7 ms·

I have never understood why people fear nuclear and don’t seem to fear carbon as giscerally or more. I can understand that nuclear has risks. But people seem t

by graeme 9y ago

I have never understood why people fear nuclear and don’t seem to fear carbon as giscerally or more. I can understand that nuclear has risks. But people seem to evaluate nuclear in a vacuum, rather than against the carbon sources which currently replace it. “What do we do with the waste” is a better question when applied to coal.

saas_co_de 9y ago
"Fine particles from coal power plants kill an estimated 13,200 people each year in the US alone" https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20928053.600-fossil-fuels-are-far-deadlier-than-nuclear-power/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20928053.600-fossil-f... The death toll from coal is staggering compared to nuclear. It is not even close.
- mikeash 9y ago
  Coal is more dangerous than nuclear even if you count the deaths in Hiroshima and Nagasaki under the "nuclear" column.
- balamaci 9y ago
  How do you actually asses that the cause of death is coal vs cigarette smoke vs car exaust? Is only cancer of respiratory system taken into account? Is a percentage of stroke victims also? How is that percentage chosen?
  - aidenn0 9y ago
    I don't know how this study does it, but one can make estimates by seeing how death-rates change in places with different levels of coal particulates, particularly over time as coal plants were opened and shuttered. Alternatively there are studies that correlate various pollutants with respiratory issues, and then compare that with the pollution emitted by coal plants. Ideally one would make many such estimates, yielding a range that one could have high confidence is close to the truth, similar to how we use multiple methods of dating fossils, and then know something is wrong if there is a large disparity.
  - yk 9y ago
    These are not death as in murder, these are a statistical measure called excess death and it is usually very model dependent. I looked a bit into the models for nuclear accidents. There the problem is, that there is just no good data in the relevant range of radiation. We have data from very low doses due to background radiation and for high doses due to accidents, we don't have good data for large scale releases. Either you can do what is suggested for higher acute doses, then you end up with 40 000 dead due to Chernobyl, or you can fit a second order model, then you will end up with something in the order of 10. (Or you do what Greenpeace did and you look at correlations between irradiation and cancer rates in former Soviet oblasts, where you then have some influence of Soviet industry, etc...) And that is if you want to look at catastrophic risk at all. (After all an RMBK had several design flaws, that modern reactors don't have.) The number basically tells you that according to a specific model, that is hopefully a good approximation of our understanding of the risks, a certain percentage of the death rate should be due to that factor. However I think these numbers carry not much more information than 32 other bits of the same sentence and to really use them you have to look at the specific model and you need to develop an opinion if the model reflects the relevant arguments well.
foepys 9y ago
Germany is traditionally very anti-nuclear because when the Chernobyl disaster happened, a lot of people in the south were told to not let their children play outside. Even today some mushrooms and boars that eat those mushrooms are contaminated. On the French and Belgian side of its borders Germany got some very old reactors that had some serious security related incidents within the last few years. [1] In the city of Aachen the government even distributed iodine tablets if it gets worse. Additionally Germany doesn't have locations to store radioactive waste indefinitely. The current location for intermediate storage, called "Asse", is known to be leaking contaminated water into all kinds of directions and nobody is really sure how to stop it. [2] 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tihange_Nuclear_Power_Station#Incidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tihange_Nuclear_Power_Station#... 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asse_II_mine#Water_inflow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asse_II_mine#Water_inflow
- vog 9y ago
  And finally, don't forget Fukushima. The current politics here in Germany are a direct reaction to Fukushima. Chernobyl, Asse, Aachen, Gorleben all didn't change anything in our politics. But Fukushima did. Immediately.
  - lispm 9y ago
    The end of nuclear was decided long before Fukushima - in 2000. The Merkel government was on its way to change that, against protests (2010). Shortly after that Fukushima happened (2011), and Merkel had to return to the Atomausstieg (also 2011).
adventured 9y ago
The slow or grudual & unseen, versus the sudden and dramatic. Humans seem to almost universally do poorly at judging those two pools of risk against one another. People are terrified of being murdered or crashing in an airplane (both sudden death), yet they die by the droves at 10x, 100x or 1000x the rate from poor lifestyle habits (food, smoking, drinking, lack of exercise, etc). The fear of sharks is likewise similar (sudden violent death, and extremely rare). With some of these there is also the control aspect that comes into play (having control, not having control, or having an illusion of control). For example with sharks, you're in their environment, heavily lacking control, almost helpless by comparison to their ability. With passenger airplane crashes, it's kiss your ass goodbye, you have basically zero control over the situation (not even the ability to pretend you do). People die by the millions driving cars, yet they don't seem to fear that nearly so much as dying in a plane crash. I chalk that up to the partial illusion that drivers have a very large amount of control as to whether they die in a car crash or not. I believe coal generates the same fear response as the gradual lifestyle threats do, it's perceived as a gradual threat/risk. Nuclear is perceived as a sudden dramatic death threat (decades of miseducation, propaganda, and of course generalized fears over all things nuclear derived from the bomb).
