3 ms·

Of course we like nuclear. This is a board full of people who want to see hard facts, numbers and metrics. By the numbers, nuclear kills a hell of a lot less

Of course we like nuclear. This is a board full of people who want to see hard facts, numbers and metrics. By the numbers, nuclear kills a hell of a lot less people than fossil fuels, or anything else (even when using an age adjusted metric that more accurately represents the impact of fossil fuels than the "bazillion deaths" that headlines tout). In terms of disaster potential it's on the order of hydroelectric unless for some reason you find waking up underwater to be vastly preferable to radiation poisoning.

mschuster91 8y ago
> In terms of disaster potential it's on the order of hydroelectric. Water disappears. Yes, a failed dam may kill thousands to tens of thousands, but the land is generally immediately reusable without major problems as long as there is no chemical industry in the floodpath. A nuclear reactor blowing up, though? The immediate death potential is mostly limited to the on-site staff and the "liquidators" (as evidenced in Chernobyl), but the land wide swaths around the site can remain uninhabitable for hundreds of years. To this day, wild pigs and fungi in Bavaria (1700 km away!) have to be radiation tested (https://www.welt.de/regionales/bayern/article154639428/Bayerns-Pilze-und-Wildschweine-strahlen-immer-noch.html https://www.welt.de/regionales/bayern/article154639428/Bayer...) due to Cs exposure in the fallout of Chernobyl.
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  >A nuclear reactor blowing up, though? The immediate death potential is mostly limited to the on-site staff and the "liquidators" (as evidenced in Chernobyl), but the land wide swaths around the site can remain uninhabitable for hundreds of years. If the land is really that valuable it can be cleaned. Nobody is going to remediate a forest in the Ukraine though because the Ukraine doesn't have that kind of money and it's not like they're particularly strapped for land in eastern Europe. By definition anything radioactive enough to cause harm is not going to be long-lived. After a few years it's generally going to >To this day, wild pigs and fungi in Bavaria (1700 km away!) have to be radiation tested If by "have to" you mean "in order to make people feel safe" then sure. If by "have to" you mean "because it is not uncommon to find examples that are too irradiated for human consumption" so we have to test them to get a picture of how common these cases are. Honestly I'd be more concerned about eating deer that have been drinking from god knows what contaminated water source than I would be about radiation in animals around Chernobyl.
  - mschuster91 8y ago
    > If the land is really that valuable it can be cleaned. Not really. Even in Japan, regulators basically screwed over regulations to declare the land as "inhabitable" again (https://www.zeit.de/politik/ausland/2017-03/fukushima-japan-tsunami-orte-sicherheit-radioaktivitaet-evakuierung https://www.zeit.de/politik/ausland/2017-03/fukushima-japan-...). > If by "have to" you mean "in order to make people feel safe" then sure. Keeping people safe is the primary objective for a state, not allowing private entities to extract the most possible profits while offloading the risks to the state. We saw this in Japan, it is impossible for any private entity to shoulder the cost of an accident.
    - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
      >Keeping people safe is the primary objective for a state You seem to be confusing "keeping people safe" with "keeping people safe theater". Monitoring the radioactivity of European crops and livestock in 2019 is solidly in the latter category. >not allowing private entities to extract the most possible profits while offloading the risks to the state. This it as tangential to a discussion of nuclear safety compared to the safety of any other power source. >We saw this in Japan, it is impossible for any private entity to shoulder the cost of an accident. And this is different than a dam failure, or any other industrial accident of similar magnitude, in a similarly populated/developed location how?
      - mschuster91 8y ago
        > This it as tangential to a discussion of nuclear safety compared to the safety of any other power source. No, it is not. No other power source comes even close in the amount of time that has to be covered by insurances. A dam breaks, a gas plant explodes, that's a couple billions of dollars of damage plus a couple billions in payments for the relatives of the dead. For corporations making billions of years in profits, that's pocket change. (Which coincidentally explains why disasters regarding open "seas" of toxic mining slurry occur so regularly) For Fukushima? That land is inhabitable for decades. Assume the Isar 1 AKW blows up? This is only 100km away from Munich. Can you imagine how much it costs to move an area with over 3M people? And that doesn't even touch the question: where to put the nuclear trash? Germany doesn't have a permanent waste facility and many other countries don't have one either. Note that I'm not against nuclear in general: Inherently safe designs such as MSRs? Perfectly fine. But not the often shoddily maintained stuff that is in use today!
- wbl 8y ago
  We permit people to live in Denver or some towns with elevated radium in their water. Heck you can have basements in New Jersey. Are you sure we're drawing a consistent line on radiation exposure?
  - mschuster91 8y ago
    > Heck you can have basements in New Jersey. According to UNSCEAR radon (which you probably mean?) actually causes 9% of lung cancers in Europe: https://www.focus.de/gesundheit/ratgeber/krebs/vorbeugung/tid-30548/unterschaetzter-lungenkrebs-ausloeser-radioaktives-radon-in-diesen-gebieten-ist-die-strahlung-gefaehrlich-hoch_aid_958040.html https://www.focus.de/gesundheit/ratgeber/krebs/vorbeugung/ti... > Are you sure we're drawing a consistent line on radiation exposure? We're not doing this, and the result is (easily!) preventable illness and death.
- nickik 8y ago
  > A nuclear reactor blowing up, though? The immediate death potential is mostly limited to the on-site staff and the "liquidators" (as evidenced in Chernobyl), but the land wide swaths around the site can remain uninhabitable for hundreds of years. Because a bit of land is what we are really running out off. > To this day, wild pigs and fungi in Bavaria (1700 km away!) have to be radiation tested (https://www.welt.de/regionales/bayern/article154639428/Bayer... https://www.welt.de/regionales/bayern/article154639428/Bayer...) due to Cs exposure in the fallout of Chernobyl. Because of massive government overreaction and idiotic regulation that make no sense at all because they are literally based on fake science that was accidentally adopted by government as a bases for regulation.
mefsb 8y ago
That's true, HN is full of purebred übermenschen and stuff.

mschuster91 8y ago

> In terms of disaster potential it's on the order of hydroelectric. Water disappears. Yes, a failed dam may kill thousands to tens of thousands, but the land is generally immediately reusable without major problems as long as there is no chemical industry in the floodpath. A nuclear reactor blowing up, though? The immediate death potential is mostly limited to the on-site staff and the "liquidators" (as evidenced in Chernobyl), but the land wide swaths around the site can remain uninhabitable for hundreds of years. To this day, wild pigs and fungi in Bavaria (1700 km away!) have to be radiation tested (https://www.welt.de/regionales/bayern/article154639428/Bayerns-Pilze-und-Wildschweine-strahlen-immer-noch.html https://www.welt.de/regionales/bayern/article154639428/Bayer...) due to Cs exposure in the fallout of Chernobyl.

dsfyu404ed 8y ago
>A nuclear reactor blowing up, though? The immediate death potential is mostly limited to the on-site staff and the "liquidators" (as evidenced in Chernobyl), but the land wide swaths around the site can remain uninhabitable for hundreds of years. If the land is really that valuable it can be cleaned. Nobody is going to remediate a forest in the Ukraine though because the Ukraine doesn't have that kind of money and it's not like they're particularly strapped for land in eastern Europe. By definition anything radioactive enough to cause harm is not going to be long-lived. After a few years it's generally going to >To this day, wild pigs and fungi in Bavaria (1700 km away!) have to be radiation tested If by "have to" you mean "in order to make people feel safe" then sure. If by "have to" you mean "because it is not uncommon to find examples that are too irradiated for human consumption" so we have to test them to get a picture of how common these cases are. Honestly I'd be more concerned about eating deer that have been drinking from god knows what contaminated water source than I would be about radiation in animals around Chernobyl.
- mschuster91 8y ago
  > If the land is really that valuable it can be cleaned. Not really. Even in Japan, regulators basically screwed over regulations to declare the land as "inhabitable" again (https://www.zeit.de/politik/ausland/2017-03/fukushima-japan-tsunami-orte-sicherheit-radioaktivitaet-evakuierung https://www.zeit.de/politik/ausland/2017-03/fukushima-japan-...). > If by "have to" you mean "in order to make people feel safe" then sure. Keeping people safe is the primary objective for a state, not allowing private entities to extract the most possible profits while offloading the risks to the state. We saw this in Japan, it is impossible for any private entity to shoulder the cost of an accident.
  - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
    >Keeping people safe is the primary objective for a state You seem to be confusing "keeping people safe" with "keeping people safe theater". Monitoring the radioactivity of European crops and livestock in 2019 is solidly in the latter category. >not allowing private entities to extract the most possible profits while offloading the risks to the state. This it as tangential to a discussion of nuclear safety compared to the safety of any other power source. >We saw this in Japan, it is impossible for any private entity to shoulder the cost of an accident. And this is different than a dam failure, or any other industrial accident of similar magnitude, in a similarly populated/developed location how?
    - mschuster91 8y ago
      > This it as tangential to a discussion of nuclear safety compared to the safety of any other power source. No, it is not. No other power source comes even close in the amount of time that has to be covered by insurances. A dam breaks, a gas plant explodes, that's a couple billions of dollars of damage plus a couple billions in payments for the relatives of the dead. For corporations making billions of years in profits, that's pocket change. (Which coincidentally explains why disasters regarding open "seas" of toxic mining slurry occur so regularly) For Fukushima? That land is inhabitable for decades. Assume the Isar 1 AKW blows up? This is only 100km away from Munich. Can you imagine how much it costs to move an area with over 3M people? And that doesn't even touch the question: where to put the nuclear trash? Germany doesn't have a permanent waste facility and many other countries don't have one either. Note that I'm not against nuclear in general: Inherently safe designs such as MSRs? Perfectly fine. But not the often shoddily maintained stuff that is in use today!
wbl 8y ago
We permit people to live in Denver or some towns with elevated radium in their water. Heck you can have basements in New Jersey. Are you sure we're drawing a consistent line on radiation exposure?
- mschuster91 8y ago
  > Heck you can have basements in New Jersey. According to UNSCEAR radon (which you probably mean?) actually causes 9% of lung cancers in Europe: https://www.focus.de/gesundheit/ratgeber/krebs/vorbeugung/tid-30548/unterschaetzter-lungenkrebs-ausloeser-radioaktives-radon-in-diesen-gebieten-ist-die-strahlung-gefaehrlich-hoch_aid_958040.html https://www.focus.de/gesundheit/ratgeber/krebs/vorbeugung/ti... > Are you sure we're drawing a consistent line on radiation exposure? We're not doing this, and the result is (easily!) preventable illness and death.
nickik 8y ago
> A nuclear reactor blowing up, though? The immediate death potential is mostly limited to the on-site staff and the "liquidators" (as evidenced in Chernobyl), but the land wide swaths around the site can remain uninhabitable for hundreds of years. Because a bit of land is what we are really running out off. > To this day, wild pigs and fungi in Bavaria (1700 km away!) have to be radiation tested (https://www.welt.de/regionales/bayern/article154639428/Bayer... https://www.welt.de/regionales/bayern/article154639428/Bayer...) due to Cs exposure in the fallout of Chernobyl. Because of massive government overreaction and idiotic regulation that make no sense at all because they are literally based on fake science that was accidentally adopted by government as a bases for regulation.

mefsb 8y ago

That's true, HN is full of purebred übermenschen and stuff.