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Safety is not a binary, safe/dangerous. How much risk we are willing to accept and what the trade-offs are isn't something that has a correct answer. it's a val

Safety is not a binary, safe/dangerous. How much risk we are willing to accept and what the trade-offs are isn't something that has a correct answer. it's a values question. My comment was assuming that society's apparent risk calculation was evident in how we treat everything other than nuclear. If your argument is that our safety regime on nuclear is correct and everything else is too dangerous and needs to be made safer, well I personally disagree but at least it's consistent and I have no problem with your opinion. It's a difference in values. The real problem I have is people who think that nuclear is a special flower and needs to be held to different standards than everything else. Which is how society is currently acting. And it's killing millions of people every year.

einpoklum 3y ago
Nuclear is a special flower, in the sense that the worst-case malfunction scenario in many reactors is a chain reaction which leads to widespread dispersion of hazardously radioactive material, be it with or without a massive explosion. In other words, the "L_infinity norm" damage potential of nuclear is higher than coal, solar, wind, and perhaps even hydro (although dam breaches are quite lethal). It's also true that if you take the "L_1 norm", i.e. the expected damage, it may well be a regular flower and not special (perhaps even less-special than coal for example). But then it's a game of trust with the kinds of companies and state institutions which in many countries have proven as untrustworthy in preventing industrial / infrastructural accidents.