18 ms·

Data from Chernobyl and Fukushima provide answers about the risks of nuclear

151 points by nixass 6y ago

lucb1e 6y ago
Title doesn't seem to match the article's contents. It concludes: > If there was a meltdown tomorrow in the UK, France, US or elsewhere, it’s likely that our failure to adjust our thinking in light of the experiences at Fukushima and Chernobyl would mean we evacuate too many people for too long. People would die as a result. Indeed, evacuate too many. The "learning about the risk of nuclear" we did "for the first time" is a study about the effects of the evacuation versus if they had stayed. In both nuclear disasters we ever had, the overreaction was apparently huge and it cost many thousands of lives in direct and indirect consequences. It might be a bit too soon to say, but in a way, the long-term repercussions of overreacting (expanding fossil fuel burning in favor of nuclear, the public reputation of nuclear) will likely be felt for generations. I'm not sure we'd ever have made 1.5°C, but now we definitely won't. (We have to still limit by how much we go over, of course, but it would have been great if we could avoid the tipping point.)
- lucb1e 6y ago
  To be clear, the title used to match the article's and was a bit weird. +1 for changing it on HN.
- cookienapper 6y ago
  Bill Gates was in the process of building a new prototype nuclear power plant. Highlights for this design is that in a worst case scenario; it will continue working without ANY human intervention. From my understanding, it may lose efficiency but will not meltdown. That's the design philosophy in a nutshell. Prototypes were set to be built in China - until Trump blocked it as part of his trade-war initiative.
734129837261 6y ago
Not sure what to make of this article. Nuclear power is by far the cleanest and safest way of generating energy for both humankind and nature. Chernobyl was ancient and outdated, which caused issues. And Fukushima had to withstand an earthquake and tsunami. And even then the radiation only killed 1 person. Even wind-turbines cause more damage by killing many, many birds. They aren't as reliable and they certainly cause a lot of noise pollution. And they aren't all that pretty, either. The risk of nuclear is low to none, barring any unforeseen freak accidents. Yes, if a tsunami hits the nuclear plant, it might break down. If a meteor hits it, it might break down. By that logic we shouldn't build cities. After all, if a tsunami hits a city many people will die. I wish politics around the world would just leave the decision-making up to smart people instead of vote-gatherers.
- paulryanrogers 6y ago
  Are you accounting for costs of mining the source material? As I understand it the cost to acquire and safely handle the nuclear material is significant.
  - mnemonicsloth 6y ago
    Significantly less than digging up millions of tons of coal. Note also that coal is somewhat radioactive too, and there is a lot more of it, so the radiation difference is small and might even favor nuclear
    - TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
      Coal is terrible. That doesn't make nuclear power the best option compared to all the others. The radiation difference isn't small if you include accidents. (Are we somehow supposed to pretend they never happened, and no nuclear accident - even if it's "just" a fuel spill, or a small fire - will ever happen again?)
      - quickthrowman 6y ago
        Which current option is better than nuclear? Please take into account the lack of battery storage capacity and water pumped storage capacity that makes an all solar and wind grid completely impractical, and that adding extensive hydro power would cause further degradation of our rivers. Nuclear power is our best option among coal/oil/natural gas/nuclear, if you believe that reducing carbon/methane emissions to slow or halt global warming is important.
  - korantu 6y ago
    For nuclear, as it is much denser energy-wise then anything else, you need to do the least amount of digging per MW capacity / let alone overall produced MWh Also one has to consider how much energy needs to be spent to get certain amount of energy generated, so called EROI. Nuclear is orders of magnitude better than other low-co2 options. For example for solar it is about 6, versus 75 for nuclear. [1] Given the investment energy is mostly in shape of fossil fuels, one, for example, cannot fuel carbon capture with anything other than nuclear, as in balance it will not reduce co2. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2015/02/11/eroi-a-tool-to-predict-the-best-energy-mix/#3de9a2a2a027 https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2015/02/11/eroi-a-to...
gwbennett 6y ago
The US Navy has trained thousands of 18-25 year old men and women to operate hundreds of reactors around the world safety for over 60 years. I was one of them. I have not been an operator for many years, but the latest reactor designs are amazingly safe and reliable. The world needs more safe, clean, cheap and reliable power. Nuclear power is one of the answers.
- ysleepy 6y ago
  Did they teach you where the nuclear waste goes too?
  - sjwright 6y ago
    The worst plausible answer couldn’t possibly be worse than pumping it directly into the air we breathe, as we do with diesel and coal.
    - tuatoru 6y ago
      And leaving it in huge open air and waterside windblown heaps, in the case of the ash.
  - Yetanfou 6y ago
    You feed it into a fast breeder reactor which both produces more fuel for conventional reactors as well as reduces the amount of waste. The resulting waste is lower in volume and needs less lengthy storage.
  - acidburnNSA 6y ago
    There are good nuclear waste solutions. The "no solution for waste" is a myth propagated by antinuclear institutions who one one hand claim it's infinitely hazardous and on the other block any and all attempts to move it out of the biosphere. They have proven to be quite cynical! More info here: https://whataboutthewaste.com https://whataboutthewaste.com
    - 6y ago
ysleepy 6y ago
Ah yes, decidedly pro-nuclear stance here. The first obvious omissions that come to mind are: 1. The evacuations took place while the meltdown was ongoing, evacuating was the sane choice given the available knowledge at the time. 2. There is no data on how not evacuating would have affected the people, since that was not done, making that comparison with such certainty seems a bit overconfident. Nuclear in general: How about showing me a sound final (100k yr) storage for nuclear waste, built and ready, before you operate any more nuclear reactors? I'm not totally against the technology, but storing all the nuclear waste in metal cans on parking lots (yes, thats where a majority of nuclear waste resides) is not a valid solution. The trend of externalizing cost to future generations is something that pisses me off to no end.
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago
  > How about showing me a sound final (100k yr) storage for nuclear waste, built and ready, before you operate any more nuclear reactors? "Nuclear waste" is an artificial problem. It is possible to build reactors that use the "nuclear waste" from existing reactors as fuel, which destroys it forever. We haven't done this primarily because people keep refusing to build new reactors that do this until we figure out what to do with the nuclear waste. Which obviously doesn't make any sense.
  - ysleepy 6y ago
    In the same sense that we will all be saved by CO2 capturing devices? These kinds of reactors (Travelling Wave Reactor etc.) you mention are vapourware and have been for quite some time. And I highly doubt the "which destroys it forever" part, - really, no waste at all, magic you say? This is just more of "Future Tech will solve this" externalization of problems.
    - randallsquared 6y ago
      > really, no waste at all, magic you say? The core problem with nuclear waste is that it's energetic. There are a number of designs that burn up waste; if we were building and testing them, poor reactor types could be abandoned and better ones could be improved. We're not doing that primarily because "nuclear" is a scary word owing to activist efforts decades ago. > This is just more of "Future Tech will solve this" externalization of problems. That is absolutely the right plan, though. Assuming our civilization doesn't collapse or stall, future generations will be enormously wealthier than we are, and any problem we have will be proportionately smaller for them. Of course, stall or collapse isn't impossible, but I do wish people wouldn't so heavily advocate for exactly that.
bawolff 6y ago
I just skimmed, but they seem to be comparing stress of evacuating vs health risk of staying. What about the stress of knowing you live on nuclear contaminated land. Surely that must be stresful enough to be comparable to the stress of evacuating?
- rl3 6y ago
  But that stress is statistically irrational. Until you're the one that develops an incurable carcinoma, or has a child with horrific birth defects.
- ali_m 6y ago
  I wonder how that compares to the stress of knowing that you live on land that's prone to earthquakes and tsunamis that kill tens of thousands of people?
  - grogenaut 6y ago
    Generally I've found people learn to deal with common systemic risks but have issues with systemic risks they're not used to. Case in point: I moved from St. Louis (Tornado Alley) to Seattle. There are really no earthquakes or volcanos in St. Louis (except from newmadrid which is a dooozy, but rare). I had trouble understanding earthquakes and they scare me a lot. But I was having a conversation with the Northwesties about Tornados. When I explained just how bad they could be, it terrified the Northwesties. There are no bad storms up here; lightning makes the news. To add to that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Joplin_tornado https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Joplin_tornado happened the next day. This terrified all of the northwesties. To me tornados are a part of life, and I'm more ok with them than earthquakes as you "get a warning", and you have a chance to move away from them (it's only a chance). At the end of the day we all, except maybe Ray Kurzweil, have to deal with the ultimate risk of death. Many of us just ignore it for our whole lives as a way of coping. Others stare it in the face and logic it away, which is essentially the same thing. Why are we all not constantly panicked with the existence of death?
- sradman 6y ago
  I think the J-Value approach is important for guiding policy but bawolff's criticism is valid. The article states: > Sadly, of the 160,000 people evacuated due to radiation fears, there were 1,121 deaths in the first 3 years from physical and mental exhaustion. When the public’s perception of risk is misaligned with official messaging, this logically will increase anxiety levels. Well informed high-trust societies should do best with a transparent and well communicated J-Value based policy. Measuring trust and refining communication practices seem like important aspects of the public response.
deleted 6y ago
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Barrin92 6y ago
Seems like a very one-sided article that focuses predominantly on health risks and points out that relocation might not have been warranted and seems to suggest that this shifts the calculus. There's however not just health risk but also economic risk. There's different estimations of how much the entire Fukushima catastrophy cost but estimates range from dozens of billions of dollars to hundreds of billions[1]. And even if relocation hadn't been mandatory I'm not so sure regions that get the stigma of being radiated would survive anyhow and I can imagine a lot of voluntary exodus and as a result further economic and property damage. Regardless of what particular number one picks, it was economically absolutely devastating. [1]hhttps://www.scientificamerican.com/article/clearing-the-radioactive-rubble-heap-that-was-fukushima-daiichi-7-years-on/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/clearing-the-radi...
- merpnderp 6y ago
  Those economic costs are tied to the health risks aren’t they.
  - Barrin92 6y ago
    not necessarily. Dismantling a nuclear plant or in this case waste clearage itself is a gargantuan effort. Scrapping ordinary nuclear plants already costs billions.
ksaj 6y ago
The article doesn't fairly compare with the risks of say, oil. Look at Exxon for a good example of how costly (and seemingly never ending) the damage and cleanup can be. And what to make of the earthquakes caused by fracking? I live in an area with multiple nuclear plants. We've never had an issue with them, although there was one false alarm. Even then, nobody seems to feel very unsafe about it around here. Property values are just as high as they always were. We did have a natural gas plant blow up. So I'm not very convinced of the nuclear dangers by comparison. Especially since nuclear technology keeps getting better, safer, and more efficient. That can't be said for much of the fossil fuel industry.
- StreamBright 6y ago
  Especially if you view the right metric. https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy The reason why nuclear is safe and a great option is energy density. You cannot really beat that with fossil fuels or renewables. We have to make nuclear safe in the sense that not even an earthquake can trigger an accident like Fukushima but we already made nuclear the safest source of energy based on the number of deaths per twh produced.
- jjeaff 6y ago
  Are there any known instances of a fracking induced earthquake causing any damage? Any reports I've seen seem to be quite localized and minor.
mcjiggerlog 6y ago
