8 ms·

Safe Enough?

94 points by emtel 3y ago

pestatije 3y ago
Your Book Review: Safe Enough? Finalist #7 in the Book Review Contest
gmerc 3y ago
Great, detailed and not fawning review of a topic too often discussed from ideological vantage points
roenxi 3y ago
> Is it right to ignore the cost of the evacuation of Tokyo, merely because an unplanned flow of water saved us? What if we assume the maximum cost of a nuclear event is not $1 trillion for the Fukushima we lived, but $10 trillion for the Fukushima we escaped This continued focus on cost rather than cost-benefit must be some sort of cognitive bias because it makes no sense. Even if there is risk of a $10 trillion disaster, once assessing the upside nuclear is still going to be a contender for the best possible form of energy. As might have been predicted, Japan struggled for a few years then admitted that having electricity justifies taking some rational risks and is working to undo the damage caused by post-Fukushima overreaction. The western powers are facing a serious energy crisis because as a body politic there was an insistence on choosing technology ideologically rather than using practical concerns. It is unfortunate that there was a decision make to test how much stress the margins of society can take rather than making a break for cheap energy in the 80s, 90s, 00s and 10s. Maybe renewables can do it now in the 20s, but the experience in places like Germany is that they are cheaper but also less effective at maintaining a comfortable society. And that 40 years delay was still foolish regardless. https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/japan-pm-call-development-construction-new-generation-nuclear-power-plants-2022-08-24/ https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/japan-pm-call-dev...
- gmerc 3y ago
  It makes perfect sense in a world where in the end every single thing is condensed down to profit.
- danielheath 3y ago
  Nuclear costs a fortune under the regulatory regime it's operated with to date. We genuinely don't know how much less it would cost to have nuclear power on an equal-safety-to-coal-power basis, because it's not been tried.
  - otherme123 3y ago
    Why would you equal-to-coal today? You need to equal wind, solar or at least gas safety. Lately I'm reading a lot about lowering nuclear safety to improve costs. Imagine cars makers asking to get rid of ABS, airbags, safety belts... to make cheaper cars. Any sane person would raise a brow when hearing that, any industry should aim to be as safe as possible, not to cut costs on safety and assume some preventable deaths with a happy smile. It's also a lie: in this report https://www.nei.org/resources/reports-briefs/nuclear-costs-in-context https://www.nei.org/resources/reports-briefs/nuclear-costs-i... , in the page 5 you can see that regulatory costs are minimal (and the source should be nuclear friendly enough) after adapting for the Fukushima "lesson".
    - roenxi 3y ago
      > Imagine cars makers asking to get rid of ABS, airbags, safety belts... But cars with all those safety features are still much more risky then nuclear plants. Cars can kill you. Practically speaking nuclear plants cannot. They force people to move. If you are going to complain about preventable deaths, what is your plan to make cars safe? We haven't done all we can do. If we bought the speed limits down to walking pace and banned reversing we'd save a huge number of lives (including small toddlers, it remains a tear jerker every time someone reverses over their own toddler). Why are you accepting high risks from cars but raising an eyebrow at nuclear plants? It isn't rational. You know people, right now, who will be killed by cars. Why isn't something being done [0]? > in the page 5 you can see that regulatory costs are minimal Nuclear is the only technology that gets more expensive the more is built. And I'll give you a hint. That anomaly is 100% caused by the regulatory framework. The report is obviously misjudging something. They're probably doing something like assuming only things that the regulators explicitly ask for count as regulatory costs. We should see a learning effect in the nuclear industry where technology gets cheaper over time. [0] That was rhetorical. The answer is because it'd be damn silly and the costs would far outweight the benefits. Everyone can see that because the costs are obvious and felt personally. It is unfortunate the the costs of lacking energy are going to be felt before people accept that there aren't alternatives to building new powerplants.
- nunuvit 3y ago
  It's not a bias. It's just the scope of the book.
- skybrian 3y ago
  Japan’s power grid apparently has problems making increased capacity and load sharing difficult, and they rely a lot on imported fossil fuels. It explains among other things why they’re so enthusiastic about hydrogen and not so much about electric cars. I’m not sure what lessons other countries can learn from their choices. Here’s a deep dive about it: https://tildes.net/~enviro/15sb/japan_to_invest_107_billion_in_hydrogen_supply_over_fifteen_years#comment-809x https://tildes.net/~enviro/15sb/japan_to_invest_107_billion_...
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- wokwokwok 3y ago