- jacobolus 9y ago
  People die in huge numbers in very violent automobile accidents. For young people in the US (15–35), the leading causes of death are car accidents and gunshots (homicide, suicide, accidents). Most physical violence (assault, murder, rape, ..) is between people who know each-other, but typically people are more afraid of different-looking strangers. I think it has more to do with fear of unusual situations than suddenness or drama.
  - adventured 9y ago
    > People die in huge numbers in very violent automobile accidents. That's offset by the illusion that people believe they're in a very high degree of control over the situation. It enables the brain to create an illusion and say to itself: I won't make that mistake, my actions dictate the outcome, I'm a good driver (as the comical studies always demonstrate, people tend to dramatically over-estimate their driving skill). > Most physical violence ... is between people who know each-other You don't actually think that's going to happen, that's the issue. If you told someone their pal is about to rape or murder them, they would not believe it, they'd be far more afraid of the menacing looking stranger. That's where ignorance of risk - as with sharks - comes into action. I would guarantee a low percentage would believe they're more likely to be murdered by someone they're close to than a stranger. If a person doesn't have a meaningful comprehension of the risk (as with nuclear), the risk context inherently can't be judged properly. I suspect there's a big illusion of control that is involved between two known relations as well, you think you have some influence over whether a friend will murder you (surely they like you, surely you could talk them down from a violent confrontation, etc.); versus that almost entirely missing from the menacing stranger scenario.
ghostbrainalpha 9y ago
That's an interesting thought and I think you have hit the nail on the head. If you ask someone where nuclear power can damage the environment, they say yes it can. They understand the damage from fallout because it is local. But the same person may not believe that coal can damage the environment globally. There is a huge cognitive bias against effects we can't physically see, and understanding the scale of the planet. This is the same reason we have some people who still believe in the flat earth conspiracy. The only answer real is education. If educators had a way to help children better create visual models of these things inside their heads, maybe we could all agree on these issues we can't see with our eyes. Maybe VR will help? I don't know. But I would definitely donate to any think tank that was A/B testing educators lessons on global warming.
- peoplewindow 9y ago
  Who believes the Earth is flat? As far as I'm aware, nobody does and nobody ever did. The belief in flat earthers is ironically stronger and more like a conspiracy theory than the belief in a flat Earth.
  - airza 9y ago
    you could probably find out this is very demonstrably false by searching facebook or google news for about 15 minutes
    - kaybe 9y ago
      Can you really though? I find it hard to distinguish from a really elaborate troll.
  - jensv 9y ago
    [This Is What the Q&A Session at a Flat Earth Conference Looks Like](http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2017/11/13/this-is-what-the-qa-session-at-a-flat-earth-conference-looks-like/#uPme4LVH8rxO3k4A.99 http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2017/11/13/this...)
pizzapill 9y ago
The fear of nuclear power in Germany comes from the Tschernobyl disaster 1986. A life changing event for many Germans. Not beeing able to leave the house. Cutting a lot of foods from your diet because they are contaminated for decades (mushrooms, game meat, berries etc.). East block countries trying to sell their contaminated food for consumption and it ending up in GDR school kitchens. Additionally having two superpowers stationing a huge arsenal of nuclear bombs in your country. While at the same time beeing sure that you'd die first in a new world war that would almost surely start in your country and would probably devastate your whole continent beyond beeing suited for human surival. Then the whole argument that its cleaner and cheaper energy. While you pay for transport, storage and security with your tax money and the company keeps the profits. By storage i mean temporar storage, because no one worldwide has figured out how to safely store the waste for hundreds of thousands of years (Pyramids are 4500 years old and we don't even know how they are build). Thats why most of this waste from the 80s and 90s lies a few km off our coasts in the sea where the UK, Russia and Italian mafia dumped it.
- vog 9y ago
  > The fear of nuclear power in Germany comes from the Tschernobyl disaster 1986. Tschernobyl was almost forgotten, at least by the politicians in power, but then Fukushima happend.
  - pizzapill 9y ago
    Not by the populace tough. I mean our politicians were happy to kill off the planet 30 years ago until many citizens started to protest for environmentaly concious politics. Now its mainstream in German politics and almost all other countries start similar programs currently. I mean even the US starts to hear the bells ringing in the last couple of years and is implementing policies that they shoul've implemented 30 years ago. In addition I might add that we are sourrounded by countries that we don't trust to be able to feed their citizes reliably. Less so when it comes to reactor security.
    - wott 9y ago
ben_w 9y ago
It’s not a rational distinction, it’s a tribal one. It’s the same cognitive bias that meant during Cold War both the USA and the USSR thought gay men were spies for the other team. Black amd white morality — if you’re any less than an angel you must be a demon.
walshemj 9y ago
And as an example the Aberfan disaster where coal mine waste had a landslide and killed 116 children and 28 adults.
megy 9y ago
Are you serious? It is the same reason people fear terrorist attacks when a million people are killed by cars every single year but everyone still drives.

