3 ms·

> Yes the technology allowed to increase the crop per acres, to ship goods across the world, to keep food cold, to warm/sterilize it, find new drugs, mass produ

> Yes the technology allowed to increase the crop per acres, to ship goods across the world, to keep food cold, to warm/sterilize it, find new drugs, mass produce clothes for few cents, etc. > That miracle comes access to free and dense energy also known as fossil fuel. If oil/gas/coal was not found/used or just not as abundant, we might not have known the same past 150 years. That's only because humans were too naive and risk-averse to recognize that once we split the atom we had access to 1000x the energy with comparable reductions in waste. Perhaps if we had AI back in the mid/late 20th century it could've explained to us the benefits of nuclear power vs fossil fuels. Instead we fell for hallucinations of our own making via events like Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima.

smaudet 3y ago
"hallucinations of our own making via events like Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima" I suppose the millions executed under extremist politics were also "hallucinations" then... (e.g. German holocaust, Soviet prisoner camps) These were all very real events with very real repercussions. They did not conclusively prove there is no "safe" nuclear power, but they did illustrate the consequences of getting it wrong. The "new" procedures around "cleaner" fission processes e.g. with fuel recycling all sound nice, but ultimately they cary the same costs of "getting it wrong". Having objections to safety is not a "hallucination". Unless you can clearly explain why a dangerous process has been made "safe", without insulting people's intelligence or understanding i.e. hand waving, you cannot prove you understand it well enough yourself to claim safety. This is my problem with the spate "nuclear is safe" going around - if only a small subset of highly trained personnel can operate and diagnose it safely, without repercussion in a closed loop, you cannot claim safety, just that there are specialized processes that under correct supervision might not be harmful, maybe.
- llsf 3y ago
  Energy is dangerous (mechanical, chemical, etc.) and produces waste. And great power requires great responsibility. "Safety" can be seen thru different lenses. If we measure by number of deaths, then nuclear is safer than dams or coal/gas power plant. Nuclear requires some expertise to run safely, but now the plant designs are better. I am wondering if the fear of nuclear is greater than the actual risk. https://what-if.xkcd.com/29/ https://what-if.xkcd.com/29/ https://xkcd.com/radiation/ https://xkcd.com/radiation/
- eloisant 3y ago
  > These were all very real events with very real repercussions. They did not conclusively prove there is no "safe" nuclear power, but they did illustrate the consequences of getting it wrong. The worse consequences of these events came from the evacuation of the zones, not from the radiations. Yes there were death due to direct radiations, about 31 for Chernobyl and none for Fukushima. But that's very small compared to all the death due to coal energy pollution, and even hydro which is catastrophic when a dam breaks (which happens way more than nuclear plant accidents). https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldwide-by-energy-source/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldw... So this is how we can talk about safety of nuclear plant: by looking at stats of the last 70 years and compare it to alternatives. Because unless we want to go back to candles and windmills we can't just say "nuclear seems dangerous so it's safer not to use it". We have to consider what we'll be using to produce electricity instead.
  - smaudet 3y ago
    > The worse consequences of these events came from the evacuation of the zones, not from the radiations. As if, had we only not evacuated people and left everyone around, nobody would have died and everything would have been better... > Yes there were death due to direct radiations, about 31 for Chernobyl and none for Fukushima. But that's very small compared to all the death due to coal energy pollution, and even hydro which is catastrophic when a dam breaks (which happens way more than nuclear plant accidents). This is not a good argument, or at least a bad statistic. You need to look at deaths per <X>, not deaths as a result of. Sure, deaths are fewer with Nuclear, but also, deaths are fewer per coconut. Deaths per terawatt is a bad argument because again, there are so many fewer nuclear plants and the tera-watts are also lower. A better analysis would be acres of land made uninhabitable by energy source. It doesn't matter you have all the electricity if nobody can live anywhere, whether it is coal causing massive wildfires in Canada or failed Nuclear plants evacuating 40 mile regions (and you need to be careful even then - the wildfires are caused by heat which is caused in part by tera-watts, although largely by fossil fuels and chemicals in the atmosphere, the dams floods are caused by lack of upkeep, a problem shared by nuclear reactors...)

smaudet 3y ago

"hallucinations of our own making via events like Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima" I suppose the millions executed under extremist politics were also "hallucinations" then... (e.g. German holocaust, Soviet prisoner camps) These were all very real events with very real repercussions. They did not conclusively prove there is no "safe" nuclear power, but they did illustrate the consequences of getting it wrong. The "new" procedures around "cleaner" fission processes e.g. with fuel recycling all sound nice, but ultimately they cary the same costs of "getting it wrong". Having objections to safety is not a "hallucination". Unless you can clearly explain why a dangerous process has been made "safe", without insulting people's intelligence or understanding i.e. hand waving, you cannot prove you understand it well enough yourself to claim safety. This is my problem with the spate "nuclear is safe" going around - if only a small subset of highly trained personnel can operate and diagnose it safely, without repercussion in a closed loop, you cannot claim safety, just that there are specialized processes that under correct supervision might not be harmful, maybe.

llsf 3y ago
Energy is dangerous (mechanical, chemical, etc.) and produces waste. And great power requires great responsibility. "Safety" can be seen thru different lenses. If we measure by number of deaths, then nuclear is safer than dams or coal/gas power plant. Nuclear requires some expertise to run safely, but now the plant designs are better. I am wondering if the fear of nuclear is greater than the actual risk. https://what-if.xkcd.com/29/ https://what-if.xkcd.com/29/ https://xkcd.com/radiation/ https://xkcd.com/radiation/
eloisant 3y ago
> These were all very real events with very real repercussions. They did not conclusively prove there is no "safe" nuclear power, but they did illustrate the consequences of getting it wrong. The worse consequences of these events came from the evacuation of the zones, not from the radiations. Yes there were death due to direct radiations, about 31 for Chernobyl and none for Fukushima. But that's very small compared to all the death due to coal energy pollution, and even hydro which is catastrophic when a dam breaks (which happens way more than nuclear plant accidents). https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldwide-by-energy-source/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldw... So this is how we can talk about safety of nuclear plant: by looking at stats of the last 70 years and compare it to alternatives. Because unless we want to go back to candles and windmills we can't just say "nuclear seems dangerous so it's safer not to use it". We have to consider what we'll be using to produce electricity instead.
- smaudet 3y ago
  > The worse consequences of these events came from the evacuation of the zones, not from the radiations. As if, had we only not evacuated people and left everyone around, nobody would have died and everything would have been better... > Yes there were death due to direct radiations, about 31 for Chernobyl and none for Fukushima. But that's very small compared to all the death due to coal energy pollution, and even hydro which is catastrophic when a dam breaks (which happens way more than nuclear plant accidents). This is not a good argument, or at least a bad statistic. You need to look at deaths per <X>, not deaths as a result of. Sure, deaths are fewer with Nuclear, but also, deaths are fewer per coconut. Deaths per terawatt is a bad argument because again, there are so many fewer nuclear plants and the tera-watts are also lower. A better analysis would be acres of land made uninhabitable by energy source. It doesn't matter you have all the electricity if nobody can live anywhere, whether it is coal causing massive wildfires in Canada or failed Nuclear plants evacuating 40 mile regions (and you need to be careful even then - the wildfires are caused by heat which is caused in part by tera-watts, although largely by fossil fuels and chemicals in the atmosphere, the dams floods are caused by lack of upkeep, a problem shared by nuclear reactors...)