  There is certainly bias, but there’s also a whole lot of “refuse to acknowledge reality”. Certainly, there is a cost/benefit to compare, but really, bluntly, we’re shit at cleaning up nuclear disasters. In every situation where they’ve occurred, it’s taken longer and cost more than anticipated, and the point here is that this enormously expensive disaster could have been 10x worse if not for a lucky coincidence. > Even if there is a risk of a $10 trillion disaster… /sigh… The problem is not that it’s too expensive; it’s that we’re not technologically advanced enough to deal with nuclear disasters other than brute force “pack everything into bricks and bury it in a hole”. People will do it, because they close their eyes and hope nothing goes wrong (hey, won’t be in office when it does, this is your problem next generation, haha~), but things will go wrong, and it will. Again. Be crushingly expensive. …and until we solve ”deal with it when it goes wrong”, bluntly, nuclear energy is always going to be controversial based on different levels of risk acceptance by different groups. It’s not cognitive bias. You just have a different opinion. Neither you nor they are “right” about acceptable levels of risk. The solution isn’t singing and dancing about nuclear power being safe. It is not safe. The solution is find ways to make it safe by being able to contain, control and deal with nuclear materials without needing “10000 years in a hole in the ground” for waste material, or “evacuate the entire metropolitan Tokyo” when things go wrong. Those are not things that happen with “safe” technology.
  - kurthr 3y ago
    What if the Tsunami had hit Tokyo? How big would that disaster have been? Sendai is a much smaller city and it had over 100k destroyed buildings, 15k dead or missing, and well over 100k without shelter. Estimates of the damage to infrastructure is estimated in the $Trillion range (over $300B spent in direct govt rebuilding incentives). Maybe we shouldn't build large cities next to water since we're not technologically advanced enough to deal with natural disasters?
    - toyg 3y ago
      In a context of rising tides, yes, that's not a smart idea. Like it wasn't smart to do it in the context of middle-age piracy in the Mediterranean, or when the Roman Empire crumbled and cities on plains became indefensible - people moved to hills and mountains, further from the coast.
- _a_a_a_ 3y ago
  Has anyone else noticed these kind of posts appear quickly for certain vested-interest areas, get voted to the top but don't have much if any backup to them? Let's break this down. > rather than cost-benefit must be some sort of cognitive bias because it makes no sense Agreed > ...once assessing the upside nuclear is still going to be a contender for the best possible form of energy. No justification given in the form of a cost/benefit analysis (which the poster just invoked the need for), just a flat statement that it is the "best possible". Note the use of weasel word 'best'. > having electricity justifies taking some rational risks and is working to undo the damage caused by post-Fukushima overreaction ... there was an insistence on choosing technology ideologically rather than using practical concerns "Rational" in "rational risks", and "overreaction", also "ideologically" versus "practical concerns" More weasel words, pure emotive invocations. I could go on, but let's finish with > that they are cheaper but also less effective at maintaining a comfortable society Absolutely no justification for this, and completely ignoring the fact that climate change is now kicking in badly. How the hell did this get voted to the top, because I'm starting to have my suspicions. If it's not shilling then it certainly against HN rules "..don't post shallow dismissals ... A good critical comment teaches us something", this being precisely a shallow dismissal and nothing I can learn from except some people are wilfully blind to what they don't want to see. Something, somewhere is blatantly going wrong with commenting.
  - sillysaurusx 3y ago
    Accusations of shilling without evidence are also against HN rules. If you have a suspicion, it’s best to email HN.
    - _a_a_a_ 3y ago
      Seems to me it's effectively impossible to get evidence of shilling, but if this is indistinguishable from shallow dismissals – which it precisely is – this post should be dealt with in an equivalent way. That said, the moderators are glad to delete certain kinds of posts (including some of mine, rightly or wrongly), but not this kind. And maybe they are right not to, but I'd like to know why. Edit: I come to HN because there's a lot of good, informative posts and also descriptions of people's experience. This is really valuable stuff, but it's being drowned out by timewasting fluff and garbage to the point where I'm starting to regret coming here, and I especially regret posting something that tries to be informative when the only response I get for a few subjects (eg. drugs) appears to be co-ordinated, weaponised downvoting. Downvotes are fine, but I need to know why someone disagrees.
troupo 3y ago
> a slippage between tectonic plates so powerful that it moved Honshu, the main island of Japan, 2.4 meters to the east. The earthquake generated a tsunami 14 meters high The definition of a black swan event. And yet the conclusion is, unsurprisingly, indistinguishable from "nuclear is bad, be very very wary". Imagine if any other tech had the same fear-mongering. We'd never have a single hydroelectric plant after Banqiao dam failure that killed anywhere from 25 000 to 240 000 and left 11 million people homeless.
- otherme123 3y ago
  You can still build nuclear reactors, they are not banned. But you want to build them ignoring safety lessons. The aeronautical industry is improving safety all the time, and accidents prompt new safety measures. They don't scoof accidents without analysis and adaptation, saying "if you want to fly you must accept that some 787-MAX are crashing down from time to time, but still safer than traveling by car, we did the math". No, they landed the plane and adapted.