by graeme 9y ago

saas_co_de 9y ago

"Fine particles from coal power plants kill an estimated 13,200 people each year in the US alone" https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20928053.600-fossil-fuels-are-far-deadlier-than-nuclear-power/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20928053.600-fossil-f... The death toll from coal is staggering compared to nuclear. It is not even close.

mikeash 9y ago
Coal is more dangerous than nuclear even if you count the deaths in Hiroshima and Nagasaki under the "nuclear" column.
balamaci 9y ago
How do you actually asses that the cause of death is coal vs cigarette smoke vs car exaust? Is only cancer of respiratory system taken into account? Is a percentage of stroke victims also? How is that percentage chosen?
- aidenn0 9y ago
  I don't know how this study does it, but one can make estimates by seeing how death-rates change in places with different levels of coal particulates, particularly over time as coal plants were opened and shuttered. Alternatively there are studies that correlate various pollutants with respiratory issues, and then compare that with the pollution emitted by coal plants. Ideally one would make many such estimates, yielding a range that one could have high confidence is close to the truth, similar to how we use multiple methods of dating fossils, and then know something is wrong if there is a large disparity.
- yk 9y ago
  These are not death as in murder, these are a statistical measure called excess death and it is usually very model dependent. I looked a bit into the models for nuclear accidents. There the problem is, that there is just no good data in the relevant range of radiation. We have data from very low doses due to background radiation and for high doses due to accidents, we don't have good data for large scale releases. Either you can do what is suggested for higher acute doses, then you end up with 40 000 dead due to Chernobyl, or you can fit a second order model, then you will end up with something in the order of 10. (Or you do what Greenpeace did and you look at correlations between irradiation and cancer rates in former Soviet oblasts, where you then have some influence of Soviet industry, etc...) And that is if you want to look at catastrophic risk at all. (After all an RMBK had several design flaws, that modern reactors don't have.) The number basically tells you that according to a specific model, that is hopefully a good approximation of our understanding of the risks, a certain percentage of the death rate should be due to that factor. However I think these numbers carry not much more information than 32 other bits of the same sentence and to really use them you have to look at the specific model and you need to develop an opinion if the model reflects the relevant arguments well.

