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Let me play devils advocate though. Right now nuclear provides 10% of the world’s power. Now since it was first deployed in the 70’s there have been at least
by fallingfrog 3y ago
Let me play devils advocate though. Right now nuclear provides 10% of the world’s power. Now since it was first deployed in the 70’s there have been at least 3 major accidents I can think of: Fukushima, Chernobyl, and 3 mile island. So that’s one every 15 years, roughly.
The naive math behind that suggests that if we were to increase the number of power plants by a factor of 10 to supply all the world’s power, we should expect the rate of accidents to increase proportionally. So that’s a Fukushima somewhere in the world every 1.5 years or 18 months. And a bad one of those accidents could spread radiation across an entire continent.
Changes the risk/reward calculation, doesn’t it?
- machina_ex_deus 3y agoNow do the same calculation for passenger aviation. That's not how disasters work. They aren't independent variables, when they happen, you learn and change the way things work to prevent them from happening again.
- majormajor 3y agoThe odds definitely aren't that straightforward. Experiments and development in the 1950s. First commercial plant in 58. Further growth in 60s and 70s. Including deadly accidents like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SL-1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SL-1 in 1961 - protests grew in 60s and 70s too. Three Mile Island 1979. Chernobyl 1986. Fukushima 2011. That 25-year gap between Chernobyl and Fukushima - and the extraordinary circumstances causing Fukushima vs the previous incidents - suggests that safety improved A LOT over the 60-odd years between 1958 and now.
- fallingfrog 3y agoTrue, it has. But, the failure rate is not zero. And more plants mean they will happen more often. I’m just pointing out that it’s rational to worry about a small probability high consequence disaster. Nuclear fission is a reaction with a positive feedback loop, making it naturally unstable, and requires some mechanism to create a negative feedback of greater magnitude to make it stable. And that requires some kind of active machinery to function properly. If that machinery fails, then the feedback loop becomes positive again. Machines can always fail, so I doubt that fission can ever be made completely safe.
- CamperBob2 3y ago3 Mile Island: No one died, nothing of any significance happened. Clickbait from an era before clickbait was a thing. Chernobyl: Irresponsible operation of obsolete, inherently-hazardous Soviet-era design. Not something that can ever happen again if some relatively-simple lessons are followed. Fukushima: Irresponsible maintenance of plant operating well beyond its intended lifespan, which was irresponsibly constructed in a tsunami-prone seismic zone. This type of accident can and probably will happen again, precisely because of moratoriums on new plant construction. One risk you didn't list but probably should have is reckless military attacks waged against installations such as Zaporizhzhia in Ukraine. It's hard to safeguard a nuclear plant against a barbarian invasion. It may make sense to operate such plants under UN auspices, or otherwise guarantee their safety through multinational treaties with real enforcement behind them.
- thehappypm 3y agoIf Japan can’t do it, responsibly, why should we expect any other country to?
- kwere 3y agofukushima plant was obsolete and built in a not great area (probably due to local political squabble), but it was in the process to slowly (backroooms deals between energy provider and gov) be modernized to current standard, thing that contained the disaster as other reactors had already moved their generators on the roof instead to keeping it at ground level. Japan is not a great example for corporate behaviour
- thehappypm 3y agoDodging the question, no?
- CamperBob2 3y agoNo. Do you know much about TEPCO?