3 ms·

Nuclear disasters get written off as outliers (even though there are multiple of them). The focus is on the small number of daeths even though that's only one a

by jmyeet 3y ago

Nuclear disasters get written off as outliers (even though there are multiple of them). The focus is on the small number of daeths even though that's only one aspect of many (eg the Chernobyl Absolute Exclusion Zone is literally 1000 square miles almost 40 years later). Chernobyl gets ignored extra because it's an old Soviet design. But what about Fukushima? The clean up will take decades and cost upwards of $1 trillion [1]. Humans are incredibly bad at managing long-term risk. We wouldn't be in this climate crisis if this weren't true. Any private companies will seek to cut costs to improve profits increasing the risk but that's OK because years of lobbying will simply shift the downsides of a potential disaster onto the public. Don't believe me? It's already happened [2]: > The U.S. Price-Anderson Act limits the liability of nuclear plant owners if a radioactive release occurs to $450 million for individual plants and $13.5 billion across all plants Fission power generation just isn't the future. [1]: https://cleantechnica.com/2019/04/16/fukushimas-final-costs-will-approach-one-trillion-dollars-just-for-nuclear-disaster/ https://cleantechnica.com/2019/04/16/fukushimas-final-costs-... [2]: https://css.umich.edu/publications/factsheets/energy/nuclear-energy-factsheet https://css.umich.edu/publications/factsheets/energy/nuclear...

127 3y ago
Yes, indeed. Humans are tragically bad at underestimating the cost of pumping trillions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere. Also coal power releases more radioactivity into the atmosphere than nuclear ever did.
throwaway2990 3y ago
Fukushima Could be argued as a success as the power plant shut itself down correctly when the earthquake hit. It was the tsunami that damaged the pumps and destroyed the cooling. So far there’s no documented effects of any radiation issues. Chernobyl Was entirely preventable if they were not fucking around and experimenting.
- jmyeet 3y ago
  There was no radiation cloud released (unlike, say, Chernobyl). This is true. But it's left a mess that will take decades and hundreds of billions to clean up. Plus all the secondary effects to this region (eg fishing). The simple argument against the idea that it's no big deal is: why not just leave it and do nothing? And the answer is "you can't". Why? Because what remains of the plant still requires active cooling, which is why there's over 1000 tanks on site storing millions of gallons of irradiated and contaminated wastewater. This problem is so large that a lot of money is spent on removing contaminants and radioactivity so the water can be heavily diluted with seawater and released into the ocean. Otherwise the tanks will just keep building up. The wastewater releases started this year (which some still strongly oppose). And this is just from keeping the core cooled. As for removing the core, this may take 50-100+ years [1] and has so many unsolved technical problems. [1]: https://apnews.com/article/japan-nuclear-fukushima-plant-decommissioning-water-release-fe953a597cc86004e525e1816d6c9c49 https://apnews.com/article/japan-nuclear-fukushima-plant-dec...
selectodude 3y ago
Your $1T guy just made up a bunch of numbers, added them up, and then decided that he was going to...raise the total cost by 25 percent. Because reasons.
- jmyeet 3y ago
  So your counterargument is that it might only be $800 billion in clean up costs?
evilos 3y ago
Nuclear energy is so insanely safe that of the three worst accidents in its history, only one actually killed people and its on the order of hundreds of people. Hydro dam failures have killed on the order of hundreds of thousands but no one is trying to ban hydro. Meanwhile, lawnmowers kill over a hundred Americans a year. Nuclear energy is safe by any reasonable standard. The land around Chernobyl and Fukushima are for the most part usable today. It is only because we cling to the unscientific LNT standard that anyone thinks otherwise. Thankfully the misconduct and fraud that led to this state of affairs is becoming more known thanks to the work of Dr. Edward Calabrese.
- natmaka 3y ago
  The real amount of victims of nuclear accidents is hotly disputed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl:_Consequences_of_the_Catastrophe_for_People_and_the_Environment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl:_Consequences_of_the... Fukushima: more than 2200 victims from the evacuation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_nuclear_accident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_nuclear_accident Hydro victims are mostly those of the Banqiao disaster, which is a fluke. In similar conditions anything would go boom with way less latency. It took place during the Chinese Cultural Revolution when most people were busy with the "revolution" which began in 1966 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure ) A well-placed expert whistle-blowing was totally ignored and even punished https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure#Whistle-blower https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure#Whist... This Revolution followed the "Great Leap Forward", with famines and millions victims. Moreover all this came after a civil war and violent Japanese invasion, during which dams were bombed, causing "massive flooding in Henan" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henan#Modern_Era https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henan#Modern_Era ) In such a context an otherwise avoidable catastrophe may happen. Then a huge typhoon closed the case ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typhoon_Nina_(1975) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typhoon_Nina_(1975) ) Predicting and adverting this catastrophe was possible, but given such a context nobody was able to do so. One may imagine what an active nuclear reactor would become/trigger in such a context.
  - evilos 3y ago
anonymouskimmer 3y ago
> but that's OK because years of lobbying will simply shift the downsides of a potential disaster onto the public. > Don't believe me? It's already happened [2]: > > The U.S. Price-Anderson Act limits the liability of nuclear plant owners if a radioactive release occurs to $450 million for individual plants and $13.5 billion across all plants That seems to be some sort of insurace/reinsurance policy of the act. According to Wikipedia: "Under the Act, the administrators of the fund have the right to further charge plants if it is needed." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price%E2%80%93Anderson_Nuclear_Industries_Indemnity_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price%E2%80%93Anderson_Nuclear... And these are some nice benefits of the act: > Companies are expressly forbidden to defend any action for damages on the grounds that an incident was not their fault. > An open-ended time limit is applied, which allows claimants three years to file a claim starting from the time they discover damage.
- jmyeet 3y ago
  > Companies are expressly forbidden to defend any action for damages on the grounds that an incident was not their fault. That's a small price to pay when your corporate liability for an event like Fukushima is limited by law to $450 million. This Act set up the NRC administered Nuclear Insurance scheme, which is largely self-funded [1], which claims to have a pool available of $13.5 billion through private insurance, industry self-insurance and a surcharge. Let's go back to the Fukushima cleanup costs. The estimate keeps going up and is rapidly approaching $1 trillion. So far (as of 2022), $82 billion has been spent [2], which is six times the entire nuclear insurance fund. The revenue of the entire industry is listed here [3] as $38.2 billion. Which brings us to my original point: in the event of this level of disaster, it would be the government footing the bill for the clean up. Who do you think would pick up the tab in the US for a Fukushima-like disaster? The commercial nuclear power industry [1]: https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/nuclear-insurance.html https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/n... [2]: https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/14762193 https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/14762193 [3]: https://www.ibisworld.com/united-states/market-research-reports/nuclear-power-industry/#:~:text=The%20market%20size%20of%20the,at%20%2438.2bn%20in%202023 https://www.ibisworld.com/united-states/market-research-repo....

by jmyeet 3y ago

127 3y ago

Yes, indeed. Humans are tragically bad at underestimating the cost of pumping trillions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere. Also coal power releases more radioactivity into the atmosphere than nuclear ever did.

throwaway2990 3y ago

Fukushima Could be argued as a success as the power plant shut itself down correctly when the earthquake hit. It was the tsunami that damaged the pumps and destroyed the cooling. So far there’s no documented effects of any radiation issues. Chernobyl Was entirely preventable if they were not fucking around and experimenting.

jmyeet 3y ago
There was no radiation cloud released (unlike, say, Chernobyl). This is true. But it's left a mess that will take decades and hundreds of billions to clean up. Plus all the secondary effects to this region (eg fishing). The simple argument against the idea that it's no big deal is: why not just leave it and do nothing? And the answer is "you can't". Why? Because what remains of the plant still requires active cooling, which is why there's over 1000 tanks on site storing millions of gallons of irradiated and contaminated wastewater. This problem is so large that a lot of money is spent on removing contaminants and radioactivity so the water can be heavily diluted with seawater and released into the ocean. Otherwise the tanks will just keep building up. The wastewater releases started this year (which some still strongly oppose). And this is just from keeping the core cooled. As for removing the core, this may take 50-100+ years [1] and has so many unsolved technical problems. [1]: https://apnews.com/article/japan-nuclear-fukushima-plant-decommissioning-water-release-fe953a597cc86004e525e1816d6c9c49 https://apnews.com/article/japan-nuclear-fukushima-plant-dec...

