5 ms·

Public support for nuclear is a pure function of time since last disaster. The last one was in 2011 so in the public's mind we are back in "probably will never

Public support for nuclear is a pure function of time since last disaster. The last one was in 2011 so in the public's mind we are back in "probably will never happen again" territory. However, we will still see more Fukushimas in the future (according to [1]). A 100X improvement in safety would really help the cause. [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214629615301067 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221462961....

mpweiher 3y ago
Or maybe better communication? Nuclear is, depending on what stats you use, either among the safest or actually the safest energy source. https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy (And the top 3 are so close that differences are essentially noise)
- rightbyte 3y ago
  In the same way the Concordes were the safest passenger jets, until they suddenly weren't.
  - mpweiher 3y ago
    Nope, this is including two accidents. And Concorde was retired because they could no longer operate it, for example no spare parts.
    - laszlojamf 3y ago
      And also didn't it just turn out that people weren't really interested in spending a lot more money to get to where they were going a little bit faster?
      - mpweiher 3y ago
        One might think so, but no, that wasn't the case. Concorde was operating profitably with reasonable load factors. And of course you now have aviation startups trying to tap the same market.
    - peterfirefly 3y ago
      > Nope, this is including two accidents. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concorde#Accidents_and_incidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concorde#Accidents_and_inciden... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_4590#Conclusions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_4590#Conclus... And it was caused by a DC-10! They should probably have added the Kevlar lining on the fuel tanks a bit earlier, though.
      - mpweiher 3y ago
        Apologies, the "two accidents" I referred to were the nuclear accidents. Which are obviously in the nuclear safety stats. And yes, caused by debris falling of a DC-10.
- tedivm 3y ago
  Just looking at deaths doesn't really tell the whole story. There aren't a lot of towns that have had to be evacuated and abandoned due to solar industry accidents.
  - mpweiher 3y ago
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure 1975 Chinese Dam fails 150K deaths 4.6 million homes destroyed 11 million people displaced Number of countries getting out of hydro: 0 ( in words: zero ) Japan and Ukraine are both among the countries that signed the “tripling nuclear by 2050” pledge. My guess would be that they have the best information on the risks of nuclear.
    - Krasnol 3y ago
      You can still build new homes on that land once it's dry. It's not contaminated with radioactivity. Imagine one of the old French reactors "going nuclear" right in the middle of dense populated Europe. It looks like a derailment and OPs argument still stands, imho. The only thing is that you can add results of radiation throughout generations, where people develop mutations and/or die early. None of those cases are in the handy graphic from above, which only counts immediate deaths.
      - peterfirefly 3y ago
        Chernobyl was a very special case. The reactor had no containment vessel -- we don't build that kind of reactors anymore (and the "old French reactors" do have containment vessels). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Containment_building https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Containment_building Your "results of radiation throughout generations" line doesn't really make sense. Don't go into the exclusion zone around Chernobyl. That's it. You don't get much radiation from other nuclear power plants and certainly not "throughout generations". You do from radon gas in the basement in some parts of the world, you do from coal smoke (a tiny bit), and you do if you live in an area with a high background radiation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramsar,_Iran#Radioactivity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramsar,_Iran#Radioactivity And what else? Yes, the evacuation around Fukushima. They panicked and evacuated far too many :(
- osigurdson 3y ago
  I think meta analysis aren't very compelling to a lot of people. Few death certificates read "killed by coal" for example. If true, I think communicating that modern reactors (for example) no longer produce weapons grade materials this could be helpful.
Gud 3y ago
Fukushima wasn’t a nuclear disaster, it was a natural disaster. How many died from the nuclear reactor meltdown vs the flood?
- osigurdson 3y ago
  Wouldn't it be more accurately characterized as a natural + nuclear disaster? Clearly things would have been less bad without the nuclear plant.
  - Gud 3y ago
    No, I don’t think so. In that case it would be just as accurate to describe it as roof cave in disaster, as I am sure a great deal of people died when their roofs fell down on them.
  - mpweiher 3y ago
    No, not really. This is what is regularly done in the press in Germany, and it looks like essentially like this: there was (an earthquake + tsunami) AND A NUCLEAR ACCIDENT IN FUKUSHIMA IN WHICH 15000 PEOPLE DIED. Now this is technically not a lie, just a "slight" skewing of emphasis and grouping, but it's how we've managed to anchor in the German population the "fact" that there was a horrible nuclear catastrophe in Fukushima where tens of thousands died, which we think was caused by a Tsunami or something, but that part doesn't really matter. When, to belabor the obvious, that is not at all what happened. The Tsunami killed over 15000. The accident at the plant caused by the Tsunami killed no one. The over-eager evacuation, on the other hand, has been made responsible for a number of deaths. So of course, technically it is true that there was a natural disaster and also a nuclear accident caused by that natural disaster. A lot of accidents were caused by the natural disaster that day, so singling out just that one seems a bit weird. And yes, the natural disaster was made slightly worse by every piece of technical infrastructure that failed to withstand this unprecedented earthquake + tsunami. For example all the seawalls built around towns that were, like the one around the plant, built to handle 7M waves. And were swept away by 14m waves that proceeded to kill thousands.

