4 ms·

> Is the waste problem solved? It has never been a problem in the first place. At least not a technical problem. Sure, it is nasty stuff, to be treated with re

by GuB-42 4y ago

> Is the waste problem solved? It has never been a problem in the first place. At least not a technical problem. Sure, it is nasty stuff, to be treated with respect, but not worse than toxic chemicals we regularly deal with. It is also potentially useful stuff: rare, exotic matter that gives off energy. Compare with coal plants that also produce nuclear waste (there are radioisotopes in coal), but that waste is dumped in the air you breathe. > Are old powerplants properly decommissioned and replaced with new ones when the time comes? The are properly decommissioned, and it is really expensive, and that's indeed a real problem with nuclear power: it is expensive. But the thing is: nuclear plants don't have an expiration date like bottles of milk, you could potentially run them forever with regular maintenance. The reason we don't do that is that is that over time, maintenance becomes more and more expensive, parts become obsolete and stop being produced, etc... At some point it is cheaper to build a new, better plant and decommission the old one instead of spending a fortune on obsolete parts and retrofitting. > Can we really claim to be able to handle worst case scenarios well (e.g. Fukushima)? No, they wouldn't be worst case scenarios if we could, but we are doing our best. In the end, even with Chernobyl, nuclear power is still one of the safest per unit of energy produced. It is no excuse, Fukushima shouldn't have happened, but if the only response to an accident was to stop everything, we wouldn't do much.

danenania 4y ago
"In the end, even with Chernobyl, nuclear power is still one of the safest per unit of energy produced." I'm not anti-nuclear at all, but I see this argument used a lot and I don't think it's a good one. The concerns with nuclear are all about tail risk. Comparing past results to other forms of energy doesn't address this since neither Chernobyl nor Fukushima were worst case scenarios for nuclear. An effective pro-nuclear argument should address the tail risk concern head-on rather than talking past it.
- potatoz2 4y ago
  Isn’t this like comparing the safety of a motorcycle to that of an A380? The “tail risk” of the latter is 800+ dead versus a single rider, but the expected value is way lower in the plane’s case.
  - danenania 4y ago
    In that case, there's plenty of data that shows the plane is safer mile-for-mile. There have been enough flights (of all jet models, not just the A380) and enough crashes to provide a reasonable estimate for the odds of a crash. From there, it's basic math to prove that the motorcycle is far more dangerous. The challenge with nuclear energy is we don't have a big enough sample to say with certainty, just from the data, what the odds are of a disaster 1000x worse than Chernobyl. My understanding is Chernobyl itself could have been 1000x worse and rendered much of Eastern Europe uninhabitable if the appropriate steps weren't taken in time, so to a neutral, non-expert observer, that would seem to indicate the odds are greater than zero. This is what many anti-nuclear people are concerned about, so if you want to get them on your side, you need to explain in detail why that kind of event is no longer possible. Just stating that it hasn't happened, as if that were proof it can't happen, isn't convincing.
    - potatoz2 4y ago
      I see what you’re saying, but it seems impossible to prove it literally cannot happen if you just assume every safety system we put in place all fail at once, which is _possible_ I guess. We live with worse tail risks daily though: we have nuclear weapons in the center of Europe (could be misused, there could be an accident, etc.), we have labs that handle or create deadly pathogens (there could be a leak, etc.), we live near volcanoes or in earthquake/tsunami prone areas, and of course we are living through climate change with unknown tail risk (to crops, to temperatures, etc.). If you accept that sort of question with no real probability of happening (“what if 5G renders us all infertile because we misunderstand high frequency radio waves?”, “what if the flu vaccine produced this year kills us all?”), you can’t really do anything. It’s impossible to prove a negative, we have to deal with expected values given our knowledge.
      - CardenB 4y ago
        That’s a very fair argument. One consideration that comes to mind is if the scale necessary for operating nuclear is much greater than the examples you cited? Thinking out loud, without taking a stance on either side, it seems we would need to scale nuclear power to the hands of many lesser qualified people than in the cases you mentioned, which would push the tail risk much harder. That said, I haven’t thought deeply about the comparison here. If we need heavy magnitude of power, then we are bound to have to accept the risk of disaster as such concentrated power centers inevitably become unstable.

by GuB-42 4y ago

danenania 4y ago

"In the end, even with Chernobyl, nuclear power is still one of the safest per unit of energy produced." I'm not anti-nuclear at all, but I see this argument used a lot and I don't think it's a good one. The concerns with nuclear are all about tail risk. Comparing past results to other forms of energy doesn't address this since neither Chernobyl nor Fukushima were worst case scenarios for nuclear. An effective pro-nuclear argument should address the tail risk concern head-on rather than talking past it.

potatoz2 4y ago
Isn’t this like comparing the safety of a motorcycle to that of an A380? The “tail risk” of the latter is 800+ dead versus a single rider, but the expected value is way lower in the plane’s case.
- danenania 4y ago
  In that case, there's plenty of data that shows the plane is safer mile-for-mile. There have been enough flights (of all jet models, not just the A380) and enough crashes to provide a reasonable estimate for the odds of a crash. From there, it's basic math to prove that the motorcycle is far more dangerous. The challenge with nuclear energy is we don't have a big enough sample to say with certainty, just from the data, what the odds are of a disaster 1000x worse than Chernobyl. My understanding is Chernobyl itself could have been 1000x worse and rendered much of Eastern Europe uninhabitable if the appropriate steps weren't taken in time, so to a neutral, non-expert observer, that would seem to indicate the odds are greater than zero. This is what many anti-nuclear people are concerned about, so if you want to get them on your side, you need to explain in detail why that kind of event is no longer possible. Just stating that it hasn't happened, as if that were proof it can't happen, isn't convincing.
  - potatoz2 4y ago
    I see what you’re saying, but it seems impossible to prove it literally cannot happen if you just assume every safety system we put in place all fail at once, which is _possible_ I guess. We live with worse tail risks daily though: we have nuclear weapons in the center of Europe (could be misused, there could be an accident, etc.), we have labs that handle or create deadly pathogens (there could be a leak, etc.), we live near volcanoes or in earthquake/tsunami prone areas, and of course we are living through climate change with unknown tail risk (to crops, to temperatures, etc.). If you accept that sort of question with no real probability of happening (“what if 5G renders us all infertile because we misunderstand high frequency radio waves?”, “what if the flu vaccine produced this year kills us all?”), you can’t really do anything. It’s impossible to prove a negative, we have to deal with expected values given our knowledge.
    - CardenB 4y ago
      That’s a very fair argument. One consideration that comes to mind is if the scale necessary for operating nuclear is much greater than the examples you cited? Thinking out loud, without taking a stance on either side, it seems we would need to scale nuclear power to the hands of many lesser qualified people than in the cases you mentioned, which would push the tail risk much harder. That said, I haven’t thought deeply about the comparison here. If we need heavy magnitude of power, then we are bound to have to accept the risk of disaster as such concentrated power centers inevitably become unstable.