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Comment by hairytrog | Hacker News Reader

IT kind of is true. Sure the death count directly attributable to nuclear reactors is low. But Fukushima caused the entire countries fleet to shut down - to the present day. Safety isn't about lives lost or health, it's about financial repurcussions of the accidents - both directly at the site (take a look at Fukushima today) and the effects on the wider industry, shutting down all the surrounding power plants, and forcing Japan to import fossils to compensate.

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I've said before, and it bears repeating, that Fukushima was the worst environmental disaster in living memory.

Because journalists and activists spun it into a near-total shutdown of new nuclear production, and for no other reason.

> that Fukushima was the worst environmental disaster in living memory.

By what metric? The exclusion zone has been completely lifted. The amount of radiation released into the ocean is negligible.

Read the second sentence.

Maybe we should steer clear of power sources that can cause the worst environmental disaster in living memory, regardless of the mechanism.

If new reactors like this one can avoid such outcomes where the old ones cannot, it's a decided improvement.

Fukushima was designed in the 60s. Had they updated the design to next gen the accident wouldnt have happened

But they didn’t. Because it cost money. Because the cost of building a new reactor was so large that they decided to take risks and run the old one past it’s lifetime.

Fast forward to today, where governments are now facing pressure to extend the life of old existing nuclear plants past their shutdown date to reduce dependence on gas.

And in the 60s the nuclear industry was just as confident of its own safety as it is today.

The only measure of nuclear safety I trust is the liability cap. Currently in America it stands at 0.04% ($300 million) the cost of 1 Fukushima ($800 billion).

> But Fukushima caused the entire countries fleet to shut down - to the present day

No, overreaction to Fukushima caused the shutdowns.

Politicians caused that, not a power plant.

>We need to do something, this is something, egro we must do it.

You can't fix stupid.

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