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People are scared of nuclear energy for the same reason that they're scared of taking an airplane. Even though it's technically and statistically very safe, the

by simias 9y ago

People are scared of nuclear energy for the same reason that they're scared of taking an airplane. Even though it's technically and statistically very safe, the perceived risk appears much greater. In particular in both cases when something goes wrong it tends to go extremely wrong and you're completely helpless to stop it. In contrast getting in a car accident or slowly suffocating in coal power plant emissions seem manageable. Personally I'm of the opinion that going all nuclear would be a mistake but on the other hand it's a great way to move away from coal and petrol while we're still figuring out how to scale renewable energies (and maybe fusion, but that's still a moonshot). It provides cheap, reliable and reasonably safe energy with very little CO2 emissions. I'm more worried about global warming than Fukushima and I'd gladly trade even a dozen of Fukushima-type incidents in the next decades (highly unlikely) if it could stop global warming and its dire, hard-to-revert consequences. In particular I genuinely do not understand why most ecologists seem to be staunchly anti-nuclear. I can understand asking for better funding in renewable R&D and planning for a transition but, at least in Europe, ecologists seem to favor dropping nuclear immediately, no matter the cost. For instance they applauded when Germany decided to completely stop producing nuclear energy, even if it meant more pollution in the short term. I find that hard to justify.

Koromix 9y ago
> People are scared of nuclear energy for the same reason that they're scared of taking an airplane. Even though it's technically and statistically very safe, the perceived risk appears much greater. [...] I'm more worried about global warming than Fukushima and I'd gladly trade even a dozen of Fukushima-type incidents in the next decades (highly unlikely) if it could stop global warming and its dire, hard-to-revert consequences. I could not agree more, but unfortunately global warming suffers from the exact opposite effect. The perceived risk appears very low to most people, because it is not very spectacular on human time scales. Even though it is by far the greatest existential risk we face.
- jsonne 9y ago
  I'm no biologist or scientist of any sort, but it seems this is a problem with all apex predators to some degree. You get to the top of the food chain by adapting to and being highly reactive to short term and catastrophic risk. Once you get there you have to do a 180 and suddenly be highly attuned to subtle and long term issues to stay there. It's simply a different skill set and frame of mind.
  - graphitezepp 9y ago
    The way humans tend to overvalue short term gain and underplay long term consequences is well covered. This line of thinking bleeds heavily into politics and how our societies organize. Would like to know if it is actually an apex predator thing, it might just be part of being a mortal animal.
  - brianpan 9y ago
    Is there anything in all of biology that IS attuned to subtle and long-term issues? I think I would argue that we are the closest to that.
    - Koromix 9y ago
      You are right, there is pretty much nothing in biology that is. Humans are no exception, but until recently it was not a big problem because we did not have the power to significantly damage the climate and the biosphere (though the megafauna would probably disagree). Fossil fuel powered technology has changed that, but we are psychologically and socially ill-equipped to deal with its transformative power.
    - matt4077 9y ago
      Yes, of course. Long-term issues aren't any different than others; they only need longer (more generations) to manifest. One class (meta-)examples are all mechanism actually promoting mutation, or other methods of genetic variation: Horizontal gene transfer is interesting in this regard. It's the ability to incorporate snippets of DNA the organism comes across. These mechanisms are an adaptation to the "known unknowns": what if a new pathogen appears, or the environment (temperature, radiation, salinity etc) suddenly changes? To achieve some flexibility, these mechanisms make trade-offs, usually sacrificing short-term reproductive success.
Recurecur 9y ago
New reactor designs completely eliminate the possibility of meltdown. LFRs include an electrically cooled salt plug that seals a holding tank. If power fails, the molten salt melts the plug, and the fuel safely drains into the tank. I particularly like ThorCon's concept, where the reactor is underground. Another plus of this reactor type is that water cooling isn't needed, so siting is much more flexible. Note that the ThorCon design can use uranium or thorium as fuel. ThorCon estimates it could be shipping reactors in ten years, and could produce 100 GW worth of reactors per year, at around three cents per KWH. http://thorconpower.com/ http://thorconpower.com/ I suggest watching the video on this page, it gives a good perspective: http://thorconpower.com/news http://thorconpower.com/news
- beat 9y ago
  "Completely eliminates the possibility" sounds like something a supervillain would say. I'm not saying that this passive safety system won't work, or is a bad idea. It sounds great from the brief description. BUT. There's a terrible, terrible tendency of the pro-nuclear side to use bombastic language, and then sneer at those with doubts as ignorant and emotional rather than logical. Pricing promises are another problem. "Power too cheap to meter" has been promised since the 1950s. It hasn't happened yet. Be careful with your language.
  - hueving 9y ago
    >and then sneer at those with doubts as ignorant and emotional rather than logical That's because you reply with things like this. >sounds like something a supervillain would say.
    - beat 9y ago
      When you tell me something "completely eliminates" the possibility of failure in complex industrial design - you're being emotional rather than logical. Look, I'm actually pro-nuclear. But I think the arguments made for nuclear power are mostly awful, driven by techno-fetishism and wishful thinking rather than real logic. The "But I'm logical and you're just emotional!" argument is itself an emotional argument, a rush to claim a moral high ground (you'll see the exact same style and phrasing used in any political argument where privileged white guys are dismissing the points of women and minorities). As others wisely pointed out in this thread, nuclear power suffers from a problem of feeling dangerous even when it's safe - and likewise, global warming feels safe even when it's an existential threat to civilization. If you want to make progress rather than score points, you need to take the emotional nature of the argument into account. I didn't say your argument sounds like something a supervillain would say because I think the technology is bad. I said it because I think the phrasing is bad. Wise up.
yusyusyus 9y ago
Some differences between the airplane analogy and the nuclear plant analogy: 1) When a plane fails catastrophically, the impact is limited to a smaller geographical area. 2) Pollution from the failure of a plane doesn't involve what is estimated to be a century-long endeavor to cleanup. 3) The toxicity from plane failures do not invade nearly every facet of life, making entire areas unlivable. I am not a proponent of nuclear energy because we do not have a way to handle the full lifecycle, including failures. We will have this someday, but the idea of "well throw this waste into a rock formation somewhere and hope it doesn't cause a problem because it takes hundreds of years to handle" is just not reasonable. Even today, the Hanford site in Washington is leaking radioactive shit into the Columbia River and there is no estimated date to complete this cleanup.
- simias 9y ago
  I completely understand where you're coming from but you can't just take nuclear energy in a vacuum. Of course if the alternative was between nuclear power plants and the miracle energy drive which runs on dreams and produces terrawatts without any risks and any pollution then there's no question. But that's not the world we live in. Today we have renewable energy, which is promising but not yet ready to be our sole source of energy. Then we have fossil energy which wrecks our climate at an alarming pace. Then we have nuclear which has its own set of problems but at least won't contribute to global warming. Sure it's a tragedy that Pripyat and Fukushima are now unlivable and will remain so for a long, long time. But global warming will probably make entire continent-sized stretches of land effectively unlivable. That's what you should be pitting nuclear reactors against.
Chathamization 9y ago
> Personally I'm of the opinion that going all nuclear would be a mistake but on the other hand it's a great way to move away from coal and petrol while we're still figuring out how to scale renewable energies (and maybe fusion, but that's still a moonshot). It provides cheap, reliable and reasonably safe energy with very little CO2 emissions. The last time I really looked into it, it seemed like nuclear energy was a pretty way to combat global warming. It has numerous issues like cost, construction time, production bottlenecks, etc. Renewables seemed a lot better (particularly when you factor things in like the cost reduction as production ramps up), but it would be a mistake to simply think about energy production. From what I recall, things like improving energy efficiency were at least as important.
sliverstorm 9y ago
Ecologists against nuclear baffles me too. You'd think they'd be booster #1. Worst-case, Chernobyl still worked out pretty darn well for the local ecosystem.

by simias 9y ago

Koromix 9y ago

> People are scared of nuclear energy for the same reason that they're scared of taking an airplane. Even though it's technically and statistically very safe, the perceived risk appears much greater. [...] I'm more worried about global warming than Fukushima and I'd gladly trade even a dozen of Fukushima-type incidents in the next decades (highly unlikely) if it could stop global warming and its dire, hard-to-revert consequences. I could not agree more, but unfortunately global warming suffers from the exact opposite effect. The perceived risk appears very low to most people, because it is not very spectacular on human time scales. Even though it is by far the greatest existential risk we face.

jsonne 9y ago
I'm no biologist or scientist of any sort, but it seems this is a problem with all apex predators to some degree. You get to the top of the food chain by adapting to and being highly reactive to short term and catastrophic risk. Once you get there you have to do a 180 and suddenly be highly attuned to subtle and long term issues to stay there. It's simply a different skill set and frame of mind.
- graphitezepp 9y ago
  The way humans tend to overvalue short term gain and underplay long term consequences is well covered. This line of thinking bleeds heavily into politics and how our societies organize. Would like to know if it is actually an apex predator thing, it might just be part of being a mortal animal.
- brianpan 9y ago
  Is there anything in all of biology that IS attuned to subtle and long-term issues? I think I would argue that we are the closest to that.
  - Koromix 9y ago
    You are right, there is pretty much nothing in biology that is. Humans are no exception, but until recently it was not a big problem because we did not have the power to significantly damage the climate and the biosphere (though the megafauna would probably disagree). Fossil fuel powered technology has changed that, but we are psychologically and socially ill-equipped to deal with its transformative power.
  - matt4077 9y ago
    Yes, of course. Long-term issues aren't any different than others; they only need longer (more generations) to manifest. One class (meta-)examples are all mechanism actually promoting mutation, or other methods of genetic variation: Horizontal gene transfer is interesting in this regard. It's the ability to incorporate snippets of DNA the organism comes across. These mechanisms are an adaptation to the "known unknowns": what if a new pathogen appears, or the environment (temperature, radiation, salinity etc) suddenly changes? To achieve some flexibility, these mechanisms make trade-offs, usually sacrificing short-term reproductive success.

