There's a reason it sounds crazy. Several 'inherently safe' reactors overheated, cores melted, they exploded and spread 'inherently safe' radiation over large populated areas. That radiation caused the government to forbid people living there, and to spend tens of billions to try to clean up that widespread radiation. The hundred of billions in decommissioning costs of those reactors could have created liberating renewable energy and storage. Instead they're being wasted on fixing 'inherent safety'.
Had the exposed 100s of tons of stored-in-the-air waste fuel rods lost their cooling water, they might have melted into huge blobs of uncontrollable, unquenchable masses, throwing uncountable curies of radiation into the atmosphere. We all were very -lucky- that they didn't. And it was nothing but luck. Luck is not inherent.
The problem is when these dice are rolled, every living organism on the planet has to live with the outcome. Some call that an acceptable risk. Sounds crazy to me.
The reason is because humans don't think very well at the large scale, and tend to obsess over the small.
In this case, there are massive positives to nuclear and people focus in very hard on the literally-happened-twice-with-pre-CAD-designs accidents. These accidents are bad, but pale into insignificance compared to the good that these nuclear plants have done. And Fukushima was in the context of a disaster that was outside design spec, so it arguably does represent a significant improvement over Chernobyl. The design specs for nuclear plants have been continuously tightened, so I doubt it would have been possible with a modern design.
Everything about the Fukushima disaster suggests that the response has been a bit paranoid. Objectively speaking, the evacuation was overzealous and according to the comments here today the Japanese government decided that the standards around what was acceptable background radiation were too unreasonable so wound them back.
Compare Fukushima to global warming (which I am occasionally assured is an civilization level threat). The civilisation level threat is business as usual, the nuclear solution is a Fukushima-city level threat. Governments routinely sign up for risks that are more likely and more expensive than Fukushima; albeit more spread out in time. Given what the environmentalists are saying about Global Warming it is clearly the case that everyone who could should have switched to nuclear power back in the 90s.
Even now, when it is starting to look more obvious that solar is the path we will choose, it is still a pretty reasonable suggestion that the environmental costs of mining, producing and installing the solar panels will outweigh the damage done by a nuclear disaster, just in a less concentrated fashion. Given that the Chinese have demonstrated how quickly a new city can be built the argument in favor of solar is - ironically - mainly economic rather than environmental.
Michael Shellenberger is obviously pro-nuclear lobbyist, just look at the list of his articles, they're 100% all pushing the same narrative. That, on it's own, wouldn't be a huge problem, other energy options certainly have their share of equally zealous lobbyist - but I have a serious problem with his style of cherry-picking proofs and presenting them as conclusive and indisputable. You can't debunk an official position of a big organization like WHO just by quoting a single scientist who disagrees, scientists disagree all the time. And another big problem I have with his texts is his seemingly complete lack of any empathy for victims of these accidents. He's pushing this "well, shit happens, people die all the time" idea, treating it all like statistics, but completely ignores the fact that just because some firefighters die on duty here and there, doesn't mean it's OK to sacrifice 28 peoples' lives like Soviets did. Also not all deaths are the same, so you can't really compare it like that. Don't know about you, but I'd certainly rather die in a car crash, than die an agonizing death of radiation poisoning or cancer. It's one of the ugliest deaths IMHO. Even if you want to be purely pragmatic, again, these deaths take longer and cost much more so you can't just sum them all up like it all has the same impact on the society. Not to mention statements like "it is an easy cancer to treat, only 1% dies", like it's nothing to be diagnosed a freaking cancer, undergo radiation and chem therapy and all that shit. He's totally ignoring all the fear and uncertainty and emotional pain it brings, and then the actual pain from treatments, and how much it all costs and what this does to the whole family of the patient. Cancers are one of the most destructive diseases from the social perspective. This is what freaks people out about radiation, as well as the fact that effects are so long lasting and hard to fix. I'm personally not against nuclear power, I think it's very smart option worth considering, but IMO this is a wrong way to push for it. We need less propaganda and politics bullshit and more serious scientists dialog...
Yes, it sounds crazy, and it really is: how on earth can someone spin an uncontained failure like Chernobyl into a story about how "inherently safe" nuclear energy is?! It "only" killed 200 people (probably according to nuclear-friendly researchers, although no sources are quoted) so it must be safe!
"Safe" is a relative term. Chernobyl is the worst disaster in nuclear history by a huge margin and killed between 200 (the uncontroversial short term deaths) and 4000 (according to the most pessimistic cancer attribution methodologies you can find in the recent medical literature) people. Compared to the worst disasters in coal, gas or hydro, that is far from the worst outcome out there.
