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Comment by Boothroid | Hacker News Reader

A common response from defenders of nuclear when concerns are raised is to point to the impact of other energy sources, and say that nuclear is better in those terms. But I just cannot get away from the thought that whilst in aggregate those other forms of energy (fossil fuels, etc) might be provably worse than well managed nuclear within a particular analysis, humanity does not seem capable of this good management of nuclear, and when things do go wrong with fossil fuels they don't have the same potential to go quite so spectacularly bad. Yes an oil spill can affect a large area, but you don't get harmful particles washing up on the coast of the US from a spill in Japan in the same way, for example.

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The only reason fossil fuels don't have the same potential to go spectacularly bad is because humans don't consider enormous damage to be "spectacular" when it's spread out.

Consider: coal alone kills about a million people a year. If those were all concentrated in a small area, we'd call it the greatest disaster the world has ever seen. But it's spread out over the whole world, so we just shrug our shoulders and say, eh, at least it doesn't go badly wrong like nuclear does.

Put another way: coal kills more people each year than nuclear ever has over its entire history, including the nuclear bombs dropped on Japan.

And yes, you do get harmful particles on the coast of the US from activity in Asia:

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/03/03/518323094/...

People are suffering and dying from fossil fuel pollution emitted half a world away. Pollution from Fukushima can only be detected on the US west coast with the most sensitive instruments, and has no health effects.

Nuclear isn't perfect, but if you want to compare it with fossil fuels, you need to look at the constant deadly impact of fossil fuels, not merely look at big splashy accidents.

Furthermore, coal releases more radiation into the environment than nuclear power.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-...

All that shows is people are spectacularly bad at assessing risks. Many people, for example, are terrified that what happened in today's headline will happen to them. But the reason it is a headline is it is rare. The mundane deadly things that are very likely to happen to you are not reported in the paper.

The thing that always fascinates me is how people constantly bring up the long lifespan of nuclear waste, while ignoring the essentially infinite lifespan of many forms of toxic chemical pollution.

Tell people that the mercury that comes out of a coal plant will outlast the Earth itself, and you get a shrug. Tell them that nuclear waste will remain dangerous for 10,000 years and suddenly it's a Big Problem that needs Extraordinary Measures in order to Safeguard Future Civilizations.

The other thing about a half-life of 10,000 years is it means the actual radiation is very, very small. If it was large, it wouldn't last 10,000 years.

The way to make nuclear waste safe is not to concentrate it and bury it. It's to disperse it in such low concentrations that it doesn't make any difference.

That's too far the other way. Material that's safe in 10,000 years (which means the half-life is significantly less) is highly active and not something you want to hang out with unless it's shielded. The longer-lived stuff isn't all that great either when it gets inside you. Being near a bunch of uranium is fine, but breathing it in is considerably less fine.

Several countries tried your approach around the middle of the last century, pulverizing large amounts of radioactive material and dispersing it into the atmosphere. The results weren't catastrophic, but thousands did die from it.

We shouldn't be irrationally fearful of nuclear waste, but we shouldn't be completely blase about it either. The stuff is dangerous... just not dangerous on a level beyond anything else out there, the way many treat it.

There's also a considerable difference between the poisonous chemical properties of heavy metals, which will persist, and their radioactive danger.

..you also need to consider that we still have no proven way of handling high level waste, and that nuclear accidents can render huge areas completely unusable for decades, and that clean up of nuclear sites can consume utterly huge amounts of money. The same is not true of fossil fuels. Also don't discount the utterly huge amounts of energy required to construct, operate, and decommission nuclear plants. Nuclear industry apologists often conveniently exclude these from their analyses.

I don't see that you have refuted my point - you just have to look at the record (thousands of nuclear incidents worldwide over decades) to see that humanity apparently is not capable of safely using nuclear, and I'm sceptical that the benefits in terms of reduced exigencies are as great as is often claimed. And personally I'd far rather have the damage spread out over a wide area if it means we don't have to every now and then throw away all the milk in Wales for years and distribute iodine tablets to thousands..

If you look at the record, you see that fossil power is vastly more dangerous.

Do you really prefer killing a million people a year, every year, to "every now and then" throwing away all the milk in Wales, just because the million deaths are spread out? I can't fathom this.

By some analyses the C02 output of nuclear is on a par with fossil fuels once the whole cycle is taken into account. Let's not forget that uranium has to be dug out of the ground, processed etc., power plants built which generally uses a lot of concrete, big holes dug in the ground to put the waste into (since we have no good way of reprocessing much of this waste). None of this comes cheap in C02 terms. I get it, you love nuclear, but supporters of nuclear often conveniently ignore.

I don't think that's a fair comparison.

