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>Only a handful of people have died from nuclear. I accept that statement only when it's followed by ' so far as you know.' [https://www.atomicheritage.org/hi

>Only a handful of people have died from nuclear. I accept that statement only when it's followed by ' so far as you know.' [https://www.atomicheritage.org/history/atomic-veterans-1946-1962 https://www.atomicheritage.org/history/atomic-veterans-1946-...] [https://www.nytimes.com/1994/08/25/us/us-nuclear-accident-in-1965-was-staged-documents-show.html https://www.nytimes.com/1994/08/25/us/us-nuclear-accident-in...]

godelski 5y ago
I accept that statement but also the people we do know that have died are several orders of magnitude. While I'm sure there are plenty of people that have died from radiation that we don't know of I'm sure this number isn't in the millions but rather in the dozens or hundreds. It'd be pretty difficult to hide so many deaths.
- drran 5y ago
  * Strict rules and prohibitions reduced the number of deaths from radiation poisoning to a very low number. * Yeah, the number of deaths from radiation poisoning is very low, so we can be reckless.
  - godelski 5y ago
    I didn't say reckless. But we also can't get the death number to zero without spending an infinite amount of resources. But doing so would result in more deaths due to not spending resources elsewhere. The problem is we can't look at everything individually. We can to a certain point but after that there are coupled effects and also noise. This is very different than saying that we can be reckless (which is a gray term, not a binary).
    - drran 5y ago
      Yep, it's the classical runaway tram problem: people will die anyway, but we should kill as fewer people as possible. So, let look at nuclear risks: * potential damage area is extremely high. If a state sponsored actor will take control over a nuclear station or nuclear waste store, he can blast it and disperse over half of a continent. Unlike nuclear weapon, it will be very dirty, so it's better not to do at same continent, but an Asian or African country can do that in the USA. * potential loses are very high, up to billions of people, if major part of the continent will be contaminated. Nobody can provide insurance for such event. If we increase the number of nuclear stations by 10x, risks will increase by 10x or more, because it's easier to guard a few stations than a dozen or a hundred stations. To keep risks low, safety of stations must be improved by the same number, otherwise, by increasing the number of stations by 10x we will have a Chornobyl/Fukushima level event every 3-5 years. Do you see a way to improve safety of nuclear stations and waste storage by 10x, while keeping construction cost and construction time in acceptable range?
      - godelski 5y ago
        You can make a good argument without exaggerating. Exaggerating just makes people ignore you or worse you create strawmen and people endlessly fight because you give clearly false statements that can be rebuttled. Most of your conclusions don't follow. I mean do you really think things haven't changed in the last 50 years? You can't calculate likelihood from black swans. Lets rephrase because the argument you're trying to make is good, just exaggerated and incomplete. Nuclear has a small chance of something going bad but when it goes wrong it's big and localized. We'll bound the cost as a bit higher than Fukushima (which includes a tsunami) with $200bn. But if we look at the median cost of accidents is well under 10bn and covered by the insurance. You're right that there's also a chance of a state sponsored attack. Though note that reactor domes are designed to withstand airplane strikes. Most state sponsored attacks on nuclear facilities haven't led to disasters and fallout. On the other hand, nuclear has provided us clean energy for over half a century. Still accounts for over 50% of the US's clean energy and provides and good constant base load. Coal and gas have a moderate chance of things going wrong. Costs often being in the range of several billion dollars to several tens of billions, a handful being a few hundred. But the big cost is the slow release of carbon into the atmosphere which has led to the largest catastrophe in human history and has an estimated cost of $4 trillion per year. The benefits are that these energy sources are cheap and can easily be throttled matching demand. Renewables have a high chance of danger but it is very low in damage (high rate of people falling off roofs and dying). Sometimes there's a high risk but rare (see dams breaking and specifically Banqiao). The other issues are that we don't have a way to provide constant load, there's not enough batteries, low production rates, and some unsolved problems that mean they don't work everywhere and thus require gas or coal to fill in. The upside is that they are relatively cheap and produce no emissions. This is the calculous that the scientific community is doing. It's not simple and requires a lot of experts working in different areas working together. The scientific community is asking for nuclear + renewables (not nuclear vs renewables). Preference renewables but when you can't, nuclear is infinitely better than gas or coal. There's some that argue we don't need nuclear but their estimated costs are far higher than renewables with a sprinkling of nuclear. This is a more nuanced debate that I encourage others to read on but take your emotions out of it. The calculous extremely convoluted. Please listen to the scientist. Trust but verify does mean to first trust.

