15 ms·

Partly I think nuclear triggers a cognitive bias where humans will tolerate ongoing low-level shittiness, but really struggle with large catastrophes, even if t

by notJim 6y ago

Partly I think nuclear triggers a cognitive bias where humans will tolerate ongoing low-level shittiness, but really struggle with large catastrophes, even if the catastrophe is far less damaging than the ongoing low-level damage. However, I think the resistance is also because the nature of the catastrophe is different. Have coal or gas plants ever created a Chernobyl-style exclusion zone? I know that mining/drilling are incredibly damaging to the environment, but theoretically work is done to mitigate/restore the areas. Of course, they're essentially turning the entire planet (or large, currently-inhabited swaths of it anyway) into an exclusion zone, but unfortunately there is another cognitive bias humans have where we under-rate long-term risks. I've been a nuclear skeptic, but gradually I'm coming around to it. At this point the main questions I have are whether it can be done cheap enough. It seems like price is really driving renewable adoption at this point, so maybe green policies should focus on subsidizing storage and nuclear instead?

khuey 6y ago
Existing already-operating nuclear plants can barely compete with cheap fracked gas in the United States. Capital investment in new nuclear is never going to pencil for a private operator without carbon taxes or enormous price drops.
- Ancapistani 6y ago
  The existing regulatory structure for nuclear power was designed for the previous generation of reactors. I don’t have deep knowledge in this area, but it’s clear to me that more modern designs have very different risk profiles, and the regulatory structure should change to reflect that. This should reduce the compliance cost, which is a very large portion of the initial and operational costs of nuclear power. In short - nukes are expensive now because they’re an extremely regulated industry. New designs are much safer and new regulation for them should therefore have much lower compliance costs.
  - burfog 6y ago
    It's not just that "The existing regulatory structure for nuclear power was designed for the previous generation of reactors." It was designed specifically to bankrupt them. It was designed to make them unprofitable. Just changing an ordinary light bulb in a nuclear power plant is all sorts of certification and paperwork. There was a ratchet effect on regulations. You could always add more, but nobody would take responsibility for removing regulations. The existence of regulations makes the reactors seem even more terrifying (because why else need the regulations) and then the resulting terror was used to justify more regulations.
    - makomk 6y ago
      The existing regulatory structure was designed specifically to stop nuclear power plants from doing things like running all the sets of redundant control and monitoring wiring through a single narrow space, filling that wiring space with flammable foam, and then testing the foam for air leaks with a candle when the plant was in operation. (This is not a hypothetical example - it actually happened in the US during the golden era of nuclear power, indeed I think it may have even been standard practice across multiple plants, and it very nearly caused a serious accident when the inevitable happened.) I know the Trump administration has tinkered with adding more flexibility to the regulations covering fire protection and safety in nuclear plants in order to try and encourage more economical new nuclear power plants with modernized designs, but it hasn't really helped because the tradeoff for being able to deviate from the rigid rules is that the companies building them have to do a bunch of work to show that their new designs achieve the same safety goals.
    - ineedasername 6y ago
      That's not quite why rigorous regulations were put in place. There have been thousands of tanker oil spills, 3,000,000 gallons of oil spilled from US pipelines each year, hundreds of coal-ash spills... In that context, Nuclear wasn't over-regulated, other power sources are severely, dangerously under-regulated. The excellent safety record of Nuclear points towards the regulations being rather effective. I will grant that those regulations are out-dated. Reactors designs are different now, and probably need to be streamlined. But rigorous regulations regarding multiple redundancies, safety checks, emergency drills, meticulous documentation of all practices & procedures performed... these things shouldn't go away.
- belorn 6y ago
  Instead of a carbon tax, the government should simply treat gas similar to what many governments did before to nuclear. Forbid the construction of new ones, and let the planned life expectancy of existing plants be final. When they did that to nuclear it worked wonders in getting people to invest. After all, people then knew that there would be vacant spots in the energy market at very predictable dates. Telling a market that in X year there will be Y amount of demand not being fulfilled, and a main competitor gone, and someone will want to fill it. The price will be based on how cheap the non-fossil fueled alternatives can be made when competing against each other.
