Comment by shadowfaxRodeo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by shadowfaxRodeo | Hacker News Reader

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Nuclear power isn't safe.

If it were, then massive amounts of money and time wouldn't go into trying to make it safe. Nuclear control rooms wouldn't be locked down like Fort Knox. And every major population center would have a nuclear power station nearby.

There's this idea that the only thing stopping nuclear from saving the world is a bunch of hippies perpetuating a myth that it's not safe — like nuclear energy is a genetically modified tomato.

It's not that. It's actually just not safe — or rather, the only way of making it safe is by having round the clock security, big brains monitoring it the whole time, and lots of money.

So, given that climate change will bring with it more pandemics, civil unrest, and natural disasters, is it wise to assume that there will always be people around who know how to look after nuclear power stations? Or people who can stop terrorists who want to make dirty bombs from the waste?

There's a reasonable argument to be made that it's a risk we should take to avoid worse distasters.

But, given that there are cheaper alternatives, that don't take a decade to build, why don't we just not build nuclear?

Let's generate non-controversial power, while massively reducing our usage.

It's the safest energy, even safer than solar or wind

Source: https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2016/06/update-of-death-per-te...

Sure, but that's sort of absurdly missing the point.

0.04 deaths per TWH of nuclear vs 0.01 deaths per TWH of solar in 2012!

Am I seriously supposed to ignore the fact that nuclear metldowns have the potential to kill millions of people — because they didn't in 2012?

Edit: sorry that sounded mean.

> Am I seriously supposed to ignore the fact that nuclear metldowns have the potential to kill millions of people — because they didn't in 2012?

Can you elaborate on how meltdowns are supposed to be able to kill millions of people? We've already experienced the worst-case scenario in a nuclear catastrophe: Chernobyl.

I'm not exaggerating when I say this was a worse-case scenario: A complete reactor containment failure with no secondary containment. Burning fuel rods were directly exposed to the atmosphere for days. In the end this directly killed 50 people. A few thousand were estimated to eventually die from cancer related to the incident. But to date only 60 people are known to have died due to radiation exposure from Chernobyl.

So yeah I think you're several orders of magnitude off in your risk assessment of nuclear power.

By giving a city radiation poisoning.

> A few thousand were estimated to eventually die from cancer related to the incident.

How many people could conceivably be downwind of a nuclear meltdown? I think it could be much much more than that.

I can't imagine why we would not include the people who eventually die of cancer.

That's just meltdowns. Given that you can also use nuclear material to create weapons, I'd also point you toward Hiroshima and Nagasaki as examples.

The point I was making in my original comment, is that it's only safe when the systems are in place to keep it safe.

Which is not something you can guarantee.

> > A few thousand were estimated to eventually die from cancer related to the incident.

> How many people could conceivably be downwind of a nuclear meltdown? I think it could be much much more than that. I can't imagine why we would not include the people who eventually die of cancer.

The several thousand figure does include the people who are predicted to eventually die from cancer.

Only 31 people died as a direct consequence of the meltdown.

Nuclear power is very safe - far safer in aggregate impacts to the environment than any other technology. And even more important, it’s predictable - something most other “clean” energy sources are not.

As for “cheaper” - citation needed. Especially for handling base load requirements in reliable and predictable ways. Most of the cost around nuclear power, especially in the United States, is from bloated, ineffectual policy decisions designed to artificially suppress it.

I do agree we should be doing more with the existing “waste” - we should be burning it in better reactor designs instead of burying or storing it. Note I didn’t say newer or modern designs - we have had the technology since the 50’s to burn what we (ridiculously) term “waste” today but it wasn’t pursued for numerous political and ill informed social issues. These designs also coast to a natural stop if their support systems are interrupted, negating the problems of active systems (like cooling) failing leading to problems in most of our currently deployed reactors.

> Nuclear power is very safe

But is it only safe, because lots of time and energy goes into making it safe? If the systems keeping it safe no longer exist — let's say all the security staff are killed by a pandemic, or there's a civil war, or society collapses, is it still safe?

I can put a solar panel on my roof and not have to worry about it destroying my neighbourhood — even in the event of a disaster.

> cheaper

It's well documented now that solar is the cheapest energy source.

That may well be because it's had a lot of investment — maybe if people weren't so afraid of nuclear it would be the cheapest instead — but given that it isn't and we're on the clock...

Using old waste to power nuclear reactors sounds like a good idea — but is it possible in our time frame? If yes, then I'd be on board, but I suspect the answer is that it that it isn't.

A almost 1% failure rate is not safe. Not by a long shot. Would you fly planes that had these failure rates?

Also, it is the potential of catastrophic events that is the issue here.

Look at the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant on the central coast in California. This thing sits on a fault line. Without a retrofit, it wouldn't have survived a Fukushima event.

If this thing would have blown up, half a million people would have been directly affected and massive cleanup costs.

That is unacceptable risk and it is economically unjustified to add more risk by building additional plants.

> A almost 1% failure rate is not safe.

Especially when to power the world we might be talking about 100,000 SMRs.

I think OP meant nuclear is only safe because of massive capital expenditure making it safe. A community of almost any size can run a bank of solar panels or wind turbines safely, but a nuclear planet needs an well-trained and expensive staff on standby to monitor and address any issues.

This is exactly what I meant.

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