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Probability of accident * Expected damage of accident = Expected damage of activity/project. Nuclear has had non-negligible probability of accidents, including

Probability of accident * Expected damage of accident = Expected damage of activity/project. Nuclear has had non-negligible probability of accidents, including dangerous accidents. The expected damage of the dangerous accidents is millions dead and injured, and potential destruction of very wide ecosystems. An accident in a coal power plant mean a bunch of coal burning. Which is bad, but several orders of magnitude less. ... And that's all while ignoring the question of waste management; and damage to reactors due to attacks at wartime. Now, has technology improved in recent decades? I'm sure it has, to some extent. But the credibility and trustworthiness of the organizations building nuclear power plants has not improved, certainly not to the level at which lay-people - like myself - are willing to take their word for it. And that includes key world state governments.

tptacek 4y ago
At what point do we observe no accident causing millions of deaths or injuries and adjust our "expected damage" calculation? Decades? Centuries? We can look past the damage caused by an accident at a coal plant and just count the damage caused by ordinary routine operation of coal plants and quickly reach damage figures that eclipse every nuclear accident in history combined.
- einpoklum 4y ago
  > At what point etc. Your second paragraph suggests that we are not at that point yet. But to be less facetious - after the regulatory systems in the relevant country reach a state of high trustworthiness and no indications of 'capture' + a few decades' buffer for the trustworthy regulation's effect to permeate. And this is ignoring the question of chances of damage by war and the issue of waste management, so maximum over the minimum period for each of these 3 considerations.
  - tptacek 4y ago
    You're begging the question. I'm not saying one can't advocate against nuclear power on the merits, either because it's too dangerous or because it's too poorly regulating. I'm saying that it can't be reasonable to do so based on the premise that it causes million-victim fatal accidents, because (1) it doesn't, and (2) other mainstream energy sources do cause mass fatalities and aren't condemned.

tptacek 4y ago

At what point do we observe no accident causing millions of deaths or injuries and adjust our "expected damage" calculation? Decades? Centuries? We can look past the damage caused by an accident at a coal plant and just count the damage caused by ordinary routine operation of coal plants and quickly reach damage figures that eclipse every nuclear accident in history combined.

einpoklum 4y ago
> At what point etc. Your second paragraph suggests that we are not at that point yet. But to be less facetious - after the regulatory systems in the relevant country reach a state of high trustworthiness and no indications of 'capture' + a few decades' buffer for the trustworthy regulation's effect to permeate. And this is ignoring the question of chances of damage by war and the issue of waste management, so maximum over the minimum period for each of these 3 considerations.
- tptacek 4y ago
  You're begging the question. I'm not saying one can't advocate against nuclear power on the merits, either because it's too dangerous or because it's too poorly regulating. I'm saying that it can't be reasonable to do so based on the premise that it causes million-victim fatal accidents, because (1) it doesn't, and (2) other mainstream energy sources do cause mass fatalities and aren't condemned.