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Nuclear power is the safest form of power delivery. Fukushima is a good lesson, but nuclear power can clearly be engineered to work safely at sea level and bel

Nuclear power is the safest form of power delivery. Fukushima is a good lesson, but nuclear power can clearly be engineered to work safely at sea level and below. The US Navy submarine corps has demonstrated it for decades. Singapore is a technologically advanced society, they could pull it off if they gave it the attention it deserves.

stephenr 6y ago
Until it isn’t, and a single accident means a huge chunk of inhabited land is no longer inhabitable. How big is the Chernobyl or Fukushima exclusion zone? How big is Singapore? One accident and the country would be essentially gone.
Jedd 6y ago
> Singapore is a technologically advanced society, they could pull it off if they gave it the attention it deserves. There's no evidence that Singapore has not already considered this idea, and subsequently given it precisely the attention it deserves. I understand that you think it's a grand idea, but the indisputable fact that many technologically advanced societies are eschewing these things may indicate your evaluation criteria is incomplete.
waheoo 6y ago
Safest? https://youtu.be/yInNecEQjeg https://youtu.be/yInNecEQjeg
- grizzles 6y ago
  Indisputably. https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy
  - Jedd 6y ago
    > Indisputably. I'll give it a go. From the article you cite: "Nuclear: there are two key points to differentiate in the estimates of nuclear energy safety. The first is the period which the studies cover. Analysis by Markandya & Wilkinson (2007) predates the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan, and therefore does not include this accident in its estimates. This fact, however, does not fully explain why the two studies differ: we might assume the inclusion of the Fukushima disaster would increase death rates but in fact the estimates of Sovacool et al. (2016) are lower. "The largest differentiator here is the period which the Sovacool et al. (2016) estimates cover. They report normalized death rates over the limited period from 1990 to 2013. This means the 1986 Chernobyl accident was not included. Sovacool et al. (2016) only include deaths from the Fukushima accident, with 573 attributed deaths. It is useful to note here that not all deaths were a direct result of the accident: for Fukushima, there were no direct deaths from the disaster; one confirmed death from radiation exposure; and the rest noted as premature deaths from evacuation and displacement of populations in the surrounding area." In addition I see that they are considering deaths only, which for both fossil fuels and nuclear fission is going to skew the numbers in their favour compared to renewable. Not sure what a complete picture would look like - you'd have to put some $-values against health & QoL impacts, and that's assuming you could accurately do root cause on chronic illness back to a power generation. In any case, nuclear fission is unlikely to make a resurgence, for any number of reasons.
  - nl 6y ago
    Your own link says (direct quote): "Modern renewables are about as safe as nuclear energy". And if you read further you see this: Let’s again put this into the context of our town of 27,000 EU citizens, who would collectively consume around one terawatt-hour of energy a year. These are the impacts if they got all of their energy from a given source: Coal: 25 people would die prematurely every year; ... Nuclear: it would take between 14 and 100 years before someone died; ... Solar: 53 years before someone died. Also, the costs of nuclear accidents are generally underestimated: according to our analysis, with 388 reactors in operation, there is a 50% probability of a Fukushima-like event (or more costly) every 60–150 years, and a Three Mile Island event (or more costly) every 10–20 years. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2015.12.026 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2015.12.026
bezmenov 6y ago
The Japanese Nuclear Commission had the following goals set in 2003: > The mean value of acute fatality risk by radiation exposure resultant from an accident of a nuclear installation to individuals of the public, who live in the vicinity of the site boundary of the nuclear installation, should not exceed the probability of about 1×10^6 per year (that is, at least 1 per million years) Their one in a million-year accident occurred about 8 years later. You can't trust theoretically derived probabilities, such as those used when discussing the safety of the nuclear field for which the effective track record is only 70 years.

stephenr 6y ago

Until it isn’t, and a single accident means a huge chunk of inhabited land is no longer inhabitable. How big is the Chernobyl or Fukushima exclusion zone? How big is Singapore? One accident and the country would be essentially gone.

Jedd 6y ago

> Singapore is a technologically advanced society, they could pull it off if they gave it the attention it deserves. There's no evidence that Singapore has not already considered this idea, and subsequently given it precisely the attention it deserves. I understand that you think it's a grand idea, but the indisputable fact that many technologically advanced societies are eschewing these things may indicate your evaluation criteria is incomplete.

waheoo 6y ago

Safest? https://youtu.be/yInNecEQjeg https://youtu.be/yInNecEQjeg

grizzles 6y ago
Indisputably. https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy
- Jedd 6y ago
  > Indisputably. I'll give it a go. From the article you cite: "Nuclear: there are two key points to differentiate in the estimates of nuclear energy safety. The first is the period which the studies cover. Analysis by Markandya & Wilkinson (2007) predates the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan, and therefore does not include this accident in its estimates. This fact, however, does not fully explain why the two studies differ: we might assume the inclusion of the Fukushima disaster would increase death rates but in fact the estimates of Sovacool et al. (2016) are lower. "The largest differentiator here is the period which the Sovacool et al. (2016) estimates cover. They report normalized death rates over the limited period from 1990 to 2013. This means the 1986 Chernobyl accident was not included. Sovacool et al. (2016) only include deaths from the Fukushima accident, with 573 attributed deaths. It is useful to note here that not all deaths were a direct result of the accident: for Fukushima, there were no direct deaths from the disaster; one confirmed death from radiation exposure; and the rest noted as premature deaths from evacuation and displacement of populations in the surrounding area." In addition I see that they are considering deaths only, which for both fossil fuels and nuclear fission is going to skew the numbers in their favour compared to renewable. Not sure what a complete picture would look like - you'd have to put some $-values against health & QoL impacts, and that's assuming you could accurately do root cause on chronic illness back to a power generation. In any case, nuclear fission is unlikely to make a resurgence, for any number of reasons.
- nl 6y ago
  Your own link says (direct quote): "Modern renewables are about as safe as nuclear energy". And if you read further you see this: Let’s again put this into the context of our town of 27,000 EU citizens, who would collectively consume around one terawatt-hour of energy a year. These are the impacts if they got all of their energy from a given source: Coal: 25 people would die prematurely every year; ... Nuclear: it would take between 14 and 100 years before someone died; ... Solar: 53 years before someone died. Also, the costs of nuclear accidents are generally underestimated: according to our analysis, with 388 reactors in operation, there is a 50% probability of a Fukushima-like event (or more costly) every 60–150 years, and a Three Mile Island event (or more costly) every 10–20 years. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2015.12.026 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2015.12.026

bezmenov 6y ago

The Japanese Nuclear Commission had the following goals set in 2003: > The mean value of acute fatality risk by radiation exposure resultant from an accident of a nuclear installation to individuals of the public, who live in the vicinity of the site boundary of the nuclear installation, should not exceed the probability of about 1×10^6 per year (that is, at least 1 per million years) Their one in a million-year accident occurred about 8 years later. You can't trust theoretically derived probabilities, such as those used when discussing the safety of the nuclear field for which the effective track record is only 70 years.