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Vastly more people have died from hydro accidents, let alone coal pollution, than have ever died from all the world’s nuclear accidents combined.
by Reason077 3y ago
Vastly more people have died from hydro accidents, let alone coal pollution, than have ever died from all the world’s nuclear accidents combined.
- whatshisface 3y agoThe very same meticulous regulatory oversight that make plants safe makes them impossible to get through permitting cost-effectively. The result of the "soft ban" are a number of extremely safe plants that it's not economical to make more of. You could hypothetically enforce a similar "soft ban" for leaded gasoline or asbestos - by requiring elaborate filtration, containment and disposal procedures, plus monitoring and redundant process oversight. They'd never show up on consumer vehicles or in homes, but they may show up in a handful of specialty applications, complete with extraordinary amounts of paperwork and large government departments. Some people might start talking about "clean fiber," or "safe leaded." P.S. if you are wondering what's wrong with allowing corporations to take on endeavors with a risk of causing large amounts of damage, it's because the value of a company isn't allowed to go negative due to bankruptcy and the corporate veil. If you're able to incorporate, you can profit from a series of "-$1,000 if I lose, +$1 if I win," bets, because creating $1000 liabilities on an entity with no money in the bank costs little more than the equipment you'd be forced to liquidate.
- Georgelemental 3y agoChina and Korea manage to build nuclear plants under budget with no significant accidets to date. So it's empirically possible
- SnorkelTan 3y agoChina seems to be building next gen reactors in reasonable amounts of time.
- whatshisface 3y agoLet's check again in 50 years, after the safety systems have had time to deteriorate, and we've had Chinese Glasnost for a look into the archives from 2056. (The Soviet Union would have kept Chernobyl a secret if Sweden hadn't detected the radiation. If the accident had been limited to the boundaries of Ukraine, it might never have been revealed as long as the regime lasted.)
- rsynnott 3y agoVirtually all plants being built in China today are third-gen evolutions of proven second-gen PWRs, themselves very safe. Hiding a Chernobyl-scale nuclear disaster would be far more difficult today; even in China, total news blackouts are a lot more difficult to pull off than they used to be. And the designs in use are inherently a lot safer and more conservative than the RBMK type (which was really pretty innovative and impressive for the time, if you ignore the unfortunate tendency to explode, but certainly _not_ conservative).
- YetAnotherNick 3y agoIt doesn't have to be Chernobyl level which are unlikely. It could just be radioactive waste contamination in ground water or things like that.
- _visgean 3y ago> The Soviet Union would have kept Chernobyl a secret if Sweden hadn't detected the radiation they would try but it would leak one way or another. Simply too many people involved...
- pdonis 3y agoChernobyl was not a result of safety systems deteriorating over a long period of operation. We have plenty of reactors in the world that have operated for decades and their safety systems still work just fine. Chernobyl was the result of an insane reactor design (positive void coefficient of reactivity and no secondary containment) which then had uncontrolled experiments run on it during operation. Nobody is going to repeat that bonehead move.
- rlpb 3y ago> ...it'd have to involve a serious overhaul of the very concepts of corporations and liability in America Don't insurance companies solve this problem? Require the nuclear corporation to have liability insurance by regulation. Then the liability is shifted to an underwriter who has much more diversified risk.
- whatshisface 3y agoThat sounds like a great idea, if you can get it implemented. Policymakers seem to be going in the opposite direction with things like tort reform (dollar value limitations on damages), and insurers who make exceptions for "acts of God," like major natural disasters. Hundred-billion-dollar insurance policies on the habitability of areas several counties in expanse, along with courts willing to resettle entire cities as part of treble damages is far from the system we have! These astounding things would be necessary to fully replace regulation with liability, even for the often-seen-as-less-apocalyptic chemical industry, which is nonetheless capable of killing thousands in extremis, and that would have to be insured.
- b112 3y agoThere'd just be a run down to lowest policy price, and then after a disaster the government would have to bail out. Which it does with glee.
- jltsiren 3y agoThey would solve the problem by making nuclear power too expensive for anyone to consider. Insurance companies don't like risks they can't quantify reliably. They either won't underwrite such risks at all, or they charge unreasonable premiums. The risks of nuclear power are still largely unknown, as there have been only two major disasters over a few decades. Both of them cost ~$200 billion, at least according to some estimates. We don't know how much worse the reasonable worst case could be. Chernobyl and Fukushima were also one-off disasters with specific causes. Insurance companies would also have to be prepared for multiple disasters in a short period of time caused by systemic issues in the design of a particular reactor type.
