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Out of all major energy sources, nuclear is the safest

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

#61

Post by ChuckMcM »

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…

Oh I love that analogy, I thought I would figure out where it came from. Most people reference the times story [1] which talks about 20 cows a year, however that story references a CDC study [2] which talks about 21 cows over 5 years. Which makes it actually about 4 people a year (average) being killed by cows. Which is still more than death by Sharks at about 1 every other year on average according to [3].

[1] "The image of cows as placid, gentle creatures is a city slicker’s fantasy, judging from an article published on Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which reports that about 20 people a year are killed by cows in the United States." -- https://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/31/dangerous-co...

[2] "A total of 21 deaths met the case definition for 2003--2008 (Table 1). Four fatalities occurred in 2003, two in 2004, six in 2005, and three each year during 2006--2008." -- https://www.cdc.gov/mmWR/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5829a2.htm

[3] https://www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/fish/isaf/contributing-fac...

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

#62

Post by windlep »

inputcoffee wrote: post #47

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.

Indeed, it also fails to mention hydroelectric. Nor is there any mention of how much it costs per TW/h, especially when you factor in the insane cost from just a single accident or the fact that the waste has to be safely and securely stored for a very long time.

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

#63

Post by jesus92gz-spain »

How can nuclear (fision) energy be safer than wind/solar/hydro? New efficient solar cells should be enough, environment friendly, and safer than other alternatives as long as the manufacturing of these are environment friendly as well. Also, everyone can setup their own solar plant at home, I almost did so, but the price of the materials and the setup are too high for me.

I'd like you to consider if nuclear material is useful for something apart from generating energy. It may be useful for other things we don't even know right now, and in the future we may have consumed all the resources.

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

#64

Post by simias »

People are scared of nuclear energy for the same reason that they're scared of taking an airplane. Even though it's technically and statistically very safe, the perceived risk appears much greater.

In particular in both cases when something goes wrong it tends to go extremely wrong and you're completely helpless to stop it. In contrast getting in a car accident or slowly suffocating in coal power plant emissions seem manageable.

Personally I'm of the opinion that going all nuclear would be a mistake but on the other hand it's a great way to move away from coal and petrol while we're still figuring out how to scale renewable energies (and maybe fusion, but that's still a moonshot). It provides cheap, reliable and reasonably safe energy with very little CO2 emissions.

I'm more worried about global warming than Fukushima and I'd gladly trade even a dozen of Fukushima-type incidents in the next decades (highly unlikely) if it could stop global warming and its dire, hard-to-revert consequences.

In particular I genuinely do not understand why most ecologists seem to be staunchly anti-nuclear. I can understand asking for better funding in renewable R&D and planning for a transition but, at least in Europe, ecologists seem to favor dropping nuclear immediately, no matter the cost. For instance they applauded when Germany decided to completely stop producing nuclear energy, even if it meant more pollution in the short term. I find that hard to justify.

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

#65

Post by vhost- »

inputcoffee wrote: post #47

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.

> 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.

this seems extremely hard to quantify.

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

#66

Post by tboughen »

andrewprock wrote: post #39
DangerousPie wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think it's not meaningful? What would be the alternative?

Deaths per capita within 100 miles of generation.

Do you think coal mining deaths should not be counted if they occur 200 miles away from the power station the mine supplies? What about if the deaths occurred a continent away?

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

#67

Post by xg15 »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #37
xg15 wrote: post #12

Can anyone explain to me why "deaths/tWh" is even a meaningful measure? Of course nuclear energy has one of the highest Wh outputs, no-one is disputing that. However, what does that have to do with the risk of use? That seems like a measure very skewed to make arguments in favour of nuclear power. I might as well argue that car drivers are safer than pedestrians because the average deaths/horse power is vastly lower.…

I'm only aware of two deaths specifically caused by wind power, when two engineers were caught on top of one when it caught fire. It's likely such a negligible number that it wouldn't even show up on the graph.

Given that the point of the graph is to show nuclear at the bottom, wouldn't that especially be a reason to include wind power in the graph?

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

#68

Post by sliverstorm »

swerner wrote: post #40
gaius wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 .

And then we put the breeder reactors into abandoned mines. Breeders aren't the solution, they have waste products too, and those waste products are also radioactive.

The good news is breeder waste is a mix of very short half lives and very long half lives. The very short ones decay to safe levels quickly, and the very long ones have a low level of activity.

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

#69

Post by fnj »

sbarker wrote: post #45
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.

1) Extreme costs. 2) Chance for disaster in case of launch mishap.

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

#70

Post by comicjk »

xg15 wrote: post #12

Can anyone explain to me why "deaths/tWh" is even a meaningful measure? Of course nuclear energy has one of the highest Wh outputs, no-one is disputing that. However, what does that have to do with the risk of use? That seems like a measure very skewed to make arguments in favour of nuclear power. I might as well argue that car drivers are safer than pedestrians because the average deaths/horse power is vastly lower.…

Terawatt-hours are a direct measurement of what we want from an energy source, namely, energy. The equivalent for transportation would be deaths/mile, which is indeed a commonly used metric of transportation safety. Deaths/TWh is very meaningful.
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