HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

⬐ alphonsegaston

I've never seen addressed how one factors in long-term societal problems into the use of nuclear energy. There's not a country in world that hasn't experienced a civil war, invasion, or other massively destabilizing event within the span of time needed to safely manage nuclear energy and its byproducts.

After Chernobyl, I always wondered how a less authoritarian regime would respond to a similar nuclear disaster. Now that we have Fukushima, we can see the Japanese government doing something like a combination of climate change denial and media manipulation (Japanese television frequently runs pieces conflating opposition to nuclear energy with a lack of empathy for those who suffered in 3/11). It would probably work the same in the states.

⬐ 77pt77

> Japanese television frequently runs pieces conflating opposition to nuclear energy with a lack of empathy for those who suffered in 3/11

Can you elaborate? I don't get it.

⬐ tinco

I think they meant 'support' not opposition.

⬐ alphonsegaston

Sure. It's kind of hard to understand without being a regular consumer of Japanese television like the NHK. But essentially, they run a lot of segments and short documentary pieces focused on the plight of residents evacuated from the area, focused on how they just want to go back home/return to normalcy(entirely understandable). This is then framed against the backdrop of people concerned with the safety of returning to the region or "exaggerating" scientists blocking their return or creating the social context in which they're being mistreated.

Only rarely is it addressed that this situation was created by a mixture of government corruption and willfull negligence. Or that the problem is still entirely unresolved and many other Japanese reactors are at risk for similar catastrophic events.

⬐ petre

So would you rather they burn coal, which they don't have and has to be imported and intoxicate everyone with mercury and arsenic biproducts from coal burning? These two heavy metals also contaminte seafood, which the Japanese are quite fond of.

⬐ sandworm101

Coal burning also produces significant radiation, enough to have an actual nuclear plant shut down on safety grounds. All sorts of nasty stuff is trapped in coal and it all come out when the carbon is burnt away.

I havent seen anyone do the math, but given the amounts of coal involved i would expect more radiation comes from coal plants each year than a yearly fukashima-type event.

⬐ phkahler

>> Coal burning also produces significant radiation, enough to have an actual nuclear plant shut down on safety grounds.

That's so cute. A nuclear plant would ideally emit zero radiation if everything is designed and working correctly. A leak is a warning sign and the potential danger is an event like the two that have happened so far. In other words, that level of radiation leak from a nuclear plant isn't actually a problem. They shut it down to make sure something really bad doesn't happen. With coal you get the leak without the catastrophe.

⬐ david-given

Don't have a reference handy, but I've seen estimates that the amount of radioactive material emitted into the atmosphere each year by coal burning is about equivalent to one Chernobyl (which was substantially worse, emission-wise, than Fukushima).

⬐ dredmorbius

On a per-plant basis, the level is all-but immaterial.

Even Fukushima levels of radiation, spread over the globe, aren't too horrible.

There are all kinds of reasons to reject coal-fired power. Radiation isn't one of them.

See the xkcd radiation chart for relative measures.

https://xkcd.com/radiation

⬐ sandworm101

It isnt a logical reason, but it is good to remind the "clean coal" crowd of such facts when they scream about radiation from nuke plants.

⬐ dredmorbius

A coal plant's regular radiation emissions are as bad as they get, and are orders of magnitude below the least possible clinically significant levels.

A nuclear power plants regular radiations are below the level of a coal plant. But a worst-case scenario, of which we have multiple extant examples are unbelievably worse: 9 trillion times more radiation, using the xkcd reference I posted (adjusting the intervals for equivalence -- 1 year rather than 10 minutes as the Chernobyl core instance is given). And it's been non-engineering factors, for the most part (management and oversight) which are the failure modes driving these. Which is to say, the problems cannot be fixed by engineering around them.

The fundamental error, though, is that this is a false dichotomy. There are alternatives to both coal and nuclear. And they bypass this problem entirely.

⬐ marze

What we see here (in the parent comment) is someone parroting standard nuclear industry propaganda: coal is bad too.

While those line at least made a bit of sense 15 years ago, it is totally pointless in 2017.

No new coal plants are being built now. It is in phase out mode. All new generation is wind, solar, and to a lesser degree methane. Coal is going away; like nuclear, it can't compete.

⬐ jcrawfordor

> No new coal plants are being built now. It is in phase out mode. All new generation is wind, solar, and to a lesser degree methane. Coal is going away; like nuclear, it can't compete.

In the United States, at least, natural gas is the largest component of new generating capacity. Wind and solar are both independently fairly close to natural gas recently, but natural gas is still the #1 increase and has been for most of the last 10 or so years.

So yes, the rate of increase in coal capacity is very low (but still net positive), but it is not true that all new generation is wind and solar. New generation is roughly 1/3rd each natural gas, wind, and solar, ranked in that order. Again - in the United States. This varies from country to country, e.g. I believe China is still seeing substantial net increases in coal, whereas I believe Western Europe is seeing a lot more wind/solar.

You can get these numbers for the US from EIA reports: https://www.eia.gov/electricity/annual/

⬐ petre

The US also has vast geothermal potential and about 3.4 MWh installed capacity. Geothermal power is a suitable replacement for nuclear and coal/gas as one can build base load power stations.

⬐ marze

Wrong on all points, data helpful:

http://www.ecowatch.com/ferc-renewable-energy-capacity-22330...

⬐ jcrawfordor

I did refer to the data, and that article gives about the same numbers. FERC and EIA are 'sibling' components of the Department of Energy, I suspect EIA's information on new generation comes directly from FERC.

