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by blue1
2559 days ago
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But what does "safe" really mean? Systems fail in unexpected ways; Chernobyl was operated in an improper way, which feels somehow "unfair" wrt risk assessment, but so it goes. Nassim Taleb suggests that we should minimize the maximum possible damage instead of trying to make precise risk assessments; looking at things this way, nuclear energy does not seem a very wise bet, because of the consequences of the worst-case scenarios. Burning things is not harmless either, but has a different risk profile. |
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> Estimates of reduced life expectancy as a result of radiation released are highly uncertain and vary from 4,000 people in a United Nations study up to 200,000 in a Greenpeace study.
Worst hydro disaster: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam
> According to the Hydrology Department of Henan Province, approximately 26,000 people died in the province from flooding and another 145,000 died during subsequent epidemics and famine. [...] Unofficial estimates of the number of people killed by the disaster have run as high as 230,000 people.[...]
Best candidate for next hydro disaster: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosul_Dam (Apparently, it's stable now, but ...)
> In February 2016, the United States Embassy in Iraq warned of a "serious and unprecedented" danger of the dam collapsing and suggested that plans for evacuation should be made, as the cities Mosul, Tikrit, Samarra, and Baghdad could be at risk in the event of collapse, and that up to 1.5 million people could be killed due to the ensuing flash floods.[...]