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Comment by acidburnNSA | Hacker News Reader

If you look objectively at the numbers, you'll see that nuclear is one of the safest forms of energy production we know. Even considering conservative estimates from Fukushima and Chernobyl, nuclear power has net saved over 2 million lives simply by displacing air-pollution related deaths that would have occurred had the nukes not been built.

Coal kills on the order of hundreds of thousands of people per year. Fukushima killed zero. Chernobyl directly killed 60, and caused up to 4000 early cancer deaths over the next several decades on top of a population that would get millions of cancer deaths anyway, and that's with a bizarro linear no-threshold model almost unheard of in other latent estimates.

Nuclear is also very nearly carbon free. So if you start factoring in health effects of global warming, nuclear's even better.

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Also we should keep in mind that the major incidents involed reactors designed in the 60s/early 70s, when nuclear energy was still very new. It's like wanting to ban planes because of the safety records of planes from the 1930s. It is because plane designs iterated, learning from our mistakes over time, that it became an extremely safe technology.

When were the majority of reactors operating today designed? Serious question. I actually want to know.

1960s and 1970s mostly. Chernobyl was designed earlier. Fukushima was a super early design. The real flaw there was they put the backup generator fuel supply in the basement in a flood zone. The reactor was designed for the US midwest, with tornados in mind as the biggest threat. Moving to Japan, they should have put at least some of the backup fuel above ground level and it would have been fine.

The flaws in an earlier design can't be a justification for absence of upgrade. Since 1960 we had build thousands of structures higher than 150m. Skyscrapers are not exactly a novely. We have the tools and the knowledge.

They had 51 years, 51! to raise a damned wall 20 m. Had all the new information, improved models, latest computers and warnings... and they didn't do anything. Neither Tesco, nor the Japanese government were able to see it coming. Their lack of vision is really infuriating.

I don't know how nuclear can be considered remotely "carbon free" if you take into account the usually-externalised emissions incurred in mining, refining and processing the uranium ores into fuels.

Then, too, I've seen no figures on the carbon costs of nuclear waste-management.

Those are all considered in the lifecycle emissions calculations done by folks like the IPCC, who released these data [1]. It considers mining, construction, transportation, waste, etc. of all energy sources so they can be compared for energy policy purposes.

E=MC2 is an amazing thing.

[1] https://partofthething.com/thoughts/wp-content/uploads/ipcc-...

Source: Schlomer S., et.al., 2014: Annex III: Technology-specific cost and performance parameters. In: Climate Change 2014: Mitigation of Climate Change. Contribution of Working Group III to the 5th Assessment Report of the IPCC

Uranium mining is a tiny operation due to it's absurd energy density. I wouldn't be surprised if the mining cost of rare Earth's used to maintain broken solar units surpasses it it's so insignificant.

Besides most countries with a nuclear weapons program end up with a lot of reactor-grade uranium lying about anyway, and those countries also happen to be the biggest polluters in energy

> I wouldn't be surprised if the mining cost of rare Earth's used to maintain broken solar units surpasses it it's so insignificant.

Yeah, there's plenty of very unpleasant chemistry involved in making PV panels and I strongly doubt that the wastes involved in the associated mining/manufacturing/disposal processes are treated anywhere nearly as carefully as nuclear waste (not to speak of the fact that due to sheer energy density difference, PV panels will produce far more waste than nuclear fuel/reactors).

No, it's actually a terribly polluting and inefficient mining process. Only a tiny fraction of what is dug up is usable. It requires many (even more toxic) steps in order to turned into fuel. There's a good documentary about uranium tailings and how they pollute the local water permanently.

Besides, there isn't enough uranium in the world to provide baseload nuclear power that would replace coal.

Australian mining engineer here. Based on some pretty basic evidence [0] I'd assume uranium mining is several orders of magnitude less damaging than other energy sources, and probably has a decisive "carbon free" advantage over wind and solar once you factor those externalities in.

Australia is a top-3 uranium producer [1], we have 3 mines. That rounds to 0 in Australian mining terms. Olympic Dam is a monster in relative terms, and the production numbers are ... by tonnes Olympic Dam isn't even a uranium mine, it is a copper mine. And Olympic Dam [2] is a world class uranium mine afaik.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_uranium_p...

[2] https://www.bhp.com/-/media/bhp/documents/investors/reports/...

We shouldn’t be burning coal either.

Okay, how should we have powered the industrial revolution?

But we are, so it's better to go with the cleaner option.

You are basically saying: Since you can't be perfectly clean, I'd rather you be as dirty as possible.

Of course we shouldn't be burning coal, but we are. In 2017, 17.8% of US energy production was from coal. 28.0% from petroleum, and 31.8% from gas.

Until these three numbers become 0.0, 0.0, and 0.0, building more nuclear plants to displace them is an immense progress.

What we have right now are three options : fossil fuels, renewable sources like wind/solar/hydro, or nuclear.

Fossil fuels kill millions a year related to pollution, and does make whole areas unlivable. About 16% of all fracking oil in the US gets spilled in nature every year[1], on top of crap like Flint. Coal is responsible for 80% of energy-generated related air pollution, worldwide[2]. They are not a good solution.

Natural sources are simply extremely limited in terms of access. Few countries can realistically really rely on these as a main source of electricity.

The, there's nuclear. We have fission, which is, while relatively safe (5 major impactful accidents since the rise of nuclear power, 3 of those being the three Fukishima plants), pretty damaging _when_ shit happens. However, are the damages realistically worse than fossil fuels? I'm not exactly qualified to figure this out myself but just looking at the numbers really doesn't make fission look that bad. Finally, there's nuclear fusion, which is a lot safer, while we've been making decent progress in the recent years, doesn't look like it's gonna run our cities any time soon.

So no, we shouldn't be burning coal, obviously, but if nothing's perfect, the logical option is the next best thing.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-39032748 [2] https://www.ucsusa.org/clean-energy/decrease-coal-use

> on top of crap like Flint

Flint's water contamination has absolutely nothing to do with energy production of any kind. It was caused by the city still having lead water pipes.

Edit:

> About 16% of all fracking oil in the US gets spilled in nature every year[1]

> [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-39032748

That isn't at all what that article says. It says 16% of wells suffer a spill each year. The industry would never allow 16% of its product to simply go to waste, particularly considering how difficult and expensive those operations are.

I'm not american, seems like I mixed up Flint with some other american city that made the news up here for having water catching fire and shit like that.

And indeed, I misread, it's not 16% total spillage but 16% of them spilling at all. This one doesn't really change much to my point that having one in six fracking points spilling out is extremely damaging.

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