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Nuclear will forever be shunned, not because it's inherently unsafe, but rather because WE are unsafe. Every nuclear disaster so far has exposed incompetence,

Nuclear will forever be shunned, not because it's inherently unsafe, but rather because WE are unsafe. Every nuclear disaster so far has exposed incompetence, negligence, corruption, or unsafe practices at some level, and has usually been accompanied by delays, denials, and attempts to bury the evidence. When dealing with potentially "forever" contaminants, this is simply unacceptable. Ans since human nature and psychology is not going to magically evolve over the next couple of centuries, and since there's no such thing as a foolproof design, reducing nuclear power is a pragmatic approach, even if it causes a temporary increase in dirtier energy production (up to a point, of course).

DangitBobby 7y ago
> Nuclear will forever be shunned, not because it's inherently unsafe, but rather because WE are unsafe. This position is self contradictory. If it weren't inherently unsafe, our treatment of it, incompetent or otherwise, could not lead to global catastrophe. The problem is simultaneously that Nuclear is inherently unsafe and people cannot be trusted.
- kgabis 7y ago
  Can nuclear energy lead to a global disaster? The Chernobyl disaster was local and it's pretty much worst case scenario. Global warming is a global disaster and if using nuclear energy is a way of avoiding it then we must use it.
  - donjoe 7y ago
    Depends on what you call 'local'. Up until now, eating wild mushrooms and boars in the south of Germany is not considered healthy due to Caesium-137 emitted by the Chernobyl-accident decades ago [0]. Each shot wild boar needs to be tested before you are actually allowed to eat it. [0] https://www.bfs.de/EN/topics/ion/environment/foodstuffs/mushrooms-game/mushrooms-game_node.html https://www.bfs.de/EN/topics/ion/environment/foodstuffs/mush...
    - asjw 7y ago
      That's the definition of local.
      - Gwypaas 7y ago
        Same in Sweden, UK, parts of central Europe and large parts of eastern Europe. This includes everything from wild mushroom and berries to wild game. In the years right after even milk had increased radiation levels sometimes going beyond acceptable standards. This is the fallout map, please tell me how that is "the definition of local" https://www.unscear.org/docs/JfigXI.pdf https://www.unscear.org/docs/JfigXI.pdf
        chinesempire 7y ago
        > Same in Sweden, UK, parts of central Europe and large parts of eastern Europe Exactly. Locally. I live in Italy, it affected us in 1986, then everything went back to normal. And the laws in place are there only for precautions, nobody wants to lift them and be held responsible in case something happens, but the death toll of Chernobyl wasn't that scary as people like to imagine. From where I live to Berlin is ~= 850kms (~525 miles) From where I live to Warsaw is ~= 1,100kms (~715 miles) From where I live to Pryp'yat' (where the Chernobyl plant is) is just 1,665 km (1,000 miles) But, from where I live to Catania (Sicily, Southern Italy) is about 1,050kms (~630 miles) So yeah, it was far from global. It was global locally to continental Europe. Global means that if the temperature goes up one degree celsius in the North Pole, the sea level rises in Australia. BTW from the map you posted it's clear that Northern Italy, where I live, was hit harder than most of Sweden, Germany or Poland. We eat mushrooms and vegetables without any particular concern. Despite that, the global cancer rate ranking is (every 100,000) 1 Australia 468 7 France (metropolitan) 344.1 8 Denmark 340.4 9 Norway 337.8 13 UK 319.2 15 Germany 313.1 23 Sweden 294.7 24 Italy 290.6 Belarus, where the power plant is, ranks 32nd 32 Belarus 260.7
        simias 7y ago
        I don't understand the point you're trying to make. Most people's definition of "local" doesn't span 4 time zones.
AnthonyMouse 7y ago
> Every nuclear disaster so far has exposed incompetence, negligence, corruption, or unsafe practices at some level, and has usually been accompanied by delays, denials, and attempts to bury the evidence. Humans are lazy and greedy and stupid. But that applies to everything, and nuclear is responsible for fewer deaths per TWh of power generated than anything you're proposing as a "dirty" alternative. > When dealing with potentially "forever" contaminants, this is simply unacceptable. This is factually not what we are dealing with. The radioactivity of a substance is inversely proportional to its half life. In other words, the more radioactive something is, the faster it disappears. The most problematic nuclear contaminants are therefore the ones with medium half lives (i.e. decades), because they're radioactive enough to be harmful but long-lived enough to still be there a week later. This is nasty stuff, but not in any way "forever" and not particularly any nastier than a lot of the chemical substances industries deal with on a large scale all over the place, which are chemically rather than radiologically hazardous and therefore don't even have a half life, i.e. they really are there forever. How is a nuclear reactor worse than a chemical plant? > Ans since human nature and psychology is not going to magically evolve over the next couple of centuries, and since there's no such thing as a foolproof design, reducing nuclear power is a pragmatic approach, even if it causes a temporary increase in dirtier energy production (up to a point, of course). Considering that coal is responsible for more radioactive emissions than nuclear per TWh produced including Chernobyl and Fukushima, that is a totally irresponsible and dangerous course of action.
- kstenerud 7y ago
  It's estimated that the zone around the Chernobyl nuclear plant will be uninhabitable for 20,000 years. The Fukushima area (especially the sea surrounding it) suffers a similar fate. Once the Bikini Atoll containment fails within the next decade or so due to neglect, it will be uninhabitable for thousands of years as well. The world is awash in secret-but-not-really nuclear dumps with failing containment systems built too close to groundwater sources, which cannot be fixed due to the radiation hazard from the failed (due to neglect, improper design, and seismic activity) containment.
- scandox 7y ago