selectodude 3y ago

Your $1T guy just made up a bunch of numbers, added them up, and then decided that he was going to...raise the total cost by 25 percent. Because reasons.

jmyeet 3y ago
So your counterargument is that it might only be $800 billion in clean up costs?

evilos 3y ago

Nuclear energy is so insanely safe that of the three worst accidents in its history, only one actually killed people and its on the order of hundreds of people. Hydro dam failures have killed on the order of hundreds of thousands but no one is trying to ban hydro. Meanwhile, lawnmowers kill over a hundred Americans a year. Nuclear energy is safe by any reasonable standard. The land around Chernobyl and Fukushima are for the most part usable today. It is only because we cling to the unscientific LNT standard that anyone thinks otherwise. Thankfully the misconduct and fraud that led to this state of affairs is becoming more known thanks to the work of Dr. Edward Calabrese.

natmaka 3y ago
The real amount of victims of nuclear accidents is hotly disputed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl:_Consequences_of_the_Catastrophe_for_People_and_the_Environment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl:_Consequences_of_the... Fukushima: more than 2200 victims from the evacuation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_nuclear_accident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_nuclear_accident Hydro victims are mostly those of the Banqiao disaster, which is a fluke. In similar conditions anything would go boom with way less latency. It took place during the Chinese Cultural Revolution when most people were busy with the "revolution" which began in 1966 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure ) A well-placed expert whistle-blowing was totally ignored and even punished https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure#Whistle-blower https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure#Whist... This Revolution followed the "Great Leap Forward", with famines and millions victims. Moreover all this came after a civil war and violent Japanese invasion, during which dams were bombed, causing "massive flooding in Henan" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henan#Modern_Era https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henan#Modern_Era ) In such a context an otherwise avoidable catastrophe may happen. Then a huge typhoon closed the case ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typhoon_Nina_(1975) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typhoon_Nina_(1975) ) Predicting and adverting this catastrophe was possible, but given such a context nobody was able to do so. One may imagine what an active nuclear reactor would become/trigger in such a context.
- evilos 3y ago

anonymouskimmer 3y ago

> but that's OK because years of lobbying will simply shift the downsides of a potential disaster onto the public. > Don't believe me? It's already happened [2]: > > The U.S. Price-Anderson Act limits the liability of nuclear plant owners if a radioactive release occurs to $450 million for individual plants and $13.5 billion across all plants That seems to be some sort of insurace/reinsurance policy of the act. According to Wikipedia: "Under the Act, the administrators of the fund have the right to further charge plants if it is needed." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price%E2%80%93Anderson_Nuclear_Industries_Indemnity_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price%E2%80%93Anderson_Nuclear... And these are some nice benefits of the act: > Companies are expressly forbidden to defend any action for damages on the grounds that an incident was not their fault. > An open-ended time limit is applied, which allows claimants three years to file a claim starting from the time they discover damage.

jmyeet 3y ago
> Companies are expressly forbidden to defend any action for damages on the grounds that an incident was not their fault. That's a small price to pay when your corporate liability for an event like Fukushima is limited by law to $450 million. This Act set up the NRC administered Nuclear Insurance scheme, which is largely self-funded [1], which claims to have a pool available of $13.5 billion through private insurance, industry self-insurance and a surcharge. Let's go back to the Fukushima cleanup costs. The estimate keeps going up and is rapidly approaching $1 trillion. So far (as of 2022), $82 billion has been spent [2], which is six times the entire nuclear insurance fund. The revenue of the entire industry is listed here [3] as $38.2 billion. Which brings us to my original point: in the event of this level of disaster, it would be the government footing the bill for the clean up. Who do you think would pick up the tab in the US for a Fukushima-like disaster? The commercial nuclear power industry [1]: https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/nuclear-insurance.html https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/n... [2]: https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/14762193 https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/14762193 [3]: https://www.ibisworld.com/united-states/market-research-reports/nuclear-power-industry/#:~:text=The%20market%20size%20of%20the,at%20%2438.2bn%20in%202023 https://www.ibisworld.com/united-states/market-research-repo....