The article you link shows that wind and solar combined add up to a bit less than twice natural gas. This is because, as I said, the three dominant forms of new production (natural gas, wind, solar) added up to about one third each, with natural gas being the largest portion.

⬐ None

None

⬐ tszymczyszyn

1. It is not true that no new coal plants are being built. It is not even true in developed countries.

https://energydesk.greenpeace.org/2017/01/13/southeast-asia-...

2. Usefulness of renewable energy sources is still not universally comparable to fossil/nuclear.

⬐ marze

http://www.ecowatch.com/ferc-renewable-energy-capacity-22330...

Can you name a coal plant that went online last year in the USA? Then list all the coal plants that are shutting down. Phase out in progress, USA led.

⬐ alphonsegaston

No, because I don't subscribe to fallacious false binaries about fossil fuels vs nuclear energy.

Japan should invest heavily in renewable energy. Despite it's many shortcomings, the Japanese government is quite good at building out and maintaining modern infrastructure. If they developed expertise in this domain, it could also serve as a great export to other markets.

⬐ ckastner

> No, because I don't subscribe to fallacious false binaries about fossil fuels vs nuclear energy.

In real terms, it currently is a binary problem.

> Japan should invest heavily in renewable infrastructure.

Proposing a hand-wavy solution like "just invest heavily" is only a solution if you ignore the political, financial, social, and technical aspects of providing almost a trillion kWh annually to 120 million people.

⬐ pm90

Invest heavily for developed nations is usually meant as an umbrella term for a combination of subsidies, tax credits, grants in specific research area and also sometimes direct investment by the Federal and State Governments.

⬐ willvarfar

What do you think of China's heavy strategic investment and policy for renewables?

⬐ petre

China has already licensed every available nuclear tech from the French, Russians, Canadians and last but not least the US and has trained a generation of nuclear scientists overseas.

http://world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profile...

They also heavily invest in renewables.

⬐ ckastner

I think it's great. I'm absolutely pro-renewables.

That doesn't change the fact that there are enormous political, financial, social, and technical problems to address before renewables can become a viable alternative to nuclear and coal.

⬐ gech

I think there are enormous political, financial, social, and technical problems to address with the current nuclear and coal solutions

⬐ alphonsegaston

Japan transformed its entire country from nearly complete devastation during WWII into a tech leader in various manufacturing and industrial technologies, including automation and robotics. They also possess some of the world's best research and technology institutions (e.g. Tokyo University). So if it's "hand-wavy" to believe in their capability to build better future, based on a quite miraculous track record, you can call me "hand-wavy."

⬐ sushid

Not the OP but I don't believe you are very familiar with modern Japanese history.

First, your point that they had a "miraculous track record" in the past means it's reasonable to be "hand-wavy" about the future is absurd. Are you familiar with the phrase "Past performance is no guarantee of future performance?" Would you say Germany or South Korea can implement any nationwide policy easily because they share a similar historical background as you've described?

Second, Japan's miraculous growth had a lot to do with direct US intervention and the Korean War. The US created a Supreme Command of Allied Powers program directed by MacArthur that made a wide set of economic and political reforms. [0] And the Korean War essentially made Japan the de facto supply depot for the UN, driving a lot of US investment money there. [0]

Third, Japan in the past had plenty of human capital and cheap labor. This is certainly not the case anymore. I'm not saying they're doomed, but their population pyramid is quiet different from post-WWII Japan. [1]

[0] https://history.state.gov/milestones/1945-1952/japan-reconst... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aging_of_Japan

⬐ alphonsegaston

I don't have to speculate about Germany because it's already happening there:

https://www.bloomberg.com/amp/news/articles/2016-05-16/germa...

I'm quite familiar with the history of modern Japan and the US' role in establishing its prominence. It's what I studied as an undergrad, actually. And yes, the strength of their economies and technical standing, derived from this historical support, are precisely what put them in a good position to achieve this aim. It has allowed them to advance manufacturing technology to a far greater degree than the US, who let all of their expertise wither with offshoring (in part to assure alliances with client states). As such, Japan has a large, skilled manufacturing sector base that can tackle this undertaking. In addition, their resource constraints have created similar expertise in advancing energy efficiency and maintaining modern grid infrastructure, both key to making renewables successful.

Japan was largely shunted down the path of nuclear energy because of US intervention in their energy sector. Now that enthusiasm for nuclear energy has largely cooled in the US, both because of its expense and a renewed emphasis on fossil fuels, Japan has greater freedom than ever to transition to renewables. They don't have fossil fuels and nuclear energy is more widely unpopular than it has ever been in the wake of Fukushima.

As for the labor market, there a large issues with structural unemployment among young people which this transition could help address. And regardless, the Japanese government is more directly interventionist in their economy, such that were this change affected, big businesses would follow suit. The line between TEPCO and the Japanese government is already as blurry as blurry can be.

⬐ AstralStorm

It is handwavy. Name the source of that energy that will allow providing that much electricity. Back of the envelope calculations. Even that is somewhat handwavy.

For example, with solar power in Japan, you could get maybe 100% (EDIT: fixed the estimates! They're better but not better enough.) more than is currently grabbed - with massive subsidies and research already there! And it is one of the countries relying on a lot of it! Comparable with Germany in fact, but with better insolation. It is not enough. Nowhere near. That expansion will provide about 25-30% of current power use in solar, total.

