[shockeychap]

I realize this isn't a popular opinion, but it bothers me how those who depict the tragedy of an accident like this seem to do so in the service of painting a dangerous picture of atomic energy, and they do it by ignoring and overlooking other accidental deaths. The Manhattan Project moved blazingly fast, and people died in vehicle accidents, fires, electrocutions, and more. Every death was tragic and represented a life cut short. But it seems like much has been written of Louis Slotin's accident while very little is said of the many others who died more "conventionally".

This is part of the reason that many people have an exaggerated fear of nuclear power when, in fact, the accidental death rate from it (even when you include Chernobyl) is far less than that of petroleum, hydro, and even wind - in some cases by multiple orders of magnitude. It's one of the safest energy sources, but takes a front-seat as the villain of the play when it comes to most articles by media, especially legacy media.

[bregma]

I think the thing that makes this death stand out from the usual run-of-the-mill fatal accident was the fact that the victim was normal and healthy when the accident occurred but could cognizantly look forward to his inevitable death over the next month and there was nothing --absolutely nothing -- that could be done to avoid it. All he could do was get his affairs in order and then sit and wait through the oncoming suffering.

It's not the accidental death, it's the prolonged psychological horror that makes it so tragic.

[tetrep]

Same with the Chernobyl disaster. There was a breif moment in time when the engineers could have safely shut the reactor down, but after that moment passed, it became a "choose you own doom adventure" and the rest of the story is more or less about how people coped with that largely unknown fact.

[6D794163636F756]

I've had chemo, and this was one of the worst aspects. I could feel myself starving and dying through the process. Had to discuss with family what to do when I died and saw the pain that put on them. I can say with absolute certainty that I don't fear death, I fear dying. If I were exposed to a lethal dose of radiation, the anticipation of the pain and death would make me want to kill myself. I don't have words to describe the psychological effect waiting for a seemingly inevitable death has. I can't imagine how much worse that is without the sliver of hope I had.

[andyjohnson0]

I understand and kind of agree with your general point. But nuclear fission accudenta have the potential to render large (on a human acale) areas of land uninhabitable. However unlikely, thats a problem. And we still dont have a good, proven solution to nuclear waste disposal.

(And yes, I understand that carbon-based fuels produce waste too.)

[marcosdumay]

AFAIK, hydroelectricity holds the record on largest area rendered uninhabitable (and largest, most impactful accident), but I guess that's because nobody counts the chemical industry and mining ones correctly.

[SavageBeast]

Seems like the real choice here is to perish via climate change caused by burning fossil fuels - OR - embrace the non-guaranteed but certainly possible dangers of nuclear power. Its a lousy decision to have to make but in my mind it comes down to this.

Its not so much the US and EU that I worry about; Its the less developed nation states. Plenty of potential for F-ups all around but at least we've been doing it successfully for some time in the US/EU.

[mcculley]

We should obviously be building nuclear plants as fast as possible while recognizing that they present outsize risks.

I want more nuclear plants, but not if they are run by the same myopic system that gave us Deepwater Horizon.

[admax88qqq]

> And we still dont have a good, proven solution to nuclear waste disposal.

I hear this all the time and I don't get it.

What is bad or unproven about burying the waste in concrete?

[omniglottal]

I'm in the state where all other US states want to ship their waste. We don't want it. What's wrong with burying it in your state? A few years back, there was an underground fire of this stuff. Your asking "what's so bad" as a non-rhetorical question is a BAD sign of what's so bad...

[delecti]

But carbon-based power generation is actively rendering large areas of land uninhabitable. Global warming isn't an outcome from accidents, that's just what it does. The difference is the plausible deniability and degrees of separation. A wave of heat deaths doesn't look like it's related to the coal mine in the next state over, but it is.

[atmavatar]

That isn't unique to nuclear power. Coal seam fires can also render larges areas uninhabitable, and they can burn for hundreds if not thousands of years.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal-seam_fire

The silver lining is we got the Silent Hill games.

[kgabis]

We do have a solution - just bury it underground. And the best part is: it gets safer with time!

[yellowapple]

The trick is picking a place to bury it; apparently all the US states with suitable locations for nuclear plants somehow lack suitable locations for waste storage, or else they wouldn't insist on shipping it to a state without any nuclear plants at all (oh but it was also the one state that got repeatedly nuked during tests, so I guess that makes it okay).

[thelazyone]

I remember an anti-nuclear talking about the Finnish project for long term storage.

He was depicting the project cost (4 billions) as ridicolously high and therefore unfeasible. Interesting that each plant (around 10 billions?) of Finland could use it for 100 years... seems like a no brainer to me!

[thelazyone]

Well said. I actually just wrote a comment to appreciate the non-drama of the article. But it's true - the same article could have been written about that guy that probably got crushed during construction or had an unlucky encounter on the highway.

I guess the "flash of blue light" carrying silent death is itself an unnecessary dramatization of a dull accident. :S

[mvkel]

> conventionally

That's everything. Nuclear deaths were socially significant because they were novel. "Hey everyone, here is a new way to die." And everyone paid attention.

Another example: Covid. It's a coronavirus. Know what else is a coronavirus? The common cold. But because Covid was novel, "hey everyone, here is a new way to die." And everyone paid attention.

[JohnBooty]

    But because Covid was novel

Do you think the fact that it was orders of magnitude more fatal and transmissible had anything to do with it, or do you truly think it was just the "novelty" factor?

[mvkel]

I didn't say novelty. I said novel, which has a specific definition

[mcpackieh]

> orders of magnitude more fatal

Really? From what I understand the IFR for covid without vaccination was somewhere in the range of 0.5% to maybe 1%, versus the flu at 0.1%. 10x worse; that would be one order of magnitude. That's for the normal flu, the Spanish Flu was much worse than either, about 10% e.g. two orders of magnitude. At three orders of magnitude you're already talking about near certain death.

[JohnBooty]

Apologies, but I'm certain you've misread the parent post to which I was responding. They wrote:

    Another example: Covid. It's a coronavirus. Know what 
    else is a coronavirus? The common cold. But because Covid 
    was novel [...]

They explicitly (and rather unbelievably) compared COVID-19 to the common cold, not the flu.

[anononaut]

Wrong thread.

[JohnBooty]

There are a lot of controversial aspects to COVID-19 that are perhaps best avoided on HN, but the assertion that it's far more dangerous than the common cold is hardly a controversial statement.

[amelius]

> I realize this isn't a popular opinion

I think on HN this actually /is/ the popular opinion.

[fmajid]

You probably have the same number of coal miners dying every year in accidents than died in the entire history of nuclear power. That's without counting all those who die from breathing arsenic, nickel, cadmium and other toxic by-products of coal combustion.

[fearface]

The reason why there’s a ton of attention in nuclear disaster is because of the damage potential.