5 ms·

> I think a good exercise for the reader is to reflect on why they were ever against nuclear power in the first place. The context is a long string of nuclear

> I think a good exercise for the reader is to reflect on why they were ever against nuclear power in the first place. The context is a long string of nuclear incidents throughout the Cold War through to the ‘90s. Not just Chernobyl, not just Fukushima, but the string of disasters at Windscale / Sellafield and many others across the globe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_power_accidents_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_power_accident... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_and_radiation_fatalities_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_and_radiation_... These disasters were huge, newsworthy and alarmingly regular. People read about those getting sick and dying directly as a result. They felt the cleanup costs as taxpayers. They saw how land became unusable after a large event, and, especially terrifying for those who had lived as adults through Cold War, saw the radioactive fallout blown across international borders by the wind. It’s not Greenpeace or an anti-nuclear lobby who caused the widespread public reaction to nuclear. It was the public reaction seeing it with their own eyes, and making an understandable decision that they didn’t like the risks. Chernobyl was one hammer blow to the coffin lid, Fukushima the second, but nuclear power was already half-dead before either of those events, kept alive only by unpopular political necessity. I’m not even anti-nuclear myself, but let’s be clear: the worldwide nuclear energy industry is itself to blame for the lack of faith in nuclear energy.

account42 1y ago
People fear what the media tells them to fear. I still remember the (publicly funded so not really independent from government) TV here having someone refer to a beech near Fukushima as "possibly one of the most dangerous places on earth" while holding up a Geiger counter that showed radiation levels barely above background levels. Nuclear accidents have been a nothing-burger compared to all the deaths and health issues caused by coal and gas - but those are more spread out over time and don't make for as exciting news so no one cares. Shutting down nuclear instead of coal was never a rational decision but an emotional one.
s_dev 1y ago
Coal kills far more people than nuclear yet you never read about it. I think partly because any nuclear catastrophes are visible and concentrated to a single area. Coal smoke kills over a much wider area and this impacts that 'newsworthiness' of this fear to spread. It's a class data vs feelings issue and yet again peoples feelings trump the data and undermines what experts familiar with both the danger and the data say.
jenadine 1y ago
Don't judge plane safety from the design of the brothers Wright aircraft
- thbb123 1y ago
  Fun fact: in the 90's, the reference gauge for aircraft safety was 1 accidental fatality per 100 million hours of passenger flight. Which is amazingly safe, far better than car and on a par with train. Now, facing the growth of air travel, it was decided to raise this bar to 1 per billion hour. Not as an end by itself - this comes at very high cost and had a significant impact on travel prices. But because, with the growth of air travel, this would have implied one major accident per fortnight on average. And because those accident are more spectacular and relayed by media, civil aviation authorities feared this might raise angst and deter the public from air travel. So, safety was enhanced, but mostly for marketing reasons.
  - rcyeh 1y ago
    I'm trying to reconcile your numbers with the Wikipedia "Aviation safety” article https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_safety https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_safety which for 2019 describes "0.5 accidents per million departures" and "40 fatalities per trillion revenue passenger kilometers". Considering that many or most passengers fly close to 800-1000 km/h, we're still quite a bit above above 1 fatality per 100 million passenger hours. Would a factor of 10 be enough? Suppose we go from one major accident per fortnight to one per five months (10 fortnights). Is that higher than what we have seen in the past thirty years?
    - thbb123 1y ago
      My numbers come from conversations I recall with René Amalberti, a notable specialist in the area, having advised, among others, Airbus. The conversations were around 1993-96, when I was doing my PhD, and thus may be a bit blurry by now. Also, it is perfectly possible the reference values and measurement units have evolved since then. Still your projection shows that both reference indicators and actual values are in the ballpark of the estimates I cited. My (and Amalberti's) main point is that safety assessment is not just about minimizing the raw number of accidents, but involves tradeoffs between various concerns, including psychological perception and revenue. Otherwise, the safest airline would be the one that does not fly anyone.
gilbetron 1y ago
And yet if you look at the "Fatalities" column, you see a stream of zeroes with a handful of non-zeroes, the worst being Chernobyl at 50 direct fatalities. Rooftop solar accounts for more deaths. Nuke plants are scary when they fail, but the actual threat is way lower than we play it out to be.
- scandox 1y ago
  I'm open to Nuclear if it can be done safely and if we can show we have the cultural maturity to keep it safe...but in the case of Chernobyl at least I think that statistics and other officious BS has been used to greatly downplay the true human cost in death, sickness, displacement and on many other metrics.
  - rpdillon 1y ago
    Two points: Chernobyl was a poor, badly run reactor that was designed badly decades ago. I don't know why we paint all of nuclear with that brush, other than folks fall victim to availability bias all the time. The other point is that we sweep aside externalities for all forms of power generation. People don't think of coal as dangerous, but it's killed far more than nuclear.
    - KerrAvon 1y ago
      We don’t actually do that, at least not in the USA. America’s industrial policy — until Trump — has been (politicians from certain areas of the country excepted) a gradual phaseout of coal and other fossil fuels. It’s taking time because West Virginia produces a lot of coal and their politicians have been assholes about it.
    - burnt-resistor 1y ago
      Fukushima, lack of insurance, and lack of waste storage facilities that no one wants to manage.
      - account42 1y ago

