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If nobody provably died because of the Fukushima accident, it was because of expansive and costly evacuations. The Japanese minstry of trade estimates the cost

If nobody provably died because of the Fukushima accident, it was because of expansive and costly evacuations. The Japanese minstry of trade estimates the cost of the cleanup to $187 billion, though I'm not sure if that really includes everything. And that number is certainly not the upper bound on what could happen when other plants have similar or worse accidents. It's a very small risk with a huge downside. The fact that scientists have consistently underestimated the likelihood of these events - even though so far there has never been one caused by ill intent - is not reassuring.

kaba0 5y ago
Is the cleanup related to nuclear, or the whole tsunami? Also, how is it underestimated? There was an exceptionally huge tsunami there, and even with that there would have been no trouble given the backup-generators would work well and even then, only a slight radiation exposure happened. There have been orders of magnitude more failures in other power plants causing much bigger damage (not even counting the environmental effect of them!).
- bayesian_horse 5y ago
  Can you name such accidents specifically? I just stated a figure from the Japanese Ministry of trade, and that seems to be the radioactive cleanup and paying of benefits etc.. while there is another figure that decommissioning the plant will cost about 750 billion US Dollars. A particular problem are millions of square meters of radio-active top-soil and where to store it. Yes, those problems have not been solved yet, and most evacuees have not yet returned and will probably never return. No amount of propaganda will convince them that the site is safe after the "safe" reactor blew up and contaminated everything. Meanwhile nuclear power has become really unpopular in Japan. People like you will dismiss this as irrational fear. Or is it irrational that you think that the future risk is a) actually quantifiable and b) tolerable? Because neither of these is scientific consensus.

kaba0 5y ago

Is the cleanup related to nuclear, or the whole tsunami? Also, how is it underestimated? There was an exceptionally huge tsunami there, and even with that there would have been no trouble given the backup-generators would work well and even then, only a slight radiation exposure happened. There have been orders of magnitude more failures in other power plants causing much bigger damage (not even counting the environmental effect of them!).

bayesian_horse 5y ago
Can you name such accidents specifically? I just stated a figure from the Japanese Ministry of trade, and that seems to be the radioactive cleanup and paying of benefits etc.. while there is another figure that decommissioning the plant will cost about 750 billion US Dollars. A particular problem are millions of square meters of radio-active top-soil and where to store it. Yes, those problems have not been solved yet, and most evacuees have not yet returned and will probably never return. No amount of propaganda will convince them that the site is safe after the "safe" reactor blew up and contaminated everything. Meanwhile nuclear power has become really unpopular in Japan. People like you will dismiss this as irrational fear. Or is it irrational that you think that the future risk is a) actually quantifiable and b) tolerable? Because neither of these is scientific consensus.