with all oil-based energy consumption, we get harmful particles. And its worse, because: oil-based consumption is massively distributed, and it is therefore harder to turn off. Apropros management of energy, we humans are surrounded by free energy we haven't yet learned to manage. If we will perish because of oil-greed, then the lesson learned in all of this is that we must continue to go "local" in production and consumption. (Myself, I'd be happy to transition to 100% solar-power, and I de-incentivize my own personal oil consumption, i.e. I ride a bicycle to work.)

ohyes 9y ago

See: global warming. Things are about to go very wrong with fossil fuels / you might say they already have.

itchy_eyelids 9y ago

Historically I was a supporter of nuclear power, but as time has gone on, I've been questioning this. My belief in the technology hasn't changed. It's my belief in humanity that has faltered. It's not the technology that needs improvement before it can be safely used.