account42 1y ago

People fear what the media tells them to fear. I still remember the (publicly funded so not really independent from government) TV here having someone refer to a beech near Fukushima as "possibly one of the most dangerous places on earth" while holding up a Geiger counter that showed radiation levels barely above background levels. Nuclear accidents have been a nothing-burger compared to all the deaths and health issues caused by coal and gas - but those are more spread out over time and don't make for as exciting news so no one cares. Shutting down nuclear instead of coal was never a rational decision but an emotional one.

s_dev 1y ago

Coal kills far more people than nuclear yet you never read about it. I think partly because any nuclear catastrophes are visible and concentrated to a single area. Coal smoke kills over a much wider area and this impacts that 'newsworthiness' of this fear to spread. It's a class data vs feelings issue and yet again peoples feelings trump the data and undermines what experts familiar with both the danger and the data say.

jenadine 1y ago

Don't judge plane safety from the design of the brothers Wright aircraft

thbb123 1y ago
Fun fact: in the 90's, the reference gauge for aircraft safety was 1 accidental fatality per 100 million hours of passenger flight. Which is amazingly safe, far better than car and on a par with train. Now, facing the growth of air travel, it was decided to raise this bar to 1 per billion hour. Not as an end by itself - this comes at very high cost and had a significant impact on travel prices. But because, with the growth of air travel, this would have implied one major accident per fortnight on average. And because those accident are more spectacular and relayed by media, civil aviation authorities feared this might raise angst and deter the public from air travel. So, safety was enhanced, but mostly for marketing reasons.
- rcyeh 1y ago
  I'm trying to reconcile your numbers with the Wikipedia "Aviation safety” article https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_safety https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_safety which for 2019 describes "0.5 accidents per million departures" and "40 fatalities per trillion revenue passenger kilometers". Considering that many or most passengers fly close to 800-1000 km/h, we're still quite a bit above above 1 fatality per 100 million passenger hours. Would a factor of 10 be enough? Suppose we go from one major accident per fortnight to one per five months (10 fortnights). Is that higher than what we have seen in the past thirty years?
  - thbb123 1y ago
    My numbers come from conversations I recall with René Amalberti, a notable specialist in the area, having advised, among others, Airbus. The conversations were around 1993-96, when I was doing my PhD, and thus may be a bit blurry by now. Also, it is perfectly possible the reference values and measurement units have evolved since then. Still your projection shows that both reference indicators and actual values are in the ballpark of the estimates I cited. My (and Amalberti's) main point is that safety assessment is not just about minimizing the raw number of accidents, but involves tradeoffs between various concerns, including psychological perception and revenue. Otherwise, the safest airline would be the one that does not fly anyone.

gilbetron 1y ago

And yet if you look at the "Fatalities" column, you see a stream of zeroes with a handful of non-zeroes, the worst being Chernobyl at 50 direct fatalities. Rooftop solar accounts for more deaths. Nuke plants are scary when they fail, but the actual threat is way lower than we play it out to be.

scandox 1y ago
I'm open to Nuclear if it can be done safely and if we can show we have the cultural maturity to keep it safe...but in the case of Chernobyl at least I think that statistics and other officious BS has been used to greatly downplay the true human cost in death, sickness, displacement and on many other metrics.
- rpdillon 1y ago
  Two points: Chernobyl was a poor, badly run reactor that was designed badly decades ago. I don't know why we paint all of nuclear with that brush, other than folks fall victim to availability bias all the time. The other point is that we sweep aside externalities for all forms of power generation. People don't think of coal as dangerous, but it's killed far more than nuclear.
  - KerrAvon 1y ago
    We don’t actually do that, at least not in the USA. America’s industrial policy — until Trump — has been (politicians from certain areas of the country excepted) a gradual phaseout of coal and other fossil fuels. It’s taking time because West Virginia produces a lot of coal and their politicians have been assholes about it.
  - burnt-resistor 1y ago
    Fukushima, lack of insurance, and lack of waste storage facilities that no one wants to manage.
    - account42 1y ago