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That's an interesting point. I think my view on this is that I think we've been pretty lucky with nuclear accidents thus far, and that we don't have nearly enou

That's an interesting point. I think my view on this is that I think we've been pretty lucky with nuclear accidents thus far, and that we don't have nearly enough to data to conclude that we will continue to operate them as safely as we have thus far. A single bad nuclear accident affecting a major city would turn that statistic entirely on it's head for centuries worth of solar panel installation.

adastra22 4y ago
That amount to saying "I'm going to ignore all the evidence because I don't like the conclusion."
- nicoburns 4y ago
  It's simply interpreting the data differently. Statistical conclusions always depend on your priors. We may also have a difference in risk tolerance. I'm willing to accept "accidents almost never happen" for something like air travel because the consequences are much less severe even if a worst-case accident does happen. I'm not nearly so willing accept even a small risk of nuclear accident because the consequences are so potentially awful (the worst case is not death IMO, but slow, painful radiation poisoning).
jnsaff2 4y ago
The worst nuclear power accident ever, Chornobyl took: knowingly unsafe design and a lot of very-very bad decisions to kill a few hundred directly and a few thousand indirectly. The only two others that even come close: Fukushima - one death, TMI - 0 deaths. So that's at most a few thousand deaths for something like 100 Million reactor hours (napkin math, don't cite). There is plenty of data and the data says it's safe.
- elesiuta 4y ago
  > So that's at most a few thousand deaths for something like 100 Million reactor hours (napkin math, don't cite). Sounds about right, but when you factor in current designs and requirements it's 100x better. LRF (large release frequencies) are required to be less than 1 in 1 000 000 per year of reactor operation [1], so roughly 10 billion reactor hours. The calculation of this considers at least 1 in 10 000 year levels of high winds and earthquakes [2]. Since the typical reactor is 1GW, so ~8TWh per year, and global energy consumption is ~23 000 TWh per year, we could use roughly 3000 reactors globally to meet most of our needs, which would put an event like this roughly every 100-1000 years. [1] https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML0909/ML090910608.pdf https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML0909/ML090910608.pdf [2] https://archive.opg.com/pdf_archive/Nuclear%20Licencing%20Documents/Pickering%20Nuclear%20Operating%20Licence%20Renewal%20(2018)/I032_COG-JP-4499-025.pdf https://archive.opg.com/pdf_archive/Nuclear%20Licencing%20Do...
  - adastra22 4y ago
    Also if your threat model is a one-in-10000 year freak event, you can have as many reactors as you want and it doesn’t increase the likelihood of a catastrophe.
- illiarian 4y ago
  Note, in comparison, dams have killed several orders of magnitude more people.
  - adastra22 4y ago
    Just solar panel installers falling off roofs have killed more people so far.
    - illiarian 4y ago
      Banqiao Dam failure alone killed an unknown number of people. The lower estimate is 26 000. The upper estimate is 240 000 people. For Chernobyl the number is 4,000 deaths as the total number of projected deaths caused by the accident over the long term. For Fukushima it's one direct death, and 2000 deaths due to evacuation. Had we approached dams the way we approach nuclear power, not a single dam would be built in the world.

adastra22 4y ago

That amount to saying "I'm going to ignore all the evidence because I don't like the conclusion."

nicoburns 4y ago
It's simply interpreting the data differently. Statistical conclusions always depend on your priors. We may also have a difference in risk tolerance. I'm willing to accept "accidents almost never happen" for something like air travel because the consequences are much less severe even if a worst-case accident does happen. I'm not nearly so willing accept even a small risk of nuclear accident because the consequences are so potentially awful (the worst case is not death IMO, but slow, painful radiation poisoning).

jnsaff2 4y ago

The worst nuclear power accident ever, Chornobyl took: knowingly unsafe design and a lot of very-very bad decisions to kill a few hundred directly and a few thousand indirectly. The only two others that even come close: Fukushima - one death, TMI - 0 deaths. So that's at most a few thousand deaths for something like 100 Million reactor hours (napkin math, don't cite). There is plenty of data and the data says it's safe.

elesiuta 4y ago
> So that's at most a few thousand deaths for something like 100 Million reactor hours (napkin math, don't cite). Sounds about right, but when you factor in current designs and requirements it's 100x better. LRF (large release frequencies) are required to be less than 1 in 1 000 000 per year of reactor operation [1], so roughly 10 billion reactor hours. The calculation of this considers at least 1 in 10 000 year levels of high winds and earthquakes [2]. Since the typical reactor is 1GW, so ~8TWh per year, and global energy consumption is ~23 000 TWh per year, we could use roughly 3000 reactors globally to meet most of our needs, which would put an event like this roughly every 100-1000 years. [1] https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML0909/ML090910608.pdf https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML0909/ML090910608.pdf [2] https://archive.opg.com/pdf_archive/Nuclear%20Licencing%20Documents/Pickering%20Nuclear%20Operating%20Licence%20Renewal%20(2018)/I032_COG-JP-4499-025.pdf https://archive.opg.com/pdf_archive/Nuclear%20Licencing%20Do...
- adastra22 4y ago
  Also if your threat model is a one-in-10000 year freak event, you can have as many reactors as you want and it doesn’t increase the likelihood of a catastrophe.
illiarian 4y ago
Note, in comparison, dams have killed several orders of magnitude more people.
- adastra22 4y ago
  Just solar panel installers falling off roofs have killed more people so far.
  - illiarian 4y ago
    Banqiao Dam failure alone killed an unknown number of people. The lower estimate is 26 000. The upper estimate is 240 000 people. For Chernobyl the number is 4,000 deaths as the total number of projected deaths caused by the accident over the long term. For Fukushima it's one direct death, and 2000 deaths due to evacuation. Had we approached dams the way we approach nuclear power, not a single dam would be built in the world.