In addition, there are two major aspects one must take into account. First, some power generation methods kill people during normal operation (coal pollution kills millions as a matter of course), no disasters required. Second, the already improbable sequence of events that led to the meltdown of the RBMK reactor at Chernobyl is simply not possible in current nuclear power plants (even in the few remaining RBMK reactors still operating upgrades have fixed the issue).
Whatever you think of nuclear energy, the fact of the matter is we need power generation facilities and there is no such thing as perfect safety. Nuclear power should be evaluated in the context of the options we realistically have, not against some unattainable ideal of perfect, infallible safety. There are reasonable economic and technical arguments against nuclear power. Chernobyl isn't one of them.
I'm not saying the arguments in the article are wrong per se, but I did stumble over the one paragraph where I looked at the referenced source:
In fact, residents of Colorado, where radiation is higher because of high concentrations of uranium in the ground, enjoy some of the lowest cancer rates in the U.S.
It links to https://coloradosun.com/2019/02/04/colorado-skin-cancer-rate... titled Colorado has the highest per-capita rate of skin cancer, thanks to sunshine and high elevation, which does not mention Uranium at all. The article does mention a low percentage of people diagnosed with cancer, and a death rate declining faster than average. However, this gets attributed to factors like low obesity and smoking rates and above-average health care coverage. If that's accurate, the article doesn't really allow us to come to any conclusions regarding background radiation effects on cancer rates except that they are less impactful than smoking...
I'm happy to see you already got an answer :) Edit: Oh, it's gone now? It was a comment disputing the Colorado reference. There are more comments above.
For what it's worth, I smelled what's up right when he talked about chernobyl right below the The Shocking Truth subheadline. The way the deaths are calculated is highly disputed, and he does not reflect that properly, instead presenting the pro-nuclear viewpoint as truth.
I (temporarily) removed it because I claimed the referenced article only talked about cancer death rates instead of cancer rates. That was a mistake on my part.
The grandparent isn't claiming there are false statements in the article; they're pointing out how the article's author has a pro-nuclear agenda and may only explain the disasters in a positive light to further a goal.
It's too black and white to see a controversial debate in "true" vs "false" statements. I mean "vaccines may have serious side effects" is not a false statement, however if it's the only statement it omits other also true statements such as "measles may cause serious complications" and the numbers / statistics comparing the two.
The argument is never that the disasters are a positive, they are disasters.
The argument is that the disasters typically demonstrate that even when things go horribly wrong nuclear is still better than business as usual (once considered in an appropariate global context). Business as usual is basically a disaster every year, when compared to nuclear.
The economic costs of mining coal/petroleum alone are catastrophic if there was a way to avoid it (eg, by mining uranium instead, which requires a fraction of the effort). Extraction is a huge waste of time and resources assuming that there is a way to avoid doing it. All the personpower and capital could be deployed to doing other things if it wasn't being used to dig big holes.
Because it is on his interest to present the facts (that can be checked) the support nuclear power. Just like an anti nuclear article will present facts ( that can be checked) against it.
By reading these two sources I can get both sides of the story and see the arguments for and against.
It's admittedly how show debates work, taking two extreme viewpoints and pitting them against each other. But in questions like this it's not a good way - clear propaganda does not present facts, it manipulates them. This only confuses and makes it impossible to get the proper arguments. It's better to work with sources that have no inherent motivation to lie.
A tangent, but this mindset of "there are always two valid sides at the extremes and we need to present both" is said to be a huge burden on the reporting about politics in the US, it makes the most extreme viewpoints visible and supported the rise of the fascists in the GOP. I agree.
There's no argument for the safety of nuclear to be had. With an unacceptable failure rate for existing plants, very costly new "safe" designs and lower and lower cost for reneweables, nuclear is quickly becoming obsolete.
It shocks me that so many (loud) proponents of nuclear power plants are still around - especially on HN. I wish you all would have lived in Europe at the time of Chernobyl.
Yet all data available on long term safety of energy production contradicts vehemently your point of view. Nuclear is by far safer than everything else, even when we include Chernobyl. Look at stats.
"Electricity produced from natural gas has the lowest risk of the 11 technologies (five
conventional, six non-conventional) It is a factor of about two lower than the next highest,
nuclear power Third is a non-conventional system, ocean thermal, which can convert the
temperature differences of ocean layers into electricity. Most other non-conventional systems
have far higher risk. However, the highest of all are coal and oil, with risk about 400 times
that of natural gas."
> How can unconventional technologies like wind or solar thermal (the "power tower" concept)have substantial public risk? The answer is simple. The production of the metals needed in many unconventional technologies requires that coal is burned
I get the feeling that this study from the 70s doesn't have all the facts that are relevant today.