To me (and I suspect to many others), the huge difference lies in the indelibility of the damages of nuclear power.

Sure, coal might kill a million people a year, but the remnants of a nuclear incident will remain for thousands of years and affect hundreds of generations after that, in ways we don't even fully understand yet.

How long will the mercury, arsenic, and other nasty pollutants emitted by coal plants stick around? What strange effects will they cause on hundreds of future generations?

For example, children and pregnant women are warned to be careful about the fish they eat because of mercury contamination. A large part of that mercury contamination comes from burning coal. That's food from 70% of the planet rendered partially unfit for human consumption by coal.

There's nothing like that for nuclear. Yes, you should avoid food grown around Chernobyl, and there have been incidents where farmers had to dump milk for a while and things like that, but no nuclear accident has ever (nor could one ever conceivably) contaminate food from so much of the planet so badly.

What about when Japan dumps all the contaminated water into the ocean, what, do I just move to a different planet?

I'm in no ways a defender or a supporter of coal here; I think we should be moving to clean energies as fast as we can. Still, the damages from nuclear catastrophes are orders of magnitude bigger than those of coal, imo.

There are multiple nuclear reactors sunk into the ocean already. Japan could shove the entire Fukushima complex into the sea and it wouldn't come close to doing what coal has done to poison the oceans.

Note that even if you think radiation is particularly scary and vastly worse than chemical poisons, coal power plants emit many tons of uranium in addition to all the other nasty pollution.

What is your basis for that last statement? Coal: about a million deaths per year. Nuclear: about half a million ever, including weapons. Given that, how can you possibly say that damage from nuclear is orders of magnitude bigger?

Have you calculated the dose you experience from that and the impact on life expectancy vs. coal?

The remnants of the Chernobyl accident, far worse than any other, do not affect the surrounding area anymore. Pripyat could be built up again if there was any interest.

Why only compare it with fossils fuels?

Because that's what the parent comment did. Obviously a full analysis should include all forms of power generation, but that comment compared fossil favorably to nuclear on the basis that its failures aren't so spectacular.

When a coal plant fails, it just turns off. When a nuclear plant fails, you've got to get the best people on Earth and tens of billions to contain (not fix) the problem, in one of the most advanced nations on Earth. It made a huge mess that spread to Europe when Chernobyl failed. If nuclear is wide spread, what happens when human incompetence causes a plant failure in a place like Nigeria or Venezuela?

Edit: also, I frequently hear this argument about coal, but it's not a choice between nuclear and coal. Nuclear advocates promote investment in nuclear, but if we were to invest huge amounts into new energy infrastructure, we might as well invest in renewables, rather than another dirty hard to manage source.

Nuclear plants sometimes kill people when they fail. Coal plants kill vast numbers of people when they work. And the latter number is far, far larger than the former. Why is that an indictment of nuclear?

At least nuclear is possible to contain. It would cost vastly more than mere billions to contain the damage of coal. So no one even tries. And it has killed vastly more people.

But the news can't get flashy photos of areas destroyed by coal damage. It doesn't happen in big single events that the news likes to cover. So the damage seems basically invisible compared to nuclear. If the news reported on every death and environmental incident caused by coal et al, it would be banned within a year.

You're forgetting about coal mining, which is one of the most life expectancy reducing occupations there is.

Furthermore, coal plants can and do explode - aerosolised coal dust goes with a bang.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents

It's not just "well managed" nuclear that is better than fossil fuels. It's the use of nuclear entirely, including the horrible accidents, that is still better than burning fossil fuels.

We could have 100 more Fukushimas and not even touch the number of people who have died of respiratory conditions due to coal.

Please don't let the outsized, dramatic media stories about nuclear sway you. It's a viable, efficient, almost limitless power source that should be a major part of the world's energy mix.

Just because there isn't a single event to point at and say 'that is the cause' doesn't mean that the damage wasn't done.

Auto accidents probably kill a few orders of magnitude more people than a nuclear accident, yet you don't see the evangelical preachings against cars like you do nuclear.

The other forms of power need to be well managed also, and they historically have not. I don't need to go into detail about the huge amounts of pollution the power industry has generated.

What is worse? A handful of accidents that kill a few hundred people? Or several thousand people dying from various cancers and respiratory illnesses cause by decades of pollution from coal plants? Not to mention the dangers of mining it.

Current where I live there is a huge push towards natural gas due to the increased supply/decreased costs thanks to fracking. I don't think we have even begun to understand the environmental impact of fracking, yet industry has unanimously declared it safe. Another huge mismanagement of our environment, in my opinion.

> Yes an oil spill can affect a large area, but you don't get harmful particles washing up on the coast of the US from a spill in Japan in the same way, for example.

