4 ms·

The same happened to nuclear energy, despite the fact that coal kills 100x people yearly than total nuclear energy deaths.

jiggawatts 4y ago
Try 10,000 times more and you’d be closer, but that’s probably still an underestimate.
nightfly 4y ago
The disasters that happen when nuclear energy fails are amazingly bad though. Even discounting immediate human deaths, 80 square miles around Fukushima and 1,000 square miles around Chernobyl are effectively ruined forever.
- KptMarchewa 4y ago
  Coal is (probably) permamently destroying 510 million square kilometers of Earth. Few square miles is amazingly small price for a carbon free energy.
  - andrepd 4y ago
    Even if it were true, the Chernobyl exclusion zone is mostly habitable now.
    - thrown_22 4y ago
      It's also the worlds largest nature reserve. There is something poignant that nuclear apocalypse is better for the environment than human civilization as it normally functions.
- MichaelCollins 4y ago
  > The disasters that happen when nuclear energy fails are amazingly bad though. Even discounting immediate human deaths, Are you sure you're not discounting that figure because it's contrary to your conclusion? Very few people have ever died as the indirect long-term result (let alone by direct immediate result) of nuclear energy accidents, even according the highest estimates from histrionic ideologues like Greenpeace.
  - nightfly 4y ago
    I'm overall not anti-nuclear or anything. The lasting cultural, ecological, and economic damage from severe nuclear disasters is _pretty_ significant though and we need to do a better job ensuring they don't happen if we wanna restore peoples trust in the idea of nuclear power.
    - sooheon 4y ago
      That's what this topic is about -- the standard for nuclear is high (as it should be), but we take the status quo of fossil fuels without a second thought, even though it's immeasurably worse in almost every way.
      - cruano 4y ago
        It's _measurably_ worse in almost every way
    - dev_tty01 4y ago
      Better job? How many people have died due to nuclear energy accidents? If you consider deaths per megawatt, or most any other standard, the nuclear agencies are doing a fantastic job. How low does the risk have to be? The relative risk of nuclear to coal is unbelievably low yet there is still this irrational ability to weigh risk/reward benefits correctly.
- lmm 4y ago
  Less than a third of the area that's been ruined forever by renewable power generation's "business as usual", indeed less than the area flooded by the Three Gorges Dam alone.
- weberer 4y ago
  But what if you took the contaminated soil around Chernobyl and shot it tens of kilometers straight up into the air, so all the radioactive isotopes get taken away by the wind and aren't a local problem any more. That's how coal plants operate.
ginko 4y ago
The "fun" part is that hydroelectric dam failures are even more localized and in many cases much more deadly, but people generally don't remember them either. As far as I can tell the single most deadly power plant disaster in history was the 1975 Banquiao Dam failure[0] that killed 26000 to 240000 people. Yet when you try to google "most deadly power plant disasters" you'll mostly get Chernobyl with 100 attributed deaths. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure

jiggawatts 4y ago

Try 10,000 times more and you’d be closer, but that’s probably still an underestimate.

nightfly 4y ago

The disasters that happen when nuclear energy fails are amazingly bad though. Even discounting immediate human deaths, 80 square miles around Fukushima and 1,000 square miles around Chernobyl are effectively ruined forever.

KptMarchewa 4y ago
Coal is (probably) permamently destroying 510 million square kilometers of Earth. Few square miles is amazingly small price for a carbon free energy.
- andrepd 4y ago
  Even if it were true, the Chernobyl exclusion zone is mostly habitable now.
  - thrown_22 4y ago
    It's also the worlds largest nature reserve. There is something poignant that nuclear apocalypse is better for the environment than human civilization as it normally functions.
MichaelCollins 4y ago
> The disasters that happen when nuclear energy fails are amazingly bad though. Even discounting immediate human deaths, Are you sure you're not discounting that figure because it's contrary to your conclusion? Very few people have ever died as the indirect long-term result (let alone by direct immediate result) of nuclear energy accidents, even according the highest estimates from histrionic ideologues like Greenpeace.
- nightfly 4y ago
  I'm overall not anti-nuclear or anything. The lasting cultural, ecological, and economic damage from severe nuclear disasters is _pretty_ significant though and we need to do a better job ensuring they don't happen if we wanna restore peoples trust in the idea of nuclear power.
  - sooheon 4y ago
    That's what this topic is about -- the standard for nuclear is high (as it should be), but we take the status quo of fossil fuels without a second thought, even though it's immeasurably worse in almost every way.
    - cruano 4y ago
      It's _measurably_ worse in almost every way
  - dev_tty01 4y ago
    Better job? How many people have died due to nuclear energy accidents? If you consider deaths per megawatt, or most any other standard, the nuclear agencies are doing a fantastic job. How low does the risk have to be? The relative risk of nuclear to coal is unbelievably low yet there is still this irrational ability to weigh risk/reward benefits correctly.
lmm 4y ago
Less than a third of the area that's been ruined forever by renewable power generation's "business as usual", indeed less than the area flooded by the Three Gorges Dam alone.
weberer 4y ago
But what if you took the contaminated soil around Chernobyl and shot it tens of kilometers straight up into the air, so all the radioactive isotopes get taken away by the wind and aren't a local problem any more. That's how coal plants operate.

ginko 4y ago

The "fun" part is that hydroelectric dam failures are even more localized and in many cases much more deadly, but people generally don't remember them either. As far as I can tell the single most deadly power plant disaster in history was the 1975 Banquiao Dam failure[0] that killed 26000 to 240000 people. Yet when you try to google "most deadly power plant disasters" you'll mostly get Chernobyl with 100 attributed deaths. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure