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

Data from Chernobyl and Fukushima provide answers about the risks of nuclear

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 166 posts

Re: Data from Chernobyl and Fukushima provide answers about the risks of nuclear

#141

Post by AngryData »

ascat wrote: post #137

I was also wondering like how the article says that relocating people near Chernobyl in such great extend isn't the right thing to do (taking the 9 months life expectancy limit in mind) but I am really confused here, because when I see movies or videos showing the Chernobyl accidents they show people feeling the burning sensation, vomiting, getting extremely sick and new babies being born with ill health, which is re…

Well obviously the people closest definitely should leave. But they eventually cleared out far more area than just the nearest town of people that were given large exposures.

Re: Data from Chernobyl and Fukushima provide answers about the risks of nuclear

#142

Post by StreamBright »

stallmanite wrote: post #129
StreamBright wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are discounting cave man with camp fire. Also nuclear _technology_ as of being controlled by humans is not as old.

I’m pretty sure the parent is pointing out that the chemical combustion in eg a caveman’s campfire required many millions of years of stars performing nuclear fusion to create any elements with higher atomic numbers than 2, oxygen included.

I agree. I am talking about technology as of what humans control. Humans do not control this -> "many millions of years of stars performing nuclear fusion to create any elements with higher atomic numbers than 2"

Re: Data from Chernobyl and Fukushima provide answers about the risks of nuclear

#143

Post by stephenr »

spfzero wrote: post #131
stephenr wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because "nuclear" is a scary word owing to activist efforts decades ago. Right, activists... not those pesky meltdowns spewing radioactive waste across Europe and into the pacific, it was the activists.

"spewing ... into the Pacific" actually dilutes it more than when it existed in ore in the first place. It had to be concentrated by orders of magnitude from ore, to make it radioactive enough to be fuel for a reactor. Before that, it was just backround that we've lived happily with for eons, and in the Pacific it is even lower level.

The plant operators measured 7.5M times the legal limit of radioactive iodine in the seawater.

Complete dilution is not a given, and expecting zero consequences to marine life (and anything that then feeds on marine life) is optimistic at best.

Re: Data from Chernobyl and Fukushima provide answers about the risks of nuclear

#144

Post by neilwilson »

"As governments only have a limited amount of money to spend on all the services they provide, this means that there are not infinite funds to be spent responding to a nuclear accident; £1 spent on evacuating residents is £1 less that is spent on schools, hospitals and roads."

Which is of course completely flawed. Firstly it is in monetary terms, when there is a dynamic amount of money. Pulling the furlough pay rabbit out of the hat put the myth of a fixed amount of money to bed forever. Money is an endogenous concept designed to allow all the resources of a currency area to be engaged usefully.

Secondly even if you reassess it in the correct real resource terms, it assumes that there are no unemployed resources and that all current uses of resources are the most socially advantageous uses.

The one thing we have learned from the Covid crisis is exactly how few people we need working to maintain the population, and how much of what we call work is an activity that is somewhat less important than your average football match.

Re: Data from Chernobyl and Fukushima provide answers about the risks of nuclear

#145

Post by pvaldes »

sesuximo wrote: post #64
ysleepy wrote: post #6

Ah yes, decidedly pro-nuclear stance here. The first obvious omissions that come to mind are: 1. The evacuations took place while the meltdown was ongoing, evacuating was the sane choice given the available knowledge at the time. 2. There is no data on how not evacuating would have affected the people, since that was not done, making that comparison with such certainty seems a bit overconfident. Nuclear in general: H…

How about you show me where to put all the carbon waste before we build another car/gas plant? Making orders of magnitude less waste that stays in one place seems obviously better... it’s in parking lots because there isn’t much of it

> where to put all the carbon waste

Trees have been extensively proven and are reliable. Human body stores also a lot of carbon.

