5 ms·
Low-probability is not enough to wave away concerns when it comes to planning nuclear power
by kingkawn 5y ago
Low-probability is not enough to wave away concerns when it comes to planning nuclear power
- sam0x17 5y agoYes, but focusing on the astronomically low probability scenarios while failing to discuss much higher probability scenarios is a bad look.
- tptacek 5y agoIs it? Those astronomically low-probability scenarios have a track record of creating real-world catastrophes.
- amluto 5y agoFukushima was a power failure. Sure, am improbable disaster caused the power failure, but the issue was still a power failure. They should haven’t been able to handle it and couldn’t.
- PaulHoule 5y agoThe power failure is not "low probability", it is the dominant failure mode that happens somewhere around 1 in 1000 to 1 in 10,000 reactor years. Reactors were licensed in the 1970s based on an entirely wrong model which saw the dominant failure mode being the pressure vessel bursting. Laymen have a totally wrong point of view about that, they think a pressure cooker really has the metal burst and go off like a bomb, really the seal breaks and you get sprayed with superheated steam which is dangerous enough. Pressure vessels burst because the chemicals eat them from the inside out but for every pressure vessel that bursts thousands of storage tanks get sucked in. After TMI the model was updated to recognize "station blackout" as the #1 risk.
- sgjohnson 5y agoFukushima currently has a body count of 1 and the city is perfectly habitable. It was also basically the worst case scenario that could happen to that reactor design. The tsunami and the earthquake killed 20000 for a scale.
- tptacek 5y agoSure, I think that's true, but it was an event of such magnitude that there's a clear state interest in regulating against it! They had to evacuate a huge area around the disaster, for some time. Sure, it was a best-case scenario, but it was the best case of a worst case. (I support nuclear power, for whatever that's worth. I think it's a good idea and we should do a lot more of it.)
- duped 5y agoOnly because the high probably scenarios are handled safely...
- throwaway894345 5y agoThis is pretty straightforward survivorship bias, i.e., you don't hear about the astronomically low-probability scenarios which don't result in real-world catastrophes (consider every building, bridge, etc which hasn't collapsed). We have to balance that against the millions of annual fossil fuel deaths (tens of thousands die each year just in the US and just due to coal pollution https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-other-reason-to-shift-away-from-coal-air-pollution-that-kills-thousands-every-year/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-other-reason-...) and the cliff toward which climate science tells us we're careening.
- RandomBK 5y agoSurvivorship bias may explain why these events are so vivid in people's minds, but when the bar is that _there should be no survivors at all_ (i.e. no catastrophes), the fact that there _are_ survivors with which to form a bias is in and of itself a concern.
- throwaway894345 5y agoIt’s a concern which must be weighed against the alternative. In the case of nuclear vs fossil fuels, it’s millions of annual deaths in the near term (air pollution) and much more with climate change.
- donio 5y agoNatural disasters are not astronomically low probability scenarios, they happen all the time. Astronomically low probability would be something that is unlikely to happen during the entire lifetime of the planet.
- sam0x17 5y agoNo, but an avalanche in a flat area is a lot less likely than, say, "what if the coolant runs out" and it seems they were missing some basic handling of these sorts of scenarios while still waxing poetic about things like avalanche contingency plans.
- csee 5y agoWhat? Depends how low the probability is and the magnitude of the worst case we're talking about.