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Comment by ilitirit | Hacker News Reader

> My point is that nuclear power is safe, as long as all disaster scenarios are taken into account

To be honest, you could probably make that argument for anything under question in any scenario. But even if we were to skip the logical loopholes ("We took it into account, but we decided the benefits outweighed the costs because of <fill in any reason>"), let's just look at the raw numbers or simply just historical facts. Have any disasters at coal plants rendered areas uninhabitable for centuries? OK, take one step back. Would those disasters have occurred if "all disaster scenarios [were] taken into account"?

The reality is that we have no one good and practical energy solution for the world. And even though I believe that there's no practical solution that can beat a tried and tested solution like nuclear in terms of efficiency, I also believe that there's been no tried and tested solution that's been worse in terms of failure.

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> Have any disasters at coal plants rendered areas uninhabitable for centuries?

Not a coal plant per se, but there's the Centralia mine fire [1] in PA, which is expected to burn for over 250 years, resulting in the entire town being abandoned.

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

coal is arguably worse even when it's working as designed. it's just amortized over a much larger area.

Anything is "arguably" worse or better. But honestly, I would challenge that point any day. As much as I'm against fossil fuels, coal powered plants only contribute a very minor part to global warming compared to lets say... ships, planes and cars. And my point is not about coal specifically - it was just mentioned because that's what the main opposition is to nuclear. Not solar/wind/water.

My point is that failure of nuclear energy provision is demonstrably worse than the failure of any other options we've tried. Does this mean it's better/worse? Who knows.

But you simply cannot say that something is safe if <xyz>, especially when history says otherwise.

I'm flabbergasted at the number of people talking unironically about "human error" as if it's historically insignificant...

> My point is that failure of nuclear energy provision is demonstrably worse than the failure of any other options we've tried.

No it isn't; when dams fail villages get swept away and everyone dies. Bad mining disasters can wipe out ~50 people too.

When Fukushima failed, basically nobody got hurt, and there is a lot of inconvenience and resources have to go to cleaning the thing up.

Obviously it is still awful for the people involved, but I'd personally rather go through a nuclear accident than a dam failure or have a mine fall on me, because I'd still be basically ok after a nuclear accident. The argument might be that it is uneconomic after accounting for the costs, but it is demonstrably safe and so a far better failure mode than anything else we've tried.

I mean, Fukushima has basically proven that the only question is economic cost/benefit.

From what I understand, far more people have been radiated to a far larger degree by coal plants operating as designed than by nuke plants in disasters. It’s just not as obvious and doesn’t make for a good breaking-emergency headline.

> As much as I'm against fossil fuels, coal powered plants only contribute a very minor part to global warming compared to lets say... ships, planes and cars.

Do you have a source behind this? From what I can tell this statement seems wrong. E.g.:

https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emiss...

https://ourworldindata.org/energy-production-and-changing-en...

Coal is a huge source of energy. And the dirtiest available. And if electricity+heat production accounts for 25% of global greenhouse gasses, and transportation 14%, there's a decent chance coal power plants contribute just as much to global warming as all of transportation does, and basically zero chance that it plays a "very minor part" when compared to ships, planes, and cars.

This varies by region. In the US transport and coal power are equal in terms of their contribution. In Nigeria it's diesel and deforestation. But I will concede that it's not "minor" (not sure why I said that...)

I'm not saying that coal is good or nuclear is bad or vice versa. As I said in my original comment, there is no one practical (in terms of safety, efficiency, cost etc) global energy solution right now. I don't believe any coal-powered plants should be built. Should existing ones be replaced by nuclear? Depends on the actual area, geo-political situation (which changes over time) etc.

How many people died because of Fukushima? How many died when the oil train blew up in the Canadian town? How many coal miners died from silicosis? How many die when a dam fails and wipes out entire towns?

The failure scenario is demonstrably better than everything we’ve tried. More people have died installing solar and wind than have from nuclear.

Right in the middle of Toronto is the Hearn Generating Station, which only used coal for a portion of its operating life. The area around it requires considerable remediation to be considered for most land uses; only film companies have leased it (and recently purchased it AFAIK) since.

Have nuclear plants rendered areas uninhabitable for centuries? I'm pretty sure Pripyat can be made habitable if someone wanted to live there, with enough financial investments. It's just that there's so much already habitable land in Belarus/Ukraine that nobody really bothered. Japan is actually trying to cleanup Hamadoori coast, which I believe they will in a few decades, and I think we'll get a lot of valuable decontamination tech and experience out of this.

>Have any disasters at coal plants rendered areas uninhabitable for centuries?

Yes, the very use of fossil fuels at the extent we use them is causing an extinction level event for the entire planet. Does the gravity of that really sink in?

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