3 ms·

At this point the cost of Fukushima in yen and in lives blighted by evacuations will be far far above any positive contribution from the plant.

arcticbull 4y ago
Literally zero people died in the immediate aftermath, and in the years since one person who worked at the plant has died. The data is clear, in terms of deaths per TWh of generated power, nuclear is the safest, cleanest form of power we have. [1] Coal power kills between 24 and 100 people per TWh generated (100 for brown coal). Nuclear is 0.03 - between industrial solar and wind, and significantly lower than rooftop solar. It also has a lower carbon impact than both wind and solar. Yes people were evacuated. But they'd have been evacuated anyways whatever kind of plant was there. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy
- grey-area 4y ago
  I wasn’t talking about deaths but about cost. The data is pretty clear on that too which is why solar and wind have risen while new fission plants decline.
robocat 4y ago
You are experiencing bog-standard selection bias. The positive contribution is from all nuclear plants, not just Fukushima. Your point would only make sense if all nuclear plants had similar accidents. An analogy to your argument: TWA flight 800 killed all its passengers, therefore all flights should be banned. Edit: maybe try to learn your own internal biases, because I suspect you would make better arguments if you understood your weaknesses.
- grey-area 4y ago
  I said nothing about banning fusion power plants, so your analogy is incorrect and your cod psychology on my motivation or ‘biases’ unhelpful. The full cost of nuclear including externalities is lower than say coal, but far higher than wind or solar or even hydro and the market has spoken as a result. An area of Japan and an area of Ukraine are now uninhabitable for a generation or two due to previous disasters. The cost of that is very very high and more than most societies are willing to bear even if in theory the risk is low, but more importantly decommissioning costs on waste and plants are huge, so fusion is far behind.
  - robocat 4y ago
    Roger that. Fusion is irrelevant - I did not mention it.
    - grey-area 4y ago
      Sorry, I meant Fission of course (existing plants), Fusion seems more promising in terms of outlay vs return.

arcticbull 4y ago

Literally zero people died in the immediate aftermath, and in the years since one person who worked at the plant has died. The data is clear, in terms of deaths per TWh of generated power, nuclear is the safest, cleanest form of power we have. [1] Coal power kills between 24 and 100 people per TWh generated (100 for brown coal). Nuclear is 0.03 - between industrial solar and wind, and significantly lower than rooftop solar. It also has a lower carbon impact than both wind and solar. Yes people were evacuated. But they'd have been evacuated anyways whatever kind of plant was there. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy

grey-area 4y ago
I wasn’t talking about deaths but about cost. The data is pretty clear on that too which is why solar and wind have risen while new fission plants decline.

robocat 4y ago

You are experiencing bog-standard selection bias. The positive contribution is from all nuclear plants, not just Fukushima. Your point would only make sense if all nuclear plants had similar accidents. An analogy to your argument: TWA flight 800 killed all its passengers, therefore all flights should be banned. Edit: maybe try to learn your own internal biases, because I suspect you would make better arguments if you understood your weaknesses.

grey-area 4y ago
I said nothing about banning fusion power plants, so your analogy is incorrect and your cod psychology on my motivation or ‘biases’ unhelpful. The full cost of nuclear including externalities is lower than say coal, but far higher than wind or solar or even hydro and the market has spoken as a result. An area of Japan and an area of Ukraine are now uninhabitable for a generation or two due to previous disasters. The cost of that is very very high and more than most societies are willing to bear even if in theory the risk is low, but more importantly decommissioning costs on waste and plants are huge, so fusion is far behind.
- robocat 4y ago
  Roger that. Fusion is irrelevant - I did not mention it.
  - grey-area 4y ago
    Sorry, I meant Fission of course (existing plants), Fusion seems more promising in terms of outlay vs return.