godelski 5y ago

I accept that statement but also the people we do know that have died are several orders of magnitude. While I'm sure there are plenty of people that have died from radiation that we don't know of I'm sure this number isn't in the millions but rather in the dozens or hundreds. It'd be pretty difficult to hide so many deaths.

drran 5y ago
* Strict rules and prohibitions reduced the number of deaths from radiation poisoning to a very low number. * Yeah, the number of deaths from radiation poisoning is very low, so we can be reckless.
- godelski 5y ago
  I didn't say reckless. But we also can't get the death number to zero without spending an infinite amount of resources. But doing so would result in more deaths due to not spending resources elsewhere. The problem is we can't look at everything individually. We can to a certain point but after that there are coupled effects and also noise. This is very different than saying that we can be reckless (which is a gray term, not a binary).
  - drran 5y ago
    Yep, it's the classical runaway tram problem: people will die anyway, but we should kill as fewer people as possible. So, let look at nuclear risks: * potential damage area is extremely high. If a state sponsored actor will take control over a nuclear station or nuclear waste store, he can blast it and disperse over half of a continent. Unlike nuclear weapon, it will be very dirty, so it's better not to do at same continent, but an Asian or African country can do that in the USA. * potential loses are very high, up to billions of people, if major part of the continent will be contaminated. Nobody can provide insurance for such event. If we increase the number of nuclear stations by 10x, risks will increase by 10x or more, because it's easier to guard a few stations than a dozen or a hundred stations. To keep risks low, safety of stations must be improved by the same number, otherwise, by increasing the number of stations by 10x we will have a Chornobyl/Fukushima level event every 3-5 years. Do you see a way to improve safety of nuclear stations and waste storage by 10x, while keeping construction cost and construction time in acceptable range?
    - godelski 5y ago
      You can make a good argument without exaggerating. Exaggerating just makes people ignore you or worse you create strawmen and people endlessly fight because you give clearly false statements that can be rebuttled. Most of your conclusions don't follow. I mean do you really think things haven't changed in the last 50 years? You can't calculate likelihood from black swans. Lets rephrase because the argument you're trying to make is good, just exaggerated and incomplete. Nuclear has a small chance of something going bad but when it goes wrong it's big and localized. We'll bound the cost as a bit higher than Fukushima (which includes a tsunami) with $200bn. But if we look at the median cost of accidents is well under 10bn and covered by the insurance. You're right that there's also a chance of a state sponsored attack. Though note that reactor domes are designed to withstand airplane strikes. Most state sponsored attacks on nuclear facilities haven't led to disasters and fallout. On the other hand, nuclear has provided us clean energy for over half a century. Still accounts for over 50% of the US's clean energy and provides and good constant base load. Coal and gas have a moderate chance of things going wrong. Costs often being in the range of several billion dollars to several tens of billions, a handful being a few hundred. But the big cost is the slow release of carbon into the atmosphere which has led to the largest catastrophe in human history and has an estimated cost of $4 trillion per year. The benefits are that these energy sources are cheap and can easily be throttled matching demand. Renewables have a high chance of danger but it is very low in damage (high rate of people falling off roofs and dying). Sometimes there's a high risk but rare (see dams breaking and specifically Banqiao). The other issues are that we don't have a way to provide constant load, there's not enough batteries, low production rates, and some unsolved problems that mean they don't work everywhere and thus require gas or coal to fill in. The upside is that they are relatively cheap and produce no emissions. This is the calculous that the scientific community is doing. It's not simple and requires a lot of experts working in different areas working together. The scientific community is asking for nuclear + renewables (not nuclear vs renewables). Preference renewables but when you can't, nuclear is infinitely better than gas or coal. There's some that argue we don't need nuclear but their estimated costs are far higher than renewables with a sprinkling of nuclear. This is a more nuanced debate that I encourage others to read on but take your emotions out of it. The calculous extremely convoluted. Please listen to the scientist. Trust but verify does mean to first trust.