Not sure I've seen a HN post before where so many people in the comments have clearly not read the article. Not even the summary of key points right at the top. The piece is not anti-nuclear. Also, risk is not binary. Finding out the true risk of something does not mean it's high risk and therefore negative. You can assess the risk of something and conclude that the risk is low and generally overblown, which is the point of the article.
- indymike 6y ago
  Perhaps because you have to have a Medium account to read the article? I'd love to read it, but I don't love the idea of logging in to Medium to do so.
  - tester756 6y ago
    I don't have account and I could read it, weird.
  - wozer 6y ago
    I can read it without an account. Maybe try incognito mode.
  - Factfull 6y ago
    No accounted needed for me.
  - Melting_Harps 6y ago
    > Perhaps because you have to have a Medium account to read the article? I'm anti-Nuclear (On Earth), but would prefer most people read it before commenting on it. So, I archived it. http://archive.vn/OmALl http://archive.vn/OmALl
    - Factfull 6y ago
      Article appears to now be free to read.
    - indymike 6y ago
sfifs 6y ago
This appears to be really shoddy research and once again illustrates why a macro economic approach to this problem simply doesn't work and why public have stopped listening. The researchers are trying to use a system level risk returns balance and using very high level average metrics like risk of reduction in lifespan. How about the distribution around the mean and how about the suffering of people who undergo cancer treatments and survive? Having seen a close relative battle cancer and the family suffering, i wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy and their families. The other piece these macro economic approaches miss is that while a system level cost isn't much, for most people their property, their job and their neighbourhood social networks ARE the major assets they have in life and in the case of nuclear accidents, they lose everything. This fundamentally Behavioral Economics view of consequences is what drives the recent popular opposition to nuclear power and unless nuclear proponents start analyzing nuclear power through a Behavioral Economics lens, they're likely going to be ignored by the population. Comparing risk of death against statistical correlations with air pollution isn't going to cut it. On nuclear, we're barking up the wrong tree by pushing for economic analysis of old style nuclear. We need to develop and qualify designs that are passively safe with no risk of driving people away from their property and society before the industry will be taken seriously, otherwise the only interest will be in weapons research.
- roenxi 6y ago
  > On nuclear, we're barking up the wrong tree by pushing for economic analysis of old style nuclear. We need to develop and qualify designs that are passively safe with ... Evidence is they figured that out in the 1980s. We haven't seen a bad meltdown from any plant built in the last 40 years.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- i_am_proteus 6y ago
  Your conjecture that this research is shoddy appears to be unfounded. By using Life Quality Index, which includes Health-Adjusted Life Expectancy, the research takes into account well-being and health impacts other than death; making expected-value decisions on such a metric is a standard way to encode a nonlinear objective function without needing to use higher central moments elsewhere in the decision. Furthermore, the analysis does look at the economic impacts of relocating people from their homes and does not simply compare the statistics against air pollution. Finally, economic analysis of old-style nuclear remains incredibly relevant, given that existing "legacy" nuclear power-generating stations represent a significant fraction of total stationary power-generating capacity, and that we have witnessed political movements to replace these facilities with fossil-fuel burning plants due to fear of nuclear accident.
SagelyGuru 6y ago
Of course this is a pro-nuclear article. It is by "UK Nuclear Institute", run by UK nuclear industry. First published in their "Nuclear Future". Come on, did you really expect it to be objective?
tinus_hn 6y ago
Is there also research available on applying this method to COVID-19 and the countermeasures?
- Factfull 6y ago
  You're in luck. The lead author or the nuclear J-value author also applied the method to COVID-19: http://jvalue.co.uk/covid-19.php http://jvalue.co.uk/covid-19.php
  - tinus_hn 6y ago
    Interesting. Unfortunately it appears the obvious choice, to try to keep the R0 value below 1, is the worst option.
apple4ever 6y ago
Many arguments for handling bad things often do not take into account the unintended consequences of that specific handling. This is one of them. The lockdowns for Coronavirus is another. I don't know which way it actual falls (lockdowns still extended life expectancy or the reduced life expectancy) but I will be curious in a couple of years what the data will show us. Some people are absolutely certain X will be the best way and either don't take into account the downsides or hand-wave away the concerns. I wish we could have actual debates to come to a solution instead of making it person or political ("YOU WANT TO KILL PEOPLE" vs "YOU DON'T CARE ABOUT PEOPLE"). But tis life I s'pose.
- atlantacrackers 6y ago
  This. Or, the unknowable lost opportunities that never materialized. How many relationships never formed, how many business never created, etc is unmeasurable but absolutely real and the impact from those lost opportunities will be felt in some way shape and form...
  - apple4ever 6y ago
    Great point. There is a lot of lost opportunities that is probably immeasurable. I've always said there are tradeoffs to every solution. And we may not have all the information to even know how bad or good a tradeoff is. No solution is perfect.
DangitBobby 6y ago
IIRC we were incredibly lucky that Chernobyl didn't turn into a much more severe global disaster. What happens in a worst-case scenario meltdown? I know we have a very pro-nuclear crowd here, so I am ready for an onslaught of information.
- grogenaut 6y ago
  The real disaster scenario is that you create a fission in the universe spawning universe in which you need a grand daughter which is provided by a doubly nested knot of 2 time loops with two variations each which self reinforce and end up providing you the grand daughter but continuously cause the apocalypse by disrupting electronics and quantum mechanics across the universe.
- mpweiher 6y ago
  Hmm...Chernobyl pretty much was the worst case. And, like Fukushima, the impact of the reaction was much more severe than the impact of the radiation. [I looked at The WHO reports that were published every decade. Each one downgraded the estimated impact from radiation dramatically, whereas the health impact of the evacuation became more and more apparent].
  - DangitBobby 6y ago
    Didn't they have to sacrifice some guys to cover some melted core in concrete to prevent much worse spread of radiation from happening? Or are you saying that didn't matter?
