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

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

#91

Post by atlantacrackers »

apple4ever wrote: post #82

Many arguments for handling bad things often do not take into account the unintended consequences of that specific handling. This is one of them. The lockdowns for Coronavirus is another. I don't know which way it actual falls (lockdowns still extended life expectancy or the reduced life expectancy) but I will be curious in a couple of years what the data will show us. Some people are absolutely certain X will be the…

This. Or, the unknowable lost opportunities that never materialized. How many relationships never formed, how many business never created, etc is unmeasurable but absolutely real and the impact from those lost opportunities will be felt in some way shape and form...

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

#92

Post by pdonis »

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 showing me a sound final (100k yr) storage for nuclear waste

You don't need one. You reprocess the waste; then you only need about 100 years storage, not 100,000, for what's left over, and we already have plenty of storage methods that will meet that need. Every nuclear-using country other than the US already does this. The only reason the US doesn't is stupid politics.

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

#93

Post by acituan »

bb88 wrote: post #48
mnemonicsloth wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same way politicians build bridges and operate air traffic control systems: by hiring experts to do it.

I feel you're being pedantic here. When bridges fail, they don't affect potentially millions of people's health. Nor does when an ATC system fail at an airport -- traffic can just be rerouted to other airports.

> When bridges fail, they don't affect potentially millions of people's health.

If you are saying bad policy decisions are inherently less scaling than nuclear disasters, I would remind you the Great Leap Forward and the tens of millions of people dead as a result of the famine in just a few years. Sure that was an outlier event, and so was the nuclear disasters of past.

The problem is, with nuclear there seems to be an emotional shock and imagery that accompanies it which doesn’t seem to match those of, for example, dying of hunger. Just like airplanes feel less safe than cars but the latter kills much more people in practice, our emotive reasoning biases us heavily in this topic.

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

#94

Post by tinus_hn »

Factfull wrote: post #86
tinus_hn wrote: post #75

Is there also research available on applying this method to COVID-19 and the countermeasures?

You're in luck. The lead author or the nuclear J-value author also applied the method to COVID-19: http://jvalue.co.uk/covid-19.php

Interesting. Unfortunately it appears the obvious choice, to try to keep the R0 value below 1, is the worst option.

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

#95

Post by grogenaut »

DangitBobby wrote: post #85

IIRC we were incredibly lucky that Chernobyl didn't turn into a much more severe global disaster. What happens in a worst-case scenario meltdown? I know we have a very pro-nuclear crowd here, so I am ready for an onslaught of information.

The real disaster scenario is that you create a fission in the universe spawning universe in which you need a grand daughter which is provided by a doubly nested knot of 2 time loops with two variations each which self reinforce and end up providing you the grand daughter but continuously cause the apocalypse by disrupting electronics and quantum mechanics across the universe.

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

#96

Post by indymike »

mcjiggerlog wrote: post #51

Not sure I've seen a HN post before where so many people in the comments have clearly not read the article. Not even the summary of key points right at the top. The piece is not anti-nuclear. Also, risk is not binary. Finding out the true risk of something does not mean it's high risk and therefore negative. You can assess the risk of something and conclude that the risk is low and generally overblown, which is the p…

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.

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

#97

Post by StreamBright »

labawi wrote: post #90
StreamBright wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. It is quite unbelievable how we use a 1 million old technology (burning stuff) and try to argue that the new way of producing energy (which is already much safer if you check number of deaths per twh) is somehow dangerous and bad. In 50 years of nuclear energy we already made is super safe. Now we can make it safe for being used in location which have pretty serious earthquakes or as a resource for flying (even…

> 1 million old technology (burning) AFAIK nuclear is older than oxidation/burning. On a more serious note, burning has been a source of power only since about the steam engine, so about 300 years.

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

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

#98

Post by grogenaut »

ali_m wrote: post #55
bawolff wrote: post #7

I just skimmed, but they seem to be comparing stress of evacuating vs health risk of staying. What about the stress of knowing you live on nuclear contaminated land. Surely that must be stresful enough to be comparable to the stress of evacuating?

I wonder how that compares to the stress of knowing that you live on land that's prone to earthquakes and tsunamis that kill tens of thousands of people?

Generally I've found people learn to deal with common systemic risks but have issues with systemic risks they're not used to. Case in point:

I moved from St. Louis (Tornado Alley) to Seattle. There are really no earthquakes or volcanos in St. Louis (except from newmadrid which is a dooozy, but rare). I had trouble understanding earthquakes and they scare me a lot. But I was having a conversation with the Northwesties about Tornados. When I explained just how bad they could be, it terrified the Northwesties. There are no bad storms up here; lightning makes the news. To add to that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Joplin_tornado happened the next day. This terrified all of the northwesties. To me tornados are a part of life, and I'm more ok with them than earthquakes as you "get a warning", and you have a chance to move away from them (it's only a chance).

At the end of the day we all, except maybe Ray Kurzweil, have to deal with the ultimate risk of death. Many of us just ignore it for our whole lives as a way of coping. Others stare it in the face and logic it away, which is essentially the same thing. Why are we all not constantly panicked with the existence of death?

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

#99

Post by grogenaut »

qayxc wrote: post #78
gwbennett wrote: post #4

The US Navy has trained thousands of 18-25 year old men and women to operate hundreds of reactors around the world safety for over 60 years. I was one of them. I have not been an operator for many years, but the latest reactor designs are amazingly safe and reliable. The world needs more safe, clean, cheap and reliable power. Nuclear power is one of the answers.

Keep in mind that these reactors are only that safe because they're operated in an environment that's very different from your typical utility company. RCOH procedures alone would make civil use prohibitively expensive.

RCOH means https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refueling_and_overhaul apparently. But I don't know why this would make civil use much more expensive.

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

#100

Post by jjeaff »

ksaj wrote: post #45

The article doesn't fairly compare with the risks of say, oil. Look at Exxon for a good example of how costly (and seemingly never ending) the damage and cleanup can be. And what to make of the earthquakes caused by fracking? I live in an area with multiple nuclear plants. We've never had an issue with them, although there was one false alarm. Even then, nobody seems to feel very unsafe about it around here. Property…

Are there any known instances of a fracking induced earthquake causing any damage?

Any reports I've seen seem to be quite localized and minor.

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