4 ms·

We seem to manage nuclear very well, and one piece of evidence is how horrifying it is that four people died in this story, and the degree of concern it generat

We seem to manage nuclear very well, and one piece of evidence is how horrifying it is that four people died in this story, and the degree of concern it generated. Nuclear stuff is like airline safety; there's a good cultural and governmental stance around taking its risks seriously. But more importantly, not responsible enough compared to which alternatives? In this case, it was a device for radiation therapy. The solution here can't be that lots of people die of cancer because nuclear is too dangerous. That just doesn't add up. For nuclear tech more generally, I posit that we are far less responsible with fossil fuels, and that they have done, and will continue to do, vast amounts of damage. Using nuclear would save a lot of lives. You can't just weigh the risk of some course of action against the absence of that risk; you have to weigh it against the risks of the alternatives or the risk of not solving the problem at all. No one is using this tech just for fun. I think some of this is a psychological effect: awful things that are (or seem like) the status quo get priced into our sense of risk, while exotic-seeming tech with very-differently-shaped risks seem irresponsible. We're also bad at weighing widespread, generalized damage against the low risk of disasters, even if some simple thought experiments make it clear which is better.

abyssin 4y ago
You could also compare nuclear power to hydroelectric power. Hydroelectric power causes orders of magnitude more deaths.
- Kon5ole 4y ago
  Such comparisons will also indicate that tigers are safer than dogs and guns are safer than cars.
  - ElectricalUnion 4y ago
    How so? Tigers kills at least a order of magnitude more that dogs, and so do guns kill [+8%] more people that cars - at least in the USA.
    - Kon5ole 4y ago
      Dogs killed an estimated 30 000 people in 2022. There are only about 5000 tigers left in the wild. (https://www.statista.com/statistics/448169/deadliest-creatures-in-the-world-by-number-of-human-deaths/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/448169/deadliest-creatur...) But the examples are not the point. The point is that things that are relatively harmless but common and handled carelessly (dogs, cars and hydro) easily cause more deaths than something that is very, very dangerous but rare and handled carefully (tigers, guns and nuclear).
jasmer 4y ago
Different risk profiles. Oil accidents are limited and proportional. Nuclear accidents have massive externalizations. Fukishima and Chernobyl are unlivable. Waste from Nuclear can do such damage in other places. Other forms of energy do not have this kind of risk, Nuclear is completely different.
- dylan604 4y ago
  are you saying that the thousands of square miles of ocean from the platforms like Deep Horizon are not suffering massive externalizations? the chernobyl exclusion zone is not a barren wasteland full of dead. the flora and fauna are living. while i wouldn't move there myself or eat any thing from there, life is not dead there. life, uh, finds a way, as it has been said.
- delroth 4y ago
  > Fukishima and Chernobyl are unlivable Fukushima has barely any exclusion zone left, the last inhabited area was reopened around the beginning of last year.
- ummonk 4y ago
  Chernobyl is not unlivable. It's roughly comparable to Ramsar, Iran in radioactivity levels.
  - gus_massa 4y ago
    Link for more info https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramsar,_Iran#Radioactivity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramsar,_Iran#Radioactivity
KennyBlanken 4y ago
We've had numerous power plant incidents throughout history, all attributable to human arrogance and incompetence - some of which have left thousands of square miles uninhabitable and given millions elevated cancer risks, caused widespread contamination of entire regions of the sea, etc. There's pages worth of military-related incidents, including things like reactor fires that ejected huge plumes of highly radioactive fallout. There have been numerous incidents in nuclear processing. One resulted in the murder of a journalist to cover it up. Hanford took decades to clean up (I think they've finally finished?) We spent decades blowing up nuclear weapons for giggles, causing so much fallout to spread worldwide that almost all steel these days has radioactive fallout in it, and many things can be dated by the decay of fallout in them because it's so widespread. The US alone has lost several functional nuclear weapons. The policy around nuclear waste in much of the US and elsewhere was, and often still is, "stick it in a hole. In containers that can rust. In water." Strange definition of "managed very well."

abyssin 4y ago

You could also compare nuclear power to hydroelectric power. Hydroelectric power causes orders of magnitude more deaths.

Kon5ole 4y ago
Such comparisons will also indicate that tigers are safer than dogs and guns are safer than cars.
- ElectricalUnion 4y ago
  How so? Tigers kills at least a order of magnitude more that dogs, and so do guns kill [+8%] more people that cars - at least in the USA.
  - Kon5ole 4y ago
    Dogs killed an estimated 30 000 people in 2022. There are only about 5000 tigers left in the wild. (https://www.statista.com/statistics/448169/deadliest-creatures-in-the-world-by-number-of-human-deaths/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/448169/deadliest-creatur...) But the examples are not the point. The point is that things that are relatively harmless but common and handled carelessly (dogs, cars and hydro) easily cause more deaths than something that is very, very dangerous but rare and handled carefully (tigers, guns and nuclear).

jasmer 4y ago

Different risk profiles. Oil accidents are limited and proportional. Nuclear accidents have massive externalizations. Fukishima and Chernobyl are unlivable. Waste from Nuclear can do such damage in other places. Other forms of energy do not have this kind of risk, Nuclear is completely different.

dylan604 4y ago
are you saying that the thousands of square miles of ocean from the platforms like Deep Horizon are not suffering massive externalizations? the chernobyl exclusion zone is not a barren wasteland full of dead. the flora and fauna are living. while i wouldn't move there myself or eat any thing from there, life is not dead there. life, uh, finds a way, as it has been said.
delroth 4y ago
> Fukishima and Chernobyl are unlivable Fukushima has barely any exclusion zone left, the last inhabited area was reopened around the beginning of last year.
ummonk 4y ago
Chernobyl is not unlivable. It's roughly comparable to Ramsar, Iran in radioactivity levels.
- gus_massa 4y ago
  Link for more info https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramsar,_Iran#Radioactivity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramsar,_Iran#Radioactivity

KennyBlanken 4y ago

We've had numerous power plant incidents throughout history, all attributable to human arrogance and incompetence - some of which have left thousands of square miles uninhabitable and given millions elevated cancer risks, caused widespread contamination of entire regions of the sea, etc. There's pages worth of military-related incidents, including things like reactor fires that ejected huge plumes of highly radioactive fallout. There have been numerous incidents in nuclear processing. One resulted in the murder of a journalist to cover it up. Hanford took decades to clean up (I think they've finally finished?) We spent decades blowing up nuclear weapons for giggles, causing so much fallout to spread worldwide that almost all steel these days has radioactive fallout in it, and many things can be dated by the decay of fallout in them because it's so widespread. The US alone has lost several functional nuclear weapons. The policy around nuclear waste in much of the US and elsewhere was, and often still is, "stick it in a hole. In containers that can rust. In water." Strange definition of "managed very well."