    - mpweiher 6y ago
      a > b ⇏ b = 0
      - DangitBobby 6y ago
        You'll have to elaborate on what a and b are
thedudeabides5 6y ago
Interesting how they call out the potential to use the J value to make public policy recommnedations but we’ve yet to really see them. I for one, would love to see some analysis of the value of lockdowns across society, i particular the prioritization of the older and more susceptible healthwise, vs the young and economically vulnerable.
- Factfull 6y ago
  The team already did that. http://jvalue.co.uk/covid-19.php http://jvalue.co.uk/covid-19.php
  - thedudeabides5 6y ago
    Amazing, thanks for sharing!
SCAQTony 6y ago
I read the article, and looked at his bio. He is not a nuclear scientist nor a analytics professional. His previous articles are pro nuke, which is fine, but to take his words wholesale with no bibliography or links is asking too much for this reader. Most of all, he quantifies stress and exhaustion as a primary cause of death for those evacuated. How did he figure that out?
- Factfull 6y ago
  Do you mean the author of the article or the study? The author provides links to the study. You can also just google NREFS.
  - SCAQTony 6y ago
    Yes, he did. The NREFs page was an Overview, which contained links to a lecture, background on the study, and and about thirty bibliography links. I suggest his opinions, at the very least, have asterisks and links to specific study as to how he arrived at his opinions. http://www.nrefs.org/publications/ http://www.nrefs.org/publications/
- hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
  Yeah, I thought this article was decent in some respects, but the larger issue was that it completely ignored human nature when it comes to risk assessment. Does he honestly think it would have worked to tell those living near Fukushima, "Don't worry, on average you'll only lose about 3 weeks of life, so don't worry about it!" Of course, very few people are hit by the "average": most people have no I'll effects while others develop cancer and die soon. Taking a purely mathematical approach to risk assessment, and using that assessment alone to guide public policy, is unwise.
  - rhn_mk1 6y ago
    The analysis was related to both sides of the coin. I imagine the presentation would offer alternatives: stay and lose 3 weeks, evacuate and lose 4 weeks, so which one do you worry about more?
baix777 6y ago
There is that old saw that generals fight the last war, and this article misses the modern risk of nuclear. With the development of cheap attack drones the risk of nuclear has increased over what is was. There is no effective way to completely protect against drones. Drones have already been used in an attack against a centralized energy facility. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Abqaiq%E2%80%93Khurais_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Abqaiq%E2%80%93Khurais_at...
- Integer 6y ago
  There was no increase of nuclear risk because of drones, and no need to increase the protection of the powerplants, for the very simple reason that there is nothing a drone can do against meters of reinforced concrete protecting the reactor. A drone big enough to do more than scratch the paint would be classified as a cruise missile, and that risk was understood since before the first nuclear powrplant was turned on.
justatdotin 6y ago
^Fthyroid
ascat 6y ago
I was also wondering like how the article says that relocating people near Chernobyl in such great extend isn't the right thing to do (taking the 9 months life expectancy limit in mind) but I am really confused here, because when I see movies or videos showing the Chernobyl accidents they show people feeling the burning sensation, vomiting, getting extremely sick and new babies being born with ill health, which is really scary. So if people don't re locate then they will constantly have this fear, right?
- AngryData 6y ago
  Well obviously the people closest definitely should leave. But they eventually cleared out far more area than just the nearest town of people that were given large exposures.
neilwilson 6y ago
"As governments only have a limited amount of money to spend on all the services they provide, this means that there are not infinite funds to be spent responding to a nuclear accident; £1 spent on evacuating residents is £1 less that is spent on schools, hospitals and roads." Which is of course completely flawed. Firstly it is in monetary terms, when there is a dynamic amount of money. Pulling the furlough pay rabbit out of the hat put the myth of a fixed amount of money to bed forever. Money is an endogenous concept designed to allow all the resources of a currency area to be engaged usefully. Secondly even if you reassess it in the correct real resource terms, it assumes that there are no unemployed resources and that all current uses of resources are the most socially advantageous uses. The one thing we have learned from the Covid crisis is exactly how few people we need working to maintain the population, and how much of what we call work is an activity that is somewhat less important than your average football match.
- Factfull 6y ago
  If the argument is completely flawed, then that would mean there is an infinite amount of money to spend reducing very small risks. That doesn't seem right. We can't, for example, spend infinite amounts on making cars safer, because they would become unaffordable and more polluting (heavier) very quickly. We would end up with no cars. Ironically, this kind of is the path that nuclear is on: the things are made so safe that no one can afford them anymore. The opportunity cost of no nuclear is seldom brought into the argument.
  - neilwilson 6y ago
    "hen that would mean there is an infinite amount of money to spend reducing very small risks." There is. But there isn't an infinite amount of stuff. And since to spend you have to have something to buy the spending stops when the real resource runs out. That's the actual limit - until you use some sort of power dynamics to start moving physical resources from their current uses. Hence the shortage of PPE at the start of the Covid crisis. All the money in the world; not enough masks to go around. There was "demand", but no "effective demand". Money is essentially inductively connected to the real economy, not directly connected. As an analogy in electrical terms money is apparent power, and the stuff it buys is real power.
ryosuke 6y ago
This article set off a number of red flags for me, and by the end I found it very hard to believe that this was done by a group of impartial researchers. And sure enough, Phillip Thomas, the lead researcher for this study, comes from a 20+ year career with the chemical and nuclear industries. I would take everything in this article with a grain of salt. http://www.bristol.ac.uk/engineering/people/philip-j-thomas/index.html http://www.bristol.ac.uk/engineering/people/philip-j-thomas/...