petersellers 6y ago
> However, I think the resistance is also because the nature of the catastrophe is different. Have coal or gas plants ever created a Chernobyl-style exclusion zone? Indirectly, yes. I think that rising sea levels due to climate change effectively does the same thing by making once-habitable coastal areas effectively uninhabitable.
donarb 6y ago
Burning coal creates fly ash which needs to be stored somewhere, usually large ponds near the power plant. In Tennessee in 2008 a dike ruptured and released 1.1 billion gallons of coal fly ash slurry that flowed into nearby rivers that drained into the Tennessee River. No-one was injured in the initial spill, but people contracted to clean it up developed cancers from being exposed to the toxic coal ash, 300 people died within 10 years after the accident. It is considered the largest industrial spill in US history. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingston_Fossil_Plant_coal_fly_ash_slurry_spill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingston_Fossil_Plant_coal_fly...
- mobilefriendly 6y ago
  Worth noting that this power plant was run by an arm of the United States government.
  - losteric 6y ago
    Why is that worth noting? I feel like you're being intentionally ambiguous by leaving unstated implications. Do you believe public operation had an impact on safety? Better or worse, and based on what evidence? If neither, how is your statement relevant to the discussion?
    - Aerroon 6y ago
      I don't know why the parent poster brought it up, but it does seem relevant to me. The government isn't going after quick profits, so you can't blame it on that. You might be able to blame profits if it had been a private corporation though.
      - skissane 6y ago
        The public and private sectors are, in principle, equally capable of incompetence; the causes tend to be somewhat different, but the outcome can be the same.
      - TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
cigaaa 6y ago
I think you have a point that the drama of evacuating a city sears nuclear disasters into our minds as uniquely damaging. At the same time, single mining disasters have caused hundreds of deaths many times over the last century. Also, black lung killed 25,000 people in 2013 alone. The death toll from the coal industry, even in very immediate, direct terms, is still higher than nuclear.
asveikau 6y ago
Well said. I had a small version of this debate with someone I know who posts political stuff on FB, who pointed out in absolutist fashion that the poor failure modes of nuclear and the regular emissions from dirtier sources are both bad, and we need something without either downside. Literally true but has a bit of "perfect as the enemy of the good" to it. I know absolutely nothing about the challenges involved in updating existing infrastructure to a different source but it seems like an immense challenge, and not at all black and white.
akiselev 6y ago
Has the Gulf of Mexico recovered from deepwater horizon? How many ecosystems were lost permanently? Animals living in the exclusion zone have a life expectancy 30% lower than those in the surrounding area (based on the last paper I read about the topic) so it's not an acceptable risk for humans but it's still peanuts compared to the damage that single spill did to the Gulf ecosystem. It's an extension of the cognitive bias you point out. Just because we humans find the area too risky to inhabit afterwards doesn't mean that the damage made a meaningful impact on the survivability of our planet.
andrewflnr 6y ago
Ongoing shittiness is predictable and easy to understand. We've survived so far, surely we can survive if it gets just a little worse. Big disasters are unpredictable and hard to understand. One of those could end the world at any time. AFAICT that's the whole reason people are more afraid of them.
- hehebbssjj 6y ago
  > Big disasters are unpredictable and hard to understand. One of those could end the world at any time. In the context of nuclear reactors, Fukushima and Chernobyl are pretty much the worst case scenario. A large nuclear disaster is very disruptive to the immediate area but it would not "end the world" in any sense.
  - sudosysgen 6y ago
    Global warming, however, can.
    - imtringued 6y ago
      I'm pessimistic but the only way that can end the world is if we really want to. It would be very similar to a nuclear war. At some point you have caused so much damage there is no point in further fighting. The only reason why the world would end at that point is that the remaining people want it to end at all costs.
  - andrewflnr 6y ago
    I should have been clear that I was describing perception, not reality. :)
  - emiliobumachar 6y ago
    It's weird to see these two accidents grouped like that, given how they differed in severity.
    - hehebbssjj 6y ago
ouid 6y ago
I would say that Florida is essentially a Chernobyl style exclusion zone, except that Chernobyl is actually a pretty nice place now.
tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago
Another part is that people are distrustful, especially when previous promises were broken, and as far as I know, before each major accident (Chernobyl, Fukushima) happened, it was said that such an accident can never happen. That brings into doubt any promise of future safety.