  - troupo 3y ago
    > But you want to build them ignoring safety lessons. No, I don't > The aeronautical industry is improving safety all the time, and accidents prompt new safety measures. Yes, they do. Note: we're still flying. The number of aircraft is increasing. And we don't turn aircraft into boogey men. Had aircraft been treated the way nuclear plants are treated, we'd stop building most of them in the early 80s, and the construction of each new one would be met with strong opposition and campaigns to shut the entire thing down.
    - nerdponx 3y ago
      You're ignoring the fact that humans generally do not think in terms of expected value, nor should they. An improbable outcome of widespread catastrophe (irradiating a million people) is and should be treated as something worse than a more-probable outcome of localized catastrophe (plane crash). You can't just do "loss x probability = cost".
totetsu 3y ago
In the hypothetical situation where Tokyo needed to be evacuated, or a large enough portion of the population there feared for their health and wanted to leave, i wonder if in the long term, the redistribution of population back into regional Japan would not be a good thing over all.
- unsupp0rted 3y ago
  In the long term, everything is a good thing over all because humans adapt to make it that way
  - teddyh 3y ago
    Yes. Like when you’re driving using a GPS map. You can’t look at the map and see if you’ve made the wrong turn, because it always recalculates the route and determines the currently correct path to your destination, and shows you as being on that path. (The only exception is when it tells you to make a U-turn.)
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- Panzer04 3y ago
  At the risk of being glib, of course not? People have a hard on for regional areas, but the practical reality is people enjoy the benefits of living in cities too much to want to live in rural areas. They are also way worse at actually providing for the needs of those people efficiently.
perihelions 3y ago
The spent-fuel pond fire is also the ongoing risk at Zaporizhzhya. There's a long list of stressors going into that probabilistic equation: e.g. the reservoir it draws on for cooling water source collapsed with the dam bombing; and all of its connections to the offsite power grid have disappeared, save one (now a single point of failure).
exmadscientist 3y ago
The article is fine, but the link in its Footnote 3 is the really interesting part: https://www.ans.org/news/article-1556/tmi-operators-did-what-they-were-trained-to-do/ https://www.ans.org/news/article-1556/tmi-operators-did-what... It's a story from the Davis Besse NPP operators, who happened to face the exact same fault as caused the accident at Three Mile Island... and made it through OK... except they experienced it first, 18 months earlier. So why, when this happened a second time, did no one learn from the first occurrence? Why were people more worried about assigning blame, substandard training materials, and taking cover from lawsuits, than about ensuring this could not happen again? THIS is why we cannot have nice things. It does not matter whether the technology can or cannot be implemented safely. It matters whether the human organizations that support that technology are up to the task of managing something where a single mistake can ruin tens of millions of people's lives, with consequences for ten thousand years. It's not like one plane dropping out of the sky, ruining 500 people's lives... this is a much longer term problem. And probabilistic risk assessment, as technically correct as it is when it gets perfect input information, is absolutely horrid at driving humans to make the right choices.
- jenadine 3y ago
  I agree with you, but you are overestimating the cost on live of an accident by many orders of magnitude. How do you get to the tens of millions of live ruinned?
  - toyg 3y ago
    Chernobyl and surrounding areas had to be fully evacuated, and it was a pretty remote site in a very sparsely populated country. That's not tens of millions but probably in the single millions. If it happened in a denser area, like France or the US East Coast, it would probably reach 10m relatively easily.
    - jenadine 3y ago
      According to Wikipedia, there was less than 200k people evacuated for Chernobyl. Also, if you take a 30km radius, multiplied by the population density of California, you get only 274k people. (And I'm pretty sure that the powerplant are build in area which are less populated than the average). As we leaned since, 30km radius is probably over-doing it. That's considering the life of someone being evacuated to be "ruined"
noduerme 3y ago
>> A nuclear power plant's approximately twenty thousand safety components have a Rube Goldberg quality. Like dominoes, numerous pumps, valves, and switches must operate in the required sequence to simply pump cooling water or shut down the plant. There were innumerable unlikely combinations of failures that could cause an accident Query: Is anything this complex designed this way today, without actually running all its failure modes through risk analysis before actually building it?
- grun3 3y ago
  After watching industrial disaster post-mortems by the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, I think the answer is yes. Plenty of stuff gets built without considering each failure mode. https://www.youtube.com/@USCSB https://www.youtube.com/@USCSB