foepys 9y ago

Germany is traditionally very anti-nuclear because when the Chernobyl disaster happened, a lot of people in the south were told to not let their children play outside. Even today some mushrooms and boars that eat those mushrooms are contaminated. On the French and Belgian side of its borders Germany got some very old reactors that had some serious security related incidents within the last few years. [1] In the city of Aachen the government even distributed iodine tablets if it gets worse. Additionally Germany doesn't have locations to store radioactive waste indefinitely. The current location for intermediate storage, called "Asse", is known to be leaking contaminated water into all kinds of directions and nobody is really sure how to stop it. [2] 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tihange_Nuclear_Power_Station#Incidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tihange_Nuclear_Power_Station#... 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asse_II_mine#Water_inflow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asse_II_mine#Water_inflow

vog 9y ago
And finally, don't forget Fukushima. The current politics here in Germany are a direct reaction to Fukushima. Chernobyl, Asse, Aachen, Gorleben all didn't change anything in our politics. But Fukushima did. Immediately.
- lispm 9y ago
  The end of nuclear was decided long before Fukushima - in 2000. The Merkel government was on its way to change that, against protests (2010). Shortly after that Fukushima happened (2011), and Merkel had to return to the Atomausstieg (also 2011).

adventured 9y ago

The slow or grudual & unseen, versus the sudden and dramatic. Humans seem to almost universally do poorly at judging those two pools of risk against one another. People are terrified of being murdered or crashing in an airplane (both sudden death), yet they die by the droves at 10x, 100x or 1000x the rate from poor lifestyle habits (food, smoking, drinking, lack of exercise, etc). The fear of sharks is likewise similar (sudden violent death, and extremely rare). With some of these there is also the control aspect that comes into play (having control, not having control, or having an illusion of control). For example with sharks, you're in their environment, heavily lacking control, almost helpless by comparison to their ability. With passenger airplane crashes, it's kiss your ass goodbye, you have basically zero control over the situation (not even the ability to pretend you do). People die by the millions driving cars, yet they don't seem to fear that nearly so much as dying in a plane crash. I chalk that up to the partial illusion that drivers have a very large amount of control as to whether they die in a car crash or not. I believe coal generates the same fear response as the gradual lifestyle threats do, it's perceived as a gradual threat/risk. Nuclear is perceived as a sudden dramatic death threat (decades of miseducation, propaganda, and of course generalized fears over all things nuclear derived from the bomb).

jacobolus 9y ago
People die in huge numbers in very violent automobile accidents. For young people in the US (15–35), the leading causes of death are car accidents and gunshots (homicide, suicide, accidents). Most physical violence (assault, murder, rape, ..) is between people who know each-other, but typically people are more afraid of different-looking strangers. I think it has more to do with fear of unusual situations than suddenness or drama.
- adventured 9y ago
  > People die in huge numbers in very violent automobile accidents. That's offset by the illusion that people believe they're in a very high degree of control over the situation. It enables the brain to create an illusion and say to itself: I won't make that mistake, my actions dictate the outcome, I'm a good driver (as the comical studies always demonstrate, people tend to dramatically over-estimate their driving skill). > Most physical violence ... is between people who know each-other You don't actually think that's going to happen, that's the issue. If you told someone their pal is about to rape or murder them, they would not believe it, they'd be far more afraid of the menacing looking stranger. That's where ignorance of risk - as with sharks - comes into action. I would guarantee a low percentage would believe they're more likely to be murdered by someone they're close to than a stranger. If a person doesn't have a meaningful comprehension of the risk (as with nuclear), the risk context inherently can't be judged properly. I suspect there's a big illusion of control that is involved between two known relations as well, you think you have some influence over whether a friend will murder you (surely they like you, surely you could talk them down from a violent confrontation, etc.); versus that almost entirely missing from the menacing stranger scenario.