- fomine3 6y ago
  never say never, seriously.
- opo 6y ago
  No one except the Soviet Union said the Chernobyl style plants were reasonable designs. That kind of design would have been illegal to build anywhere else in the world. No one ever promised that there would never be a nuclear accident - that would be unrealistic for any power source. But historically nuclear power has been safer than all the alternatives that were available. (For example, nuclear power has saved hundreds of thousands if not millions of lives that would have been lost if coal plants had been built instead.)
counters 6y ago
You hit on a really important point here, the notion of "dread risk"[1]. The public tends to poorly characterize and amortize the different degrees of risk associated with different activities, due to biases in how we perceive the risk of extreme or rare events. Simply running the numbers, it's far more likely for the average American to die in a car accident (or even, probably a plane accident, even given how rare they are!) than for the same person to ever be impacted by a nuclear meltdown, or a terrorist attack, etc. And yet, NIMBY-ism runs rampant while there are quite active political voices which argue against mandating seatbelts (I guess less so in the year 2020), helmets for motorcyclists, etc. [1]: Slovic, 1987. https://science.sciencemag.org/content/236/4799/280 https://science.sciencemag.org/content/236/4799/280
Aerroon 6y ago
>Partly I think nuclear triggers a cognitive bias where humans will tolerate ongoing low-level shittiness, but really struggle with large catastrophes, even if the catastrophe is far less damaging than the ongoing low-level damage. How come hydroelectric dams don't get treated this way? In 2019 a dam in Brazil had a catastrophic failure that cost the lives of 270 people. In 2019! In 1975 a dam failed in China and the death toll is estimated between 80,000 and 240,000. All of this ignores the ecosystem destruction that building a dam and flooding a valley does. All of that plant life will die and the carbon goes back into the cycle. Yet I don't see hydroelectric dams getting nearly as much push back from activists. Why?
- leshenka 6y ago
  Most people don't live near downstream of hydros, to them water is just water, but nuclear is ~~scary~~ stuff
- dredmorbius 6y ago
  Hydro disasters have been large, but are tangible/sensible, immediate, and resolve relatively quickly (days for rescue, months for recovery, possibly a few years for rebuilding). Banqiao is now home to 17 million people (after 40 years, largely achieved within a decade or so). Meantime, Chernobyl still hasn't seen complete containment (after 34 years), and Fukushima hasn't begun initial cleanup (after 9 years). The two nuclear sites will be obligatory nature preserves for centuries, containing still-lethal risks. The specific failings at Banqiao were virtually all managerial and political, not technical; poor engineering, inadequate safety provisions, underestimated environmental and operational risks, poor contingency planning, unforseen perfect storm (literally), severed communications, insufficient warnings, no community disaster preparation, inadequate rescue and recovery. None of these failures are specific to hydro, all apply to nuclear power, and as non-engineering problems there is no technical fix that makes them go away. In Banqiao, about 25,000 people died in the immediate innundation. Another 150,000 died in the following weeks of starvation and disease. There's no great mystery as to how such deaths are avoided: floodwaters are mitigated by high ground and evacuation centres; starvation and disease by food, water, and medical stocks; and rescue & recovery by trained teams and equipment. Reestablishment of communications, transport, and utilities is critical. China at the time was desperately poor, politically dysfunctional, and gambled hugely on risk and lost. Other major hydro disasters tend to share these traits. As do many regions looking to nuclear power for salvation. (I've mentioned Banqiao several times over the years on HN. It's a terrifying but educational tragedy. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adredmorbius%20banqiao&sort=byPopularity&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... Wikipedia article recommended: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam))
cm2187 6y ago
But also can you point to a WW1 plane and say "you see, planes are unsafe"? Chernobyl was designed in the early days of nuclear energy.
Spooky23 6y ago
Gas no, but coal and other burning based fuels create similar hazards, in addition to nasty waste products and mining related pollution. Coal spreads radioactive ash and various noxious chemicals. In my area of the country, many lakes were “killed” by coal related pollution from the Midwest in the 70s and 80s, for example. Nuclear waste disposal is a real issue that needs to be deal with, but overall the technology has potential to be much better than it is today.
at-fates-hands 6y ago