- 3y ago
- smallmancontrov 3y agoIn the US we get 20% of our power from nuclear, we have for 40 years, and most of those plants were built before we invented safety. How much risk for 100%? <5x. Probably much less, because we learn.
- whatshisface 3y agoI'm not sure what you mean by, "invented safety," but the NCR keeps a close watch on old plants as well as the new ones.
- smallmancontrov 3y agoSome levels of safety must be designed in, and those designs have the attractive property that they do not necessarily rely on continued organizational competence. Not that that's a bad thing. The more layers of defense the merrier, of course.
- whatshisface 3y agoSome designs are resistant to one failure, reactor runaways; but the larger and more expensive problem is keeping radioactivated coolant and parts out of our waterways and waste/recycling streams.
- smallmancontrov 3y agoIf only the overall amount of waste were small, the transport secure, and we had geological formations in which to bury the stuff that by their very dissolvable-but-not-dissolved existence proved that water left only by evaporation! Ah well. I'm just glad that renewables are finally moving forward. Better late than never.
- nickpp 3y ago> Better late than never. Most likely too late as we kept burning fossil fuels too long and we are now facing the danger of civilization-ending climate change. All thanks to doomer propaganda like whatshisface's. Amazing how powerful fear is - to manipulate and keep people down.
- wpietri 3y agoAnd I'd add that nuclear power is worse here than even standard capitalism. In the US, the federal government provides a massive subsidy in the form of free insurance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price%E2%80%93Anderson_Nuclear_Industries_Indemnity_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price%E2%80%93Anderson_Nuclear... And that's before we get to all of the other subsidies, cataloged here: https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/nuclear-power-still-not-viable-without-subsidies https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/nuclear-power-still-not-via... I'm a big fan of free and fair markets, and think that they have been woefully underapplied in recent decades. Happily there's an uptick in antitrust regulation, so maybe we're moving in the right direction.
- whatshisface 3y agoAll regulated industries receive liability breaks as "compensation" for being regulated. For example, many classes of product approved by the FDA are considered immune from liabilities related to dangers discovered in application[0], in particular, medical devices[1]. I agree that it is likely to distort the markets and incentivize regulatory capture. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FDA_preemption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FDA_preemption [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riegel_v._Medtronic,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riegel_v._Medtronic,_Inc.
- wpietri 3y agoDo you have more examples for this "all"? There are a lot of regulated industries out there, and I haven't heard of liability exemptions for them. E.g., food is highly regulated, but there are plenty of lawsuits over that. Ditto cars. Or banks. Or airplanes. From what I've seen, I think things like the Price-Anderson Act are less about universal liability protections for regulated activities, and more about special pleading by people with money. It seems to me that the correct response for "this is so dangerous nobody will insure it" is not "well fuck it, go ahead and the government will cover your losses."
- pdonis 3y ago> In the US, the federal government provides a massive subsidy in the form of free insurance While I'm no fan of this act on general principles and would be fine with seeing it repealed, to call it a "massive subsidy" ignores the fact that, as the Wikipedia article you link to notes, the secondary insurance provided under it has never been used. Every claim has been within the amount of primary insurance coverage, which is bought on the open insurance market at normal rates. This is strong evidence that nuclear power is in fact an ordinary insurable risk and the government does not need to take measures like this act.
- rsynnott 3y agoThe tricky bit about nuclear construction today isn’t really _safety_ so much as public acceptance; you’ll get tied up for decades in disputes which are nothing in particular to do with the safety regulation, and everything to do with public opposition.
- legulere 3y agoDeath rate is just one measure for safety, there are also other ways of harm like evacuation. Another way risks of nuclear are underestimated are compound effects over long durations. A million years and a thousand years are easily grouped together under very long, but at a incidence of once per thousand years it's the difference between 1 and 1000.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- usrusr 3y agoVastly more electricity has been supplied by hydro. Nuclear is tiny.
- arcticbull 3y ago... no, it's not. They're similar order of magnitude. Nuclear provides about 10% of global electricity, and hydro around 17%. In the US nuclear is about 18% while hydro is around 6%. [1] [1] https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3 https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3
- Retric 3y agoHydro actively saves lives by reducing flooding. It’s net death toll is negative.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- bruce511 3y agoWhile you are correct, this is one of those cases where statistics can be misleading. "The other source which is heavily influenced by a few large-scale accidents is hydropower. Its death rate since 1965 is 1.3 deaths per TWh. This rate is almost completely dominated by one event: the Banqiao Dam Failure in China in 1975. It killed approximately 171,000 people. Otherwise, hydropower was very safe, with a death rate of just 0.04 deaths per TWh – comparable to nuclear, solar, and wind." [1] While there are reasons for and against nuclear and hydro, their safety difference is not material. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy