5 ms·

Very unsafe? In the past 14 years there have been 72 fatalities involving US Air Carriers, out of around 250 million flight hours flown[1]. That’s fewer fatalit

Very unsafe? In the past 14 years there have been 72 fatalities involving US Air Carriers, out of around 250 million flight hours flown[1]. That’s fewer fatalities in 14 years than there are US motor vehicle fatalities in a single day (on average). [1]: https://www.ntsb.gov/safety/StatisticalReviews/Pages/CivilAviationDashboard.aspx https://www.ntsb.gov/safety/StatisticalReviews/Pages/CivilAv...

crmd 3y ago
Humans are bad at statistics. For example the incident at three mile island in 1979 didn't kill anyone, but the accident crystallized anti-nuclear safety concerns among activists and the general public, and accelerated the decline of efforts to build new reactors.
- nmca 3y ago
  requiring events to kill anyone as evidence of danger of death is a foolish standard, obviously. People are "bad at statistics" in the sense that the very real evidence coming from, e.g. 3 mile, is hard to bring into statistical models appropriately, not in the sense that there was no evidence there.
  - Rallen89 3y ago
    So what are you basing it on if not deaths/flight hours
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - j4yav 3y ago
      Scary news reports per minute
  - amarshall 3y ago
    For Three Mile, indeed there is some disagreement on the long-term non-fatal health effects. That any causal effect is unclear does not mean it does not exist, but does suggest that, even if it does, it is likely small. (Admittedly, I have not done a thorough review of the data on this). Nevertheless, your point carries to the true comparison of nuclear power: fossil fuel power and its long-term economic and health impact. For the airline risk example: US Airline Carriers in past 14 years: 268 serious injuries (same source as above). Depending on the year, that’s about the same or less than the number of road traffic related injuries in the US in just one hour (on average)[1]. [1]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/191900/road-traffic-related-injuries-and-fatalities-in-the-us-since-1988/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/191900/road-traffic-rela...
- Retric 3y ago
  Don’t underestimate the direct effects. Three mile island directly cost well over 1 billion in 1979 dollars (2+B today) just in terms of destroyed assets and initial cleanup costs. The wider impact was even more expensive. Such a visible failure changed the risk/reward calculations which then hurt the nuclear industry quite a bit. We did keep building US nuclear reactors afterwards, but they were never that profitable in the first place making the industry very sensitive to disruption. Timeline of US reactor construction: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident#/media/File:Nuclear_power_history.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident#/me...
  - acjohnson55 3y ago
    Looks like Chernobyl really killed nuclear.
    - Retric 3y ago
      Compare active reactors + reactors in construction during three mile island vs where nuclear production stabilized. Things stabilizing like that is very suspect. It probably has to do with capacity factors and the long lead time, but I wouldn’t assume there’s no correlation.
      - acjohnson55 3y ago
        Yeah, I'm not saying there's no correlation, just that you see the full-on halt kick in after Chernobyl. Which makes intuitive sense to me. Even though our reactors were very different from Chernobyl, the incident was so much more extreme and the distinctions were probably largely lost to the general public.
  - boringg 3y ago
    You have it backwards. Industries that are profitable are subject to disruption.
    - Retric 3y ago
- sgustard 3y ago
  This question sort of answers itself, but why skirt the real concern, just add a "Chance of crashing" filter to the flight search? Bonus jobs for data scientists and takes the consumer out of the odds calculation.
- ren_engineer 3y ago
  the impact of violence vs other causes of death is similar, 9/11 killed 3K people and we went to war for 20 years and spent trillions as a result. Meanwhile 100K Americans died from opioids last year and the government does nothing

crmd 3y ago

Humans are bad at statistics. For example the incident at three mile island in 1979 didn't kill anyone, but the accident crystallized anti-nuclear safety concerns among activists and the general public, and accelerated the decline of efforts to build new reactors.

nmca 3y ago
requiring events to kill anyone as evidence of danger of death is a foolish standard, obviously. People are "bad at statistics" in the sense that the very real evidence coming from, e.g. 3 mile, is hard to bring into statistical models appropriately, not in the sense that there was no evidence there.
- Rallen89 3y ago
  So what are you basing it on if not deaths/flight hours
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - j4yav 3y ago
    Scary news reports per minute
- amarshall 3y ago
  For Three Mile, indeed there is some disagreement on the long-term non-fatal health effects. That any causal effect is unclear does not mean it does not exist, but does suggest that, even if it does, it is likely small. (Admittedly, I have not done a thorough review of the data on this). Nevertheless, your point carries to the true comparison of nuclear power: fossil fuel power and its long-term economic and health impact. For the airline risk example: US Airline Carriers in past 14 years: 268 serious injuries (same source as above). Depending on the year, that’s about the same or less than the number of road traffic related injuries in the US in just one hour (on average)[1]. [1]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/191900/road-traffic-related-injuries-and-fatalities-in-the-us-since-1988/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/191900/road-traffic-rela...
Retric 3y ago
Don’t underestimate the direct effects. Three mile island directly cost well over 1 billion in 1979 dollars (2+B today) just in terms of destroyed assets and initial cleanup costs. The wider impact was even more expensive. Such a visible failure changed the risk/reward calculations which then hurt the nuclear industry quite a bit. We did keep building US nuclear reactors afterwards, but they were never that profitable in the first place making the industry very sensitive to disruption. Timeline of US reactor construction: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident#/media/File:Nuclear_power_history.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident#/me...
- acjohnson55 3y ago
  Looks like Chernobyl really killed nuclear.
  - Retric 3y ago
    Compare active reactors + reactors in construction during three mile island vs where nuclear production stabilized. Things stabilizing like that is very suspect. It probably has to do with capacity factors and the long lead time, but I wouldn’t assume there’s no correlation.
    - acjohnson55 3y ago
      Yeah, I'm not saying there's no correlation, just that you see the full-on halt kick in after Chernobyl. Which makes intuitive sense to me. Even though our reactors were very different from Chernobyl, the incident was so much more extreme and the distinctions were probably largely lost to the general public.
- boringg 3y ago
  You have it backwards. Industries that are profitable are subject to disruption.
  - Retric 3y ago
sgustard 3y ago
This question sort of answers itself, but why skirt the real concern, just add a "Chance of crashing" filter to the flight search? Bonus jobs for data scientists and takes the consumer out of the odds calculation.
ren_engineer 3y ago
the impact of violence vs other causes of death is similar, 9/11 killed 3K people and we went to war for 20 years and spent trillions as a result. Meanwhile 100K Americans died from opioids last year and the government does nothing