>> it seems like price is really driving renewable adoption at this point. Another article fresh from Wired about the aging solar panel mess and the toxic waste they're leaving behind: Solar panels are an increasingly important source of renewable power that will play an essential role in fighting climate change. They are also complex pieces of technology that become big, bulky sheets of electronic waste at the end of their lives—and right now, most of the world doesn’t have a plan for dealing with that. But we’ll need to develop one soon, because the solar e-waste glut is coming. By 2050, the International Renewable Energy Agency projects that up to 78 million metric tons of solar panels will have reached the end of their life, and that the world will be generating about 6 million metric tons of new solar e-waste annually. While the latter number is a small fraction of the total e-waste humanity produces each year, standard electronics recycling methods don’t cut it for solar panels. Recovering the most valuable materials from one, including silver and silicon, requires bespoke recycling solutions. And if we fail to develop those solutions along with policies that support their widespread adoption, we already know what will happen. https://www.wired.com/story/solar-panels-are-starting-to-die-leaving-behind-toxic-trash/ https://www.wired.com/story/solar-panels-are-starting-to-die... People seem to think solar and wind and electric power don't come with equally damaging aspects to the environment. Remember in the 1970's and 80's when people thought plastic was the greatest thing on earth? We can save the trees now!! People started using plastic for everything. People stopped using paper bags at grocery stores. People opted for Tupperware instead of glass bowls and containers and on and on. We all thought we were saving the world by using plastic for everything. Apparently we were dead wrong about plastic and not look at what we've sown? Huge plastic floating islands in the oceans. Plastic debris washing ashore on distant islands, killing the entire ecosystems. Price is all good and fine, but the long term ramifications of renewable energy we still don't know about.
- KozmoNau7 6y ago
  The pollution from solar panels is absolutely miniscule compared to the pollution produced by fossil fuel power. By a gigantic margin.
throwaway0a5e 6y ago
>Have coal or gas plants ever created a Chernobyl-style exclusion zone? Coal extraction has created far more land where you can't drink the well water and probably would be unwise to eat any plants or animals raised on the land.
BurningFrog 6y ago
I think it's even simpler: People tie nuclear power to nuclear bombs. They think, consciously or subconsciously, that they're some kind of slowed down nuclear explosions, and one day there will be a mushroom cloud turning the area into glass. Yeah, the experts say it can't happen, but how do we know they're not arrogant Jurassic Park style fools?
dragontamer 6y ago
> Have coal or gas plants ever created a Chernobyl-style exclusion zone? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia_mine_fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia_mine_fire Maybe not a Chernobyl-style exclusion zone, but its devastating a town and the fire will be ongoing for 250-years.
- Technetium 6y ago
  It definitely seems like most people are dismissive of this point because they think technology has somehow advanced to the point where we will never be able to have accidents.
  - dragontamer 6y ago
    I don't think Coal Seam fires are "dismissed". They're common enough that the risks are known to coal-towns. But they're uncommon enough that most people don't seem to know about them. There are many coal-seam fires across the world, all of which take decades (or centuries) before the fires are expected to burn out. In contrast, nuclear disasters are so rare that pretty much every nuclear disaster is known by everyone. Nuclear disasters are your "black swan" event, so to speak. I doubt there's any conspiracy, or detractors to the coal-seam fires. Its just not a very well known fact. ---------- There are literally hundreds of coal seam fires around the world right now. Small enough to be obscure, large enough to not catch the attention of anybody looking for novelties. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal-seam_fire#List_of_mine_fires https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal-seam_fire#List_of_mine_fi...
zajio1am 6y ago
> Have coal or gas plants ever created a Chernobyl-style exclusion zone? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia_mine_fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia_mine_fire
dvsfish 6y ago
> Partly I think nuclear triggers a cognitive bias where humans will tolerate ongoing low-level shittiness, but really struggle with large catastrophes, even if the catastrophe is far less damaging than the ongoing low-level damage. Much like how low level corruption can be absolutely devastating to a democracy over time versus a high profile scandal or two which can be dealt with with urgency and clearer solutions.
devin 6y ago
Apparently it's all in the marketing. See: the current US response to Covid-19.
paulmd 6y ago
Sure. Centralia PA is now uninhabitable because of coal mining and on a smaller scale you’ve got things like the TVA fly ash spill that caused widespread environmental damage.

