Danube's record low levels force shutdown of Hungary's only nuclear plant

Post by Kon5ole » Wed, Aug 05, 2026, 4:10 PM UTC

Hammershaft wrote: post #248

Kon5ole wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think you're seriously misunderstanding the statistic I posted. Not at all, i am very familiar with this argument, but it’s flawed. It doesn’t matter at all how many people have died so far. It is entirely irrelevant for determining the risk.

How is it irrelevant? It establishes the base rate under specific regulatory regimes. Most of the nuclear plants that make up that base rate were built when nuclear regulations were much much more lax than they are now, and yet Nuclear ends up with the safest track record out of all energy sources.

>How is it irrelevant?

Because it only looks at what has happened, not what could happen. And what could happen is the interesting thing.

Before Chernobyl happened, the statistics didn't tell us it could happen. Before Fukushima happened, the statistics didn't tell is it could happen.

They happened anyway. The next thing that happens will similarly be completely independent from anything that happened before.

So - what happened before is irrelevant. What COULD happen is relevant.

Post by Kon5ole » Wed, Aug 05, 2026, 6:33 PM UTC

Hammershaft wrote: post #249

Kon5ole wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Even if deregulation increased nuclear deaths per watt by two orders of magnitude (which I strongly doubt!) Why doubt it? Chernobyl alone was very close to causing millions of deaths. The actual accident released only about 5% of the core, but had the graphite fire not been extinguished, places as far away as Scotland and Scandinavia would not be able to grow enough edible food within their borders for decades. Euro…

I hadn't heard any of these claims before. Without a source, I decided to ask chatgpt. Its assessment is that essentially every claim in this comment is false. If you think chatgpt is wrong can you explain why? https://chatgpt.com/s/t_6a72ee6f965c81919cc6e4bf8da64262

By all means use chatGPT, but your linked chat session hasn't understood the conditions. It answers mostly based on what actually happened, not taking into account the scenario I described.

Try asking chatGPT something like:

"just a simple yes or no - Could the Chernobyl accident in theory under worst case conditions have developed to a disaster causing local food shortages in western europe and affect the water supply for millions of people in the Ukraine and neighboring countries?"

For me, I get "Yes" from ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude Opus.

You may argue that Chernobyl was a hunk of junk plant and that it can't happen anywhere else, so ask ChatGPT this as well:

"just a simple yes or no - is there any scenario where fuel stored in ponds at US nuclear plants could ever release pollution like Chernobyl?"

Yes.

It really is in a class of its own when it comes to risk.

Re: Danube's record low levels force shutdown of Hungary's only nuclear plant

Re: Danube's record low levels force shutdown of Hungary's only nuclear plant