Re: Data from Chernobyl and Fukushima provide answers about the risks of nuclear

#146

Post by Factfull »

neilwilson wrote: post #144

"As governments only have a limited amount of money to spend on all the services they provide, this means that there are not infinite funds to be spent responding to a nuclear accident; £1 spent on evacuating residents is £1 less that is spent on schools, hospitals and roads." Which is of course completely flawed. Firstly it is in monetary terms, when there is a dynamic amount of money. Pulling the furlough pay rabbi…

If the argument is completely flawed, then that would mean there is an infinite amount of money to spend reducing very small risks. That doesn't seem right. We can't, for example, spend infinite amounts on making cars safer, because they would become unaffordable and more polluting (heavier) very quickly. We would end up with no cars. Ironically, this kind of is the path that nuclear is on: the things are made so safe that no one can afford them anymore. The opportunity cost of no nuclear is seldom brought into the argument.

Re: Data from Chernobyl and Fukushima provide answers about the risks of nuclear

#147

Post by Factfull »

Melting_Harps wrote: post #136
indymike wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps because you have to have a Medium account to read the article? I'd love to read it, but I don't love the idea of logging in to Medium to do so.

> Perhaps because you have to have a Medium account to read the article? I'm anti-Nuclear (On Earth), but would prefer most people read it before commenting on it. So, I archived it. http://archive.vn/OmALl

Article appears to now be free to read.

Re: Data from Chernobyl and Fukushima provide answers about the risks of nuclear

#148

Post by raxxorrax »

andbberger wrote: post #18
ysleepy wrote: post #6

Ah yes, decidedly pro-nuclear stance here. The first obvious omissions that come to mind are: 1. The evacuations took place while the meltdown was ongoing, evacuating was the sane choice given the available knowledge at the time. 2. There is no data on how not evacuating would have affected the people, since that was not done, making that comparison with such certainty seems a bit overconfident. Nuclear in general: H…

Waste was never really a problem and has been definitively solved. You bury it in a deep unmarked hole. [1] Go ahead and keep arguing about whether or not nuclear is a good idea. Earth doesn't care. The water will be lapping at your feet soon. How's that for externalizing a cost to future generations? I am, and will continue to be blown away that the world found out how to make rocks so spicy they can power our civil…

With all security measures and the problem with storing waste, nuclear is just very expensive, at least for many countries with a high population density.

Europe doesn't have that many vast uninhabited landscapes for example. That Canada can just dump it beyond the polar circle is another thing.

Uranium isn't endless. With the current rate of consumption, it would last ~80 years. Sure, there are ideas to extract it and we certainly could find more, but it should certainly be a factor to be reminded of. There are also quite rare materials needed for containment, which have similar restrictions. Some say we could extract Uranium from seawater, but that is pretty much bullshit, not only economically.

I am not for shutting down nuclear plants, but I doubt it can compete or is the future of our energy production. Maybe other reactor types may help, but I don't judge people for being anti nuclear.

Re: Data from Chernobyl and Fukushima provide answers about the risks of nuclear

#149

Post by raxxorrax »

spfzero wrote: post #131
stephenr wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because "nuclear" is a scary word owing to activist efforts decades ago. Right, activists... not those pesky meltdowns spewing radioactive waste across Europe and into the pacific, it was the activists.

"spewing ... into the Pacific" actually dilutes it more than when it existed in ore in the first place. It had to be concentrated by orders of magnitude from ore, to make it radioactive enough to be fuel for a reactor. Before that, it was just backround that we've lived happily with for eons, and in the Pacific it is even lower level.

because there is a lot of water on the planet?

Or a hungry fish will introduce it into the food chain before it has dissolved completely homogeneously into the wide oceans of the earth.

Re: Data from Chernobyl and Fukushima provide answers about the risks of nuclear

#150

Post by cookienapper »

lucb1e wrote: post #2

Title doesn't seem to match the article's contents. It concludes: > If there was a meltdown tomorrow in the UK, France, US or elsewhere, it’s likely that our failure to adjust our thinking in light of the experiences at Fukushima and Chernobyl would mean we evacuate too many people for too long. People would die as a result. Indeed, evacuate too many. The "learning about the risk of nuclear" we did "for the first tim…

Bill Gates was in the process of building a new prototype nuclear power plant. Highlights for this design is that in a worst case scenario; it will continue working without ANY human intervention. From my understanding, it may lose efficiency but will not meltdown. That's the design philosophy in a nutshell. Prototypes were set to be built in China - until Trump blocked it as part of his trade-war initiative.
Post reply on HN