by notJim 6y ago

khuey 6y ago

Existing already-operating nuclear plants can barely compete with cheap fracked gas in the United States. Capital investment in new nuclear is never going to pencil for a private operator without carbon taxes or enormous price drops.

Ancapistani 6y ago
The existing regulatory structure for nuclear power was designed for the previous generation of reactors. I don’t have deep knowledge in this area, but it’s clear to me that more modern designs have very different risk profiles, and the regulatory structure should change to reflect that. This should reduce the compliance cost, which is a very large portion of the initial and operational costs of nuclear power. In short - nukes are expensive now because they’re an extremely regulated industry. New designs are much safer and new regulation for them should therefore have much lower compliance costs.
- burfog 6y ago
  It's not just that "The existing regulatory structure for nuclear power was designed for the previous generation of reactors." It was designed specifically to bankrupt them. It was designed to make them unprofitable. Just changing an ordinary light bulb in a nuclear power plant is all sorts of certification and paperwork. There was a ratchet effect on regulations. You could always add more, but nobody would take responsibility for removing regulations. The existence of regulations makes the reactors seem even more terrifying (because why else need the regulations) and then the resulting terror was used to justify more regulations.
  - makomk 6y ago
    The existing regulatory structure was designed specifically to stop nuclear power plants from doing things like running all the sets of redundant control and monitoring wiring through a single narrow space, filling that wiring space with flammable foam, and then testing the foam for air leaks with a candle when the plant was in operation. (This is not a hypothetical example - it actually happened in the US during the golden era of nuclear power, indeed I think it may have even been standard practice across multiple plants, and it very nearly caused a serious accident when the inevitable happened.) I know the Trump administration has tinkered with adding more flexibility to the regulations covering fire protection and safety in nuclear plants in order to try and encourage more economical new nuclear power plants with modernized designs, but it hasn't really helped because the tradeoff for being able to deviate from the rigid rules is that the companies building them have to do a bunch of work to show that their new designs achieve the same safety goals.
  - ineedasername 6y ago
    That's not quite why rigorous regulations were put in place. There have been thousands of tanker oil spills, 3,000,000 gallons of oil spilled from US pipelines each year, hundreds of coal-ash spills... In that context, Nuclear wasn't over-regulated, other power sources are severely, dangerously under-regulated. The excellent safety record of Nuclear points towards the regulations being rather effective. I will grant that those regulations are out-dated. Reactors designs are different now, and probably need to be streamlined. But rigorous regulations regarding multiple redundancies, safety checks, emergency drills, meticulous documentation of all practices & procedures performed... these things shouldn't go away.
belorn 6y ago
Instead of a carbon tax, the government should simply treat gas similar to what many governments did before to nuclear. Forbid the construction of new ones, and let the planned life expectancy of existing plants be final. When they did that to nuclear it worked wonders in getting people to invest. After all, people then knew that there would be vacant spots in the energy market at very predictable dates. Telling a market that in X year there will be Y amount of demand not being fulfilled, and a main competitor gone, and someone will want to fill it. The price will be based on how cheap the non-fossil fueled alternatives can be made when competing against each other.

petersellers 6y ago

> However, I think the resistance is also because the nature of the catastrophe is different. Have coal or gas plants ever created a Chernobyl-style exclusion zone? Indirectly, yes. I think that rising sea levels due to climate change effectively does the same thing by making once-habitable coastal areas effectively uninhabitable.

