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> Unsurprisingly, this scared the crap out of the fossil fuel industry in the US and countries like Russia that are net exporters of fossil fuels, so they've sp

> Unsurprisingly, this scared the crap out of the fossil fuel industry in the US and countries like Russia that are net exporters of fossil fuels, so they've spent decades lobbying to bind nuclear plant construction up in red tape to prevent them being built and funding anti-nuclear propaganda. This is frankly nonsense, and my hope is that this nonsense is coming from a person too young to remember the real, valid fears from disasters like 3 Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima. Yes, I fully understand that over the long term coal plants cause many more deaths, and of course climate change is an order of magnitude worse, eventually. The issue is that human fears aren't based so much on "the long term" or "eventualities". When nuclear power plants failed, they had the unfortunate side effect of making hundreds or thousands of square miles uninhabitable for generations. The fact that societies demand heavy regulation for something that can fail so spectacularly isn't some underhanded conspiracy. Just look at France, the country with probably the most successful wide-scale deployment of nuclear. They are rightfully proud of their nuclear industry there, but they are not a huge country (significantly smaller than Texas), and thus understand the importance of regulation to prevent any disasters. Electricity there is relatively cheap compared to the rest of Western Europe but still considerably higher than the US average.

trashtester 1y ago
The fears from 3 Mile Island and Fukushima were almost completely irrational. The death toll from those was too low to measure. And the fears from Chernobyl was MOSTLY irrational. The reason for the extreme fears that are generated from even very moderate spills from nuclear plants comes in part from the association with nuclear bombs and in part from fear of the unknown. A lot (if not most) people shut their rational thinking off when the word "nuclear" is used, even those who SHOULD understand that a lot more people die from coal and gas plants EVERY YEAR than have died from nuclear energy throughout history. Indeed, the safety level at Chernobyl may have been atrocious. But so was the coal industry in the USSR. Indeed, even if just considering the USSR, the death toll from coal alone caused a similar number of deaths (or a bit more) than the deaths caused by Chernobyl EVERY YEAR [1]. [1] https://www.science.org/doi/pdf/10.1126/science.238.4823.11.d https://www.science.org/doi/pdf/10.1126/science.238.4823.11....
- roenxi 1y ago
  I think you're underselling it - the atrocious safety level at Chernobyl appears to still be an improvement on the coal industry held to a high standard. It is a horrible irony that the environmentalist movement managed to do such incredible damage to the environment by their enthusiastic attacks on nuclear.
- gengwyn 1y ago
  The tragedy of Chernobyl is it being seen as a failure of nuclear energy, rather than a failure of the Soviet government.
jart 1y ago
If you want to see what a thousand square mile uninhabitable wasteland looks like, here's a YouTube video of some guys swimming in a pool underneath the Chernobyl reactor for fun: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOughghZ8To https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOughghZ8To I'm so tired of hearing about how regulation is this magic salve that saves everything. Regulation is what caused Chernobyl. Soviet regulations mandated that the flawed RBMK reactor design be used. They knew it was flawed and they forced people to use it anyway. Because that's what government does. There's a similar story in western countries, where it hasn't been feasible to use better designs due to antiquated government regulations, it's just no one here has screwed up as badly as the Soviets did.

trashtester 1y ago

The fears from 3 Mile Island and Fukushima were almost completely irrational. The death toll from those was too low to measure. And the fears from Chernobyl was MOSTLY irrational. The reason for the extreme fears that are generated from even very moderate spills from nuclear plants comes in part from the association with nuclear bombs and in part from fear of the unknown. A lot (if not most) people shut their rational thinking off when the word "nuclear" is used, even those who SHOULD understand that a lot more people die from coal and gas plants EVERY YEAR than have died from nuclear energy throughout history. Indeed, the safety level at Chernobyl may have been atrocious. But so was the coal industry in the USSR. Indeed, even if just considering the USSR, the death toll from coal alone caused a similar number of deaths (or a bit more) than the deaths caused by Chernobyl EVERY YEAR [1]. [1] https://www.science.org/doi/pdf/10.1126/science.238.4823.11.d https://www.science.org/doi/pdf/10.1126/science.238.4823.11....

roenxi 1y ago
I think you're underselling it - the atrocious safety level at Chernobyl appears to still be an improvement on the coal industry held to a high standard. It is a horrible irony that the environmentalist movement managed to do such incredible damage to the environment by their enthusiastic attacks on nuclear.
gengwyn 1y ago
The tragedy of Chernobyl is it being seen as a failure of nuclear energy, rather than a failure of the Soviet government.

jart 1y ago

If you want to see what a thousand square mile uninhabitable wasteland looks like, here's a YouTube video of some guys swimming in a pool underneath the Chernobyl reactor for fun: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOughghZ8To https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOughghZ8To I'm so tired of hearing about how regulation is this magic salve that saves everything. Regulation is what caused Chernobyl. Soviet regulations mandated that the flawed RBMK reactor design be used. They knew it was flawed and they forced people to use it anyway. Because that's what government does. There's a similar story in western countries, where it hasn't been feasible to use better designs due to antiquated government regulations, it's just no one here has screwed up as badly as the Soviets did.