  > Considering that coal is responsible for more radioactive emissions than nuclear per TWh produced including Chernobyl and Fukushima, that is a totally irresponsible and dangerous course of action. Don't concentration and distribution matter? I mean in Serhii Plokhii's book on Chernobyl he several times repeats the claim that a significant leak into the river/sea would have rendered large parts of Europe uninhabitable. Now either that's a gross lie or your point is ignoring a hugely significant difference between coal production and nuclear. Which is it?
DeathArrow 7y ago
>When dealing with potentially "forever" contaminants, this is simply unacceptable. That sounds subjective. I think we need some kind of measures to judge the pros and cons of different solutions. Whether that means money, potential human lives loss, health issues. If we consider health issues alone, the money loss from using much more expensive alternatives can mean less people will have access to health care and that might mean alternative solutions can be more damaging than nuclear power. I am not saying that nuclear is better, but that we have to be careful and do a trough analysis before declaring something bad and declare something good. By "we" I mean "we as society". Such analysis should be done solely through technical specialists, not through activists, business interests or through any subjective party.
DrNuke 7y ago
Of course not, humans doing such complex and dangerous things are a bit smarter than your average Homer’s situation comedy. Your scathing opinion is perfect for the oil and gas industry, though.
- eecc 7y ago
  Alright. Call me when those bright candles have found a permanent long term solution to radioactive waste disposal. So far, I’ve noticed we’re still leaving several cores’ worth of highly radioactive spent fuel sitting in a pool next to the core containment vessel. Just a SNAFU away from blowing into everyone’s living room... But that’s only temporarily, of course! They’re smart enough to know it’s not a permanent solution; just a lifetime long. Pardon my sarcasm /s
  - DrNuke 7y ago
    Mind, I am not saying that you are wrong, nuclear today is not a commercially viable option in the West anymore. The point is that digging holes is easier and dirtier than nuclear fission, which is why candles had to be bright to make nuclear happen in first instance. That said, the trade-off seems unfavorable right now, even without considering waste.
  - lmm 7y ago
    Sure. But all of that, even projected centuries into the future, still kills fewer people than die by falling from a height while installing wind turbines. Accidents happen in every industry in which humans are involved, we shouldn't apply a double standard (just as, if equally radioactive coal ash is considered safe to just dump, we should probably dump a lot of our nuclear waste in the same way). Note that even if you stop nuclear power completely, the "nuclear waste" problem still exists. There's still a bunch of radioactive Uranium naturally occurring in various parts of the world. Is that an urgent problem?
brownbat 7y ago
> because WE are unsafe Totally agree, a system is only as safe as it's operators, so it's totally reasonable to compare worst case scenarios. But if you run the numbers on those terms, that still doesn't fully explain why nuclear is treated so differently. Extending your point, WE are the ones responsible for coal and hydro safety related deaths too. An unsafe hydro project in China killed somewhere between 80,000 and 240,000 people in 1975 after a whistleblower was ignored. With coal mining, we don't even have to look at "worst" cases to get to serious issues. Coal production leads US industries in fatal injuries, often leading to litigation alleging unsafe conditions. Miners often suffer permanent scarring of the lung tissues. Coal's output, not unlike radiation, is a silent killer. The fine particulates from coal pollution can cross the blood brain barrier, and lead to 10,000 early deaths in the US from coal's "fallout" each year.[0] Coal ash is also, perhaps unintuitively, MORE radioactive than nuclear waste.[1] Chernobyl directly killed around 50 people, with higher indirect deaths. The Soviet government compounded the failures by keeping contaminated food in the supply chain, leading to a lot of new thyroid cancers. Even taking that into account, and expelled radiation into the atmosphere, UN estimates of early deaths projected all the way out to 2065 are only around 9,000. Some people put that a bit higher. 15,000 would be a fair estimate.[2] The UN projection means we could have a Chernobyl disaster every year and it would still be safer than coal. Maybe the estimates wrong and we cut them in half in coal's favor, and should just talk about a Chernobyl disaster every other year comparing more favorably. At that rate, it would take 30 years to equal the deaths due to equal the damage done by one hydro disaster. Now, I don't think we should judge hydro harshly based on its worst accident in a poorly run communist country. You can choose to do that for nuclear, and it still comes out remarkably safe, even under the worst possible cases. I absolutely think its fair to judge coal harshly based on its continuing track record, and have no idea why someone would move from nuclear to coal after running the numbers. > Nuclear will forever be shunned I fear you might be right. But it definitely feels like some sort of cognitive bias, the availability heuristic or something making nuclear deaths more scary than coal deaths, but I don't know, can't figure it out. [0] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-coal-kills/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-coal-kills/ [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-... [2] There's a great discussion of the science behind these estimations on the More or Less podcast. Recommended listening. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p07dtfxp https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p07dtfxp P.S. - > Potentially "forever" contaminants... I already droned on long enough, but superfund sites related to coal tar are good reading here. They usually have to entomb the whole site in a giant concrete barrier to never be opened again. We treat radiation like it's the only hazardous thing we need to seal off forever, it's not really accurate, other forms of power generate similar hazards as or more frequently.