donarb 6y ago

Burning coal creates fly ash which needs to be stored somewhere, usually large ponds near the power plant. In Tennessee in 2008 a dike ruptured and released 1.1 billion gallons of coal fly ash slurry that flowed into nearby rivers that drained into the Tennessee River. No-one was injured in the initial spill, but people contracted to clean it up developed cancers from being exposed to the toxic coal ash, 300 people died within 10 years after the accident. It is considered the largest industrial spill in US history. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingston_Fossil_Plant_coal_fly_ash_slurry_spill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingston_Fossil_Plant_coal_fly...

mobilefriendly 6y ago
Worth noting that this power plant was run by an arm of the United States government.
- losteric 6y ago
  Why is that worth noting? I feel like you're being intentionally ambiguous by leaving unstated implications. Do you believe public operation had an impact on safety? Better or worse, and based on what evidence? If neither, how is your statement relevant to the discussion?
  - Aerroon 6y ago
    I don't know why the parent poster brought it up, but it does seem relevant to me. The government isn't going after quick profits, so you can't blame it on that. You might be able to blame profits if it had been a private corporation though.
    - skissane 6y ago
      The public and private sectors are, in principle, equally capable of incompetence; the causes tend to be somewhat different, but the outcome can be the same.
    - TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago

cigaaa 6y ago

I think you have a point that the drama of evacuating a city sears nuclear disasters into our minds as uniquely damaging. At the same time, single mining disasters have caused hundreds of deaths many times over the last century. Also, black lung killed 25,000 people in 2013 alone. The death toll from the coal industry, even in very immediate, direct terms, is still higher than nuclear.

asveikau 6y ago

Well said. I had a small version of this debate with someone I know who posts political stuff on FB, who pointed out in absolutist fashion that the poor failure modes of nuclear and the regular emissions from dirtier sources are both bad, and we need something without either downside. Literally true but has a bit of "perfect as the enemy of the good" to it. I know absolutely nothing about the challenges involved in updating existing infrastructure to a different source but it seems like an immense challenge, and not at all black and white.

akiselev 6y ago

Has the Gulf of Mexico recovered from deepwater horizon? How many ecosystems were lost permanently? Animals living in the exclusion zone have a life expectancy 30% lower than those in the surrounding area (based on the last paper I read about the topic) so it's not an acceptable risk for humans but it's still peanuts compared to the damage that single spill did to the Gulf ecosystem. It's an extension of the cognitive bias you point out. Just because we humans find the area too risky to inhabit afterwards doesn't mean that the damage made a meaningful impact on the survivability of our planet.

andrewflnr 6y ago

Ongoing shittiness is predictable and easy to understand. We've survived so far, surely we can survive if it gets just a little worse. Big disasters are unpredictable and hard to understand. One of those could end the world at any time. AFAICT that's the whole reason people are more afraid of them.

hehebbssjj 6y ago
> Big disasters are unpredictable and hard to understand. One of those could end the world at any time. In the context of nuclear reactors, Fukushima and Chernobyl are pretty much the worst case scenario. A large nuclear disaster is very disruptive to the immediate area but it would not "end the world" in any sense.
- sudosysgen 6y ago
  Global warming, however, can.
  - imtringued 6y ago
    I'm pessimistic but the only way that can end the world is if we really want to. It would be very similar to a nuclear war. At some point you have caused so much damage there is no point in further fighting. The only reason why the world would end at that point is that the remaining people want it to end at all costs.
- andrewflnr 6y ago
  I should have been clear that I was describing perception, not reality. :)
- emiliobumachar 6y ago
  It's weird to see these two accidents grouped like that, given how they differed in severity.
  - hehebbssjj 6y ago

ouid 6y ago

I would say that Florida is essentially a Chernobyl style exclusion zone, except that Chernobyl is actually a pretty nice place now.

tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago

Another part is that people are distrustful, especially when previous promises were broken, and as far as I know, before each major accident (Chernobyl, Fukushima) happened, it was said that such an accident can never happen. That brings into doubt any promise of future safety.

fomine3 6y ago
never say never, seriously.
opo 6y ago
No one except the Soviet Union said the Chernobyl style plants were reasonable designs. That kind of design would have been illegal to build anywhere else in the world. No one ever promised that there would never be a nuclear accident - that would be unrealistic for any power source. But historically nuclear power has been safer than all the alternatives that were available. (For example, nuclear power has saved hundreds of thousands if not millions of lives that would have been lost if coal plants had been built instead.)

