[acituan]

> When bridges fail, they don't affect potentially millions of people's health.

If you are saying bad policy decisions are inherently less scaling than nuclear disasters, I would remind you the Great Leap Forward and the tens of millions of people dead as a result of the famine in just a few years. Sure that was an outlier event, and so was the nuclear disasters of past.

The problem is, with nuclear there seems to be an emotional shock and imagery that accompanies it which doesn’t seem to match those of, for example, dying of hunger. Just like airplanes feel less safe than cars but the latter kills much more people in practice, our emotive reasoning biases us heavily in this topic.

[bb88]

Sure, GLF focused on idealistic purity rather than expertise.

There are also a lot more agricultural experts in the US than nuclear experts.

[acituan]

> Sure, GLF focused on idealistic purity rather than expertise

1986 USSR bureaucracy didn’t fail only for a lack of expertise either.

> There are also a lot more agricultural experts in the US than nuclear experts.

It is not a numbers game of that sort. If anything, public misinformation being amplified in influence through social media affects expert based political will negatively insofar the topic is ripe for emotional biases, not lack of real experts.

[bb88]

> 1986 USSR bureaucracy didn’t fail only for a lack of expertise either.

I think you're talking Chernobyl here, without actually saying Chernobyl. Again they were arguably pushing ideology over science -- in many ways to save cost. Then making any criticisms about safety state secrets so no one could know about them.

It's worth noting that Gorbachev believed that Chernobyl led to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1992, six years later.

> If anything, public misinformation being amplified in influence through social media affects expert based political will negatively insofar the topic is ripe for emotional biases, not lack of real experts.

True, but that cuts your argument. As it turns questions of science into ideological ones. If you're a farmer you can go to your local extension office, and ask questions about herbicide and fertilizers and planting schedules without government interference -- essentially expanding knowledge.

If Russia ran ads on FB that said the best time to plant corn was in November of the following year, there would be a lot of laughter.

There is no such thing as extension offices for nuclear science -- ergo making it even more ripe for the idea that you're talking about.

On the other hand, people trust vaccines less, and there has been a concerted effort to cause public distrust. Imagine what would happen if that happened to nuclear scientists. Worse, there would be only few people to make that argument against it. With vaccines there were lots of people that could, and still largely failed.

[acituan]

> I think you're talking Chernobyl here, without actually saying Chernobyl

Yes.

> True, but that cuts your argument. As it turns questions of science into ideological ones.

That’s fair enough. If I am understanding correctly, you’re saying the institutional mistrust and failing public discourse we are experiencing today would render existing nuclear dangerous too. No matter if we have expertise or not (I believe we do) we can’t navigate our way to it in the presence of so much other BS.

[bb88]

Not only that, but in the past when a nuclear accident happens, TEPCO - a private company, and the USSR/Russia (twice now) have hidden information from the public during the accidents.

This makes the entire situation worse. Who does the public trust? The press? Watchdog groups?

It's bad enough it happens at all, but could it happen in the US? I would have said no until the last few years.

I kind of think this would be a good board game, actually. Kind of like pandemic but for a nuclear accident, and trying to make decisions based upon imperfect information.