3 ms·

The number of nuclear plants is so small that any example is statistically anecdotical. Yes, Fukushima did not kill much. Is it because the nuclear is in itsel

by cauch 3y ago

The number of nuclear plants is so small that any example is statistically anecdotical. Yes, Fukushima did not kill much. Is it because the nuclear is in itself super safe, or is it because we were lucky? We would need ~100 Fukushima before even having a rough estimation. I think risk cannot be counted as "number of deaths", but as "capacity of losing control". Cars and cows kill a lot of humans. Yet, their risks are controllable: it is not true that if just few things change or if the circumstances are slightly unlucky, suddenly, they will do 1'000 times more deaths. With this way of thinking, we can understand better why scientists are worried about pandemic rather than common cold, even if before the last pandemic (and maybe during, whatever) common colds was killing more. And it works with coal too: unpredicted effects of global warming are a way of losing control, and it is why scientists are so adamant about stopping using coal. I don't think it is true that we have judged the other forms of power generation differently than the way we judge nuclear. We judge the same way: based on our current understanding of how easy it is to keep or lose control. Sure, coal is dangerous and has unpredicted effects. But the reason it was treated differently is because the capacity of losing control with coal were not at all obvious from the start, while they were written in black and white from the start for nuclear.

jychang 3y ago
Nuclear plants produce 68% of the energy in France. If that’s not statistically relevant, doubling the number wouldn’t be statistically relevant either. For that matter, even in the USA, nuclear power produces about 10% of all electricity. Multiply that by 10 and that’s the entire population as a sample.
- cauch 3y ago
  That's not at all the point. Imagine the following game: you throw three dices. If the three dices are not ending on 1, you win 1 dollar. If they are ending on three 1, you lose 100'000 dollars. If you throw the dice ten times, you will, with high probability, not have three 1 (the probability of appearing is 0.5% per throw). You will probably need to throw more then 10 times before loosing. But when loosing, you will lose a lot too, which makes the bet intrinsically a bad idea (the win does not justify the risk if unlucky). France has 56 nuclear plants. 56! It's totally unreasonnable to draw conclusion on intrinsic safety of the nuclear plants on such a small number. The fact that you cover the full population with a small number of plants does not change that: it does not change the fact that you cannot conclude scientifically. The same way it is incorrect to say "I only need 3 throws, so it means that the 1-1-1 bet is intrinsically a good idea". (PS: please do not answer about "loosing 100'000 dollars, but with nuclear disaster, it's not that bad", it's not the point. The point is that statistics is a large number game, and that we just don't have a large number of nuclear power plants to do statistics with them)
  - pfdietz 3y ago
    Note that powering the world (all uses of energy, not just the grid) with nuclear will require ~6000 3 GW(th) nuclear reactors, to provide the 18 TW of primary energy the world currently consumes. About two orders of magnitude more than France has. At the historical rate of world nuclear accidents this would yield > 1 meltdown a year.
  - cpleppert 3y ago
    There are hundreds of nuclear power plants that have been in operation for decades. Most operating nuclear power plants run with dramatically higher uptimes than what they were originally conservatively designed to meet. Nuclear power plants are operating in an active war zone right now! Six reactors were the site of a military battle and ended up sustaining damage beyond anything foreseeable by the designers. Every one of them shut down successfully and at no point was there any evidence that there was ever a safety risk to the public unless a malevolent actor wanted to cause such an accident. This body of evidence strongly supports the view that nuclear is not only safe but incredibly safe. We have incredible knowledge about how to run nuclear plants safely.
    - cauch 3y ago
      Again, you miss my point. "hundreds of reactor in operation for decades" is NOTHING. These plants have a large number of differences, and are located and operated often very differently. At the end, you have something like "10 plants operated for ~10 years under conditions A", "10 plants operated for ~15 years under conditions B", ... SIX! Six reactors were the site of a military battle and ended up sustaining damage beyond anything foreseeable by the designers. Six is NOTHING. You cannot say "I trust that nuclear is intrinsically well-design to resist to military conflict" based on SIX cases. The damage may have been lucky. Or even may have been unlucky (I'm not saying that nuclear is unsafe, I'm just saying the stats says you cannot conclude). The only people who pretend we have incredible knowledge about how to run nuclear plants safely are either people who also demonstrate they don't have any idea of what they need to check to "demonstrate safety", or they are experts that are on the left side of the Gaussian curve: they are as numerous as as-much-qualified experts who pretend nuclear plants are proven very unsafe (in other word: they are cherry-picked experts, and do not represent the consensus which is: nuclear plants are too complex, too diversified, too sensitive to surrounding circumstances and not yet used enough so that we can scientifically conclude)