Safe Enough?

94 points by emtel 3y ago

pestatije 3y ago

Your Book Review: Safe Enough? Finalist #7 in the Book Review Contest

gmerc 3y ago

Great, detailed and not fawning review of a topic too often discussed from ideological vantage points

roenxi 3y ago

> Is it right to ignore the cost of the evacuation of Tokyo, merely because an unplanned flow of water saved us? What if we assume the maximum cost of a nuclear event is not $1 trillion for the Fukushima we lived, but $10 trillion for the Fukushima we escaped This continued focus on cost rather than cost-benefit must be some sort of cognitive bias because it makes no sense. Even if there is risk of a $10 trillion disaster, once assessing the upside nuclear is still going to be a contender for the best possible form of energy. As might have been predicted, Japan struggled for a few years then admitted that having electricity justifies taking some rational risks and is working to undo the damage caused by post-Fukushima overreaction. The western powers are facing a serious energy crisis because as a body politic there was an insistence on choosing technology ideologically rather than using practical concerns. It is unfortunate that there was a decision make to test how much stress the margins of society can take rather than making a break for cheap energy in the 80s, 90s, 00s and 10s. Maybe renewables can do it now in the 20s, but the experience in places like Germany is that they are cheaper but also less effective at maintaining a comfortable society. And that 40 years delay was still foolish regardless. https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/japan-pm-call-development-construction-new-generation-nuclear-power-plants-2022-08-24/ https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/japan-pm-call-dev...

