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Comment by jaxtellerSoA | Hacker News Reader

>and irrational fear of "radiation"

Radiation is very harmful, and very real. You don't get nuclear power without it. Nothing irrational about the fear of radiation.

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It isn't irrational to fear radiation, but what is irrational is the level of fear, and also the fear in context with other dangers that we face that nuclear helps to solve.

I don't think that I'm out of line in suggesting that Global Climate Change is a much larger threat than even several Chernobyl incidents. The constant coverage, even to this day, about the Chernobyl incident has caused an availability heuristic in the collective psyche of man, and exacerbates the largest issues that we actually face.

The fear is a real and large issue that leads to a lack of reasonable discourse when evaluating pros and cons of nuclear against other sources in terms of funding advanced technologies and building current designs. But the fear is not necessarily what drives a cumbersome regulatory infrastructure that hampers new construction and the poor management by Westinghouse of the recent projects that led to massive cost overruns.

More radioactive material is emitted/released from coal plants than from nuclear plants, even when adjusted for the difference in power production between those two types of plants. It's not irrational to be wary about radiation, it is irrational to respond to that wariness by going all NIMBY on new nuclear plants.

I'm pro nuclear power, but this is the difference between drinking a glass of water and drowning with your head in a bucket. It's weird to apply averages to situations where nuclear disasters release massive amounts of radiation all at once.

No, it's not weird - that's exactly where the fallacy is. Getting millions of people slowly poisoned by pollution gets less weight than a dozen of people directly hurt by radiation. For example, Three Mile Island incidents had essentially zero casualties (yes, including study of cancer incidence increase, which did not find any significant increase) but everybody has heard about it (and it essentially killed new nuclear development in the US). Try to find out how much morbidity random coal plant is causing, and pretty much nobody knows or cares.

This[1] site claims over 7,500 deaths each year are attributable to fine particle pollution from U.S. power plants.

This[2] site claims Coal is responsible for over 800,000 premature deaths per year globally and many millions more serious and minor illnesses. In China alone, around 670,000 people die prematurely per year as a result of coal-related air pollution. The ‘Coal Kills’ report estimates that in India coal contributes to between 80,000 to 115,000 premature deaths annually. In the United States coal kills around 13,000 people annually, and 23,300 in Europe. The economic costs of the health impacts from coal combustion in Europe are valued at about US$70 billion per year, with 250,600 life years lost.

1. http://www.catf.us/fossil/problems/power_plants/

2. https://endcoal.org/health/

Right. So we are comparing (in US) 13000 deaths annually and one major incident with no casualties - and in the coal case, it's "yeah we know it's not ideal, so we are slowly moving away, but really slow because you have to be realistic here" and in the nuclear case it's "OMG OMG OMG radiation no more new stations ever we have to forget the whole thing now, it's too unsafe did I say RADIATION?!".

Oh, right, sorry. Yeah, coming back to this a day later I see that were you wrote "pretty much nobody knows or cares" it was meant in the general sense of stop someone in the street and ask them about coal and their eyes will glaze over vs ask them about nuclear power and radiation-three-eyed-fish-godzilla and they're way more likely to have a seizure right there on the street.

That's true, but what I said factors in all of those historic nuclear disasters. Even with all of those, nuclear power still averages out at releasing less radiation per unit of power generated than coal.

Yeah, and perhaps radiation per unit of power isn't a good metric. Suddenly rendering huge areas uninhabitable is qualitatively different than slightly increasing cancer risk over a long period of time. Anything that conflates the first with the second isn't a very good analysis. It's like how more oil seeps out of the floor of the Atlantic each year than was released during the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Doesn't make it not a disaster.

>Suddenly rendering huge areas uninhabitable

Coal has the that risk as well, it could actually be worse because of the lax regulation. See fly ash spills for reference.

It might not be a good metric, but it's still overly generous to coal, because we're already rushing headlong towards huge areas of coastline being uninhabitable because they'll be underwater.

That's under normal operation, though. As Fukushima has shown us recently, sometimes they break.

...and still kills less people than coal kills during its normal operation.

Also (considering the amount of land that will be submerged underwater by 2100) probably makes less amount of land uninhabitable than coal does.

A lot of technology sometimes break. We still use it. We routinely travel in steel boxes whizzing around at breakneck speeds where any serious mechanical malfunction or error leads to a quick death or very painful long term injury - and millions get hurt this way every year - but we take this risk because the rewards are higher. But with radiation somehow no reward is worth the risk - its radiation, how could you dare to rationally calculate risk/rewards if people can die!!!!11one1oen That's what I call "irrational".

Stop repeating this, it's propaganda.

Which part, and do you have a source arguing otherwise?

The whole thing relies on emission of fly ash which contains a few ppm of thorium and uranium.

However a few things never mentioned.

1. Modern coal fired plants collect fly ash and bury it in landfill. So coal fired power plants since the 1970's don't emit fly ash or it's radio-isotopes.

2. As radio-isotopes go neither thorium or uranium are particularly bio-available or subject to bio-magnification.

3. Common dirt contains a few ppm of thorium and uranium. So contamination with fly ash doesn't change anything radio-logically.

I am not an expert on nuclear energy but my understanding is that some designs (like the Molten Salt reactor) are considerably safer. You still have the risk of local contamination but no one should really care if a tiny area on earth is contaminated as a worst case. But they shouldn't expose a whole region to radiations.

My understanding is that development costs are significant as changing the design requires a lot of engineering and testing. But perhaps it is time for an ambitious programme which scale would justify the investment given the age of the current plants in most major countries.

Sharks are also real. Yet for an average person, living in fear of sharks is completely irrational, especially if that person never goes where sharks could actually harm them. The fear is rational when the probability of harm is substantial, with most nuclear developments it is not, and less than the alternatives.

You don't get X-rays without radiation, either. For that matter, you don't get sunshine without radiation.

The problem with fear of radiation is that all radiation gets dumped under that label, without any nuance as to the amount or kind. A properly-operating nuclear plant will emit radiation, but in amounts that should be less than the background levels. A failing nuclear plant can emit catastrophic amounts. The two really need to be in two different categories in peoples' minds, because they are not similar at all.

>You don't get X-rays without radiation

Yeah which is why you don't get X-rays as part of a routine physical exam. They only use them when necessary, because they know that repeated exposure to radiation is bad.

Well, you still get them as part of a routine dental exam. You never did get them as part of a routine non-dental medical exam that I can recall. (And if I understand correctly, the dosage on a dental X-ray is much lower than it used to be, because the machines have improved a great deal.)

>Well, you still get them as part of a routine dental exam.

Yeah and they put a lead vest on you, and leave the fucking room. I actually have my dentist take X-rays less frequently than the "recommended" time frames (once a year is "recommended" I think) because of this.

I believe most don't actually use film anymore, they use some other capture device that operates electronically.

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