[_ea1k]

Couldn't you say all of the same things about coal? The risks are largely invisible, people can't assess them, and people definitely die due to its use.

Maybe there needs to be another criteria. Something like, "when the hazard comes with a scary label"?

[lazide]

No?

Coal fires are pretty obvious.

Acid rain is pretty obvious (and easy to measure with ph strips, which are easy to find).

Nasty smog is pretty obvious.

Plumes of gunk from smoke stacks are obvious.

Now, co2 and fine particulate contamination (like say radioactive contamination from ash), yes. Those take decades to be noticable (if at all). There have been big issues because of it, statistically. But those are not well known/accepted either by the public. And certainly not the most common 'acute' problems.

Something like a release of radiation from a nuclear power plant can (and usually is), completely invisible. As is things like ingesting fallout. It usually kills years or decades later.

If you can see radiation, you're pretty much a dead man walking already.

A reactor melting down is a sudden acute incident that can release massive amounts of completely invisible radioactive elements that won't kill anyone for decades - or in weeks/months, if really bad.

By the time something has obviously gone wrong from the outside (like the core blowing up in Chernobyl, or the reactor building blowing up due to Hydrogen explosion in Fukushima), massive releases are essentially guaranteed. But still usually invisible. Cherenkov radiation 'sky beam' from chernobyl excepted. [https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/1142309/Chernobyl-dis...]

And with a little avoidance, a lethal dose might be easy to not have! If you have good data. Without good data, it's a crap shoot though.

[roenxi]

You lead with a questioning No - but then about half way through your post you came to a certain yes. The threat of governments not protecting us from nuclear radiation is smaller than the actual costs of governments not protecting us from coal.

And the idea that there is a risk we can't detect is silly, we radiation is easy to detect. The issue is we can't detect a threat because there appears not to be one. The risks aren't quantified because the threshold for a paniced response has been set far too low, so there is panic without a problem. And the population doesn't own Geiger counters because they are canny with their money and they don't have a reason to own one. If there was a risk, it'd be easy to make measuring devices generally available. You can buy one for less than $100.

[lazide]

Nope.

My ‘yes’ was for long term, persistent exposure. Not an acute accident.

Panic tends to happen in acute accidents because people don’t have time to prepare or do any of those things you’re talking about.

When the folks who are in charge during a crisis are clearly either incompetent or lying, and it’s one of those acute situations where people don’t have time to get all those things, that’s when it’s perfectly rational to be ‘irrationally worried’.

When there is a history of that kind of thing happening, that’s when it’s perfectly rational to be ‘irrationally worried’ long term.

[_ea1k]

That's exactly my point, though. Lots of people die from coal mining as an industry. That is largely invisible.

The health effects on the population at large are also significant, but largely invisible. Radiation? Also measurable, but largely invisible.

But often the same people who are fine with coal will tell me how terrible three mile island was and that it is evidence that we shouldn't expand nuclear.

Radiation is somehow scarier.

[lazide]

Coal mining deaths are very, very visible. Coal mining is also clearly filthy and dangerous. If you don’t see it, it’s only because you’ve never seen coal mining or been to a coal mining town.

No one who mined coal - ever - was unclear on how bad for them it was. Even long before we had x-rays or modern medical anything.

Mining uranium kills people in ways that aren’t so obvious, and in proportions that didn’t make any sense even based on radiation models.

It turns out radon gets easily carried in on dust, and miners were getting 300x the radiation exposure that their Geiger counters or dosimeters showed was possible.

They also were ingesting/breathing in trace amounts of things like Polonium, which also weren’t showing up.

Radiation is scarier because it’s not obvious when it’s there, or how bad it’s going to be for someone until way after it’s too late. And it’s hard to figure out - like you really need a solid physics degree AND a medical degree to understand becquerels (or curies) vs rads vs rem, and what that actually means for a random human somewhere in a mine.

The unknown is always scarier.

Coal dust is not confusing anyone, and requires zero degrees to understand how shitty it is to breath.