[grecy]

The problem is when they go bad, it gets really bad.

We were extremely lucky with Chernobyl that young men sacrificed themselves, else a large chunk of Europe would be uninhabitable.

We were extremely lucky with Fukushima all the radiated water just went into the ocean. When it was going down there was nothing we could do but stand back and watch how bad it got.

Of course on a regular day nuclear is safe, but every now and then things go extremely badly, and sooner or later we’re not going to get so lucky. We will simply have to watch and retreat from death.

[panick21_]

> The problem is when they go bad, it gets really bad.

Not really. If you actually measure it, its not actually that bad.

> We were extremely lucky with Chernobyl that young men sacrificed themselves, else a large chunk of Europe would be uninhabitable.

Often claimed but, the scientific bases for this claim is beyond shake. Maybe at the very worse you could say that radiation that was slightly dangerous would have been measurable all over Europe, but even that is a stretch.

> The problem is when they go bad, it gets really bad.

Fukushima killed people because of rush unnecessary evacuations. Nobody actually died of radiation, maybe a very small group of people will have a slightly higher likely-hood of getting cancer, but even that will most likely not even be measruable.

The actual earth quake and the water killed far more people. The nuclear event made the news because its a novelty, while we have seen many people killed by earthquake and water.

> sooner or later we’re not going to get so lucky.

Given that safety increases over time, even the chance of a minor incident is increasingly less likely.

And if we actually built modern plants not 1970 design we could make it almost impossible for any significant risk to exist at all. But of course research and progress has essentially been stopped.

[atoav]

Oh sure. The wave of deformed children that I grew up with in the shouthern German, southern Austrian area surely had nothing to do with this, pure coincidence. There are certain mushrooms that are still forbidden to eat.

It is easy to talk for someone who has not experienced the fallout of an nuclear powerplant burning a few countries over. Experiencing such a thing (hopefully understandably) changes how favourable people see the technology.

On top of that the question of safe nuclear waste storage is far from solved in dense Europe. From an ethical standpoint I think an approach of "Lol we need energy now, let's have later generations deal with this and pay for it" highly questionable.

If you produce one kW/h of nuclear energy today, my opinion is that the costs of the potential fallout in the weird rare cataatrophe scenario and the waste storage for the whole lifetime of the waste need to be paid ahead. That, however would make nuclear uneconmical.

[JohnBooty]

    It is easy to talk for someone who has not 
    experienced the fallout of an nuclear 
    powerplant burning a few countries over. 

First, I am very sorry. That must have been unimaginably scary.

While it it not the same as experiencing this terror firsthand, my grandparents lived not very far away from you during the Chernobyl incident. It was very frightening.

Also, I live not so far away from Three Mile Island here in the USA. As well as very several currently functioning nuclear plants.

So while it is "easy" for me to talk about nuclear power, it is not purely fantasy for me.

    If you produce one kW/h of nuclear energy today
    my opinion is that the costs of the potential 
    fallout in the weird rare cataatrophe scenario 
    and the waste storage for the whole lifetime of 
    the waste need to be paid ahead. That, however 
    would make nuclear uneconmical. 

I mostly agree, but I would also say the same thing about fossil fuels.

I am looking at this from the perspective of global warming, which will have disastrous consequences for many billions of people.

Should we also add the costs of global warming to each kW/h of energy produced by coal or natural gas?

[throw0101c]

> Should we also add the costs of global warming to each kW/h of energy produced by coal or natural gas?

Yes. That's what carbon pricing/taxes is all about after all: counting the externalities.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_price

[panick21_]

Yeah most of this 'deformed children' stuff is also not really true. The reported facts about this are just not correct.

Its basically not statically significant.

There might be a somewhat larger effects on some treatable cancers, but the numbers are still incredibly small compared with the fear mongering and of course compared with other forms of energy used back then.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/children-...

You are like better of with having a nuclear fallout every could decades rather then a coal plant.

[pyuser583]

> The problem is when they go bad, it gets really bad

Deepwater horizon was really bad. Plenty of coal accidents are real bad.

Not having energy is really bad.

Nuclear is the safest form of energy - and catastrophic failures are found in other forms of energy production.

[grecy]

The difference is even when coal or oil goes “worst case scenario” bad, it’s still entirely manageable.

We have tools, equipment and people to put out oil rig fires, clean up oil spills and all that.

Obviously Exxon Valdez was very, very bad. So was deep water horizon. Now imagine they were nuclear plantS that went bad and we didn’t get lucky like in the past. It would be many orders of magnitudes worse, for tens of thousands of years.

[LargoLasskhyfv]

Oh, really?

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erdgasleck_in_der_Nordsee

https://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/technik/elgin-gasaustrit...

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S02648...

[grecy]

Absolutely those are horrifically bad.

Now imagine humans can't even go within a few hundred meters to clean anything up, and we have no robots that can either.

Also imagine that humans can't live within 500km ever again.

Nuclear is clearly the best option, right up until the point it's the worst possible thing for humans and planet earth, which seems to happen about every 30 years or so. As I said, we've been lucky with it so far.

[vlovich123]

This is the core problem. In this thread people keep referencing the data of the actual historical track record and you’re bringing up imaginary scenarios that haven’t existed and might never. Of course, the flip side argument is that past performance is not indicative of future results. Still, the track record approach feels like a better way to evaluate because a) non-green alternatives are waaaay worse b) green alternatives have a comparable number of deaths per MWh produced c) nuclear can reasonably ween us off fossil fuels d) if you actually invest in technology and make the regulatory environment sane, over time the cost and risk of nuclear decrease really rapidly.

In other words, on a risk adjusted basis, the data continually shows nuclear is the safest and most economical bet for removing fossil fuels and all their problems from the energy mix. You’d need a a relative fuckton of very very bad accidents where everything went wrong and by all accounts that doesn’t really happen.

[philistine]

With how bad things are climate-wise, I feel like anything below a full-throat defence of nuclear power is in favour of global warming.

[grecy]

The time to start building tons of new nuclear plants was 20 years ago.

Given how little time we have to react, and how long it takes to build a nuclear plant (and how expensive they are), putting our hopes on nuclear this late in the game is foolhardy and will never save us.

We have no choice but to go with what will have a meaningful impact in the immediate future (5 year horizon) - wind, solar, hydro. Many countries are already past 50% renewable, and many are climbing towards 100%.

[pyuser583]

Which has never happened.

It’s fair to bring up hypotheticals, but you have to do it for everything you’re comparing!

It’s especially important to include “never happened” scenarios for brand new, or lightly used, methods of energy extraction!

What are the worst case scenarios for windmills? Solar panels?

Imagine a major Soviet-level accident at a rare earth element mine.

Imagine a large supply of rare earth metals are improperly labeled.

It might not be as bad as a major nuclear accident … then again maybe it would be.

[shrimpx]

The BP oil spill was immeasurably more disastrous than Fukushima. Oil is dangerous to drill and refine and it pollutes like crazy when converted to energy.