4 ms·
This highlights the biggest problem I have with the rabidly pro nuclear people who insist that we now know how to build safe reactors. They always assume everyo
by jshen 16y ago
This highlights the biggest problem I have with the rabidly pro nuclear people who insist that we now know how to build safe reactors. They always assume everyone involved has the best intentions, but we know that that is not the case.
- VladRussian 16y agothe nuclear industry seems to be caught in the multiple "9"s trap : it costs enormous amounts of money (and thus provide motive for taking shortcuts) to build a device with 0.999999999... reliability. That sucks in all the money what could otherwise have been spent on multiple, yet built to less "9"s and thus cheaper, additional levels of protection, say several more metal containment/enclosing vessels instead of the current 2 - the reactor's vessel itself and the containment structure. There are a lot of examples when the same or less amount of money spent on cheaper components allowed to organize them into more reliable or performant system.
- gamble 16y agoNuclear industry PR reminds me of NASA's attitude to space travel prior to the Challenger explosion. The fact is that there are fewer than 500 reactors in operation worldwide, representing a significant fraction of the total number ever built. Even if you don't consider Chernobyl a civilian reactor, a substantial fraction of the reactors ever built have now suffered severe accidents. Like the shuttles, nuclear failures are essentially black swan events. The shuttle program's probabilities of failure looked great prior to Challenger and Columbia. Now they look like dangerously experimental technology. Likewise, nuclear power is still essentially experimental. No one can credibly quantify the risk involved, or the chances that containment features will work, when there is so little data to draw conclusions from.
- Wientje 16y agoExperimental or not, it has among the least accidents per KWh. 500 is a big enough number for some reasonable statistics.
- jshen 16y agoThis argument is popular, but I don't find it compelling. The dangers of most other energy sources are front loaded (let's ignore global warming for a moment), while the risks from nuclear power are spread over many many many years.
- tptacek 16y agoSo, your argument is that because it's harder to make judgements about the impact of fossil fuels, surely our judgement about nuclear power must be worse?
- jshen 16y agoMy argument is that I don't find those stats compelling. Nothing more, nothing less.
- tptacek 16y agoIsn't your analysis a victim of what Nassim Taleb calls the narrative fallacy? The fight is between "true" and "false", not "compelling" and "abstruse".
- jshen 16y agoI don't understand what you're saying. I am skeptical that the conclusion drawn from the previous stats follows logically from the stats themselves.
- yummyfajitas 16y agoThe carcinogens and particulates emitted by coal do all their damage immediately? They don't build up in people's lungs and cause cancer and other diseases many years later? Surface coal mining doesn't leave many square miles of more or less uninhabitable wasteland that remains uninhabitable for many years in the future? Underground coal mines don't catch fire and render entire towns completely uninhabitable? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia,_Pennsylvania http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia,_Pennsylvania Many other energy sources have risks which are spread over many years. They just don't have that "omfg, scary scientific stuff I don't understand" factor.
- tptacek 16y agoa substantial fraction of the reactors ever built have now suffered severe accidents By "a substantial fraction", you mean...? By "severe accidents", you mean...? Cite, please?
- gamble 16y agoFrom the IAEA: (http://www.iaea.org/cgi-bin/db.page.pl/pris.charts.htm http://www.iaea.org/cgi-bin/db.page.pl/pris.charts.htm) 442 active reactors 125 shutdown reactors --- 567 total Destroyed reactors: Unit 2 TMI Units 1-4 Fukushima Unit 4 Chernobyl Percentage of reactors totally destroyed in accidents: 1.04% including Chernobyl 0.87% excluding Chernobyl I defy you to find another power generation technology that has a total failure rate this severe.
- tptacek 16y agoBy "severe accident" you appear to mean "event that renders a plant incapable of further operation", which is an analysis that suggests that hard drives are more dangerous than nuclear power. This seems like a disingenuous way to dodge the simpler and more relevant statistic: how many fatalities are attributable to nuclear vs. coal.
- gamble 16y agoWhat are you, HN's resident troll? I responded politely and informatively to your dickish 'citation needed' post, and your only response is to call me disingenuous?
- tptacek 16y agoThank you for finding an interesting statistic. I was just thinking, while ordering pizza for my family, that despite the fact that your statistic absolutely didn't make the case your original uncited post made, I was still happy to see it, and appreciative that you'd take the time to find it. I disagree with you. Strongly. I think you're on the wrong side of an argument that simple math demonstrates the right side of. But I don't think you're a jerk for making your argument, and certainly don't mean to be "dickish".
- icarus_drowning 16y agoActually this particular article seems to highlight the fact that people who don't have good intentions get caught. These aren't new allegations. The evidence isn't yet in whether this has any impact on Fukushima's current troubles
- tptacek 16y agoIs everyone who supports nuclear power "rabid", or do we just need to adequately demonstrate our bona fides to you first? And, are the people who build coal power plants part of a monastic order that shields them from making selfish bad decisions? Because the statistics on fossil fuel power generation are worse.
- jdp23 16y agoThe people who are responding to the Fukushima situation by emphasizing how safe nukes are come across as so tone-deaf that they certainly seem rabid.
- tptacek 16y agoWhat is it that you don't like, the argument, or the politics of the argument?
- jdp23 16y agoI was specifically talking about the "optics", as political analysts like to say.
- nitrogen 16y agoConsidering that the reactors survived the initial impact of a disaster that killed thousands and displaced hundreds of thousands of people, I'd say they fared quite well.
- jshen 16y agoGo back to the first day and read the comments on HN about how everything is perfectly fine, and nothing bad can possibly happen to these reactors. That was blind faith that turned out to be wrong. Those people, instead of becoming more reasoned after being wrong, continue to make bold claims about how all future reactors will be perfectly safe. These are ideological thoughts, not reasoned thoughts. That's what I mean by 'rabid'
- 16y ago