counters 6y ago

You hit on a really important point here, the notion of "dread risk"[1]. The public tends to poorly characterize and amortize the different degrees of risk associated with different activities, due to biases in how we perceive the risk of extreme or rare events. Simply running the numbers, it's far more likely for the average American to die in a car accident (or even, probably a plane accident, even given how rare they are!) than for the same person to ever be impacted by a nuclear meltdown, or a terrorist attack, etc. And yet, NIMBY-ism runs rampant while there are quite active political voices which argue against mandating seatbelts (I guess less so in the year 2020), helmets for motorcyclists, etc. [1]: Slovic, 1987. https://science.sciencemag.org/content/236/4799/280 https://science.sciencemag.org/content/236/4799/280

Aerroon 6y ago

>Partly I think nuclear triggers a cognitive bias where humans will tolerate ongoing low-level shittiness, but really struggle with large catastrophes, even if the catastrophe is far less damaging than the ongoing low-level damage. How come hydroelectric dams don't get treated this way? In 2019 a dam in Brazil had a catastrophic failure that cost the lives of 270 people. In 2019! In 1975 a dam failed in China and the death toll is estimated between 80,000 and 240,000. All of this ignores the ecosystem destruction that building a dam and flooding a valley does. All of that plant life will die and the carbon goes back into the cycle. Yet I don't see hydroelectric dams getting nearly as much push back from activists. Why?

leshenka 6y ago
Most people don't live near downstream of hydros, to them water is just water, but nuclear is ~~scary~~ stuff
dredmorbius 6y ago
Hydro disasters have been large, but are tangible/sensible, immediate, and resolve relatively quickly (days for rescue, months for recovery, possibly a few years for rebuilding). Banqiao is now home to 17 million people (after 40 years, largely achieved within a decade or so). Meantime, Chernobyl still hasn't seen complete containment (after 34 years), and Fukushima hasn't begun initial cleanup (after 9 years). The two nuclear sites will be obligatory nature preserves for centuries, containing still-lethal risks. The specific failings at Banqiao were virtually all managerial and political, not technical; poor engineering, inadequate safety provisions, underestimated environmental and operational risks, poor contingency planning, unforseen perfect storm (literally), severed communications, insufficient warnings, no community disaster preparation, inadequate rescue and recovery. None of these failures are specific to hydro, all apply to nuclear power, and as non-engineering problems there is no technical fix that makes them go away. In Banqiao, about 25,000 people died in the immediate innundation. Another 150,000 died in the following weeks of starvation and disease. There's no great mystery as to how such deaths are avoided: floodwaters are mitigated by high ground and evacuation centres; starvation and disease by food, water, and medical stocks; and rescue & recovery by trained teams and equipment. Reestablishment of communications, transport, and utilities is critical. China at the time was desperately poor, politically dysfunctional, and gambled hugely on risk and lost. Other major hydro disasters tend to share these traits. As do many regions looking to nuclear power for salvation. (I've mentioned Banqiao several times over the years on HN. It's a terrifying but educational tragedy. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adredmorbius%20banqiao&sort=byPopularity&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... Wikipedia article recommended: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam))

cm2187 6y ago

But also can you point to a WW1 plane and say "you see, planes are unsafe"? Chernobyl was designed in the early days of nuclear energy.

Spooky23 6y ago

Gas no, but coal and other burning based fuels create similar hazards, in addition to nasty waste products and mining related pollution. Coal spreads radioactive ash and various noxious chemicals. In my area of the country, many lakes were “killed” by coal related pollution from the Midwest in the 70s and 80s, for example. Nuclear waste disposal is a real issue that needs to be deal with, but overall the technology has potential to be much better than it is today.