151 points by nixass 6y ago

Title doesn't seem to match the article's contents. It concludes: > If there was a meltdown tomorrow in the UK, France, US or elsewhere, it’s likely that our failure to adjust our thinking in light of the experiences at Fukushima and Chernobyl would mean we evacuate too many people for too long. People would die as a result. Indeed, evacuate too many. The "learning about the risk of nuclear" we did "for the first time" is a study about the effects of the evacuation versus if they had stayed. In both nuclear disasters we ever had, the overreaction was apparently huge and it cost many thousands of lives in direct and indirect consequences. It might be a bit too soon to say, but in a way, the long-term repercussions of overreacting (expanding fossil fuel burning in favor of nuclear, the public reputation of nuclear) will likely be felt for generations. I'm not sure we'd ever have made 1.5°C, but now we definitely won't. (We have to still limit by how much we go over, of course, but it would have been great if we could avoid the tipping point.)

lucb1e 6y ago
To be clear, the title used to match the article's and was a bit weird. +1 for changing it on HN.
cookienapper 6y ago
Bill Gates was in the process of building a new prototype nuclear power plant. Highlights for this design is that in a worst case scenario; it will continue working without ANY human intervention. From my understanding, it may lose efficiency but will not meltdown. That's the design philosophy in a nutshell. Prototypes were set to be built in China - until Trump blocked it as part of his trade-war initiative.

734129837261 6y ago

Not sure what to make of this article. Nuclear power is by far the cleanest and safest way of generating energy for both humankind and nature. Chernobyl was ancient and outdated, which caused issues. And Fukushima had to withstand an earthquake and tsunami. And even then the radiation only killed 1 person. Even wind-turbines cause more damage by killing many, many birds. They aren't as reliable and they certainly cause a lot of noise pollution. And they aren't all that pretty, either. The risk of nuclear is low to none, barring any unforeseen freak accidents. Yes, if a tsunami hits the nuclear plant, it might break down. If a meteor hits it, it might break down. By that logic we shouldn't build cities. After all, if a tsunami hits a city many people will die. I wish politics around the world would just leave the decision-making up to smart people instead of vote-gatherers.

paulryanrogers 6y ago
Are you accounting for costs of mining the source material? As I understand it the cost to acquire and safely handle the nuclear material is significant.
- mnemonicsloth 6y ago
  Significantly less than digging up millions of tons of coal. Note also that coal is somewhat radioactive too, and there is a lot more of it, so the radiation difference is small and might even favor nuclear
  - TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
    Coal is terrible. That doesn't make nuclear power the best option compared to all the others. The radiation difference isn't small if you include accidents. (Are we somehow supposed to pretend they never happened, and no nuclear accident - even if it's "just" a fuel spill, or a small fire - will ever happen again?)
    - quickthrowman 6y ago
      Which current option is better than nuclear? Please take into account the lack of battery storage capacity and water pumped storage capacity that makes an all solar and wind grid completely impractical, and that adding extensive hydro power would cause further degradation of our rivers. Nuclear power is our best option among coal/oil/natural gas/nuclear, if you believe that reducing carbon/methane emissions to slow or halt global warming is important.
- korantu 6y ago
  For nuclear, as it is much denser energy-wise then anything else, you need to do the least amount of digging per MW capacity / let alone overall produced MWh Also one has to consider how much energy needs to be spent to get certain amount of energy generated, so called EROI. Nuclear is orders of magnitude better than other low-co2 options. For example for solar it is about 6, versus 75 for nuclear. [1] Given the investment energy is mostly in shape of fossil fuels, one, for example, cannot fuel carbon capture with anything other than nuclear, as in balance it will not reduce co2. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2015/02/11/eroi-a-tool-to-predict-the-best-energy-mix/#3de9a2a2a027 https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2015/02/11/eroi-a-to...

gwbennett 6y ago

The US Navy has trained thousands of 18-25 year old men and women to operate hundreds of reactors around the world safety for over 60 years. I was one of them. I have not been an operator for many years, but the latest reactor designs are amazingly safe and reliable. The world needs more safe, clean, cheap and reliable power. Nuclear power is one of the answers.

ysleepy 6y ago
Did they teach you where the nuclear waste goes too?
- sjwright 6y ago
  The worst plausible answer couldn’t possibly be worse than pumping it directly into the air we breathe, as we do with diesel and coal.
  - tuatoru 6y ago
    And leaving it in huge open air and waterside windblown heaps, in the case of the ash.
- Yetanfou 6y ago
  You feed it into a fast breeder reactor which both produces more fuel for conventional reactors as well as reduces the amount of waste. The resulting waste is lower in volume and needs less lengthy storage.
- acidburnNSA 6y ago
  There are good nuclear waste solutions. The "no solution for waste" is a myth propagated by antinuclear institutions who one one hand claim it's infinitely hazardous and on the other block any and all attempts to move it out of the biosphere. They have proven to be quite cynical! More info here: https://whataboutthewaste.com https://whataboutthewaste.com
  - 6y ago

ysleepy 6y ago

Ah yes, decidedly pro-nuclear stance here. The first obvious omissions that come to mind are: 1. The evacuations took place while the meltdown was ongoing, evacuating was the sane choice given the available knowledge at the time. 2. There is no data on how not evacuating would have affected the people, since that was not done, making that comparison with such certainty seems a bit overconfident. Nuclear in general: How about showing me a sound final (100k yr) storage for nuclear waste, built and ready, before you operate any more nuclear reactors? I'm not totally against the technology, but storing all the nuclear waste in metal cans on parking lots (yes, thats where a majority of nuclear waste resides) is not a valid solution. The trend of externalizing cost to future generations is something that pisses me off to no end.