With hydro and tide power, just 10-15% more is available unless you want to destroy all the coastline (then maybe 25%), which you cannot if you want to feed people. Again not enough. Japan already uses a lot of available hydro capacity.

Wind is not really feasible either... About 10% more is available of mostly offshore wind. Everywhere feasible is already installed.

Biomass, maybe 25% more for total conversion - and it is not a clean fuel.

Fusion is too far away for now extrapolating the linear improvements in this technology.

Additionally, everything in Japan (production, services etc.) is already tweaked to be energy efficient...

As it is now, Japan is burning a lot of oil and coal. On the order of ~50% electricity is fueled by those sources. It has increased additionally since the disaster because no other source can cover it.

Serious solutions involve:

1) Clean and safe nuclear fission power. Again. I'm sure Japanese are able to figure that one out, even in their special circumstances which complicate matters.

2) Massive breakthrough in fusion. Good luck with that. There is already much increased investment. Given current trends, even if the linear factor on the development of fusion improves, we're looking at 50 years or so of development time for that to be viable.

3) Solving huge political issues to expand out-of-country solar capacity, import even more green electricity from other countries. We're talking world government scale here.

4) Another undisclosed physics discovery worth a few Nobel prizes.

⬐ rb1

Turns out, living in an environment with as low as possible background radiation might not be such a great idea either.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2015/09/23/is-radiat... <~~ forbes piece about this study: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.3109/09553002.2015.106...

⬐ mpweiher

As with most nuclear accidents so far, the health risks from fear of radiation exceed the actual health risks from the radiation itself.

The boars don't know about the radiation and therefore do not fear it.

⬐ masklinn

With respect to wildlife, it's more that the health risks of radiation are significantly lower than the health risks of human presence and activities.

⬐ jlebrech

the average pig in captivity only lives for around 6 months, so them dieing at 1 or 3 gives them plenty of time to procreate.

⬐ lubonay

Go hang out at Pripyat if you really think it's the fear that gets you. I volunteer as the B group, fearing radiation intensely but staying away from it. We can document whose health deteriorates first!

⬐ Bluestrike2

While I'm not trying to play down the consequences of Chernobyl and Fukushima (though they're of vastly different magnitudes), there are some really unique guided tours that head into the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. You can even spend the night at a hotel [i]in[/i] the Zone, luxuriating in the height of Soviet-era hospitality...for the proletariat, anyhow. There are some truly hauntingly beautiful photographs[0] that highlight the very real human cost to the disaster, one that could have been prevented.

I love travel photography, so it's always been something that's high up on my todo list, though I'd prefer to go with friends (hard to understate the awkward silence that follows "Want to visit Chernobyl with me?") at some point. Tours avoid the problematic areas, and there were obviously a ton of workers going in and out to work on the New Safe Containment building recently so it's not like it's a complete dead zone. If you look at this chart of recorded radiation levels[1] at interesting Pripyat/Chernobyl landmarks from 2009, you'll note that while you'll want to stay the hell away from some landmarks, the uSv/hour recordings at the places tours visit are comparable to daily exposure to natural background radiation in various regions or a transatlantic flight.[2][3] Thousands visit each year, though I'd probably suggest screening your tour options carefully.

Of course, I mentioned the plan to my mother back when I was 18 and I still hear about it from her when we disagree nine years later :). Some people just have an odd sense of risk aversion.

0. https://500px.com/search?q=pripyat+ukraine&type=photos&sort=...

1. http://chernobylgallery.com/chernobyl-disaster/radiation-lev...

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(radiation...

3. http://greentourua.com/chernobyl-today-all-you-need-to-know-...

⬐ mpweiher

"Expert Assessment

Consensus

The mental health impact of Chernobyl is the largest public health problem caused by the accident to date"

-- Health Effects of the Chernobyl Accident, page 95, World Health Organization [1]

But what do they know?

[1] http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/43447/1/9241594179_...

⬐ Diederich

Do you have any other references that point to minimal human health impact associated with the Chernobyl disaster besides the WHO?

> But what do they know?

I'm sure that they know a lot about a lot of things, but that doesn't mean that every report they produce is accurate.

⬐ mpweiher

The WHO did not speak of "minimal" human health impacts. In fact, the health impacts were significant.

It's just that those impacts are not primarily due to direct effects radiation. The biggest impact appears to have been over-reaction to the fear of the effects of radiation. Again, those effects due to the overreaction were very real and very significant.

⬐ Retric

That's with a large scale evacuation, so it says nothing about living in the area. It's like saying Y2K did not cause any major issues so all that effort was pointless. Remember, dealing with probelms alters the outcomes so you can't look at the outcome alone.

⬐ morsch

Exactly, the cited passage goes on:

The magnitude and scope of the disaster, the size of the affected population, and the long-term consequences make it, by far, the worst industrial disaster on record. Chernobyl unleashed a complex web of events and long-term difficulties, such as massive relocation, loss of economic stability, and long-term threatds to health in current and, possibly, future generations, that resulted in an increased sense of anomie and diminished sense of physical and emotional balance.

⬐ vidarh

You'll note that a large proportion of these are due to the evacuation, and we do not know how much of that was necessary.

In terms of directly attributable health effects, including deaths, it's nowhere near the worst industrial disaster on record. It's a curious claim.

We'll likely never know whether that was due to the evacuation or simply that the risk were overstated. E.g. consider the Bhopal disaster [1] for comparison - 2259 official immediate deaths in Bhopal vs. 56, and nearly 4000 confirmed dead due to the disaster and 16k+ estimated total deaths, vs. a WHO estimate of 4000 eventual shortened lifespans after Chernobyl (e.g. people whose life expectancy over a period of decades is shortened due to increased cancer risks). Bhopal further caused an estimated 558,000 injuries.

