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Nuclear was also promoted as save decades before Chernobyl and Fukushima by the lobbies. So is there a guarantee that it is safe this time around?
by tscherno 5y ago
Nuclear was also promoted as save decades before Chernobyl and Fukushima by the lobbies. So is there a guarantee that it is safe this time around?
- fsflover 5y agoIt is statistically safer than almost anything even if you take Chernobyl and Fukushima into account.
- tscherno 5y agoSure, I just wanted to point out the sentiment which I feel most have. Smoking was also scientifically safe in the 70s.
- parineum 5y agoThe point is that there was never a time where Nuclear became unsafe. It was never a lie. The reverse of your analogy would be if cigarettes were actually good for you but we banned them because two people died of lung cancer.
- Cybiote 5y agoThat's not accurate. By the 1960s and 70s, the scientific consensus [1] not only strongly believed smoking was a causal factor in lung cancer but also knew it contained radioactive isotopes of Polonium (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2509609/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2509609/) and lead. [1] https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/sgr/history/index.htm https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/sgr/history/inde...
- Gwypaas 5y agoIs that why it is impossible to insure a nuclear power plant on the private market?
- initplus 5y agoIf fossil fuel power plants were legally responsible for harm caused by their carbon emissions, they would also be impossible to insure.
- Gwypaas 5y agoWho compares against fossil plants nowadays? Except wanting to put a carbon tax on them to account for that issue you mention. Truly, it's new built nuclear compared compared to renewables, storage and long-distance distance transmission. Spatial and temporal arbitrage of energy.
- loeg 5y agoGermany is shutting down nuclear and replacing it with coal and gas. The comparison to fossil fuel is incredibly apt.
- Gwypaas 5y agoGoing by the German energy usage there's no replacement using fossil plants being done. It's all displaced by cheaper renewables, especially coal and old nuclear plants. https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/gallery_image/public/paragraphs/images/fig2-gross-power-production-germany-1990-2020.png?itok=xVUsZl3M https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/g...
- germandiago 5y agoThis is a silly move IMHO. The mix to go for should be clean + backup nuclear.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Nasrudith 5y agoBeing impossible to insure is related more to a high degree of synchronization of risk pools than overall danger of death. Death rates are averages - it is possible that one person dying per time period is rate-equivalent to the whole town dying at once in a once-in-a-tens-of-millenia event. But the risk exposure in that event is quite different. You can get life insurance/death benefits as a mercenary or even as a centarian. It will be expensive because of the high risk of payout but you can get it. Because while it is probable that you will cack it from being so damn old/being a combatant in unstable regions with lesser support it is extremely unlikely every mercenary or centarian they have insured will die at once.
- red_trumpet 5y agoWhat do you mean by "safer"? Less accidents compared to eg coal plants? No exploding coal plant will render a whole region unlivable for >30 years. Both happened at Tschernobyl and Fukushima.
- rich_sasha 5y agoAreas around coal power plants can exceed radioactivity limits for nuclear power plants, due to trace elements in the soot landing back down. Never mind all the other stuff. That’s pretty nasty, I’d rather be close to a nuclear power plant.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- germandiago 5y agoI did not know this.
- sigmoid10 5y agoCoal plants might render the entire planet unlivable within the next century. When weighed against the theoretical worst case impact of climate collapse, the theoretical worst case impact for nuclear power (that is, every single plant exploding and contaminating a 30 mile radius) is still vanishing by comparison.
- itsangaris 5y agoCheckout deaths per capita statistics https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-production-per-twh https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-p...
- mdavidn 5y agoCoal plants release ash into the air and groundwater continuously, in the course of normal operation. This ash is around five times more radioactive than soil.
- UnFleshedOne 5y ago
- germandiago 5y agoNuclear energy fear reminds me of people that are afraid of planes. It is like if there is a crash it is going to be very bad. But it is also true that your chances to have a crash in a car is just higher.
- freemint 5y agoThe number of people displaced by coal is lower. Nuclear does well on deaths, yes.
- germandiago 5y agoWe were talking about deaths or displaced in the first place? By a measure of deaths, nuclear energy is very safe.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Ericson2314 5y agoTo a first approximation, Fukushima did not cause any harm. I view the plant iself as a success story, given ancient reactor design etc. etc. I think a lot of half-paying-attention people confused the reactor and the tsunami. Of course the news coverage and in-hindsight-unnecessary evacuation didn't help either.