Recurecur 9y ago

New reactor designs completely eliminate the possibility of meltdown. LFRs include an electrically cooled salt plug that seals a holding tank. If power fails, the molten salt melts the plug, and the fuel safely drains into the tank. I particularly like ThorCon's concept, where the reactor is underground. Another plus of this reactor type is that water cooling isn't needed, so siting is much more flexible. Note that the ThorCon design can use uranium or thorium as fuel. ThorCon estimates it could be shipping reactors in ten years, and could produce 100 GW worth of reactors per year, at around three cents per KWH. http://thorconpower.com/ http://thorconpower.com/ I suggest watching the video on this page, it gives a good perspective: http://thorconpower.com/news http://thorconpower.com/news

beat 9y ago
"Completely eliminates the possibility" sounds like something a supervillain would say. I'm not saying that this passive safety system won't work, or is a bad idea. It sounds great from the brief description. BUT. There's a terrible, terrible tendency of the pro-nuclear side to use bombastic language, and then sneer at those with doubts as ignorant and emotional rather than logical. Pricing promises are another problem. "Power too cheap to meter" has been promised since the 1950s. It hasn't happened yet. Be careful with your language.
- hueving 9y ago
  >and then sneer at those with doubts as ignorant and emotional rather than logical That's because you reply with things like this. >sounds like something a supervillain would say.
  - beat 9y ago
    When you tell me something "completely eliminates" the possibility of failure in complex industrial design - you're being emotional rather than logical. Look, I'm actually pro-nuclear. But I think the arguments made for nuclear power are mostly awful, driven by techno-fetishism and wishful thinking rather than real logic. The "But I'm logical and you're just emotional!" argument is itself an emotional argument, a rush to claim a moral high ground (you'll see the exact same style and phrasing used in any political argument where privileged white guys are dismissing the points of women and minorities). As others wisely pointed out in this thread, nuclear power suffers from a problem of feeling dangerous even when it's safe - and likewise, global warming feels safe even when it's an existential threat to civilization. If you want to make progress rather than score points, you need to take the emotional nature of the argument into account. I didn't say your argument sounds like something a supervillain would say because I think the technology is bad. I said it because I think the phrasing is bad. Wise up.

yusyusyus 9y ago

Some differences between the airplane analogy and the nuclear plant analogy: 1) When a plane fails catastrophically, the impact is limited to a smaller geographical area. 2) Pollution from the failure of a plane doesn't involve what is estimated to be a century-long endeavor to cleanup. 3) The toxicity from plane failures do not invade nearly every facet of life, making entire areas unlivable. I am not a proponent of nuclear energy because we do not have a way to handle the full lifecycle, including failures. We will have this someday, but the idea of "well throw this waste into a rock formation somewhere and hope it doesn't cause a problem because it takes hundreds of years to handle" is just not reasonable. Even today, the Hanford site in Washington is leaking radioactive shit into the Columbia River and there is no estimated date to complete this cleanup.

simias 9y ago
I completely understand where you're coming from but you can't just take nuclear energy in a vacuum. Of course if the alternative was between nuclear power plants and the miracle energy drive which runs on dreams and produces terrawatts without any risks and any pollution then there's no question. But that's not the world we live in. Today we have renewable energy, which is promising but not yet ready to be our sole source of energy. Then we have fossil energy which wrecks our climate at an alarming pace. Then we have nuclear which has its own set of problems but at least won't contribute to global warming. Sure it's a tragedy that Pripyat and Fukushima are now unlivable and will remain so for a long, long time. But global warming will probably make entire continent-sized stretches of land effectively unlivable. That's what you should be pitting nuclear reactors against.

Chathamization 9y ago

> Personally I'm of the opinion that going all nuclear would be a mistake but on the other hand it's a great way to move away from coal and petrol while we're still figuring out how to scale renewable energies (and maybe fusion, but that's still a moonshot). It provides cheap, reliable and reasonably safe energy with very little CO2 emissions. The last time I really looked into it, it seemed like nuclear energy was a pretty way to combat global warming. It has numerous issues like cost, construction time, production bottlenecks, etc. Renewables seemed a lot better (particularly when you factor things in like the cost reduction as production ramps up), but it would be a mistake to simply think about energy production. From what I recall, things like improving energy efficiency were at least as important.

sliverstorm 9y ago

Ecologists against nuclear baffles me too. You'd think they'd be booster #1. Worst-case, Chernobyl still worked out pretty darn well for the local ecosystem.