at-fates-hands 6y ago

>> it seems like price is really driving renewable adoption at this point. Another article fresh from Wired about the aging solar panel mess and the toxic waste they're leaving behind: Solar panels are an increasingly important source of renewable power that will play an essential role in fighting climate change. They are also complex pieces of technology that become big, bulky sheets of electronic waste at the end of their lives—and right now, most of the world doesn’t have a plan for dealing with that. But we’ll need to develop one soon, because the solar e-waste glut is coming. By 2050, the International Renewable Energy Agency projects that up to 78 million metric tons of solar panels will have reached the end of their life, and that the world will be generating about 6 million metric tons of new solar e-waste annually. While the latter number is a small fraction of the total e-waste humanity produces each year, standard electronics recycling methods don’t cut it for solar panels. Recovering the most valuable materials from one, including silver and silicon, requires bespoke recycling solutions. And if we fail to develop those solutions along with policies that support their widespread adoption, we already know what will happen. https://www.wired.com/story/solar-panels-are-starting-to-die-leaving-behind-toxic-trash/ https://www.wired.com/story/solar-panels-are-starting-to-die... People seem to think solar and wind and electric power don't come with equally damaging aspects to the environment. Remember in the 1970's and 80's when people thought plastic was the greatest thing on earth? We can save the trees now!! People started using plastic for everything. People stopped using paper bags at grocery stores. People opted for Tupperware instead of glass bowls and containers and on and on. We all thought we were saving the world by using plastic for everything. Apparently we were dead wrong about plastic and not look at what we've sown? Huge plastic floating islands in the oceans. Plastic debris washing ashore on distant islands, killing the entire ecosystems. Price is all good and fine, but the long term ramifications of renewable energy we still don't know about.

KozmoNau7 6y ago
The pollution from solar panels is absolutely miniscule compared to the pollution produced by fossil fuel power. By a gigantic margin.

throwaway0a5e 6y ago

>Have coal or gas plants ever created a Chernobyl-style exclusion zone? Coal extraction has created far more land where you can't drink the well water and probably would be unwise to eat any plants or animals raised on the land.

BurningFrog 6y ago

I think it's even simpler: People tie nuclear power to nuclear bombs. They think, consciously or subconsciously, that they're some kind of slowed down nuclear explosions, and one day there will be a mushroom cloud turning the area into glass. Yeah, the experts say it can't happen, but how do we know they're not arrogant Jurassic Park style fools?

dragontamer 6y ago

> Have coal or gas plants ever created a Chernobyl-style exclusion zone? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia_mine_fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia_mine_fire Maybe not a Chernobyl-style exclusion zone, but its devastating a town and the fire will be ongoing for 250-years.

Technetium 6y ago
It definitely seems like most people are dismissive of this point because they think technology has somehow advanced to the point where we will never be able to have accidents.
- dragontamer 6y ago
  I don't think Coal Seam fires are "dismissed". They're common enough that the risks are known to coal-towns. But they're uncommon enough that most people don't seem to know about them. There are many coal-seam fires across the world, all of which take decades (or centuries) before the fires are expected to burn out. In contrast, nuclear disasters are so rare that pretty much every nuclear disaster is known by everyone. Nuclear disasters are your "black swan" event, so to speak. I doubt there's any conspiracy, or detractors to the coal-seam fires. Its just not a very well known fact. ---------- There are literally hundreds of coal seam fires around the world right now. Small enough to be obscure, large enough to not catch the attention of anybody looking for novelties. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal-seam_fire#List_of_mine_fires https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal-seam_fire#List_of_mine_fi...

zajio1am 6y ago

> Have coal or gas plants ever created a Chernobyl-style exclusion zone? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia_mine_fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia_mine_fire

dvsfish 6y ago

> Partly I think nuclear triggers a cognitive bias where humans will tolerate ongoing low-level shittiness, but really struggle with large catastrophes, even if the catastrophe is far less damaging than the ongoing low-level damage. Much like how low level corruption can be absolutely devastating to a democracy over time versus a high profile scandal or two which can be dealt with with urgency and clearer solutions.

devin 6y ago

Apparently it's all in the marketing. See: the current US response to Covid-19.

paulmd 6y ago

Sure. Centralia PA is now uninhabitable because of coal mining and on a smaller scale you’ve got things like the TVA fly ash spill that caused widespread environmental damage.