[Schlaefer]

> Instead of informing the public of the facts (The plant was an antique, didn't meet safety standards, was built on a fault line)

Knowing these facts makes it even more scary. We can't move countries away from fault lines, so plants are going to be build in these places again. Everything new is going to be old eventually. There's no reason to expect meeting safety standards in the future if we can't do it right now.

[nitrogen]

Everyone seems to forget that it took a freaking tsunami that displaced hundreds of thousands of people to take out a 60 year old reactor design. While coal is killing people every day.

[Schlaefer]

Of course it should take a freak event to take out a nuclear power plant, it shouldn't happen every second Sunday. But I would also expect it to be an event that doesn't happen regularly every few hundred years [1].

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/21/world/asia/21stones.html

[belorn]

We should hold nuclear to the standard of hydroelectric power. The potential energy of elevated water behind a dam is on par or greater than nuclear accidents, and past dam failures has costed way more lives than nuclear has.

In 2017, California had a major accidents with their Oroville Dam and evacuated of 188,000 people living downstream. This can be compared to the 154,000 evacuated from Fukushima. The United state and the state of California can be compared to Japan and the Fukushima Prefecture. Why did both countries, wealthy as they are, fail to meet the safety standards that a required of them? Both occurred during unexpected natural events.

One occurred during the most powerful earthquake ever recorded in Japan, and the fourth most powerful earthquake in the world since modern record-keeping began 100 years ago. The other occurred during Northern California's wettest winter in over 100 years. I suspect the first one to be more rare, through both include "hundred years" as a key factor.

I suspect however that the wrong conclusion to make is to define both dams and nuclear to be inherently unsafe technologies that we can't use because people might die. They are dangerous, and historically a lot of people has died, but they are also significant safer than burning fossil fuels. More people has and will die because of fossil fuel, and until we stop burning fossil fuels we should deploy any and all alternatives.

[sfifs]

> a major accidents with their Oroville Dam and evacuated of 188,000 people living downstream. This can be compared to the 154,000 evacuated from Fukushima

You're being disingenuous here. The waters would have flowed to the sea and most people would have been back inweeks if not days. No one's going back to Fukushima's neighborhood in decades.

[belorn]

You have it wrong if you think people could return back to their homes in a few weeks after a catastrophic dam failure. Flooding like those don't leave any homes or cities to return to. Land slides and wave takes everything in its path, buildings people and animals alike.

In 1975 when Banqiao Dam failed, 26,000 died from flooding, 145,000 died from subsequent famine and epidemics, and 11 million became homeless. When the waters flowed back to the sea, it took a bit longer than "been back inweeks if not days". The flooding did not leave any radiation, but the human toll was still very high.

[sfifs]

I was referring to the Oroville dam in the GP comment. The 180k people displaced started returning literally 2 days later with zero casualties.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oroville_Dam_crisis

Yes two generations ago (that's how old the China disaster you're referring to is) especially in developing economies, there were major dam disasters. You don't really quite see them today - especially in developed largely economies which are also likely to have Nuclear as an option

[korantu]

If anything this can be ascribed to resilience of nuclear generation. The tsunami in question killed (in a first world country, no less) many thousands of people.

The outdated nuclear plant located in the midst of the disaster killed none.

[BurningFrog]

More than displaced, the tsunami killed 20,000 people.

It was also the biggest Earthquake in 1000+ years of recorded Japanese history, and hit a small area where it could produce a tsunami overflowing the tsunami walls.

In the 99.99% likely world where this didn't happen, we'd have a much healthier nuclear power situation. But now we're in this world...

[rmbyrro]

I think I understand your point here, but it also seems to me this line of thinking also denies the laws of evolution...