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The problem with nuclear mistakes is they aren't a few decades. They can be measured in centuries. So yeah. Regulation. Don't build a damn LWR on a fault li

The problem with nuclear mistakes is they aren't a few decades. They can be measured in centuries. So yeah. Regulation. Don't build a damn LWR on a fault line (Fukushima) 3mile Island - don't have so many damn errors printing out that everything is ignore Chernobyl - we all know I think. It's still being worked on to contain it fully. Goiânia accident (brazil) - caesium-137 - Time magazine has identified the accident as one of the world's "worst nuclear disasters" and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) called it "one of the world's worst radiological incidents". (and this was just a radiation source, not a nuclear plant) So yeah. Oil has bad disasters. Nuclear has EPIC disasters. I think what is missing in your argument is not that these pieces are difficult. It's that combining all of them adds to a significant amount of complexity. It's not JUST a heat exchanger. It's a heat exchanger that has to go through shielding. And it has to operate at much higher pressures than another type of power production facility would use. Which adds more complexity. And even greater need of safety. I'm not arguing against Nuclear; I think it's incredibly worthwhile especially in the current age of AI eating up so much power in a constant use situation. But I do think it needs to be extremely regulated due to the risks of things going south.

DennisP 1y ago
And then there's coal. The difference between nuclear and coal is that when nuclear has a horrible accident, it kills fewer people than coal kills as part of its normal expected operation.
- immibis 1y ago
  The difference between nuclear and coal is that when nuclear has a horrible accident, it kills as many people right here and makes as much land uninhabitable right here as coal does in our enemy countries within its normal expected operation.
  - AnthonyMouse 1y ago
    Our enemy countries are West Virginia and Pennsylvania?
  - tedk-42 1y ago
    Except for Russia, where else have deaths + land issues happened?
    - Retric 1y ago
      Not a commercial reactor but US lost 3 people trying to hand operate a small reactor with minimal safety: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SL-1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SL-1 “On Tuesday, January 3, 1961, SL-1 was being prepared for restart after a shutdown of 11 days over the holidays. Maintenance procedures required that rods be manually withdrawn a few inches to reconnect each one to its drive mechanism. At 9:01 pm MST, Rod 9 was suddenly withdrawn too far, causing SL-1 to go prompt critical instantly. In four milliseconds, the heat generated by the resulting enormous power excursion caused fuel inside the core to melt and to explosively vaporize.” The industry didn’t just randomly get so risk averse there where a lot of meltdowns and other issues over time.
      - peterfirefly 1y ago
        Do stupid things and stupid things will happen. There are plenty of similarly stupid accidents on stupidly run construction sites and chemical plants all the time. Also lots of accidents with trains, lots of accidents with temperamental chemicals. Take this stupid accident, for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_Galactic#2007_Scaled_Composites_fuel_tank_testing_explosion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_Galactic#2007_Scaled_Co... > In July 2007, three Scaled Composites employees were killed and three critically injured at the Mojave spaceport while testing components of the rocket motor for SpaceShipTwo. An explosion occurred during a cold fire test, which involved nitrous oxide flowing through fuel injectors. The procedure had been expected to be safe. N2O is very good oxidizer + it's a molecule that can fall apart (and turn into N2 and O2) in a very exothermic way if you look at it wrong. Oops. Back to SL-1. Nobody was killed by radiation. They were killed by things hitting them hard from the explosion. > The effort to minimize the size of the core gave an abnormally-large reactivity worth to Rod 9, the center control rod. > One of the required maintenance procedures called for Rod 9 to be manually withdrawn about four inches (10 cm) in order to attach it to the automated control mechanism from which it had been disconnected. Post-accident calculations, as well as examination of scratches on Rod 9, estimate that it had actually been withdrawn about twenty inches (51 cm), causing the reactor to go prompt critical and triggering the steam explosion. and: > At SL-1, control rods would sometimes get stuck in the control rod channel. Numerous procedures were conducted to evaluate control rods to ensure they were operating properly. There were rod drop tests and scram tests of each rod, in addition to periodic rod exercising and rod withdrawals for normal operation. From February 1959 to November 18, 1960, there were 40 cases of a stuck control rod for scram and rod drop tests and about a 2.5% failure rate. From November 18 to December 23, 1960, there was a dramatic increase in stuck rods, with 23 in that time period and a 13.0% failure rate. Besides these test failures, there were an additional 21 rod-sticking incidents from February 1959 to December 1960; four of these had occurred in the last month of operation during routine rod withdrawal. Rod 9 had the best operational performance record even though it was operated more frequently than any of the other rods. That is insane.
  - Natsu 1y ago
    Meltdowns aren't physically possible if we're building newer types of plants, so there can't be a new Chernobyl or even Fukushima if we're using modern types of passively cooled plants.
    - Retric 1y ago
      There’s generally significant costs and asterisks around such claims. You’re much better off paying attention to site placement than trying to design something to safety handle getting covered in several meters of volcanic ash Pompeii style.
- ViewTrick1002 1y ago
  The great thing is that coal is not the alternative in 2025. Renewables are forcing enormous amounts of coals and fossil gas off grids around the world as we speak.
  - tempodox 1y ago
    > coal is not the alternative in 2025. Except in uncle Donald’s kingdom with “America’s Beautiful Clean Coal Industry” (yes, seriously): https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/04/reinvigorating-americas-beautiful-clean-coal-industry-and-amending-executive-order-14241/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/04/rein...
    - ViewTrick1002 1y ago
      Lets come back if that leads to an increase of coal usage instead of being posturing like most else they do. Coal has been uncompetitive since the advent of the CCGT plant and was stagnating long before the fracking boom.
  - DennisP 1y ago
    Yes, and in terms of overall deaths per terawatt-hour, nuclear is similar to renewables.
  - opo 1y ago
    >The great thing is that coal is not the alternative in 2025. Unfortunately, there is a country that shut down nuclear power plants while they still have operating coal plants. Over time, coal use is declining in Germany, but that isn't the story so far in 2025: >…The share of electricity produced with fossil fuels in Germany increased by ten percent between January and the end of June 2025, compared to the same period one year before, while power production from renewables declined by almost six percent, the country’s statistical office >… Coal-fired power production increased 9.3 percent, while electricity production from fossil gas increased by 11.6 percent. https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/fossil-electricity-production-germany-increased-10-first-half-2025 https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/fossil-electricity-prod... Shutting nuclear power plants down when you are still burning coal is almost unbelievable... I don’t think future generations will look kindly on countries who shut down a clean form of power while they still are running the most dangerous and dirty form of power generation ever created.
frotaur 1y ago
I agree Chernobyl was an epic disaster, but Fukushima ? Last I heard the radiation level are basically normal even close to the reactor, and overall radiation wide there hasn't been much damage if at all. So it seems that fukushima is an example of something that should have been an EPIC accident, but actually was perfectly fine in the end. I may be wrong, but thats what I remembered from the wikipedia page.
- felipeerias 1y ago
  Fukushima was partly an issue of flawed risk assessment. The tsunami that took down the plant was believed to be an incredibly rare even, expected to happen once every ten thousand years. However, that was a result of faulty assumptions made when the plant was initially planned. With better data and methods, the event would have seemed a lot more likely.
- immibis 1y ago
  It was perfectly fine because the operators stole the batteries from all the cars in the parking lot to run the control room. Not something I'd like the continued existence of New York City to rely upon.
  - chickenbig 1y ago
    > Not something I'd like the continued existence of New York City to rely upon. Was New York City really at risk? Citation needed.
- Reason077 1y ago
  The costs of cleaning up Fukushima, including the wider effects on the Japanese economy, are estimated to exceed US$200 billion. That makes it a pretty EPIC disaster in economic terms alone. Even Chernobyl was not really that bad in terms of lives lost. Even taking the worst estimates of long-term deaths from radiation exposure, it killed a tiny fraction of the numbers of people who have died from hydroelectric disasters or from exposure to coal power plant pollution. But that doesn't mean it wasn't a catastrophic disaster for the regional (and wider Soviet) economy.
peterfirefly 1y ago
> Don't build a damn LWR on a fault line (Fukushima) Don't put the emergency diesel generators in the basement where they are certain to be flooded if the tsunami wall is too low. Also, don't build too low tsunami walls. > So yeah. Oil has bad disasters. Nuclear has EPIC disasters. No. Hydropower has. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_hydroelectric_power_station_failures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_hydroelectric_power_st...