DangitBobby 7y ago

> Nuclear will forever be shunned, not because it's inherently unsafe, but rather because WE are unsafe. This position is self contradictory. If it weren't inherently unsafe, our treatment of it, incompetent or otherwise, could not lead to global catastrophe. The problem is simultaneously that Nuclear is inherently unsafe and people cannot be trusted.

kgabis 7y ago
Can nuclear energy lead to a global disaster? The Chernobyl disaster was local and it's pretty much worst case scenario. Global warming is a global disaster and if using nuclear energy is a way of avoiding it then we must use it.
- donjoe 7y ago
  Depends on what you call 'local'. Up until now, eating wild mushrooms and boars in the south of Germany is not considered healthy due to Caesium-137 emitted by the Chernobyl-accident decades ago [0]. Each shot wild boar needs to be tested before you are actually allowed to eat it. [0] https://www.bfs.de/EN/topics/ion/environment/foodstuffs/mushrooms-game/mushrooms-game_node.html https://www.bfs.de/EN/topics/ion/environment/foodstuffs/mush...
  - asjw 7y ago
    That's the definition of local.
    - Gwypaas 7y ago
      Same in Sweden, UK, parts of central Europe and large parts of eastern Europe. This includes everything from wild mushroom and berries to wild game. In the years right after even milk had increased radiation levels sometimes going beyond acceptable standards. This is the fallout map, please tell me how that is "the definition of local" https://www.unscear.org/docs/JfigXI.pdf https://www.unscear.org/docs/JfigXI.pdf
      - chinesempire 7y ago
        > Same in Sweden, UK, parts of central Europe and large parts of eastern Europe Exactly. Locally. I live in Italy, it affected us in 1986, then everything went back to normal. And the laws in place are there only for precautions, nobody wants to lift them and be held responsible in case something happens, but the death toll of Chernobyl wasn't that scary as people like to imagine. From where I live to Berlin is ~= 850kms (~525 miles) From where I live to Warsaw is ~= 1,100kms (~715 miles) From where I live to Pryp'yat' (where the Chernobyl plant is) is just 1,665 km (1,000 miles) But, from where I live to Catania (Sicily, Southern Italy) is about 1,050kms (~630 miles) So yeah, it was far from global. It was global locally to continental Europe. Global means that if the temperature goes up one degree celsius in the North Pole, the sea level rises in Australia. BTW from the map you posted it's clear that Northern Italy, where I live, was hit harder than most of Sweden, Germany or Poland. We eat mushrooms and vegetables without any particular concern. Despite that, the global cancer rate ranking is (every 100,000) 1 Australia 468 7 France (metropolitan) 344.1 8 Denmark 340.4 9 Norway 337.8 13 UK 319.2 15 Germany 313.1 23 Sweden 294.7 24 Italy 290.6 Belarus, where the power plant is, ranks 32nd 32 Belarus 260.7
        simias 7y ago
        I don't understand the point you're trying to make. Most people's definition of "local" doesn't span 4 time zones.

