[toolcombinator]

Nonsense.

Modern reactors are safe.

Even the old (inherently unsafe) reactors like the Soviet Chernobyl style design aren’t some sort of apocalyptical danger.

Less than 40 people died in one of the most serious accidents ever (Chernobyl).

That’s a fraction of the number of people killed every year because of windmills and fossil fuels.

Far from “rendering cities uninhabitable for decades” there is no reason why Chernobyl couldn’t be repopulated today.

Heck, they have tourists visit the site every day these days.

[pasabagi]

I think it was more like 60 people. 30 people was just the number who died in the initial explosion.

Presumably a lot more people would have died if it wasn't for a really expensive and heroic cleanup / disaster management effort.

[xyzzy123]

These figure are also only true if you don't count QALYS injuries to the 600,000 liquidators involved in the cleanup, or believe that radiation exposure to those living in the area was harmless and resulted in no deaths.

[devonkim]

I’m not going to minimize the dangers of nuclear but doing good faith comparisons would mean that we should consider the full human and ecological costs of the status quo as well which is much more catastrophic than even a Chernobyl level incident every decade. If solely comparing radiation fossil fuel production is much worse than nuclear of all things as well even counting accidents like Fukushima, Three Mile, and Chernobyl.

Independent reviews (of course I wouldn’t trust USSR orgs) of the Chernobyl fallout I’ve read (including out into EU where wind currents would theoretically have created higher cancer rates) show nothing really conclusive. Similar for follow-ups from Fukushima (yes, I’m aware of the radiation levels in the water).

These nuclear v renewable distractions seem to do nothing to get us off the clear and present danger of fossil fuels, which is my big frustration.

[xyzzy123]

I agree that fossil fuels cost a huge number of lives and constitute an ongoing disaster.

It seems the general public are very sensitive to tail risks. There are times that can be irrational (terrorism) but there is also some wisdom in that.

Diffuse risks (say, particulate) are usually more acceptable than acute risks (need to evacuate a huge area, mount a months or years long cleanup, maybe your city becomes uninhabitable). Familiar risks (auto accidents, low-level air pollution) are usually more acceptable than mysterious or unpredictable risks (radiation). I suppose this could be fixed if radiation hazards were more generally familiar.

I think what a naive analysis of the risks of nuclear power misses is variance of outcome and also the confidence of the public.

You need a lot of trust in your fellow man and government (to not be corrupt, to put safety ahead of profit, to be technically proficient) for nuclear to make sense. That seems in short supply these days.

It's also not clear to me that building nuclear plants will actually reduce fossil fuel consumption worldwide. It seems to me that if fossil fuels are not consumed in one place, it is likely they will be consumed somewhere else. Put another way, it's not clear to me that fossil fuel consumption is dictated by anything but price or political mandate. (EDIT: This is a pretty whataboutish objection and could apply to any technical solution, which we definitely need some of, so I admit it's not that great of an argument).

The climate crisis is a complex socio-technical mess, and I remain skeptical that nuclear is a panacea. Asking people to be rational and just accept the plants ignores the squishy bits (humans) which are a big component of the problem.

[pasabagi]

I was just trying to apply the same standards to Chernobyl as you apply to other accidents.

(Obviously, if you talk about QALYS injuries, most polluting industries, especially in this era, could be associated with arbitrarily high numbers of deaths, even if you don't look at events like the Bhopal catastrophe, or Minamata syndrome, etc. I actually think it's fair and worthwhile to highlight this, but I don't think it's fair and worthwhile to only do so in the case of Chernobyl, and not in any other industrial accidents or operations).

[w0de0]

Our hueristic for acceptable risk does not properly account for low-probability but extreme consequence circumstance - proverbial black swan events.

Against instinct, we should find unacceptable even an absurdly minuscule chance of (for instance) irradiating the European peninsula for 10,000 years.

An argument for safety with an attached “even Chernobyl was [mostly safe]” corollary should be suspected of unsupportable optimism.

[rurban]

Great, we do have a volunteer! Volunteers first

If modern reactors would be safe, we would have plenty of them. Building safe reactors is extremely expensive, and the poison they produce is still not manageable long-term.