AnthonyMouse 6y ago
> How about showing me a sound final (100k yr) storage for nuclear waste, built and ready, before you operate any more nuclear reactors? "Nuclear waste" is an artificial problem. It is possible to build reactors that use the "nuclear waste" from existing reactors as fuel, which destroys it forever. We haven't done this primarily because people keep refusing to build new reactors that do this until we figure out what to do with the nuclear waste. Which obviously doesn't make any sense.
- ysleepy 6y ago
  In the same sense that we will all be saved by CO2 capturing devices? These kinds of reactors (Travelling Wave Reactor etc.) you mention are vapourware and have been for quite some time. And I highly doubt the "which destroys it forever" part, - really, no waste at all, magic you say? This is just more of "Future Tech will solve this" externalization of problems.
  - randallsquared 6y ago
    > really, no waste at all, magic you say? The core problem with nuclear waste is that it's energetic. There are a number of designs that burn up waste; if we were building and testing them, poor reactor types could be abandoned and better ones could be improved. We're not doing that primarily because "nuclear" is a scary word owing to activist efforts decades ago. > This is just more of "Future Tech will solve this" externalization of problems. That is absolutely the right plan, though. Assuming our civilization doesn't collapse or stall, future generations will be enormously wealthier than we are, and any problem we have will be proportionately smaller for them. Of course, stall or collapse isn't impossible, but I do wish people wouldn't so heavily advocate for exactly that.

bawolff 6y ago

I just skimmed, but they seem to be comparing stress of evacuating vs health risk of staying. What about the stress of knowing you live on nuclear contaminated land. Surely that must be stresful enough to be comparable to the stress of evacuating?

rl3 6y ago
But that stress is statistically irrational. Until you're the one that develops an incurable carcinoma, or has a child with horrific birth defects.
ali_m 6y ago
I wonder how that compares to the stress of knowing that you live on land that's prone to earthquakes and tsunamis that kill tens of thousands of people?
- grogenaut 6y ago
  Generally I've found people learn to deal with common systemic risks but have issues with systemic risks they're not used to. Case in point: I moved from St. Louis (Tornado Alley) to Seattle. There are really no earthquakes or volcanos in St. Louis (except from newmadrid which is a dooozy, but rare). I had trouble understanding earthquakes and they scare me a lot. But I was having a conversation with the Northwesties about Tornados. When I explained just how bad they could be, it terrified the Northwesties. There are no bad storms up here; lightning makes the news. To add to that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Joplin_tornado https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Joplin_tornado happened the next day. This terrified all of the northwesties. To me tornados are a part of life, and I'm more ok with them than earthquakes as you "get a warning", and you have a chance to move away from them (it's only a chance). At the end of the day we all, except maybe Ray Kurzweil, have to deal with the ultimate risk of death. Many of us just ignore it for our whole lives as a way of coping. Others stare it in the face and logic it away, which is essentially the same thing. Why are we all not constantly panicked with the existence of death?
sradman 6y ago
I think the J-Value approach is important for guiding policy but bawolff's criticism is valid. The article states: > Sadly, of the 160,000 people evacuated due to radiation fears, there were 1,121 deaths in the first 3 years from physical and mental exhaustion. When the public’s perception of risk is misaligned with official messaging, this logically will increase anxiety levels. Well informed high-trust societies should do best with a transparent and well communicated J-Value based policy. Measuring trust and refining communication practices seem like important aspects of the public response.

deleted 6y ago

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Barrin92 6y ago

Seems like a very one-sided article that focuses predominantly on health risks and points out that relocation might not have been warranted and seems to suggest that this shifts the calculus. There's however not just health risk but also economic risk. There's different estimations of how much the entire Fukushima catastrophy cost but estimates range from dozens of billions of dollars to hundreds of billions[1]. And even if relocation hadn't been mandatory I'm not so sure regions that get the stigma of being radiated would survive anyhow and I can imagine a lot of voluntary exodus and as a result further economic and property damage. Regardless of what particular number one picks, it was economically absolutely devastating. [1]hhttps://www.scientificamerican.com/article/clearing-the-radioactive-rubble-heap-that-was-fukushima-daiichi-7-years-on/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/clearing-the-radi...

merpnderp 6y ago
Those economic costs are tied to the health risks aren’t they.
- Barrin92 6y ago
  not necessarily. Dismantling a nuclear plant or in this case waste clearage itself is a gargantuan effort. Scrapping ordinary nuclear plants already costs billions.

ksaj 6y ago

The article doesn't fairly compare with the risks of say, oil. Look at Exxon for a good example of how costly (and seemingly never ending) the damage and cleanup can be. And what to make of the earthquakes caused by fracking? I live in an area with multiple nuclear plants. We've never had an issue with them, although there was one false alarm. Even then, nobody seems to feel very unsafe about it around here. Property values are just as high as they always were. We did have a natural gas plant blow up. So I'm not very convinced of the nuclear dangers by comparison. Especially since nuclear technology keeps getting better, safer, and more efficient. That can't be said for much of the fossil fuel industry.