- step21 5y ago"did not cause any harm" - for a very loose defintion of harm. Sure it could have been much worse. But enough ground and water was contaminated, and much more will be in the future when they run out of storage.
- Ericson2314 5y agoAnd how much ground water is contaminated with fossil fuel extraction?
- nsonha 5y agoRadio contamination is at a different level
- bananabreakfast 5y agoand who has actually been directly affected by this? I think it's your definition of harm that is too loose and overly inclusive. Your average oil spill does 100x more damage to the ecosystem and economy than fukushima
- rob74 5y agoSo Fukushima did no harm, because the 100 000 people who had to be evacuated were not harmed?
- Ericson2314 5y agoThey didn't need to be evacuated, or at least not so quickly --- at least in hindsight. I'm trying to compromise a bit with the "at least"s :)
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- goodpoint 5y agoIt's not just a matter of safety of the plans themselves. You need safety against external threats e.g. a nuclear plant can be targeted during war or by terrorists You need safety around illegal dumping https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste#Illegal_dumping https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste#Illegal_dump... Also, extremely centralized energy production creates political risks (coups, corruption, hiding mismanagement) Nuclear proliferation risk. Investment risk: solar keeps getting cheaper and nuclear has very long ROI that might grow indefinitely
- themaninthedark 5y agoYou have the same considerations with coal waste as well. >https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/business/article248745190.html https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/business/article24874... Look at how many coal ash spills there have been...and those come with nice forever things like mercury.
- armada651 5y agoAt least two of those points don't hold when you're talking about existing plants though. Germany already hosts nuclear weapons courtesy of the US, so where's the proliferation risk from nuclear power? And there's nothing worse for ROI than shutting down the plant. For the other points I'd say that I'd rather build solar to replace coal plants first before replacing nuclear plants.
- goodpoint 5y ago> Germany already hosts nuclear weapons courtesy of the US, so where's the proliferation risk? Proliferation is not a binary 1 or 0. > For the other points I'd say that I'd rather build solar to replace coal plants first before replacing nuclear plants. That's a false dichotomy.
- armada651 5y ago> Proliferation is not a binary 1 or 0. I think climate change poses a bigger existential risk than the nuclear proliferation risk from Germany continuing the nuclear energy production they're already doing. > That's a false dichotomy. Sure we can do both, but the reality is we're not doing both. The last time Germany closed its nuclear plants they were replaced by coal plants.
- unchocked 5y agoThere are no guarantees. You need to compare vs. the safety of burning coal, for the climate and for human health. You need to compare it with how sure you are that renewables & storage will satisfy our energy needs tomorrow, or the safety of not having enough energy to go around. That said, nuclear is pretty safe. I would live next door to a nuclear power plant, and if I did I would be likelier to die slipping in the shower.
- 0xbadcafebee 5y ago> So is there a guarantee A guarantee doesn't mean that the thing being guaranteed won't happen. A guarantee is a promise to pay someone back - when, not if - the thing you promised doesn't work. Anyone who gives you a guarantee has already saved up enough money to pay you off when the thing fails. > that it is safe Safe compared to what? People go insane about airline safety whenever one plane crashes, even though commercial passenger airplanes are 1000x safer than any other form of transportation. You could have a plane bombed, hijacked, whatever, every single day, for 10 years, and would still be 1000x safer than any other form of transport. People wouldn't think it was safe, though, because when it does fail, it fails spectacularly. And that's the mentality of an anti-nuclear person. Who cares that the outcomes are almost always better? The one time it's not better is really scary, so I don't want it in my back yard.
- thow-01187 5y agoControversial take, but even if we had a Fukushima-level disaster every 10 years, and just dump nuclear waste into the ocean (which sounds cavalier and hand-wavy, but we've been doing that for decades no discernible ill effect) - nuclear would still be a better option than coal for base load
- himinlomax 5y agoFukushima killed one (1). In the context of a massive natural disaster that killed 10000. Three Miles Island happened years before Chernobyl and killed no one, because it wasn't a dodgy, duct-taped together soviet piece of junk. In the last 30 years, the only nuclear power accident was Fukushima and again, caused just one victim. Fossil fuel depot fires have killed thousands more in that time.
- freemint 5y agobecause 0.2 million people were displaced.
- himinlomax 5y ago... unnecessarily, because the government freaked out.