by cauch 3y ago

jychang 3y ago

Nuclear plants produce 68% of the energy in France. If that’s not statistically relevant, doubling the number wouldn’t be statistically relevant either. For that matter, even in the USA, nuclear power produces about 10% of all electricity. Multiply that by 10 and that’s the entire population as a sample.

cauch 3y ago
That's not at all the point. Imagine the following game: you throw three dices. If the three dices are not ending on 1, you win 1 dollar. If they are ending on three 1, you lose 100'000 dollars. If you throw the dice ten times, you will, with high probability, not have three 1 (the probability of appearing is 0.5% per throw). You will probably need to throw more then 10 times before loosing. But when loosing, you will lose a lot too, which makes the bet intrinsically a bad idea (the win does not justify the risk if unlucky). France has 56 nuclear plants. 56! It's totally unreasonnable to draw conclusion on intrinsic safety of the nuclear plants on such a small number. The fact that you cover the full population with a small number of plants does not change that: it does not change the fact that you cannot conclude scientifically. The same way it is incorrect to say "I only need 3 throws, so it means that the 1-1-1 bet is intrinsically a good idea". (PS: please do not answer about "loosing 100'000 dollars, but with nuclear disaster, it's not that bad", it's not the point. The point is that statistics is a large number game, and that we just don't have a large number of nuclear power plants to do statistics with them)
- pfdietz 3y ago
  Note that powering the world (all uses of energy, not just the grid) with nuclear will require ~6000 3 GW(th) nuclear reactors, to provide the 18 TW of primary energy the world currently consumes. About two orders of magnitude more than France has. At the historical rate of world nuclear accidents this would yield > 1 meltdown a year.
- cpleppert 3y ago
  There are hundreds of nuclear power plants that have been in operation for decades. Most operating nuclear power plants run with dramatically higher uptimes than what they were originally conservatively designed to meet. Nuclear power plants are operating in an active war zone right now! Six reactors were the site of a military battle and ended up sustaining damage beyond anything foreseeable by the designers. Every one of them shut down successfully and at no point was there any evidence that there was ever a safety risk to the public unless a malevolent actor wanted to cause such an accident. This body of evidence strongly supports the view that nuclear is not only safe but incredibly safe. We have incredible knowledge about how to run nuclear plants safely.
  - cauch 3y ago
    Again, you miss my point. "hundreds of reactor in operation for decades" is NOTHING. These plants have a large number of differences, and are located and operated often very differently. At the end, you have something like "10 plants operated for ~10 years under conditions A", "10 plants operated for ~15 years under conditions B", ... SIX! Six reactors were the site of a military battle and ended up sustaining damage beyond anything foreseeable by the designers. Six is NOTHING. You cannot say "I trust that nuclear is intrinsically well-design to resist to military conflict" based on SIX cases. The damage may have been lucky. Or even may have been unlucky (I'm not saying that nuclear is unsafe, I'm just saying the stats says you cannot conclude). The only people who pretend we have incredible knowledge about how to run nuclear plants safely are either people who also demonstrate they don't have any idea of what they need to check to "demonstrate safety", or they are experts that are on the left side of the Gaussian curve: they are as numerous as as-much-qualified experts who pretend nuclear plants are proven very unsafe (in other word: they are cherry-picked experts, and do not represent the consensus which is: nuclear plants are too complex, too diversified, too sensitive to surrounding circumstances and not yet used enough so that we can scientifically conclude)