gmerc 3y ago
It makes perfect sense in a world where in the end every single thing is condensed down to profit.
danielheath 3y ago
Nuclear costs a fortune under the regulatory regime it's operated with to date. We genuinely don't know how much less it would cost to have nuclear power on an equal-safety-to-coal-power basis, because it's not been tried.
- otherme123 3y ago
  Why would you equal-to-coal today? You need to equal wind, solar or at least gas safety. Lately I'm reading a lot about lowering nuclear safety to improve costs. Imagine cars makers asking to get rid of ABS, airbags, safety belts... to make cheaper cars. Any sane person would raise a brow when hearing that, any industry should aim to be as safe as possible, not to cut costs on safety and assume some preventable deaths with a happy smile. It's also a lie: in this report https://www.nei.org/resources/reports-briefs/nuclear-costs-in-context https://www.nei.org/resources/reports-briefs/nuclear-costs-i... , in the page 5 you can see that regulatory costs are minimal (and the source should be nuclear friendly enough) after adapting for the Fukushima "lesson".
  - roenxi 3y ago
    > Imagine cars makers asking to get rid of ABS, airbags, safety belts... But cars with all those safety features are still much more risky then nuclear plants. Cars can kill you. Practically speaking nuclear plants cannot. They force people to move. If you are going to complain about preventable deaths, what is your plan to make cars safe? We haven't done all we can do. If we bought the speed limits down to walking pace and banned reversing we'd save a huge number of lives (including small toddlers, it remains a tear jerker every time someone reverses over their own toddler). Why are you accepting high risks from cars but raising an eyebrow at nuclear plants? It isn't rational. You know people, right now, who will be killed by cars. Why isn't something being done [0]? > in the page 5 you can see that regulatory costs are minimal Nuclear is the only technology that gets more expensive the more is built. And I'll give you a hint. That anomaly is 100% caused by the regulatory framework. The report is obviously misjudging something. They're probably doing something like assuming only things that the regulators explicitly ask for count as regulatory costs. We should see a learning effect in the nuclear industry where technology gets cheaper over time. [0] That was rhetorical. The answer is because it'd be damn silly and the costs would far outweight the benefits. Everyone can see that because the costs are obvious and felt personally. It is unfortunate the the costs of lacking energy are going to be felt before people accept that there aren't alternatives to building new powerplants.
nunuvit 3y ago
It's not a bias. It's just the scope of the book.
skybrian 3y ago
Japan’s power grid apparently has problems making increased capacity and load sharing difficult, and they rely a lot on imported fossil fuels. It explains among other things why they’re so enthusiastic about hydrogen and not so much about electric cars. I’m not sure what lessons other countries can learn from their choices. Here’s a deep dive about it: https://tildes.net/~enviro/15sb/japan_to_invest_107_billion_in_hydrogen_supply_over_fifteen_years#comment-809x https://tildes.net/~enviro/15sb/japan_to_invest_107_billion_...
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
wokwokwok 3y ago
There is certainly bias, but there’s also a whole lot of “refuse to acknowledge reality”. Certainly, there is a cost/benefit to compare, but really, bluntly, we’re shit at cleaning up nuclear disasters. In every situation where they’ve occurred, it’s taken longer and cost more than anticipated, and the point here is that this enormously expensive disaster could have been 10x worse if not for a lucky coincidence. > Even if there is a risk of a $10 trillion disaster… /sigh… The problem is not that it’s too expensive; it’s that we’re not technologically advanced enough to deal with nuclear disasters other than brute force “pack everything into bricks and bury it in a hole”. People will do it, because they close their eyes and hope nothing goes wrong (hey, won’t be in office when it does, this is your problem next generation, haha~), but things will go wrong, and it will. Again. Be crushingly expensive. …and until we solve ”deal with it when it goes wrong”, bluntly, nuclear energy is always going to be controversial based on different levels of risk acceptance by different groups. It’s not cognitive bias. You just have a different opinion. Neither you nor they are “right” about acceptable levels of risk. The solution isn’t singing and dancing about nuclear power being safe. It is not safe. The solution is find ways to make it safe by being able to contain, control and deal with nuclear materials without needing “10000 years in a hole in the ground” for waste material, or “evacuate the entire metropolitan Tokyo” when things go wrong. Those are not things that happen with “safe” technology.
- kurthr 3y ago
  What if the Tsunami had hit Tokyo? How big would that disaster have been? Sendai is a much smaller city and it had over 100k destroyed buildings, 15k dead or missing, and well over 100k without shelter. Estimates of the damage to infrastructure is estimated in the $Trillion range (over $300B spent in direct govt rebuilding incentives). Maybe we shouldn't build large cities next to water since we're not technologically advanced enough to deal with natural disasters?
  - toyg 3y ago
    In a context of rising tides, yes, that's not a smart idea. Like it wasn't smart to do it in the context of middle-age piracy in the Mediterranean, or when the Roman Empire crumbled and cities on plains became indefensible - people moved to hills and mountains, further from the coast.
_a_a_a_ 3y ago
Has anyone else noticed these kind of posts appear quickly for certain vested-interest areas, get voted to the top but don't have much if any backup to them? Let's break this down. > rather than cost-benefit must be some sort of cognitive bias because it makes no sense Agreed > ...once assessing the upside nuclear is still going to be a contender for the best possible form of energy. No justification given in the form of a cost/benefit analysis (which the poster just invoked the need for), just a flat statement that it is the "best possible". Note the use of weasel word 'best'. > having electricity justifies taking some rational risks and is working to undo the damage caused by post-Fukushima overreaction ... there was an insistence on choosing technology ideologically rather than using practical concerns "Rational" in "rational risks", and "overreaction", also "ideologically" versus "practical concerns" More weasel words, pure emotive invocations. I could go on, but let's finish with > that they are cheaper but also less effective at maintaining a comfortable society Absolutely no justification for this, and completely ignoring the fact that climate change is now kicking in badly. How the hell did this get voted to the top, because I'm starting to have my suspicions. If it's not shilling then it certainly against HN rules "..don't post shallow dismissals ... A good critical comment teaches us something", this being precisely a shallow dismissal and nothing I can learn from except some people are wilfully blind to what they don't want to see. Something, somewhere is blatantly going wrong with commenting.
- sillysaurusx 3y ago
  Accusations of shilling without evidence are also against HN rules. If you have a suspicion, it’s best to email HN.
  - _a_a_a_ 3y ago
    Seems to me it's effectively impossible to get evidence of shilling, but if this is indistinguishable from shallow dismissals – which it precisely is – this post should be dealt with in an equivalent way. That said, the moderators are glad to delete certain kinds of posts (including some of mine, rightly or wrongly), but not this kind. And maybe they are right not to, but I'd like to know why. Edit: I come to HN because there's a lot of good, informative posts and also descriptions of people's experience. This is really valuable stuff, but it's being drowned out by timewasting fluff and garbage to the point where I'm starting to regret coming here, and I especially regret posting something that tries to be informative when the only response I get for a few subjects (eg. drugs) appears to be co-ordinated, weaponised downvoting. Downvotes are fine, but I need to know why someone disagrees.

troupo 3y ago

> a slippage between tectonic plates so powerful that it moved Honshu, the main island of Japan, 2.4 meters to the east. The earthquake generated a tsunami 14 meters high The definition of a black swan event. And yet the conclusion is, unsurprisingly, indistinguishable from "nuclear is bad, be very very wary". Imagine if any other tech had the same fear-mongering. We'd never have a single hydroelectric plant after Banqiao dam failure that killed anywhere from 25 000 to 240 000 and left 11 million people homeless.

otherme123 3y ago
You can still build nuclear reactors, they are not banned. But you want to build them ignoring safety lessons. The aeronautical industry is improving safety all the time, and accidents prompt new safety measures. They don't scoof accidents without analysis and adaptation, saying "if you want to fly you must accept that some 787-MAX are crashing down from time to time, but still safer than traveling by car, we did the math". No, they landed the plane and adapted.
- troupo 3y ago
  > But you want to build them ignoring safety lessons. No, I don't > The aeronautical industry is improving safety all the time, and accidents prompt new safety measures. Yes, they do. Note: we're still flying. The number of aircraft is increasing. And we don't turn aircraft into boogey men. Had aircraft been treated the way nuclear plants are treated, we'd stop building most of them in the early 80s, and the construction of each new one would be met with strong opposition and campaigns to shut the entire thing down.
  - nerdponx 3y ago
    You're ignoring the fact that humans generally do not think in terms of expected value, nor should they. An improbable outcome of widespread catastrophe (irradiating a million people) is and should be treated as something worse than a more-probable outcome of localized catastrophe (plane crash). You can't just do "loss x probability = cost".

totetsu 3y ago

In the hypothetical situation where Tokyo needed to be evacuated, or a large enough portion of the population there feared for their health and wanted to leave, i wonder if in the long term, the redistribution of population back into regional Japan would not be a good thing over all.

unsupp0rted 3y ago
In the long term, everything is a good thing over all because humans adapt to make it that way
- teddyh 3y ago
  Yes. Like when you’re driving using a GPS map. You can’t look at the map and see if you’ve made the wrong turn, because it always recalculates the route and determines the currently correct path to your destination, and shows you as being on that path. (The only exception is when it tells you to make a U-turn.)
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
Panzer04 3y ago
At the risk of being glib, of course not? People have a hard on for regional areas, but the practical reality is people enjoy the benefits of living in cities too much to want to live in rural areas. They are also way worse at actually providing for the needs of those people efficiently.

perihelions 3y ago

The spent-fuel pond fire is also the ongoing risk at Zaporizhzhya. There's a long list of stressors going into that probabilistic equation: e.g. the reservoir it draws on for cooling water source collapsed with the dam bombing; and all of its connections to the offsite power grid have disappeared, save one (now a single point of failure).

exmadscientist 3y ago

The article is fine, but the link in its Footnote 3 is the really interesting part: https://www.ans.org/news/article-1556/tmi-operators-did-what-they-were-trained-to-do/ https://www.ans.org/news/article-1556/tmi-operators-did-what... It's a story from the Davis Besse NPP operators, who happened to face the exact same fault as caused the accident at Three Mile Island... and made it through OK... except they experienced it first, 18 months earlier. So why, when this happened a second time, did no one learn from the first occurrence? Why were people more worried about assigning blame, substandard training materials, and taking cover from lawsuits, than about ensuring this could not happen again? THIS is why we cannot have nice things. It does not matter whether the technology can or cannot be implemented safely. It matters whether the human organizations that support that technology are up to the task of managing something where a single mistake can ruin tens of millions of people's lives, with consequences for ten thousand years. It's not like one plane dropping out of the sky, ruining 500 people's lives... this is a much longer term problem. And probabilistic risk assessment, as technically correct as it is when it gets perfect input information, is absolutely horrid at driving humans to make the right choices.

jenadine 3y ago
I agree with you, but you are overestimating the cost on live of an accident by many orders of magnitude. How do you get to the tens of millions of live ruinned?
- toyg 3y ago
  Chernobyl and surrounding areas had to be fully evacuated, and it was a pretty remote site in a very sparsely populated country. That's not tens of millions but probably in the single millions. If it happened in a denser area, like France or the US East Coast, it would probably reach 10m relatively easily.
  - jenadine 3y ago
    According to Wikipedia, there was less than 200k people evacuated for Chernobyl. Also, if you take a 30km radius, multiplied by the population density of California, you get only 274k people. (And I'm pretty sure that the powerplant are build in area which are less populated than the average). As we leaned since, 30km radius is probably over-doing it. That's considering the life of someone being evacuated to be "ruined"

noduerme 3y ago

>> A nuclear power plant's approximately twenty thousand safety components have a Rube Goldberg quality. Like dominoes, numerous pumps, valves, and switches must operate in the required sequence to simply pump cooling water or shut down the plant. There were innumerable unlikely combinations of failures that could cause an accident Query: Is anything this complex designed this way today, without actually running all its failure modes through risk analysis before actually building it?

grun3 3y ago
After watching industrial disaster post-mortems by the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, I think the answer is yes. Plenty of stuff gets built without considering each failure mode. https://www.youtube.com/@USCSB https://www.youtube.com/@USCSB