AnthonyMouse 7y ago

> Every nuclear disaster so far has exposed incompetence, negligence, corruption, or unsafe practices at some level, and has usually been accompanied by delays, denials, and attempts to bury the evidence. Humans are lazy and greedy and stupid. But that applies to everything, and nuclear is responsible for fewer deaths per TWh of power generated than anything you're proposing as a "dirty" alternative. > When dealing with potentially "forever" contaminants, this is simply unacceptable. This is factually not what we are dealing with. The radioactivity of a substance is inversely proportional to its half life. In other words, the more radioactive something is, the faster it disappears. The most problematic nuclear contaminants are therefore the ones with medium half lives (i.e. decades), because they're radioactive enough to be harmful but long-lived enough to still be there a week later. This is nasty stuff, but not in any way "forever" and not particularly any nastier than a lot of the chemical substances industries deal with on a large scale all over the place, which are chemically rather than radiologically hazardous and therefore don't even have a half life, i.e. they really are there forever. How is a nuclear reactor worse than a chemical plant? > Ans since human nature and psychology is not going to magically evolve over the next couple of centuries, and since there's no such thing as a foolproof design, reducing nuclear power is a pragmatic approach, even if it causes a temporary increase in dirtier energy production (up to a point, of course). Considering that coal is responsible for more radioactive emissions than nuclear per TWh produced including Chernobyl and Fukushima, that is a totally irresponsible and dangerous course of action.

kstenerud 7y ago
It's estimated that the zone around the Chernobyl nuclear plant will be uninhabitable for 20,000 years. The Fukushima area (especially the sea surrounding it) suffers a similar fate. Once the Bikini Atoll containment fails within the next decade or so due to neglect, it will be uninhabitable for thousands of years as well. The world is awash in secret-but-not-really nuclear dumps with failing containment systems built too close to groundwater sources, which cannot be fixed due to the radiation hazard from the failed (due to neglect, improper design, and seismic activity) containment.
scandox 7y ago
> Considering that coal is responsible for more radioactive emissions than nuclear per TWh produced including Chernobyl and Fukushima, that is a totally irresponsible and dangerous course of action. Don't concentration and distribution matter? I mean in Serhii Plokhii's book on Chernobyl he several times repeats the claim that a significant leak into the river/sea would have rendered large parts of Europe uninhabitable. Now either that's a gross lie or your point is ignoring a hugely significant difference between coal production and nuclear. Which is it?

DeathArrow 7y ago

>When dealing with potentially "forever" contaminants, this is simply unacceptable. That sounds subjective. I think we need some kind of measures to judge the pros and cons of different solutions. Whether that means money, potential human lives loss, health issues. If we consider health issues alone, the money loss from using much more expensive alternatives can mean less people will have access to health care and that might mean alternative solutions can be more damaging than nuclear power. I am not saying that nuclear is better, but that we have to be careful and do a trough analysis before declaring something bad and declare something good. By "we" I mean "we as society". Such analysis should be done solely through technical specialists, not through activists, business interests or through any subjective party.

