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The death toll from that incident was one (1). You can see online, nuclear power is actually one of the safest methods of energy generation, behind solar and a

The death toll from that incident was one (1). You can see online, nuclear power is actually one of the safest methods of energy generation, behind solar and ahead of wind, because sometimes dudes fall from the tops of the windmills. Could you start looking at the second-order effects of the meltdown to get a higher death toll? Probably, but you could probably also look at all of the pollutants generated by solar panels, and the fact that they get shipped to Africa and crushed up and thrown in the ground to make solar's death toll look higher too.

wkat4242 2y ago
Death toll isn't the only metric for accident severity. Environmental pollution is really important too. And with Fukushima we were kinda lucky. It was still a double meltdown with several hydrogen explosions and could have been much worse.
- jovial_cavalier 2y ago
  I think I already addressed this point. You also need to think about second-order effects, but like I said, there are second order effects to all of these solutions. Just because nuclear's side effects are more easy to dramatize doesn't mean that it is necessarily more deadly / harmful to the environment.
pfdietz 2y ago
Death toll so far. Projections of cancer deaths from Fukushima go up into the hundreds.
- mpweiher 2y ago
  That's not true. The WHO says there will be no detectable health effects.
  - pfdietz 2y ago
    That's because the deaths would be lost in a sea of ordinary cancers. Hundreds of additional cancers would not be detectable; that would be below the statistical noise floor. Not being detectable does not mean they won't occur. Anyway, let me steelman what you're aiming at here. I think you want to argue not that hundreds of deaths won't occur, but that hundreds of deaths don't matter that much. These are statistical deaths, so it's appropriate to treat them using the "statistical value of a human life". This is the value of a life to be used for policy purposes (like deciding if a safety measure is needed, if spending on a medical treatment is appropriate, etc.) In the US, it's around $12M per life. So, 200 (say) deaths would have a value of $2.4B. This is not enormous compared to overall cost of the accident, even to the utility. It could be reasonable to treat radiation releases as at Fukushima by fining the polluter by an amount related to this value. Under this sort of regulatory regime, the purpose of regulations is not to avoid all releases, but to keep the releases small enough that the utilities would have the resources to pay the fines. So, no 100,000 death accidents. Nuclear power plants designed to this concept could allow some small radiation release in accidents.

wkat4242 2y ago

Death toll isn't the only metric for accident severity. Environmental pollution is really important too. And with Fukushima we were kinda lucky. It was still a double meltdown with several hydrogen explosions and could have been much worse.

jovial_cavalier 2y ago
I think I already addressed this point. You also need to think about second-order effects, but like I said, there are second order effects to all of these solutions. Just because nuclear's side effects are more easy to dramatize doesn't mean that it is necessarily more deadly / harmful to the environment.

pfdietz 2y ago

Death toll so far. Projections of cancer deaths from Fukushima go up into the hundreds.

mpweiher 2y ago
That's not true. The WHO says there will be no detectable health effects.
- pfdietz 2y ago
  That's because the deaths would be lost in a sea of ordinary cancers. Hundreds of additional cancers would not be detectable; that would be below the statistical noise floor. Not being detectable does not mean they won't occur. Anyway, let me steelman what you're aiming at here. I think you want to argue not that hundreds of deaths won't occur, but that hundreds of deaths don't matter that much. These are statistical deaths, so it's appropriate to treat them using the "statistical value of a human life". This is the value of a life to be used for policy purposes (like deciding if a safety measure is needed, if spending on a medical treatment is appropriate, etc.) In the US, it's around $12M per life. So, 200 (say) deaths would have a value of $2.4B. This is not enormous compared to overall cost of the accident, even to the utility. It could be reasonable to treat radiation releases as at Fukushima by fining the polluter by an amount related to this value. Under this sort of regulatory regime, the purpose of regulations is not to avoid all releases, but to keep the releases small enough that the utilities would have the resources to pay the fines. So, no 100,000 death accidents. Nuclear power plants designed to this concept could allow some small radiation release in accidents.