DennisP 1y ago

And then there's coal. The difference between nuclear and coal is that when nuclear has a horrible accident, it kills fewer people than coal kills as part of its normal expected operation.

immibis 1y ago
The difference between nuclear and coal is that when nuclear has a horrible accident, it kills as many people right here and makes as much land uninhabitable right here as coal does in our enemy countries within its normal expected operation.
- AnthonyMouse 1y ago
  Our enemy countries are West Virginia and Pennsylvania?
- tedk-42 1y ago
  Except for Russia, where else have deaths + land issues happened?
  - Retric 1y ago
    Not a commercial reactor but US lost 3 people trying to hand operate a small reactor with minimal safety: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SL-1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SL-1 “On Tuesday, January 3, 1961, SL-1 was being prepared for restart after a shutdown of 11 days over the holidays. Maintenance procedures required that rods be manually withdrawn a few inches to reconnect each one to its drive mechanism. At 9:01 pm MST, Rod 9 was suddenly withdrawn too far, causing SL-1 to go prompt critical instantly. In four milliseconds, the heat generated by the resulting enormous power excursion caused fuel inside the core to melt and to explosively vaporize.” The industry didn’t just randomly get so risk averse there where a lot of meltdowns and other issues over time.
    - peterfirefly 1y ago
      Do stupid things and stupid things will happen. There are plenty of similarly stupid accidents on stupidly run construction sites and chemical plants all the time. Also lots of accidents with trains, lots of accidents with temperamental chemicals. Take this stupid accident, for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_Galactic#2007_Scaled_Composites_fuel_tank_testing_explosion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_Galactic#2007_Scaled_Co... > In July 2007, three Scaled Composites employees were killed and three critically injured at the Mojave spaceport while testing components of the rocket motor for SpaceShipTwo. An explosion occurred during a cold fire test, which involved nitrous oxide flowing through fuel injectors. The procedure had been expected to be safe. N2O is very good oxidizer + it's a molecule that can fall apart (and turn into N2 and O2) in a very exothermic way if you look at it wrong. Oops. Back to SL-1. Nobody was killed by radiation. They were killed by things hitting them hard from the explosion. > The effort to minimize the size of the core gave an abnormally-large reactivity worth to Rod 9, the center control rod. > One of the required maintenance procedures called for Rod 9 to be manually withdrawn about four inches (10 cm) in order to attach it to the automated control mechanism from which it had been disconnected. Post-accident calculations, as well as examination of scratches on Rod 9, estimate that it had actually been withdrawn about twenty inches (51 cm), causing the reactor to go prompt critical and triggering the steam explosion. and: > At SL-1, control rods would sometimes get stuck in the control rod channel. Numerous procedures were conducted to evaluate control rods to ensure they were operating properly. There were rod drop tests and scram tests of each rod, in addition to periodic rod exercising and rod withdrawals for normal operation. From February 1959 to November 18, 1960, there were 40 cases of a stuck control rod for scram and rod drop tests and about a 2.5% failure rate. From November 18 to December 23, 1960, there was a dramatic increase in stuck rods, with 23 in that time period and a 13.0% failure rate. Besides these test failures, there were an additional 21 rod-sticking incidents from February 1959 to December 1960; four of these had occurred in the last month of operation during routine rod withdrawal. Rod 9 had the best operational performance record even though it was operated more frequently than any of the other rods. That is insane.
- Natsu 1y ago
  Meltdowns aren't physically possible if we're building newer types of plants, so there can't be a new Chernobyl or even Fukushima if we're using modern types of passively cooled plants.
  - Retric 1y ago
    There’s generally significant costs and asterisks around such claims. You’re much better off paying attention to site placement than trying to design something to safety handle getting covered in several meters of volcanic ash Pompeii style.
ViewTrick1002 1y ago
The great thing is that coal is not the alternative in 2025. Renewables are forcing enormous amounts of coals and fossil gas off grids around the world as we speak.
- tempodox 1y ago
  > coal is not the alternative in 2025. Except in uncle Donald’s kingdom with “America’s Beautiful Clean Coal Industry” (yes, seriously): https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/04/reinvigorating-americas-beautiful-clean-coal-industry-and-amending-executive-order-14241/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/04/rein...
  - ViewTrick1002 1y ago
    Lets come back if that leads to an increase of coal usage instead of being posturing like most else they do. Coal has been uncompetitive since the advent of the CCGT plant and was stagnating long before the fracking boom.
- DennisP 1y ago
  Yes, and in terms of overall deaths per terawatt-hour, nuclear is similar to renewables.
- opo 1y ago
  >The great thing is that coal is not the alternative in 2025. Unfortunately, there is a country that shut down nuclear power plants while they still have operating coal plants. Over time, coal use is declining in Germany, but that isn't the story so far in 2025: >…The share of electricity produced with fossil fuels in Germany increased by ten percent between January and the end of June 2025, compared to the same period one year before, while power production from renewables declined by almost six percent, the country’s statistical office >… Coal-fired power production increased 9.3 percent, while electricity production from fossil gas increased by 11.6 percent. https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/fossil-electricity-production-germany-increased-10-first-half-2025 https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/fossil-electricity-prod... Shutting nuclear power plants down when you are still burning coal is almost unbelievable... I don’t think future generations will look kindly on countries who shut down a clean form of power while they still are running the most dangerous and dirty form of power generation ever created.

