[ImSkeptical]

>Its just that when something goes wrong, it goes REALLY wrong. That makes more of an emotional reaction in the general public than the scattered and sporadic deaths in other industries, in which there are sadly many, many more.

I don't this explanation really holds true. For example, there is a single failure with a hydroelectric dam [1] that has killed more people than have died as a result of all nuclear-power related deaths, and in more spectacular fashion.

I think it has something to do with the expense and scale of nuclear power, but also something to do with nuclear energy being a thing far outside the natural experience of most people. Nuclear power is also connected to nuclear weapons, which, understandably, has a strong negative connotation to most people.

Better science education might resolve some of the emotional problems connected to nuclear energy.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam

[ardit33]

All that, and Chernobyl. I was a kid when it happened, but it affected most of Europe, (the radiation ended up going all the way to Sweden and Italy). It is hard to measure the cancer rates due to it, but the numbers are significant.

" (The 95% confidence levels are 27,000 to 108,000 cancers and 12,000 to 57,000 deaths.) In addition, as of 2005, some 6,000 thyroid cancers and 15 thyroid cancer deaths have been attributed to Chernobyl. That number will grow with time."

Nuclear power failure has the power to create a wasteland of its surrounding for millennia, that's why nobody wants them on their backyard.

[roenxi]

Where are you sourcing these numbers from? The WHO says "up to 4000 people could eventually die of radiation exposure from the Chernobyl".

I also have a new quote for nuclear talks: > Alongside radiation-induced deaths and diseases, the report labels the mental health impact of Chernobyl as “the largest public health problem created by the accident” and partially attributes this damaging psychological impact to a lack of accurate information.

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2005/pr38/en/

[ageofwant]

You mention Chernobyl, the worst nuclear accident in human history, today, 30 years later, Chernobyl sits at the heart of a wildlife haven. What is more alive and supports more species, Chernobyl or Manhattan?

"According to the World Health Organization in 2011, urban outdoor air pollution, from the burning of fossil fuels and biomass is estimated to cause 1.3 million deaths worldwide per year and indoor air pollution from biomass and fossil fuel burning is estimated to cause approximately 2 million premature deaths.[14] In 2013 a team of researchers estimated the number of premature deaths caused by particulate matter in outdoor air pollution as 2.1 million, occurring annually"

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

[CPLX]

> What is more alive and supports more species, Chernobyl or Manhattan?

Well yes and a decomposing corpse riddled with maggots is clearly supporting a diverse community of organisms as well.

Pity that's not the standard.

[beders]

No one makes the case burning fossil fuels is better.

Renewables are cheap enough and practical enough to end all this.

[whipoodle]

"Chernobyl was actually good" is one of the more interesting takes in support of nuclear power, I'll give you that.

[elsonrodriguez]

Nuclear power creates a wasteland of surrounding areas.

Fossil fuels create a wasteland of the world.

[toomuchtodo]

The fight is no longer between fossil and nuclear; its nuclear versus renewables. And renewables are winning.

[opo]

No one I know is opposed to renewable energy, but advocates really do everybody a disservice when they try to argue that an intermittent power source without storage is the reasonable replacement for base load power. As Bill Gates said in an interview "…They have this statement that the cost of solar photovoltaic is the same as hydrocarbon’s. And that’s one of those misleadingly meaningless statements. What they mean is that at noon in Arizona, the cost of that kilowatt-hour is the same as a hydrocarbon kilowatt-hour. But it doesn’t come at night, it doesn’t come after the sun hasn’t shone, so the fact that in that one moment you reach parity, so what? The reading public, when they see things like that, they underestimate how hard this thing is. So false solutions like divestment or “Oh, it’s easy to do” hurt our ability to fix the problems. Distinguishing a real solution from a false solution is actually very complicated."

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/11/we-need...

(Gates is investing in 4th gen nuclear and energy storage companies so he is putting his money where his mouth is.)

[toomuchtodo]

Natural gas will be cheaper than renewables + utility scale battery storage for only so long; as soon as natural gas spot market prices spike, renewables and storage are deployed, creating a downward price spiral, which natural gas generators can only defend against for so long.

Nuclear will never be commercially viable again.

[opo]

Natural gas might be as bad in terms of climate change as burning coal due to losses of methane during production/transporting, so it would be great to eliminate its use. Unfortunately we are far, far away from having grid storage that could accommodate only having renewables. Grid storage has been worked on for generations and even so, right now, the U.S. has about 24.6GW of grid storage, 95% of which is pumped storage hydro. That is a very tiny fraction of what would be needed.

[vkou]

Strange, and here I thought that 93% of our energy output was generated by fossil fuels and nuclear.

[elsonrodriguez]

Has there been consensus on whether renewables can power our society and industry on their own? Or for that matter generate more power than we currently need to drive further progress?

[ams6110]

If you consider only electrical power generation, in some areas, yes renewable are competitive for some hours of the day.

As a fraction of our total energy consumption, they barely register.

[toomuchtodo]

It only takes a few hours of sunlight to power humanity for a year. The amount of energy is not the question, it's scaling up collection.

[elsonrodriguez]

For a while the amount of energy is certainly a question. If it takes 100 gigawatts to produce a solar panel, but that panel only returns 75 gigawatts over its usable lifespan (including maintenance), then that's not a good look.

Even if solar generated 1.25 watts per watt to contruct/transport/install/maintain, it still isn't enough.

Now if solar is at the point where it was generate 5 watts per 1 watt, we're in business.

[wbl]

That's assuming linear no threshold models which are not supported in this range by epidemiology.

[ambicapter]

So the 95% confidence level of cancers and deaths is 3x to 4000x the actual measured cancers and deaths? What is going on here?

[thephyber]

> Better science education might resolve some of the emotional problems connected to nuclear energy.

Persuasion is a science that has been perfected by religions/cults, magicians, marketers and sales people. Scientists, mathematicians, economists, and policy makes don't wield that weapon very well.

You can spit accurate + well researched stats that argue your case until you are blue in the face, but not everyone listens to polite, well researched Oxford-style debates. You are competing with entrenched interests like oil and gas lobbies, doubt purveyers who have purchased professors with grants, the wild imaginations of Hollywood, and the association of "nuclear" in the minds of people who lived through the Cold War.

[makomk]

Well, that hydroelectric dam was built in part as a flood control measure, and effectively ended up being rebuilt a few years later to put a stop to the repeated flooding that occurred without it. It simply wasn't the same kind of tradeoff.