ghostbrainalpha 9y ago

That's an interesting thought and I think you have hit the nail on the head. If you ask someone where nuclear power can damage the environment, they say yes it can. They understand the damage from fallout because it is local. But the same person may not believe that coal can damage the environment globally. There is a huge cognitive bias against effects we can't physically see, and understanding the scale of the planet. This is the same reason we have some people who still believe in the flat earth conspiracy. The only answer real is education. If educators had a way to help children better create visual models of these things inside their heads, maybe we could all agree on these issues we can't see with our eyes. Maybe VR will help? I don't know. But I would definitely donate to any think tank that was A/B testing educators lessons on global warming.

peoplewindow 9y ago
Who believes the Earth is flat? As far as I'm aware, nobody does and nobody ever did. The belief in flat earthers is ironically stronger and more like a conspiracy theory than the belief in a flat Earth.
- airza 9y ago
  you could probably find out this is very demonstrably false by searching facebook or google news for about 15 minutes
  - kaybe 9y ago
    Can you really though? I find it hard to distinguish from a really elaborate troll.
- jensv 9y ago
  [This Is What the Q&A Session at a Flat Earth Conference Looks Like](http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2017/11/13/this-is-what-the-qa-session-at-a-flat-earth-conference-looks-like/#uPme4LVH8rxO3k4A.99 http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2017/11/13/this...)

pizzapill 9y ago

The fear of nuclear power in Germany comes from the Tschernobyl disaster 1986. A life changing event for many Germans. Not beeing able to leave the house. Cutting a lot of foods from your diet because they are contaminated for decades (mushrooms, game meat, berries etc.). East block countries trying to sell their contaminated food for consumption and it ending up in GDR school kitchens. Additionally having two superpowers stationing a huge arsenal of nuclear bombs in your country. While at the same time beeing sure that you'd die first in a new world war that would almost surely start in your country and would probably devastate your whole continent beyond beeing suited for human surival. Then the whole argument that its cleaner and cheaper energy. While you pay for transport, storage and security with your tax money and the company keeps the profits. By storage i mean temporar storage, because no one worldwide has figured out how to safely store the waste for hundreds of thousands of years (Pyramids are 4500 years old and we don't even know how they are build). Thats why most of this waste from the 80s and 90s lies a few km off our coasts in the sea where the UK, Russia and Italian mafia dumped it.

vog 9y ago
> The fear of nuclear power in Germany comes from the Tschernobyl disaster 1986. Tschernobyl was almost forgotten, at least by the politicians in power, but then Fukushima happend.
- pizzapill 9y ago
  Not by the populace tough. I mean our politicians were happy to kill off the planet 30 years ago until many citizens started to protest for environmentaly concious politics. Now its mainstream in German politics and almost all other countries start similar programs currently. I mean even the US starts to hear the bells ringing in the last couple of years and is implementing policies that they shoul've implemented 30 years ago. In addition I might add that we are sourrounded by countries that we don't trust to be able to feed their citizes reliably. Less so when it comes to reactor security.
  - wott 9y ago

ben_w 9y ago

It’s not a rational distinction, it’s a tribal one. It’s the same cognitive bias that meant during Cold War both the USA and the USSR thought gay men were spies for the other team. Black amd white morality — if you’re any less than an angel you must be a demon.

walshemj 9y ago

And as an example the Aberfan disaster where coal mine waste had a landslide and killed 116 children and 28 adults.

megy 9y ago

Are you serious? It is the same reason people fear terrorist attacks when a million people are killed by cars every single year but everyone still drives.