For comparison, the Chernobyl exclusion zone used to be home to 120,000 people. Far more people were actually harmed in Bhopal than even lived near Chernobyl.

Chernobyl is only worse than Bhopal on a single measure: It will take longer before the area is fully safe to use again (but much shorter than people initially thought - as mentioned elsewhere, there is already pressure to open it up to more activity, as background radiation is already down to relatively safe levels).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster

⬐ mpweiher

> You'll note that a large proportion of these are due to the evacuation, and we do not know how much of that was necessary.

Exactly. The biggest (general-population) health effect was almost certainly overreaction.

⬐ morsch

You may claim that, but please stop pretending that the section of the report you refer to does the same.

⬐ mpweiher

"Expert Assessment

Consensus

The mental health impact of Chernobyl is the largest public health problem caused by the accident to date"

-- Health Effects of the Chernobyl Accident, page 95, World Health Organization [1]

That's the direct quote. But you can continue to pretend/imagine that it says what you want it to say.

⬐ morsch

You keep quoting that sentence, but it doesn't even imply, much less outright say, that the evacuation was "almost certainly overreaction".

Both well justified and poorly justified evacuations come with mental health impacts. If our house burns down while we're in it and we get out in time, the mental health impact would be the largest health concert; that doesn't mean we should stay in it.

You can argue that the Chernobyl evacuation was an overreaction, but not using that paragraph or the enclosing section in that report. Yet you persist in doing so.

⬐ Retric

I think the best way to say it is. If your house burns down and you get out early then the largest health impact was physiological, that does not mean staying was an option.

⬐ Retric

That quote does not support your argument. A little above that on page iii it mentions how the mass evacuations, iodine pills, and cleanup effort saved many lives across millions impacted.

You can't save someone's life unless they where first put at risk. So, there where clearly problems now you can talk about the largest outstanding problem after mitigation, but that's different.

⬐ mpweiher

> unless they where first put at risk.

Who said that there had been no risk?

> there where clearly problems

Who said there were no problems? I don't see how people turn "A is greater than B" into "B is zero".

If I had written "there was obviously no risk at all from radiation" you might have a point, I but I did not write that and would never write that, because it is clearly ridiculous.

⬐ Retric

Nothing I said suggested zero anywhere. I have said you can't measure 'with intervention' vs 'without intervention' by only looking at the with intervention outcome. Thus, to support your argument you need to demonstrate what the harm would have been vs what it is.

⬐ Retric

People far outside of the exclusion zone where harmed, though generally in minor ways. Further, the improvements in cancer treatment have reduced the number of deaths expected which makes analysis even more difficult.

However, a larger consideration is the economic damage from Chernobyl caused a even more indirect harm. Now, some of this was arguably an overreaction. But again, the cleanup effort is a large part of why the direct harm has been so small. Without that it's a very different situation.

⬐ sonthonax

Wild animals have a death rate orders of magnitude greater than healthy Japanese people. The increased incidence of radiation sickness probably does little to the overall death rate of the boars.

⬐ sageikosa

In those cases it's usually better to check out fecundity rather than life expectancy deltas. Has live birth rate declined or infant mortality increased?

⬐ maxerickson

You are conflating impact and controllable individual risk.

If there was no exclusion zone at all the impact from fear would likely still be larger. That measurement wouldn't help the people getting large radiation exposures inside the zone.

⬐ emodendroket

But nobody really cares if boars get cancer and die early, unlike humans.

⬐ jlebrech

most pigs die early, but from humans.

⬐ emodendroket

Yeah, all the more reason why comparing humans' unwillingness to live in high radiation areas with that of boars is kind of a silly comparison to make.

⬐ pvaldes

Most interesting question about boars is that they are big animals that dig deep in the soil searching for roots, rodents and tubercles. They are basically working hard to return the buried radioactive isotopes to the surface again when they are more dangerous. We should think on it and adjust our models to predict and understand the problem.

And Boars will travel in and out of Fukushima of course.

⬐ pvaldes

when they are more dangerous -> where (the isotopes) are more dangerous

⬐ _ph_

Sorry, no. There is a distinctive health risk to radioactive radiation, and thus the regions around Fukushima and Chernobyl are evacuated from permanent residency. It is perfectly safe to do short trips into those regions. But long term, this is a considerable health risk. The boars can live there, because they are short-lived animals compared to humans, and the article doesn't say whether they do reach their natural life span even. They only seem to live long enough to procreate, which is 1-3 years for wild boars. Humans could live there as well, but they would experience an unacceptably short live. A human group can survive on a life expectancy of little more than 20 years, thats what human kind did in the past. But by modern standards this is not acceptable, and consequently those regions are not considered safe for settlement.

⬐ vidarh

There are risks, certainly, but even the exclusion zone around Chernobyl is under ongoing re-evaluation with growing pressure to open up more of it for various use, as the main risk in large parts of it currently is not the overall levels of radiation, but 1) poor mapping of areas with higher concentrations, and 2) the risk of disturbing particulate or releasing material e.g. through forest-fires or stirring up dirt that may turn out to be more radioactive than expected.

Consider that even the Chernobyl plant itself continued generating electricity until 2000 - the remaining generators were shut down one after the other, but people were working at Chernobyl all the way through. Several thousand people work in the exclusion zone at any time, and several thousand more worked at the plant in the 14 years from the accident until its closure.