StreamBright 6y ago
Especially if you view the right metric. https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy The reason why nuclear is safe and a great option is energy density. You cannot really beat that with fossil fuels or renewables. We have to make nuclear safe in the sense that not even an earthquake can trigger an accident like Fukushima but we already made nuclear the safest source of energy based on the number of deaths per twh produced.
jjeaff 6y ago
Are there any known instances of a fracking induced earthquake causing any damage? Any reports I've seen seem to be quite localized and minor.

mcjiggerlog 6y ago

Not sure I've seen a HN post before where so many people in the comments have clearly not read the article. Not even the summary of key points right at the top. The piece is not anti-nuclear. Also, risk is not binary. Finding out the true risk of something does not mean it's high risk and therefore negative. You can assess the risk of something and conclude that the risk is low and generally overblown, which is the point of the article.

indymike 6y ago
Perhaps because you have to have a Medium account to read the article? I'd love to read it, but I don't love the idea of logging in to Medium to do so.
- tester756 6y ago
  I don't have account and I could read it, weird.
- wozer 6y ago
  I can read it without an account. Maybe try incognito mode.
- Factfull 6y ago
  No accounted needed for me.
- Melting_Harps 6y ago
  > Perhaps because you have to have a Medium account to read the article? I'm anti-Nuclear (On Earth), but would prefer most people read it before commenting on it. So, I archived it. http://archive.vn/OmALl http://archive.vn/OmALl
  - Factfull 6y ago
    Article appears to now be free to read.
  - indymike 6y ago

sfifs 6y ago

This appears to be really shoddy research and once again illustrates why a macro economic approach to this problem simply doesn't work and why public have stopped listening. The researchers are trying to use a system level risk returns balance and using very high level average metrics like risk of reduction in lifespan. How about the distribution around the mean and how about the suffering of people who undergo cancer treatments and survive? Having seen a close relative battle cancer and the family suffering, i wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy and their families. The other piece these macro economic approaches miss is that while a system level cost isn't much, for most people their property, their job and their neighbourhood social networks ARE the major assets they have in life and in the case of nuclear accidents, they lose everything. This fundamentally Behavioral Economics view of consequences is what drives the recent popular opposition to nuclear power and unless nuclear proponents start analyzing nuclear power through a Behavioral Economics lens, they're likely going to be ignored by the population. Comparing risk of death against statistical correlations with air pollution isn't going to cut it. On nuclear, we're barking up the wrong tree by pushing for economic analysis of old style nuclear. We need to develop and qualify designs that are passively safe with no risk of driving people away from their property and society before the industry will be taken seriously, otherwise the only interest will be in weapons research.

roenxi 6y ago
> On nuclear, we're barking up the wrong tree by pushing for economic analysis of old style nuclear. We need to develop and qualify designs that are passively safe with ... Evidence is they figured that out in the 1980s. We haven't seen a bad meltdown from any plant built in the last 40 years.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
i_am_proteus 6y ago
Your conjecture that this research is shoddy appears to be unfounded. By using Life Quality Index, which includes Health-Adjusted Life Expectancy, the research takes into account well-being and health impacts other than death; making expected-value decisions on such a metric is a standard way to encode a nonlinear objective function without needing to use higher central moments elsewhere in the decision. Furthermore, the analysis does look at the economic impacts of relocating people from their homes and does not simply compare the statistics against air pollution. Finally, economic analysis of old-style nuclear remains incredibly relevant, given that existing "legacy" nuclear power-generating stations represent a significant fraction of total stationary power-generating capacity, and that we have witnessed political movements to replace these facilities with fossil-fuel burning plants due to fear of nuclear accident.

SagelyGuru 6y ago

Of course this is a pro-nuclear article. It is by "UK Nuclear Institute", run by UK nuclear industry. First published in their "Nuclear Future". Come on, did you really expect it to be objective?

tinus_hn 6y ago

Is there also research available on applying this method to COVID-19 and the countermeasures?

Factfull 6y ago
You're in luck. The lead author or the nuclear J-value author also applied the method to COVID-19: http://jvalue.co.uk/covid-19.php http://jvalue.co.uk/covid-19.php
- tinus_hn 6y ago
  Interesting. Unfortunately it appears the obvious choice, to try to keep the R0 value below 1, is the worst option.

apple4ever 6y ago

Many arguments for handling bad things often do not take into account the unintended consequences of that specific handling. This is one of them. The lockdowns for Coronavirus is another. I don't know which way it actual falls (lockdowns still extended life expectancy or the reduced life expectancy) but I will be curious in a couple of years what the data will show us. Some people are absolutely certain X will be the best way and either don't take into account the downsides or hand-wave away the concerns. I wish we could have actual debates to come to a solution instead of making it person or political ("YOU WANT TO KILL PEOPLE" vs "YOU DON'T CARE ABOUT PEOPLE"). But tis life I s'pose.

atlantacrackers 6y ago
This. Or, the unknowable lost opportunities that never materialized. How many relationships never formed, how many business never created, etc is unmeasurable but absolutely real and the impact from those lost opportunities will be felt in some way shape and form...
- apple4ever 6y ago
  Great point. There is a lot of lost opportunities that is probably immeasurable. I've always said there are tradeoffs to every solution. And we may not have all the information to even know how bad or good a tradeoff is. No solution is perfect.

DangitBobby 6y ago

IIRC we were incredibly lucky that Chernobyl didn't turn into a much more severe global disaster. What happens in a worst-case scenario meltdown? I know we have a very pro-nuclear crowd here, so I am ready for an onslaught of information.

grogenaut 6y ago
The real disaster scenario is that you create a fission in the universe spawning universe in which you need a grand daughter which is provided by a doubly nested knot of 2 time loops with two variations each which self reinforce and end up providing you the grand daughter but continuously cause the apocalypse by disrupting electronics and quantum mechanics across the universe.
mpweiher 6y ago
Hmm...Chernobyl pretty much was the worst case. And, like Fukushima, the impact of the reaction was much more severe than the impact of the radiation. [I looked at The WHO reports that were published every decade. Each one downgraded the estimated impact from radiation dramatically, whereas the health impact of the evacuation became more and more apparent].
- DangitBobby 6y ago
  Didn't they have to sacrifice some guys to cover some melted core in concrete to prevent much worse spread of radiation from happening? Or are you saying that didn't matter?
  - mpweiher 6y ago
    a > b ⇏ b = 0
    - DangitBobby 6y ago
      You'll have to elaborate on what a and b are

thedudeabides5 6y ago

Interesting how they call out the potential to use the J value to make public policy recommnedations but we’ve yet to really see them. I for one, would love to see some analysis of the value of lockdowns across society, i particular the prioritization of the older and more susceptible healthwise, vs the young and economically vulnerable.