frotaur 1y ago

I agree Chernobyl was an epic disaster, but Fukushima ? Last I heard the radiation level are basically normal even close to the reactor, and overall radiation wide there hasn't been much damage if at all. So it seems that fukushima is an example of something that should have been an EPIC accident, but actually was perfectly fine in the end. I may be wrong, but thats what I remembered from the wikipedia page.

felipeerias 1y ago
Fukushima was partly an issue of flawed risk assessment. The tsunami that took down the plant was believed to be an incredibly rare even, expected to happen once every ten thousand years. However, that was a result of faulty assumptions made when the plant was initially planned. With better data and methods, the event would have seemed a lot more likely.
immibis 1y ago
It was perfectly fine because the operators stole the batteries from all the cars in the parking lot to run the control room. Not something I'd like the continued existence of New York City to rely upon.
- chickenbig 1y ago
  > Not something I'd like the continued existence of New York City to rely upon. Was New York City really at risk? Citation needed.
Reason077 1y ago
The costs of cleaning up Fukushima, including the wider effects on the Japanese economy, are estimated to exceed US$200 billion. That makes it a pretty EPIC disaster in economic terms alone. Even Chernobyl was not really that bad in terms of lives lost. Even taking the worst estimates of long-term deaths from radiation exposure, it killed a tiny fraction of the numbers of people who have died from hydroelectric disasters or from exposure to coal power plant pollution. But that doesn't mean it wasn't a catastrophic disaster for the regional (and wider Soviet) economy.

peterfirefly 1y ago

> Don't build a damn LWR on a fault line (Fukushima) Don't put the emergency diesel generators in the basement where they are certain to be flooded if the tsunami wall is too low. Also, don't build too low tsunami walls. > So yeah. Oil has bad disasters. Nuclear has EPIC disasters. No. Hydropower has. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_hydroelectric_power_station_failures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_hydroelectric_power_st...