DrNuke 7y ago

Of course not, humans doing such complex and dangerous things are a bit smarter than your average Homer’s situation comedy. Your scathing opinion is perfect for the oil and gas industry, though.

eecc 7y ago
Alright. Call me when those bright candles have found a permanent long term solution to radioactive waste disposal. So far, I’ve noticed we’re still leaving several cores’ worth of highly radioactive spent fuel sitting in a pool next to the core containment vessel. Just a SNAFU away from blowing into everyone’s living room... But that’s only temporarily, of course! They’re smart enough to know it’s not a permanent solution; just a lifetime long. Pardon my sarcasm /s
- DrNuke 7y ago
  Mind, I am not saying that you are wrong, nuclear today is not a commercially viable option in the West anymore. The point is that digging holes is easier and dirtier than nuclear fission, which is why candles had to be bright to make nuclear happen in first instance. That said, the trade-off seems unfavorable right now, even without considering waste.
- lmm 7y ago
  Sure. But all of that, even projected centuries into the future, still kills fewer people than die by falling from a height while installing wind turbines. Accidents happen in every industry in which humans are involved, we shouldn't apply a double standard (just as, if equally radioactive coal ash is considered safe to just dump, we should probably dump a lot of our nuclear waste in the same way). Note that even if you stop nuclear power completely, the "nuclear waste" problem still exists. There's still a bunch of radioactive Uranium naturally occurring in various parts of the world. Is that an urgent problem?

brownbat 7y ago

> because WE are unsafe Totally agree, a system is only as safe as it's operators, so it's totally reasonable to compare worst case scenarios. But if you run the numbers on those terms, that still doesn't fully explain why nuclear is treated so differently. Extending your point, WE are the ones responsible for coal and hydro safety related deaths too. An unsafe hydro project in China killed somewhere between 80,000 and 240,000 people in 1975 after a whistleblower was ignored. With coal mining, we don't even have to look at "worst" cases to get to serious issues. Coal production leads US industries in fatal injuries, often leading to litigation alleging unsafe conditions. Miners often suffer permanent scarring of the lung tissues. Coal's output, not unlike radiation, is a silent killer. The fine particulates from coal pollution can cross the blood brain barrier, and lead to 10,000 early deaths in the US from coal's "fallout" each year.[0] Coal ash is also, perhaps unintuitively, MORE radioactive than nuclear waste.[1] Chernobyl directly killed around 50 people, with higher indirect deaths. The Soviet government compounded the failures by keeping contaminated food in the supply chain, leading to a lot of new thyroid cancers. Even taking that into account, and expelled radiation into the atmosphere, UN estimates of early deaths projected all the way out to 2065 are only around 9,000. Some people put that a bit higher. 15,000 would be a fair estimate.[2] The UN projection means we could have a Chernobyl disaster every year and it would still be safer than coal. Maybe the estimates wrong and we cut them in half in coal's favor, and should just talk about a Chernobyl disaster every other year comparing more favorably. At that rate, it would take 30 years to equal the deaths due to equal the damage done by one hydro disaster. Now, I don't think we should judge hydro harshly based on its worst accident in a poorly run communist country. You can choose to do that for nuclear, and it still comes out remarkably safe, even under the worst possible cases. I absolutely think its fair to judge coal harshly based on its continuing track record, and have no idea why someone would move from nuclear to coal after running the numbers. > Nuclear will forever be shunned I fear you might be right. But it definitely feels like some sort of cognitive bias, the availability heuristic or something making nuclear deaths more scary than coal deaths, but I don't know, can't figure it out. [0] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-coal-kills/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-coal-kills/ [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-... [2] There's a great discussion of the science behind these estimations on the More or Less podcast. Recommended listening. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p07dtfxp https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p07dtfxp P.S. - > Potentially "forever" contaminants... I already droned on long enough, but superfund sites related to coal tar are good reading here. They usually have to entomb the whole site in a giant concrete barrier to never be opened again. We treat radiation like it's the only hazardous thing we need to seal off forever, it's not really accurate, other forms of power generate similar hazards as or more frequently.