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> In a perfect world fission power could be used safely, the real world isn't perfect, and the pro-nuclear crowds main argument seems to be to go around saying

> In a perfect world fission power could be used safely, the real world isn't perfect, and the pro-nuclear crowds main argument seems to be to go around saying "we're actually perfect now". This isn’t a criticism of nuclear power; it’s a criticism of industrial civilization and technological progress. You can make the exact same point about coal mining, lithium mining, power grids, hell, even campfires if you wanted to. If I went and dug up horror stories about what happened before we had an electrical code and used those horror stories to argue that we shouldn’t have electricity inside our homes, it would be perfectly reasonable to say, “that’s why we have electrical codes”. And I don’t think it would be a strong counter for me to say, “but the electrical code isn’t perfect”.

gpm 5y ago
It's not a criticism of all technological progress, it's a criticism of technology where you cannot accept a single worst case failure, as is the case with nuclear power plants and very little else. If an electrical fault in your house meant killings 10s or hundreds of millions of people, instead of costing you a home (and if you're really unlucky single digit numbers of lives) we'd be foolish to allow it. As it turns out, electrical faults in a house only burns down the house, not the continent.
- philwelch 5y ago
  A nuclear accident isn’t going to kill tens or hundreds of millions of people. Nuclear bombs—and fusion bombs at that—deployed in large numbers, would do that. But a single nuclear accident isn’t anywhere near the same scale as a full scale nuclear strike. Chernobyl killed tens of people. And Chernobyl was the “shitty construction with no electrical codes” of nuclear power plants. Fukushima killed like one person.
  - gpm 5y ago
    Chernobyl by all accounts killed thousands of people, and by some (dubious) accounts may have killed many more than that. Chernobyl was capable of killing millions of people, again I refer you to the article that I started this whole subthread with. What actually happened in Chernobyl was very very far from the worst case nuclear disaster: https://www.thetrumpet.com/14007-three-men-who-saved-millions https://www.thetrumpet.com/14007-three-men-who-saved-million...
    - philwelch 5y ago
      > Chernobyl by all accounts killed thousands of people Fewer than 100 deaths have been directly attributed to Chernobyl. All of the numbers in the thousands are estimates based on assumptions and statistical models around radiation exposure. But if you’re bringing that into the question, it’s only fair to calculate the number of excess deaths that would have been caused by the extra amount of coal mining and air pollution that would have occurred if the Soviet Union did not operate nuclear power plants. And when you work that out, you’ll see it’s likely that the Soviet nuclear power system—which was catastrophically mis-managed not just by 21st century standards but by the standards of the USSR’s contemporaries—still saved many more lives than it cost.

gpm 5y ago

It's not a criticism of all technological progress, it's a criticism of technology where you cannot accept a single worst case failure, as is the case with nuclear power plants and very little else. If an electrical fault in your house meant killings 10s or hundreds of millions of people, instead of costing you a home (and if you're really unlucky single digit numbers of lives) we'd be foolish to allow it. As it turns out, electrical faults in a house only burns down the house, not the continent.

philwelch 5y ago
A nuclear accident isn’t going to kill tens or hundreds of millions of people. Nuclear bombs—and fusion bombs at that—deployed in large numbers, would do that. But a single nuclear accident isn’t anywhere near the same scale as a full scale nuclear strike. Chernobyl killed tens of people. And Chernobyl was the “shitty construction with no electrical codes” of nuclear power plants. Fukushima killed like one person.
- gpm 5y ago
  Chernobyl by all accounts killed thousands of people, and by some (dubious) accounts may have killed many more than that. Chernobyl was capable of killing millions of people, again I refer you to the article that I started this whole subthread with. What actually happened in Chernobyl was very very far from the worst case nuclear disaster: https://www.thetrumpet.com/14007-three-men-who-saved-millions https://www.thetrumpet.com/14007-three-men-who-saved-million...
  - philwelch 5y ago
    > Chernobyl by all accounts killed thousands of people Fewer than 100 deaths have been directly attributed to Chernobyl. All of the numbers in the thousands are estimates based on assumptions and statistical models around radiation exposure. But if you’re bringing that into the question, it’s only fair to calculate the number of excess deaths that would have been caused by the extra amount of coal mining and air pollution that would have occurred if the Soviet Union did not operate nuclear power plants. And when you work that out, you’ll see it’s likely that the Soviet nuclear power system—which was catastrophically mis-managed not just by 21st century standards but by the standards of the USSR’s contemporaries—still saved many more lives than it cost.