[s1artibartfast]

I don't think it's a slam dunk for banning nuclear, but agree with the parent post that consent to risk is a valid part of the conversation.

Car or plane, the people most exposed to the risk have some choice in the matter - to fly, drive, or be around vehicles.

New considerations are introduced when those exposed to the risks of your choice maybe hundreds of miles away with no say, or even yet to be born.

[preisschild]

Its very similar. Most people "at risk" for a accident in a nuclear power plant are the workers. There are multiple redundancies that make sure dangerous levels of radioactive isotopes are not released to the public. Thats why every western nuclear power plant has required containment buildings basically forever. Chernobyl didn't, which is why it affected the environment / nearby people.

[natmaka]

No containment is perfect. In French nuclear plants it has to "contain" most of the stuff for at least 72 hours, but no one sees it as a sealed repository and it sure isn't.

[chickenbig]

> No containment is perfect.

You set the bar too high. Radiation isn't an all-or-nothing phenomenon; we are exposed to background radiation all the time, so expecting perfection is unjustified. Also a large portion of radioactivity that might escape comes from short-lived isotopes, making short term evacuation a possibility.

[natmaka]

The bar is the comparison with the other set of pertinent electricity-generating equipments: renewables.

The LNT debate isn't settled, effects of added background radiation is difficult to assess. Moreover the dust escaping from a nuclear plant may be inhaled, ingested... ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committed_dose ).

A "large portion" isn't all, and at Fukushima the nuclear accident-triggered evacuation officially made around 2200 victims.

[chickenbig]

> The bar is the comparison with the other set of pertinent electricity-generating equipments: renewables.

> A "large portion" isn't all

Setting the bar too high.

> The LNT debate isn't settled

Indeed the evidence for effects at smaller and longer term doses is at best weak. We also have a good idea of how DNA repair works. But LNT seems like the least unreasonable conservative way to treat radiation, which may be replaced by something in the up-coming ICRP modernisation.

> Moreover the dust escaping

What sort of dust is this?

> nuclear accident-triggered evacuation officially made around 2200 victims

In hindsight how many of these people needed to be evacuated? https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/11/171120085453.h... How many people died from overheating due to a lack of electricity in the years after Fukushima?

[natmaka]

>> A "large portion" isn't all

> Setting the bar too high.

The major underlying point is a comparison: renewables vs. nuclear. And on those accounts (effect of a major accident, waste...) renewables are clear winners.

>> The LNT debate isn't settled > up-coming ICRP modernisation

Not sure about this. This "modernisation" is, AFAIK, stagnant ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Commission_on_Ra... ). Moreover quite different hypothesis are more and more widespread ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gofman ).

>> Moreover the dust escaping

> What sort of dust is this?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radionuclide

Some escape during a nuclear major accident, and very few want it in the air they breath, the food they eat, the water they drink... Even most of those believing this will cause no harm may prefer clean air, food, water...

>> Fukushima nuclear accident

> In hindsight how many of these people needed to be evacuated?

Nobody knew at the time, and they even considered that evacuating the entire region may be necessary! ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naoto_Kan#Fukushima_nuclear_ac... ).

Moreover even obedient Japaneses may, during a major nuclear accident, not be willing to obey to "please stay and wait!", especially from those who previously said "the nuclear plant is safe, there will be no problem.'.

In any case even magnificent armchairs' experts babbling 'they could and should stay and wait" years after the event cannot change History.

> How many people died from overheating due to a lack of electricity in the years after Fukushima?

This perspective also leads to preferring renewables as the will to shut down nuclear reactors during such accident, for the lack of an immediate full explanation, and also the imperative to do so after discovering some generic defect), all play for renewables.

The pressing (financial) necessity of building reactors in series (of units as identical as possible, in order to reduce unit costs) reduces their heterogeneity and thus the robustness of the fleet, to the point of making a "generic defect" one of the industry's fears, as the discovery of a defect can coerce int shutting down all reactors of the model concerned.

This is what happened in France at the end of 2021 with the shutdowns of N4 reactors due to as recently in France after discovering stress corrosion cracking ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France#Crisis... ) is specific to nuclear. If all the reactors in the fleet were N4, they would all have been shut down!

During and shortly after the major nuclear accident at Fukushima, all other nuclear reactors in Japan were shut down as a precaution and remained so for years. Most of them are still down in 2025, some claim that they are restarting but, 14 years after the accident, the hard facts are clear: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-electricity-nuclear... , reflecting the lack of enthusiasm of the population.

Let's check the trend. Share of produced electricity in Japan:

2011: 75% fossil fuels, 15% nuclear, 10% renewables

2024: 68% , 8.3% , 23%

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/elec-mix-bar?time=2011&co...

Wind, solar... sources do not pose such a threat because they cannot trigger a catastrophe, so discovering a problem does not mean shutting down all units of the type in question. The heterogeneity of renewable source types (solar, wind, geothermal, biomass, etc.), that of equipment manufacturers and models (wind turbines, photovoltaic panels, etc.), as well as the unit sizes of the latter, which are smaller than those of a nuclear reactor, and their geographical dispersion, increase the robustness of the renewable energy fleet: the probability that a large part of the fleet will break down, develop a fault, produce nothing, etc., is minimal.

No lack of electricity => nobody dies due to the lack of electricity.

[s1artibartfast]

The point I'm making is about consent and the mechanisms of decision making, not the actual risk levels involved.