Comment by phildenhoff | Hacker News Reader

Comment by phildenhoff | Hacker News Reader

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When you compare Nuclear, Natural Gas, Coal, Wind, Solar, and Hydro, Nuclear comes out by far as the safest technology [1].

Coal is incredibly dangerous directly - mining and operation are generally unsafe. Hydro has had some terrible accidents like the Chinese Banqiao dam rupture in 1975 which killed tens or hundreds of thousands. Solar and wind I'm not too sure about, but nuclear power has tens of deaths total attributed to it.

The nuclear-relate deaths that occurred have been from using light-water reactors, which are essentially very-high pressure high-temperature radioactive containers. Modern designs like molten salt reactors (like LFTR) have the potential to be safer, but don't have regulatory support and are mired in the process [2].

I made a whole infographic about the safety of nuclear power, but I'm not an engineer or journalist [3]

[1]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-d...

[2]: https://www.aps.org/units/fps/newsletters/201101/hargraves.c...

[3]: https://create.piktochart.com/output/37686680-safe-nuclear-p...

Per IPCC, wind and solar are very nearly on par with (possibly better) than nuclear. It's coal that really drags down the average, and yes, we need to stop using that.

Hydro's mortality is largey attributable to a single, though immensely bad incident, the Chinese Banqiao Dam disaster of 1975. That itself was a consequence of poor engineering, planning, management, response, and an unanticipated weather event (parked typhoon/cold-front dumping > 1,000mm rain in 24h), with most issues being common to any high-profile technical engineering project.

Hydro otherwise is largely safe (there are a few other exceptions, again higghligghting planning, management, response, and institutional integrity, especially in developing regions or periods), problems not specific to the energy-harnessing mechanism) and the Banqiao site is presently home to > 15 millions, rather than being a multi-century technically-induced wildlife park as is the case with other technologies.

>That itself was a consequence of poor engineering, planning, management, response, and an unanticipated weather event

Absolutely the same can be said about Chernobyl (well, apart from the weather) and Fukusima.

Precisely my point.

Though to clarify: as non-engineering failures, there is no technical engineering fix to this problem.

A similar case happened in Italy, and again, because of corruption that led to bad engineering: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vajont_Dam

Banqiao, China (~170k mort, almost all to disease and starvation, planning/response was abysmal); Machchu2, India (5k, 1979), Johnstown, US (2.2k, 1889, birthed Red Cross and reformed liability law), Vaijont, Italy (2.5k, 1963 landslide-triggered tsunami overtopped dam). Seven topped 1,000 fatalities, of which one was an act of war. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dam_failure)
There are literally tens of thousand of dams, if not > 100k, worldwide (over 22k in China alone), with well over a century of major utilisation. Granted 100 or fewer major (2+GWe) installations.

There are fewer than 400 nuclear power stations worldwide (3911 by my count from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_power_stations...), the bulk in operation for less than 50 years. We've had three major disasters and numerous close calls, all with massive long-term consequences. Building out infrastructure to the scale of present or future (industrialised-world electric provisioning to 8-12 billion inhabitants) would see even at much better safety records* a major accident every few years. And that's only one disadvantage.

Notably, once floodwaters recede, even a catastrophic dam failure returns to livable condition rapidly: weeks to years, rather than centuries.

And, as noted, it's human, social, business, and organisational factor common to any major high-value asset technical project generally to blame.

s/3911/391/

(This was not a large value of 400.)

> Hydro's mortality is largey attributable to a single, though immensely bad incident,

This is very similar to nuclear.

> Per IPCC, wind and solar are very nearly on par with (possibly better) than nuclear.

Mind sourcing this? every place I've looked shows nuclear beating solar by 5x and wind by 2x.

Gah! One of their reports within the past 5+ years. It was in an analysis of risks by major energy modalities. Unfortunately IPCC's content organisation is a disaster.

Analysis unit was deaths per GWh or similar.

I'll see if I can find it though I'm not optimistic.

Our World In Data posts similar stats, premature deaths/yr at 1 TWe/yr generation:

    Coal: 25
    Oil:  18
    Gas: 3

For the safer options, statement is inverted, as years for 1 death:

    Nuclear: 14--100
    Wind: 29 years
    Hydropower or solar: 42 years
    Solar: 53

Note w/h/s are all within the range of error for nuclear. (And why hydro isn't broken out separately I don't know.)

https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy

> but nuclear power has tens of deaths total attributed to it.

I'm skeptical of this figure - Chernobyl alone is expected to cause ~4k+ deaths due to radiation exposure.

I'm sure nuclear is still significantly lower than combustion fuels, but I'd expect solar is somewhat safer.

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