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Comment by ekianjo | Hacker News Reader

> It's this sort of regulatory boom and bust that makes me feel humans shouldn't be allowed to do anything that's dangerous on a really large scale (such as nuclear power).

You had a good comment except for the last line. Nuclear power is the safest form of energy production out there (and by far).

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His point is not that nuclear power is not dangerous, his point is that according to his theory, humans will get complacent and walk-back regulations when nothing happens, leading to potential nuclear accidents that were needless.

How long do we have to wait to see this prophecy realize? Because nuclear power has been around for a long time already, and the industry remains extremely regulated.

> Because nuclear power has been around for a long time already, and the industry remains extremely regulated.

The industry was very heavily regulated globally before Chernobyl and Fukushima, but look what happened.

I’m not saying I’m against nuclear power (as I’m not). I’m not saying that any industry regulation is generally ineffective most of the time, especially when financials and greed gets involved (even though it appears to be true). I’m just saying humans are bad at moderating risk over long periods of time.

> The industry was very heavily regulated globally before Chernobyl and Fukushima, but look what happened

Gross incompetence and huge design issues 40 years ago on one hand, and complacency+incompetence that required a huge natural disaster to pose a problem, and even then it resulted in less death and destruction than the evacuation, the natural disaster itself or your regular fossil fuel power plant? Not sure that's a good example.

Is the Japanese nuclear industry really heavily regulated if they were still able to put Fukushima where it was?:

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

> The industry was very heavily regulated globally before Chernobyl and Fukushima, but look what happened.

Apart from Chernobyl which was poorly designed and managed to begin with, other plants have proven safe. Even Fukushima hardly caused any death while several thousands people were killed by a once-in-a-lifetime tsunami. Let's put things in perspective, please.

Arguably, non-nuclear fossil power is just as dangerous due to less regulation (pollution, climate change). And I wouldn't discount second-order effects from renewables either. And dam breaks can be far deadlier than nuclear accidents.

We are not really "fit" for any technology, but lack of technology wouldn't keep us safe from existential risks either. The solution is to transcend our biological substrate altogether.

> Nuclear power is the safest form of energy production out there (and by far).

Only on average. The potential worst case fuckup is the most spectacular compared to any other energy source.

Yes, and this is a perception issue. Most people don't understand statistics.

Not at all.

Dams failures are WAY worse in terms of deaths.

A battle of worst case scenarios. For science.

At least with a dam you can see the where the danger is after it fails :\

The biggest coal, gas and dam failures were all pretty bad and often on a level with nuclear.

The 'worst case' with a modern reactor is basically zero to very few people die and there is some leaked out radiation. This is what happened in Fukushima. Its hard to find a worse case with a modern reactor.

I do not know what you have in mind, but to my understanding Chernobyl was pretty much as bad as it can get. And the other energy sources... Well, if we are allowed to stretch our imagination on the potential worst case, I start thinking about fossile fuels, greenhouse gas effect and Venus. Or maybe genetically modified energy crops that break ecosystems...

No - Chernobyl would have been much worse if the people on the ground hadn’t stopped the meltdown. The miners? The divers? What do you think those sacrifices were about?

Somehow stuff like Centralia[0] always skips the mind when comparing Chernobyl to coal. Nuclear isn't the only source with long-lasting, damaging effects.

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

> The potential worst case fuckup is the most spectacular compared to any other energy source.

Just like plane crashes make for horrific headlines. Meantime, a lot more people die every year driving their car to work, and nobody talks about it. Your point is, we don't know how to grasp data?

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