mpweiher 3y ago

Or maybe better communication? Nuclear is, depending on what stats you use, either among the safest or actually the safest energy source. https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy (And the top 3 are so close that differences are essentially noise)

rightbyte 3y ago
In the same way the Concordes were the safest passenger jets, until they suddenly weren't.
- mpweiher 3y ago
  Nope, this is including two accidents. And Concorde was retired because they could no longer operate it, for example no spare parts.
  - laszlojamf 3y ago
    And also didn't it just turn out that people weren't really interested in spending a lot more money to get to where they were going a little bit faster?
    - mpweiher 3y ago
      One might think so, but no, that wasn't the case. Concorde was operating profitably with reasonable load factors. And of course you now have aviation startups trying to tap the same market.
  - peterfirefly 3y ago
    > Nope, this is including two accidents. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concorde#Accidents_and_incidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concorde#Accidents_and_inciden... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_4590#Conclusions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_4590#Conclus... And it was caused by a DC-10! They should probably have added the Kevlar lining on the fuel tanks a bit earlier, though.
    - mpweiher 3y ago
      Apologies, the "two accidents" I referred to were the nuclear accidents. Which are obviously in the nuclear safety stats. And yes, caused by debris falling of a DC-10.
tedivm 3y ago
Just looking at deaths doesn't really tell the whole story. There aren't a lot of towns that have had to be evacuated and abandoned due to solar industry accidents.
- mpweiher 3y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure 1975 Chinese Dam fails 150K deaths 4.6 million homes destroyed 11 million people displaced Number of countries getting out of hydro: 0 ( in words: zero ) Japan and Ukraine are both among the countries that signed the “tripling nuclear by 2050” pledge. My guess would be that they have the best information on the risks of nuclear.
  - Krasnol 3y ago
    You can still build new homes on that land once it's dry. It's not contaminated with radioactivity. Imagine one of the old French reactors "going nuclear" right in the middle of dense populated Europe. It looks like a derailment and OPs argument still stands, imho. The only thing is that you can add results of radiation throughout generations, where people develop mutations and/or die early. None of those cases are in the handy graphic from above, which only counts immediate deaths.
    - peterfirefly 3y ago
      Chernobyl was a very special case. The reactor had no containment vessel -- we don't build that kind of reactors anymore (and the "old French reactors" do have containment vessels). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Containment_building https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Containment_building Your "results of radiation throughout generations" line doesn't really make sense. Don't go into the exclusion zone around Chernobyl. That's it. You don't get much radiation from other nuclear power plants and certainly not "throughout generations". You do from radon gas in the basement in some parts of the world, you do from coal smoke (a tiny bit), and you do if you live in an area with a high background radiation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramsar,_Iran#Radioactivity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramsar,_Iran#Radioactivity And what else? Yes, the evacuation around Fukushima. They panicked and evacuated far too many :(
osigurdson 3y ago
I think meta analysis aren't very compelling to a lot of people. Few death certificates read "killed by coal" for example. If true, I think communicating that modern reactors (for example) no longer produce weapons grade materials this could be helpful.

Gud 3y ago

Fukushima wasn’t a nuclear disaster, it was a natural disaster. How many died from the nuclear reactor meltdown vs the flood?

osigurdson 3y ago
Wouldn't it be more accurately characterized as a natural + nuclear disaster? Clearly things would have been less bad without the nuclear plant.
- Gud 3y ago
  No, I don’t think so. In that case it would be just as accurate to describe it as roof cave in disaster, as I am sure a great deal of people died when their roofs fell down on them.
- mpweiher 3y ago
  No, not really. This is what is regularly done in the press in Germany, and it looks like essentially like this: there was (an earthquake + tsunami) AND A NUCLEAR ACCIDENT IN FUKUSHIMA IN WHICH 15000 PEOPLE DIED. Now this is technically not a lie, just a "slight" skewing of emphasis and grouping, but it's how we've managed to anchor in the German population the "fact" that there was a horrible nuclear catastrophe in Fukushima where tens of thousands died, which we think was caused by a Tsunami or something, but that part doesn't really matter. When, to belabor the obvious, that is not at all what happened. The Tsunami killed over 15000. The accident at the plant caused by the Tsunami killed no one. The over-eager evacuation, on the other hand, has been made responsible for a number of deaths. So of course, technically it is true that there was a natural disaster and also a nuclear accident caused by that natural disaster. A lot of accidents were caused by the natural disaster that day, so singling out just that one seems a bit weird. And yes, the natural disaster was made slightly worse by every piece of technical infrastructure that failed to withstand this unprecedented earthquake + tsunami. For example all the seawalls built around towns that were, like the one around the plant, built to handle 7M waves. And were swept away by 14m waves that proceeded to kill thousands.