There is a natural level of background radiation, but it's not equal in all places. I think it's possible to detect some isotopes that crossed the ocean from Japan to USA, but if you compare the amount of additional radioactivity with the background level additional difference is tiny.

I'd like to give some tranquility with some numbers that compare the amount of additional radioactivity with other sources. (If you leave with someone, he/she is slightly radioactive. Some food are more radioactive than other. And other radiation sources like X-ray, CT, plane flight, sunbath ...)

Anyway, I prefer to post something to make you more nervous. "Coal Ash Is More Radioactive Than Nuclear Waste" https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-... Coal plants also emit a lot of radioactive particles that are distributed worldwide.

As you note, both nuclear and traditional energy can fail spectacularly (e.g., Brightwater Horizon,) but a good comparison of these events can be tricky. Particularly, for nuclear "harm," careful how much is real science vs how much is merely the scariness of radioactive materials; yes, scientists could detect radioactive caesium and iodine from Fukushima washing up on California, but there's orders of magnitude difference between what is "detectable" and has any real chance of effecting you.

I was going to point out something similar. Scientists can also detect the pollution from coal plants in China in California[1].

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/21/world/asia/china-also-exp...

Think about it as daily car crashes and pollution-related deaths versus an Airbus A380 full of people exploding live on prime time TV. I bet my ass people will keep talking about flight safety for weeks, non-stop, which is absolutely nonsensical. How many times you noticed people talking about the fossil fuels at a waiting line of a random place?

I am not pro nuclear, but fossil fuels are presently responsible for the active die off of the earths oceans and melting of its ice caps, id say things are being managed catastrophically poorly for those fuels as much if not worse than nuclear. Fall out zones like Chernobyl seem to have vibrant resurgent nature once people are gone. I am making a twisted argument I suppose for meltdowns, but all I'm trying to say is that this argument against nuclear applies just as devastatingly to everything but renewables.

Underground coal fires like the Centralia mine fire are an interesting and not as well known problem as oil spills.

> The fire is burning in underground coal mines at depths of up to 300 feet (90 m) over an 8-mile (13 km) stretch of 3,700 acres (15 km2). At its current rate, it could continue to burn for over 250 years.[2]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia_mine_fire

Is there no way to put it out? Starve it of oxygen? Tons of water?

The area is cracked enough you would never be able to fill the whole seam.

Sequester CO2 there? Helps on two levels.

The only nuclear accident that has killed any significant number of people was Chernobyl: which used the most dangerous reactor design that had ever existed, had tons of corners cut, was being operated by barely-trained staff, and the safeties were turned off temporarily. This was the Soviet Union, where failure could end in the manager's imprisonment in the GULAG or even death. As a result, it was not exactly run properly...

Today, Pripyat is perfectly safe except for the immediate vicinity of the reactor. People could live there.

> fossil fuels they don't have the same potential to go quite so spectacularly bad

No, that's not quite right. In fact with all oil-based energy consumption, we get harmful particles. And its worse, because: oil-based consumption is massively distributed, and it is therefore harder to turn off.

Apropros management of energy, we humans are surrounded by free energy we haven't yet learned to manage. If we will perish because of oil-greed, then the lesson learned in all of this is that we must continue to go "local" in production and consumption.

(Myself, I'd be happy to transition to 100% solar-power, and I de-incentivize my own personal oil consumption, i.e. I ride a bicycle to work.)

I've been pro-nuclear (fission) most of my life but I changed my opinion when I saw that Humanity can't manage when things go south.

Still waiting for nuclear fusion though.

Historically I was a supporter of nuclear power, but as time has gone on, I've been questioning this.

My belief in the technology hasn't changed. It's my belief in humanity that has faltered.

It's not the technology that needs improvement before it can be safely used.

Probably far off in the future but assuming we perfect robotics and A.I. wouldn't it be possible to manage nuclear with no human-hands?

The thing then will be who takes responsibility for accidents caused by robots..

I'm not so optimistic:

* Fuckushima: A giant tsunami hit the plant, cut the external power lines and drawn the emergency generators. Not even waterproof robot will fix that. (You can blame bad design or not enough preparation, but robots will not solve that.)

* Chernobyl: They disable a few safety system to make some stupid tests. Apparently the safety system were necessary. If you can override the orders of the robots with a password, they will obey stupid orders. (You can blame bad design here too, to make the accident bigger.)

* Three Mile Island: Apparently it was partially an human error. Robots may have helped. (Let's blame also bad design a little.)

You have to be aware that Japan government took a very unprofessional approach to this disaster.

Attributing the damage of this to general nuclear accident is inappropriate.

