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Comment by arcticbull | Hacker News Reader

Also zero people died in the immediate aftermath of Fukushima, and one employee sadly eventually died years later of a cancer that's being attributed to it after receiving an annual dose of radiation in the incident. Counting it as anything other than an indication of how safe these plants have gotten is pretty disingenuous.

The data is clear, it's the safest form of energy in deaths per TWh generated. [1]

Anyways while we fitter around and argue, China is building 150 new reactors in the next 15 years, as much as the entire world has built in the last 35. To go with their massive solar deployment. Now that's an energy grid getting cleaned up neatly. [2]

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-p...

[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-11-02/china-cli...

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It’s really ridiculous to say that nuclear is the safest form of energy, when deaths at Chernobyl and Fukushima were prevented only by enormous cleanup efforts that will probably easily exceed $100 billion each. That doesn’t include the lost economic value of the exclusion zone, higher energy prices, etc.

Meanwhile, there has been a worldwide effort to spend billions of dollars upgrading existing reactors with enhanced safety equipment after Fukushima, which suggests that many nuclear operators had not been accurately calculating risk factors up to that point.

The more accurate statement would be to say that humans are capable of overcoming the inherent danger of nuclear energy, with enough money, will, and sacrifice.

"It's ridiculous to say nuclear is the safest form of energy when it costs so much money" is a ridiculous argument.

The cost of nuclear may be a fair argument against it, and should definitely be considered when determing our energy policy. That doesn't mean it somehow kills more people.

Every form of energy has an inherent danger that humans can use money, will, and sacrifice to overcome.

If we’ve spent more money evacuating populations from irradiated areas than on training wind turbine technicians to use harnesses properly, does that mean nuclear energy is safer than wind power?

Yes? As even after that training, fewer people have died due to nuclear energy. Cost and safety are two separate points, both need to be considered but you can't just say something is unsafe because it's costly.

Imagine someone says "you have to either pay $10 to play Russian roulette with a five chamber gun or $100 to play with a six chamber gun." Which is safer?

> It’s really ridiculous to say that nuclear is the safest form of energy, when deaths at Chernobyl and Fukushima were prevented only by enormous cleanup efforts

Do you not understand how superlatives work?

It's the safest form of energy. It's not entirely safe, alright. But pointing that out in the absolute is completely pointless anyway. We need/want energy, there's a price for it. In terms of safety, nuclear is the best. Superlative. It's better than all alternatives.

It's almost nutty to me that the number of workers who've fallen to their deaths from wind turbines per GWh is more than the number of people killed by nuclear power accidents and maintenance per GWh.

Doesn't surprise me at all really. And it doesn't even necessarily mean it's irrational to prefer living near a wind turbine farm than a nuke plant, given most people aren't turbine engineers. I also imagine it's a statistic that will change considerably with time as we build out wind farms, especially if doing so can largely be automated. At any rate, we need both (given the current state of affairs). I doubt the choice to build one or other is going to come down to deaths-per-GWh.

The number will go up as more wind is deployed. It has to be maintained, serviced and replaced on a periodic basis.

But yes, we need both.

> how safe these plants have gotten

Consider that Fukushima was designed in the 1960s and that virtually no reactors with designs that date more recently than that have been built, and we have an absolute quorum that this is the safest form of base load energy you can procure.

It’s saddening to me the green movement ruined our chances of clean energy and averted climate crisis in my lifetime.

I've never understood why there has been such a strong anti-nuke sentiment among many environmental groups, but you're really stretching it to say that's what's "ruined our chances". The blatant sponsorship of AGW denialism and buying out of politicians by vested interests deserves the bulk of the credit on that front. That and weak and backward looking political leadership in general.

AGW advocacy would enjoy a significant improvement of reception if every solution other than me suffering a lower quality of life wasn’t neatly boxed out of our set of choices.

Meanwhile the politicians and celebrities who wish I would eat crickets (literally) fly on private jets to spend time on yachts that burn 500 gallons of diesel a day, and complain that my work truck doesn’t run on lithium and cobalt batteries powered by solar panel.

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