Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Out of all major energy sources, nuclear is the safest

ourworldindata.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 679 posts

Re: Out of all major energy sources, nuclear is the safest

#41

Post by sdy »

FussyZeus wrote: post #2

The brain is not designed to understand statistics. Nuclear accidents are theatrical and fun, and therefore get a lot of play on the media when they happen. Look no further than the media circus surrounding Fukushima to confirm. Everybody is scared to death of Sharks, yet sharks killed only 1 person in the US last year. Cows killed 20, 75% of which were deliberate attacks, but almost no one is afraid of a Cow. Meanwh…

You may be on to something. Have we checked how far North Korea is able to launch sharks and cars? /s I think nuclear can't be compared to cars and sharks.

Re: Out of all major energy sources, nuclear is the safest

#42

Post by monknomo »

gaius wrote: post #20
cjsuk wrote: post #14

Apart from the waste. We really don't know what to do about it other than bury it and leave it for a few tens to hundreds of generations in the future to deal with with the hope that they will know what to do. So it's the safest option. But only for now. We might just be dooming our descendants to deal with the mess and they might be in a worse state than we are now.

We really don't know what to do about it Another myth. Of course we do: breeder reactors. Hint: why is nuclear waste dangerous? because there is still loads of energy in it .

Tricky to use breeder reactors in a way that doesn't upset the non-proliferation balance

Re: Out of all major energy sources, nuclear is the safest

#43

Post by maxerickson »

gaius wrote: post #20
cjsuk wrote: post #14

Apart from the waste. We really don't know what to do about it other than bury it and leave it for a few tens to hundreds of generations in the future to deal with with the hope that they will know what to do. So it's the safest option. But only for now. We might just be dooming our descendants to deal with the mess and they might be in a worse state than we are now.

We really don't know what to do about it Another myth. Of course we do: breeder reactors. Hint: why is nuclear waste dangerous? because there is still loads of energy in it .

It's not a solved engineering problem.

It's likely that planned reactors would work, but they are also likely to be really expensive.

Re: Out of all major energy sources, nuclear is the safest

#44

Post by QAPereo »

payne92 wrote: post #13

I believe the politicization of nuclear energy (the resulting lack of investment & innovation) will go down as one of the major blunders in human history. We'd be in a far, far better situation with greenhouse gasses if we (as a human race) had continued to invest in nuclear energy. There would have been mishaps along the way, but at a much smaller scale than we're experiencing now with deaths from air pollution and…

>I believe the politicization of nuclear energy (the resulting lack of investment & innovation) will go down as one of the major blunders in human history.

It's more or less ensured that we won't be in any shape to record histories sooner rather than later.

Re: Out of all major energy sources, nuclear is the safest

#45

Post by sbarker »

cjsuk wrote: post #14

Apart from the waste. We really don't know what to do about it other than bury it and leave it for a few tens to hundreds of generations in the future to deal with with the hope that they will know what to do. So it's the safest option. But only for now. We might just be dooming our descendants to deal with the mess and they might be in a worse state than we are now.

We should shoot the waste into to sun.

Re: Out of all major energy sources, nuclear is the safest

#46

Post by jcranmer »

anorphirith wrote: post #8

the only problem is where to get the uranium, I believe russia gets it from kazakhstan. france from niger. does US buys it from kazakhstan as well ?

Major imports into the US come from Canada, Kazakhstan, Australia, and Russia. Namibia used to be a bigger import source country, but it's apparently dropped off in recent years.

Source: https://www.eia.gov/uranium/marketing/pdf/umartable3figure5....

Re: Out of all major energy sources, nuclear is the safest

#47

Post by inputcoffee »

Two important points:

1. What about wind and solar?

2. The death/unit energy misses out the fact that we spend a lot more to keep nuclear safe because we are worried about it. If we spent a fraction of the same amount on other energy, we might get similar safety results.

Re: Out of all major energy sources, nuclear is the safest

#48

Post by stcredzero »

cjsuk wrote: post #14

Apart from the waste. We really don't know what to do about it other than bury it and leave it for a few tens to hundreds of generations in the future to deal with with the hope that they will know what to do. So it's the safest option. But only for now. We might just be dooming our descendants to deal with the mess and they might be in a worse state than we are now.

Apart from the waste. We really don't know what to do about it other than bury it and leave it for a few tens to hundreds of generations in the future to deal with with the hope that they will know what to do.

We could do like we do with coal, and just release the radioactivity into the atmosphere. That industry disposes of a lot of radioactive material that way.

Re: Out of all major energy sources, nuclear is the safest

#49

Post by Terr_ »

cjsuk wrote: post #14

Apart from the waste. We really don't know what to do about it other than bury it and leave it for a few tens to hundreds of generations in the future to deal with with the hope that they will know what to do. So it's the safest option. But only for now. We might just be dooming our descendants to deal with the mess and they might be in a worse state than we are now.

You could argue that it's actually our social and legal system which is causing problems, rather than a deficiency of technology.

Not in the sense that people are being irrational, but in the sense that we don't have a good framework for dealing with liabilities -- like nuclear waste -- for extremely long periods of time. We could probably store it pretty well if anybody was motivated in paying the direct and indirect costs of doing so properly.

Re: Out of all major energy sources, nuclear is the safest

#50

Post by FussyZeus »

tathougies wrote: post #28
FussyZeus wrote: post #2

The brain is not designed to understand statistics. Nuclear accidents are theatrical and fun, and therefore get a lot of play on the media when they happen. Look no further than the media circus surrounding Fukushima to confirm. Everybody is scared to death of Sharks, yet sharks killed only 1 person in the US last year. Cows killed 20, 75% of which were deliberate attacks, but almost no one is afraid of a Cow. Meanwh…

1,700,000% more likely actually :)

I can't math good apparently, heh.
Post reply on HN