Keep in mind that the death toll from Fukushima was zero.

To the parent's point, this is entirely untrue. The yakuza colluded with the energy companies to round to their debtors and homeless people to clean up contamination.

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/05/ho...

https://www.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSBRE9BT00520131230

The idea that they all escaped unscathed with no impact on their health or some weren't simply "offed" for being uncooperative is laughable on its face.

That there were no deaths associated with Fukushima is only possible if you accept a demonstrably false construction of the energy industry in Japan that ignores its intersection with organized crime and government corruption, which is something that goes back decades.

Let me rephrase that: "Keep in mind that more people were killed by organized crime making a buck off the disaster, than by the disaster itself."

There are other considerations than immediate direct deaths.

From Wikipedia:

> though there have been no fatalities linked to radiation due to the accident, the eventual number of cancer deaths, according to the linear no-threshold theory of radiation safety, that will be caused by the accident is expected to be around 130–640 people in the years and decades ahead...in the most contaminated areas faced a 70% higher relative risk of developing thyroid cancer for females exposed as infants...

> However, an estimated 1,600 deaths are believed to have occurred due to the resultant evacuation conditions...

> Summarizing all responses to questions related to evacuees' current family status, one-third of all surveyed families live apart from their children, while 50.1% live away from other family members (including elderly parents) with whom they lived before the disaster. The survey also showed that 34.7% of the evacuees have suffered salary cuts of 50% or more since the outbreak of the nuclear disaster. A total of 36.8% reported a lack of sleep, while 17.9% reported smoking or drinking more than before they evacuated.

> We know from Chernobyl that the psychological consequences are enormous. Life expectancy of the evacuees dropped from 65 to 58 years – not because of cancer, but because of depression, alcoholism, and suicide. Relocation is not easy, the stress is very big.

> A frozen soil barrier has been constructed in an attempt to prevent further contamination of seeping groundwater, but in July 2016 TEPCO revealed that the ice wall had failed to stop groundwater from flowing in and mixing with highly radioactive water inside the wrecked reactor buildings, adding that they are "technically incapable of blocking off groundwater with the frozen wall"...every day 300 tons of contaminated water leak from the crippled nuclear plant...

> On 22 August 2011, a government spokesman mentioned the possibility that some areas around the plant "could stay for some decades a forbidden zone".

> The amount of compensation to be paid by TEPCO is expected to reach 7 trillion yen. Costs to Japanese taxpayers are likely to exceed 12 trillion yen ($100 billion). In December 2016 the government estimated decontamination, compensation, decommissioning, and radioactive waste storage costs at 21.5 trillion yen ($187 billion), nearly double the 2013 estimate.

> In 2014 Japan enacted the State Secrecy Law. The Fukushima incident falls under this law and, as a "state secret", independent investigations and reports are forbidden by law.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disa...

> ...are "technically incapable of blocking off groundwater with the frozen wall"...every day 300 tons of contaminated water leak from the crippled nuclear plant...

That article is out of date. The frozen wall has been working for quite a while but TEPCO wasn't (isn't) allowed to completely close it.

June 29, 2017

    Tepco applies to the NRA for permission to finish the Fukushima Daiichi ice wall. Closure of the wall has been throttled down by Tokyo’s Nuclear Regulation Authority due to fears concerning groundwater outside the turbine buildings falling below the level of water inside. Tepco has been forced to freeze the last half-dozen seven-meter-wide sections individually, wait to see what it does to external groundwater levels, and then proceed to the next section if groundwater level is maintained according to plan. One section on the inland side of the 1.5 kilometer ice structure is all that needs to be activated to complete the wall. To date, the sequential closure of Tokyo-mandated gaps has dropped the groundwater influx from 400 tons per day down to about 100 tons per day. No projections are being made as to how much more the in-flow will abate after the last part of the wall is frozen.

https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20170627_01/

I would also like to give a pointer to the "Fukushima Accident Updates" blog-page at hiroshimasyndrome.com. It collects and summarizes a lot of Japanse news and updates concerning Fukishima and related on a regular basis that will never reach the mainstream/ international press.

http://www.hiroshimasyndrome.com/fukushima-accident-updates....

In other words, nuclear accident is (pardon the Orwellianism) so un-dangerous that "fear of radioactivity" is more lethal than radioactivity itself.

Another way to put it is: when I see a group of anti-nuclear activists posing with children of Fukushima prefecture, asking "How long can they live?", it makes me shake my fist with anger, because they are literally harming these children more than the nuclear accident itself.

Compare that number to the number who died in or were displaced by the tsunami.

See: global warming. Things are about to go very wrong with fossil fuels / you might say they already have.

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