Factfull 6y ago
The team already did that. http://jvalue.co.uk/covid-19.php http://jvalue.co.uk/covid-19.php
- thedudeabides5 6y ago
  Amazing, thanks for sharing!

SCAQTony 6y ago

I read the article, and looked at his bio. He is not a nuclear scientist nor a analytics professional. His previous articles are pro nuke, which is fine, but to take his words wholesale with no bibliography or links is asking too much for this reader. Most of all, he quantifies stress and exhaustion as a primary cause of death for those evacuated. How did he figure that out?

Factfull 6y ago
Do you mean the author of the article or the study? The author provides links to the study. You can also just google NREFS.
- SCAQTony 6y ago
  Yes, he did. The NREFs page was an Overview, which contained links to a lecture, background on the study, and and about thirty bibliography links. I suggest his opinions, at the very least, have asterisks and links to specific study as to how he arrived at his opinions. http://www.nrefs.org/publications/ http://www.nrefs.org/publications/
hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
Yeah, I thought this article was decent in some respects, but the larger issue was that it completely ignored human nature when it comes to risk assessment. Does he honestly think it would have worked to tell those living near Fukushima, "Don't worry, on average you'll only lose about 3 weeks of life, so don't worry about it!" Of course, very few people are hit by the "average": most people have no I'll effects while others develop cancer and die soon. Taking a purely mathematical approach to risk assessment, and using that assessment alone to guide public policy, is unwise.
- rhn_mk1 6y ago
  The analysis was related to both sides of the coin. I imagine the presentation would offer alternatives: stay and lose 3 weeks, evacuate and lose 4 weeks, so which one do you worry about more?

baix777 6y ago

There is that old saw that generals fight the last war, and this article misses the modern risk of nuclear. With the development of cheap attack drones the risk of nuclear has increased over what is was. There is no effective way to completely protect against drones. Drones have already been used in an attack against a centralized energy facility. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Abqaiq%E2%80%93Khurais_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Abqaiq%E2%80%93Khurais_at...

Integer 6y ago
There was no increase of nuclear risk because of drones, and no need to increase the protection of the powerplants, for the very simple reason that there is nothing a drone can do against meters of reinforced concrete protecting the reactor. A drone big enough to do more than scratch the paint would be classified as a cruise missile, and that risk was understood since before the first nuclear powrplant was turned on.

justatdotin 6y ago

^Fthyroid

ascat 6y ago

I was also wondering like how the article says that relocating people near Chernobyl in such great extend isn't the right thing to do (taking the 9 months life expectancy limit in mind) but I am really confused here, because when I see movies or videos showing the Chernobyl accidents they show people feeling the burning sensation, vomiting, getting extremely sick and new babies being born with ill health, which is really scary. So if people don't re locate then they will constantly have this fear, right?

AngryData 6y ago
Well obviously the people closest definitely should leave. But they eventually cleared out far more area than just the nearest town of people that were given large exposures.

neilwilson 6y ago

"As governments only have a limited amount of money to spend on all the services they provide, this means that there are not infinite funds to be spent responding to a nuclear accident; £1 spent on evacuating residents is £1 less that is spent on schools, hospitals and roads." Which is of course completely flawed. Firstly it is in monetary terms, when there is a dynamic amount of money. Pulling the furlough pay rabbit out of the hat put the myth of a fixed amount of money to bed forever. Money is an endogenous concept designed to allow all the resources of a currency area to be engaged usefully. Secondly even if you reassess it in the correct real resource terms, it assumes that there are no unemployed resources and that all current uses of resources are the most socially advantageous uses. The one thing we have learned from the Covid crisis is exactly how few people we need working to maintain the population, and how much of what we call work is an activity that is somewhat less important than your average football match.

Factfull 6y ago
If the argument is completely flawed, then that would mean there is an infinite amount of money to spend reducing very small risks. That doesn't seem right. We can't, for example, spend infinite amounts on making cars safer, because they would become unaffordable and more polluting (heavier) very quickly. We would end up with no cars. Ironically, this kind of is the path that nuclear is on: the things are made so safe that no one can afford them anymore. The opportunity cost of no nuclear is seldom brought into the argument.
- neilwilson 6y ago
  "hen that would mean there is an infinite amount of money to spend reducing very small risks." There is. But there isn't an infinite amount of stuff. And since to spend you have to have something to buy the spending stops when the real resource runs out. That's the actual limit - until you use some sort of power dynamics to start moving physical resources from their current uses. Hence the shortage of PPE at the start of the Covid crisis. All the money in the world; not enough masks to go around. There was "demand", but no "effective demand". Money is essentially inductively connected to the real economy, not directly connected. As an analogy in electrical terms money is apparent power, and the stuff it buys is real power.

ryosuke 6y ago

This article set off a number of red flags for me, and by the end I found it very hard to believe that this was done by a group of impartial researchers. And sure enough, Phillip Thomas, the lead researcher for this study, comes from a 20+ year career with the chemical and nuclear industries. I would take everything in this article with a grain of salt. http://www.bristol.ac.uk/engineering/people/philip-j-thomas/index.html http://www.bristol.ac.uk/engineering/people/philip-j-thomas/...