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When the nuclear industry feels confident enough to not need its own special law to protect it from liability in case of accidents, I’ll feel a little more conf

When the nuclear industry feels confident enough to not need its own special law to protect it from liability in case of accidents, I’ll feel a little more confident in their safety rhetoric. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price%E2%80%93Anderson_Nuclear_Industries_Indemnity_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price%E2%80%93Anderson_Nuclear...

stinkbeetle 1y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Childhood_Vaccine_Injury_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Childhood_Vaccine_Inj...
IMTDb 1y ago
This exists because of a cognitive bias: we tend to focus on direct, attributable harm while overlooking larger, diffuse, and indirect harm. A nuclear plant could operate safely for 50 years, causing no harm, but if it explodes once and kills 10,000 people, there's gonna be a trial. A coal plant could run for the same 50 years without any dramatic accident, yet contribute to 2,000 premature deaths every single year through air pollution—adding up to 100,000 deaths. Nobody notices, nobody is sued, business as usual. It's legally safer today to be "1% responsible for 1000 death" than to be "100% responsible for a single one". Fix this and that law goes away.
- LinXitoW 1y ago
  Well, no, that's more down to nuclear fans constantly using the worst possible comparisons, and creating false dichotomies. The better comparison are renewables or natural gas, not an ancient technology literally everybody (outside of it's investors) agrees is bad and should go.
  - IMTDb 1y ago
    Nuclear sits just between wind (slightly more dangerous) and solar (slightly less dangerous) per unit of electricity production, all of them being much safer than hydro; and ridiculously safer than gas, oil and coal. It's a really, really safe option. Note that these number are a bit old and since then, installation of consumer solar has increased significantly. Installation of solar panels on consumer roofs is much more dangerous than installation of solar panels in solar plants, so death rate for solar are significantly underestimated. Meanwhile accident rates of plant construction (nuclear, solar or otherwise) keep dropping. https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy
- oneshtein 1y ago
  So, for safety, turn off coal first, then turn off nuclear.
  - DennisP 1y ago
    For safety, the order to turn things off is coal, oil, biomass, natural gas, hydropower, wind, then nuclear. https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy
DennisP 1y ago
The trouble with liability is that if your nuclear plant has an accident and the cancer rate in the area doesn't detectably change, everybody in the area who gets cancer will sue you anyway.
peterfirefly 1y ago
That law says more about the reliability of US courts than about the safety of nuclear power.

stinkbeetle 1y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Childhood_Vaccine_Injury_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Childhood_Vaccine_Inj...

IMTDb 1y ago

This exists because of a cognitive bias: we tend to focus on direct, attributable harm while overlooking larger, diffuse, and indirect harm. A nuclear plant could operate safely for 50 years, causing no harm, but if it explodes once and kills 10,000 people, there's gonna be a trial. A coal plant could run for the same 50 years without any dramatic accident, yet contribute to 2,000 premature deaths every single year through air pollution—adding up to 100,000 deaths. Nobody notices, nobody is sued, business as usual. It's legally safer today to be "1% responsible for 1000 death" than to be "100% responsible for a single one". Fix this and that law goes away.

LinXitoW 1y ago
Well, no, that's more down to nuclear fans constantly using the worst possible comparisons, and creating false dichotomies. The better comparison are renewables or natural gas, not an ancient technology literally everybody (outside of it's investors) agrees is bad and should go.
- IMTDb 1y ago
  Nuclear sits just between wind (slightly more dangerous) and solar (slightly less dangerous) per unit of electricity production, all of them being much safer than hydro; and ridiculously safer than gas, oil and coal. It's a really, really safe option. Note that these number are a bit old and since then, installation of consumer solar has increased significantly. Installation of solar panels on consumer roofs is much more dangerous than installation of solar panels in solar plants, so death rate for solar are significantly underestimated. Meanwhile accident rates of plant construction (nuclear, solar or otherwise) keep dropping. https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy
oneshtein 1y ago
So, for safety, turn off coal first, then turn off nuclear.
- DennisP 1y ago
  For safety, the order to turn things off is coal, oil, biomass, natural gas, hydropower, wind, then nuclear. https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy

DennisP 1y ago

The trouble with liability is that if your nuclear plant has an accident and the cancer rate in the area doesn't detectably change, everybody in the area who gets cancer will sue you anyway.

peterfirefly 1y ago

That law says more about the reliability of US courts than about the safety of nuclear power.