That's not to say none of them will suffer health risks, but the exclusion zone was set as large as it was largely because we didn't know how to manage it, and didn't know how to clean it up, and didn't know what the long term effects would be. We know a lot more now, and the indications are a lot less scary than the initial reactions.

It's now to the point where there are even proposals for agricultural use in the zone.

⬐ ckastner

> Humans could live there as well, but they would experience an unacceptably short live

Is this an assumption on your part, or can you back this up with data?

⬐ _ph_

I am not a MD, but I think it is accepted knowledge that elevated radiation levels shorten the life expectancy. How much, depends on many factors, like the exact nature of the radiation, like you are exposed to it, or have a likelyhood of eating contaminated foo, and of course your very age. The older you are, the less likely you are to suffer from this.

I haven't done research on this myself, but I would assume that the exclusion zones have been set up according to the accepted standards for radiation safety levels.

⬐ krrrh

You're speaking with unwarranted certainty on this subject. there is much that is unknown on this subject due to very sparse data, and the fact that cancer rates are already relatively high in the general population and affected by a myriad of environmental and lifestyle factors.

We live in a world where the available data allows credible scientists to observe a hormetic effect in animal models exposed to low-dose radiation, and where longitudinal studies of people who live in areas with naturally higher background radiation (higher than large areas of the exclusion zone), such as Colorado experience lower than average cancer rates.[1]

Furthermore, the death toll from nuclear power generation, should be considered in comparison to the death toll of other power technologies. While it is arguable that many renewable tech are comparable and possibly have become better than nuclear in terms of safety, the deaths caused even just by radioactive particles spewed into the environment from coal plants is much higher than nuclear. It is a classic case of seen vs. unseen effects.[2]

The unstated argument in this thread is whether the precautionary principle should be applied to public health policy with regards to human-caused radiation. It's perfectly reasonable to argue that it should based on unknowns, but it doesn't help to make overly certain assumptions that have weak scientific support.

[1] a decent jumping off point on this stuff is the Wikipedia article on radiation hormesis - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hormesis

[2] Another quick jumping off point, with a myriad of links and charts from credible government and international organizations. http://www.nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energ...

⬐ mpweiher

Here is an article explaining.[1] It's a "random site on the Internet", so feel free to not believe anything they say, but I think they provide fairly good references to source material.

There was also a documentary film a while ago, I'll see if I can find it. It mentions this apartment complex in Taiwan that was contaminated, and the health of the residents turned out to be better than average, not worse.

Ahh, found it[2]. Seem like fairly reputable sources.

[1] http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/articles/nuclear.html

[2] http://ecolo.org/documents/documents_in_english/low-dose-Cob...

⬐ coddingtonbear

I'd recommend doing a little research about the controversy around the "Linear no-threshold model" of radiation exposure. The answer isn't quite as clear as you might guess.

⬐ sevensor

> But long term, this is a considerable health risk.

And yet, a bunch of old people live in the Chernobyl Exclusion zone:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_Exclusion_Zone#Popul...

⬐ icebraining

It's always refreshing to see a case of literal survivorship bias.

⬐ sevensor

Thanks for calling me on this -- it's a good point.

⬐ _ph_

Yes, old people. There is a strong variation on what the consequences radiation has on people depending on age. They won't have any more children and cancer is slower to develop in old people. And also, it is like with smoking. Some people smoke all their life and live past 90 years of age. Others don't. Overall the consensus is, that smoking kills the average person sooner or later. And we cannot know, how much their life is going to be shortened by their stay in the zones with higher radiation. Radiation is also not a black and white thing. There is plenty of natural radiation all over the earth, and of course a lot of cosmic radiation. And there is nuclear radiation spread around the globe as the consequence of the nuclear tests in the 60ies. So the exclusion zone only marks the region, where the radiation level is such, that it is considered unsafe for permanent residency.

⬐ sevensor

Fair point, and as the sibling comment to yours points out, my comment is an example of survivorship bias. So should we, as with smoking, allow people to determine their own tolerance for risk? Let them eat the wild boar of Fukushima and the cabbages of Pripyat?

⬐ _ph_

I am pretty sure, if smoking wasn't allowed for historic reasons, it would be impossible to sell tobacco as a new product. And as you said, some people are tolerated in the exclusion zones. As it is impossible to "see" radiation and few own decent measuring devices, it totally makes sense to me, that the authorities mark those zones. If this marking is done wrongly, one can criticize them for that, but there need to be some official guidelines. Especially seeing how bad people are about making judgements about smoking :).

But some of it is happening even here in Germany. Some of the Bavarian forests are still contaminated by the Chernobyl incident such that it is not completely safe to east mushrooms from them. Having a few dishes of those mushrooms per year is most likely safe, but the authorities are having warnings (but no bans) out. And the mushroom eating wild boars have to be checked for radiation before their meat can be eaten.

⬐ jlebrech

1-3 years is pretty good going considering what happens to them if they are not wild.

⬐ mpweiher

There is a difference between "there is no risk", which I did not write but you imply I did, and "this risk is greater than this other risk", which is what I did write.

See the WHO evaluation of the the Chernobyl disaster, which states that the largest public health problem of the disaster has been the mental health impact (link in other response: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13829192).

Again, that doesn't mean that there weren't other impacts, but the mental health impact was larger. I also remember seeing video footage of all the animals that died after Fukushima. They didn't die of radiation, they died of neglect.

Also, the health impact of fairly low radiation dosages is effectively unknown to date, but data from the Chernobyl incident keeps correcting the effect downward every 10 years.

The idea that "there is no safe dosage" was created artificially, because after Hiroshima and Nagasaki the exposure effects were simply linearly extrapolated to zero. There was no actual data there.

⬐ onli

I realize there are a lot of nuclear apologist around here, but this is getting ridiculous.

That boars are living in the area means nothing. It doesn't mean in the slightest that it is safe for humans. With Chernobyl and Fukushima we are talking about serious levels of radiation, high enough to kill people very fast. See https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/feb/03/fukushim... of how high the radiation in Fukushima still is today.

To act like "Ah, nothing really happened, see the wild pigs flocking around" is not even close to an appropriate judgment of the situation.

We all would like to have safe and cheap energy. We won't reach that goal by trivializing the dangers of nuclear energy, which isn't even cheap to begin with.

⬐ new299

The Guardian article you quote is I believe inaccurate. That was a new reading that was taken inside the reactor building. There was no increase in radiation.

If you stand inside the containment vessel your probably going to have a bad time.

That doesn't tell you much about how long you'd survive in a nearby town... and in fact there are individuals who have refused to leave, who are currently ok:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/in-sight/wp/2016/03/11/c...

⬐ onli

Well, yes and no. The article does cover an increase in radiation:

> Even if a 30-percent margin of error is taken into account, the recent reading, described by some experts as “unimaginable”, is far higher than the previous record of 73 sieverts an hour detected by sensors in 2012.

But it is talking about the reactor. That does not immediately translate into a high radiation level outside, but it shows the potential radiation level we are dealing with. At least in the beginning that radiation leaked, and that might happen again.

Also in Chernobyl there are people living in the zone. If they are old enough that they will die before the radiation will cause cancer, and they are never unlucky enough to step into a pocket of escaping reactor radiation, that's probably not too bad.

⬐ vidarh

It is higher because the measurements were taken closer to the core. If anything, these measurements are good news, because they demonstrate a substantial fuel concentration right there, still inside the containment vessel, which puts limits on the amount that may have leaked. What would have been bad news would be not finding any significant radiation source.

⬐ new299

The reporting around this measurement was truly awful. I live in Japan, and it freaked out a bunch of my friends when really nothing had changed.

It was also an estimate made based on the amount of noise seen on CCD camera images. That's a really awful way to measure radiation.

⬐ vidarh

I think the worst reporting on it I've seen was when Robert X Cringely regurgitated a blogspam that badly mangled the Guardian article on it, and used it as "evidence" for an impending "China Syndrome" style meltdown, without even any evidence of a containment vessel breach:

http://www.cringely.com/2017/02/16/no-fracking-way-fukushima...

Complete with appeal to authority and failure to read the source he uses properly...

⬐ new299

That's pretty sad. :(

I was a big fan of Triumph of the Nerds [1] and his other documentaries and books. :(

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triumph_of_the_Nerds

⬐ new299

It was widely mis-reported at the time. However, they had never reported a radiation reading from this location before. The title of the article is "Fukushima nuclear reactor radiation at highest level since 2011 meltdown". That is not true. It's just have they have a new reading that's higher than previously recorded because it's further inside the reactor.

A better description of the readings can be found here:

http://ansnuclearcafe.org/2017/02/07/radiation-levels-not-so...

⬐ onli

It doesn't really matter, does it? Whether it is a raise or not, it is radiation that exists.

Even if attacking the reading itself: The numbers might be wrong, the radiation is undisputed high.

⬐ new299

I mean yes it matters to me and to my friends who live in Japan.

Suggesting that levels are increasing implies that new material might be leaving the reactor or that the reactor is becoming less stable. That further implies that you need to re-evaluate the radiation levels in your region and if it's safe to stay there.

⬐ jessriedel

If you re-read mpweiher's comment, you'll see it doesn't use the presence of the boars to argue for the lack of danger to humans. You're responding to something he didn't say.

⬐ onli

I don't manage to write a response to you without making it sound impolite, which is not my intention. I scrubbed it, please read the following short-form with the most positive interpretation you can muster: I don't think you understood his comment. If one links "There are boars" with "humans have higher fear of radiation than there is actual danger", there are only so many messages such a comment can transport. If one later goes on to talk about "we don't know how low levels of radiations interact with the human body', while in Fukushima there are high levels of radiation, then the intention of mpweiher's comments become pretty clear.

⬐ jessriedel

(I do appreciate your restraint. I know these discussions can get heated.)

> If one links "There are boars" with "humans have higher fear of radiation than there is actual danger", there are only so many messages such a comment can transport.

The message I took was "boars are different from humans because they aren't susceptible to disproportionate fear". It's meant to highlight the fact that although the abstract reasoning of humans usually gives them great advantage over animals, it can backfire.

Likewise, my dog successfully avoids homeopathic medicine, which is ironic given that people who are taken in by that stuff have more advanced brains than him. But, even though my dog also doesn't want to ever go to the vet, this is not an endorsement of never going to the doctor.

⬐ onli

It's meant to highlight the fact that although the abstract reasoning of humans usually gives them great advantage over animals, it can backfire.

Exactly, that's how I understood it as well. And here the implications is that human reasoning backfired because we judged the impact of nuclear accident wrong. It is combined with a "the boar lives there well because it has no fear, we can live there as well". That comes from the first sentence, that health risks from fear of radiation exceed the actual health risks from the radiation.

That's typical pro-nuclear propaganda.

⬐ mpweiher

> That's typical pro-nuclear propaganda.

No, it's a simple matter of fact statement. That doesn't mean that radiation is not dangerous. Especially in high-doses it is extremely dangerous. But so is almost anything energy related (heat of a gas turbine, fall from a dam, etc.). In terms of public health, so far fear of radiation has had worse health outcomes than radiation.

⬐ jessriedel

> And here the implications is that human reasoning backfired because we judged the impact of nuclear accident wrong

Yes, that is what he claimed.

> It is combined with a "the boar lives there well because it has no fear, we can live there as well".

No, he did not claim that.

> That comes from the first sentence, that health risks from fear of radiation exceed the actual health risks from the radiation.

The existence of boars is not being used to support the claim that fear of radiation exceed the actual health risks. Rather, that claim is being asserted independently.

⬐ Diederich

> I realize there are a lot of nuclear apologist around here, but this is getting ridiculous.

I'm pro nuclear power, but I agree with you. Boars running around doesn't mean jack squat.

We need to look objectively about all of the many aspects of nuclear power production, including its dangers and financial costs.

Honestly, the way solar generation and battery technology is taking off, even the most optimistic nuclear technology might become irrelevant.

⬐ vidarh

If you try to get your measuring equipment as close to the fuel as possible, then yes, you will unsurprisingly get high radiation readings. But they apply inside the reactor core, not outside the containment vessel.

⬐ jessaustin

The nuclear apologists don't seem to realize they would have a more effective argument if they just admitted what is obvious to anyone: that occasionally nuclear power causes terrible catastrophes. Perhaps someday in the bright shiny future it won't, but it certainly has for the last 65 years we've been using it. Then they could stack those terrible catastrophes up against what they see as the wonderful benefits of nuclear power, and reasonable people would have some choices to make. Instead, they run around with fingers in ears chanting "nyah nyah nyah no problems here", and reasonable people can only conclude that the analysis is missing some important points.

⬐ adekok

> that occasionally nuclear power causes terrible catastrophes.

To play devil's advocate...so do cars. Tens of thousands of people die every year in the USA from car crashes, and millions more are injured. These numbers are greater than similar numbers from nuclear power.

The nuclear catastrophes which have occurred have largely been predicted. And were preventable. Both for Chernobyl and for Fukushima. Just like most car deaths and injuries in the 1950s were preventable.

And... coal plants put out more radiation and pollution than do nuclear plants. And the pollution from coal plants kills or injures more people.

No one is saying nuclear power is safe. But if you're going to claim it's terrible, you have to admit that there are many things we live with every day which are much more terrible than nuclear power.

⬐ 10238192301

Chernobyl happened during a reckless experiment and Fukushima was built in a Tsunami area.

I'm pro nuclear, but obviously I support prohibiting (and shutting down!) power plants in danger zones as well as procedures that make stupid experiments impossible.

⬐ None

None

⬐ jessaustin

I'm going to congratulate myself here. This is one of the best sorts of trolls: I told them what they were doing wrong that was making their argument ineffective, and that inspired them to do much more of it.

⬐ vidarh

Maybe it is a losing battle, but fighting that kind of ignorance is something I see as a moral imperative given the number of deaths that the fear of nuclear power is causing.

The anti-nuclear hysteria is in a class together with the anti-vaccine movement when it comes to potential public harm.

⬐ jessaustin

Even if you were correct about that (you're not! [0]), why would you persist in ineffective rhetoric?

[0] Nuclear power is never the best option, no matter what criteria is used. It's always more expensive, it always produces more dangerous waste, and it always poses more risk to the community than numerous competing options. Whatever lives you thought you might save with a nuclear plant, save billions of dollars and decades of development and just put in some wind or solar farms or natural gas turbines or some combination of those.

⬐ mpweiher

Wow! [0]

[0] You are citing yourself as a reliable source. That's pretty nifty.

> it always produces more dangerous waste,

False.

> it always poses more risk to the community

False.

> It's always more expensive

That one is closest to the truth, but also not really true:

"Some independent reviews keep repeating that nuclear power plants are necessarily very expensive,[26][27] and anti-nuclear groups frequently produce reports that say the costs of nuclear energy are prohibitively high.[28][29][30][31] This is despite the fact that in 2015 the cost of electricity in nuclear France is approximately the same as in Denmark and two-thirds of that in Germany.[32][33]"

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

⬐ vidarh

Even if the truth is ineffective, if the alternative is to lie I will persist with the truth in face of this type of ignorance:

> [0] Nuclear power is never the best option, no matter what criteria is used. It's always more expensive, it always produces more dangerous waste,

Irrelevant; the waste does far less damage than the alternatives.

> and it always poses more risk to the community than numerous competing options.

The death tolls shows clearly that this is false for every solution we have for base loads. When battery/storage technology gets far enough this may change, but as long as a single coal, oil or gas plant is active, reducing nuclear is a far greater risk to the community.

> Whatever lives you thought you might save with a nuclear plant, save billions of dollars and decades of development and just put in some wind or solar farms or natural gas turbines or some combination of those.

Wind or solar farms can not provide baseload without billions in investments in storage. Once we have that infrastructure, sure, then we can consider reducing dependence on nuclear. In the meantime they can not replace nuclear.

Natural gas kills more.

⬐ mpweiher

> best sorts of trolls

Good to know that you were just trolling.

> I told them what they were doing wrong that

You do realize that just because you say something is wrong doesn't actually make it so. Right?

Who is "them", by the way?

> argument ineffective

Nope, the nuclear industry's existing strategy, which closely follows your ridiculous suggestion of admitting things that aren't true, has been extremely ineffective and has backfired. They thought that if they created standards that mandated extreme, one could say ridiculous levels of safety, the public would accept nuclear power as safe. The opposite happened: the high safety standards were taken as evidence of how terrible all this was.

And they backfired even worse in that the standards were so high that "keeping the public safe" using those standards actually exposed them to worse danger than looser standards would have. Oh the irony!

And yes, I also used to believe your take that, well, every once in a while there are horrible accidents. And unlike you I used to believe that those accidents, even if rare, were horrible enough to rule out nuclear power.

That is, until I looked at the actual numbers (and later the WHO reports on Chernobyl). And found out that not only are the amortized numbers ridulously better than anything else. Even the "catastrophes" were (a) both much less catastrophic than I thought and (b) other power sources had much worse catastrophes than I knew (because those aren't reported) and (c) most of the catastrophic effects were actually indirect and due not to radiation but to fear of radiation.

Did I mention the irony?

So I came around to the view (expressed very well by others in this thread) that not using a power source that is (a) safer than any other available on the planet and (b) >1000 times safer then the most widely used and readily available alternative is morally/ethically completely indefensible, downright repugnant.

⬐ mpweiher

> occasionally nuclear power causes terrible catastrophes

Except that's not the case, other forms of power generation not only have far higher death tolls overall, but also more terrible catastrophes:

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

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

⬐ onli

That's not even internally consistent. We have no terrible catastrophes because the others have terrible catastrophes?

⬐ vidarh

It's more that even Chernobyl is a tiny little blip compared to things like the Banqiao dam failure, even if you take some of the worst long term death toll estimates. And coal kills several times as many people every year in the US alone as what Chernobyl is projected to kill from the accident until the radioactivity released is all gone, even without any accidents.

⬐ onli

That's not what he wrote though.

Besides, why is the coal thing used as an argument? That's a good point to make when discussing with someone who wants to replace nuclear energy with coal. But I doubt anyone here has that goal.

Something like the dam does not compare, it is not one or the other, and it is not long-lasting damage.

⬐ vidarh

Se his own answer. My response mirrors his. And there have been coal fires and explosions that have killed more people in single incidents too.

The point is that if you're going to worry about risks, the moral thing to do would be to get rid off coal even if your alternative is massive increases in nuclear.

> Something like the dam does not compare, it is not one or the other, and it is not long-lasting damage.

No it does not, it is several magnitudes more deaths and millions of homeless.

As for long-lasting damage, hydro projects are amongst the most devastating power plant projects we have, routinely displacing millions of people from their homes forever, submerging entire cities, destroying vast forest areas and animal habitats, and setting off ticking environmental disasters in the form of rotting vegetation releasing vast amounts of CO2.

So, no, dams do not compare - they are some of the least environmentally friendly options we have, and have killed a lot more people (even excluding Banqiao), and made far larger areas uninhabitable.

⬐ onli

No, that's just not valid. One thing does not become less horrible because another thing is more horrible. The relative horribleness might change, the absolute does not.

If you are against coal and therefor for nuclear, that's your choice to make. I'm against both, and thus the whole "but coal kill people too" does not apply at all to my thinking.

⬐ mpweiher

All energy forms are more deadly than nuclear, sometimes significantly so, and that includes burning wood. Including solar and wind.

So what do you want to do? Die? Because without ready access to energy the vast majority of humans will die.

⬐ onli

> Including solar and wind.

That's wrong.

⬐ mpweiher

No it's not.

Fatalities per trillion kWh:

Solar (rooftop): 440 Wind: 150 Wind(UK): <1000 Nuclear: 90 Nuclear(US): 0.01

Last I checked, 90 is smaller than 440 or 150, and 0.01 is vastly smaller than 440 or 150.

But maybe math works differently on your planet.

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

⬐ onli

Went for another thing through my comments, and will take the chance to add an answer here.

That table is not a valid source. That goes into the bigger pcuture of you deciding for yourself what fact is and what not, and starting to insult people from your "superior" position. I mean, I'm happy about that, it disqualifies everything you write, and I despise your position.

That tables only source is a Forbes Article which has no further direct reference for it. It is coming form the head of one single man. But somehow for you it becomes objective truth.

Also, it does not hold up even when just looking at it. There are no big explosions killing people for solar and wind energy. That means the deaths counted there include numbers like people falling from roofs during installation (even then, it's improbable high). However, the number for nuclear energy is that low that it is evident that deaths like "people having an accident on way to work" are obviously not included. And it does not show which numbers are taken for the accidents in three miles, the radiation leaks we had in Germany and France, Chernobyl and Fukushima. I would not be surprised if it were 0, 0, 56 and 0, which is ridiculous. It's one thing to criticize current medical radiation models, it is another to assume radiation is completely harmless.

⬐ vidarh

The "but coal kills people too" - at magnitudes higher rate - factors in because it's not a matter of turning things off without replacing it. Turning off nuclear means coal continues to be used for longer.

The death rates of coal are so incredibly high that it is immoral and irresponsible to switch off nuclear plants - the way e.g. Germany is doing - as long as coal is being used. The same applies to fossil fuels, and to a lesser extent to well maintained hydro (the caveat being "well maintained" - build a dam and you sign up for eternal maintenance or putting towns downstream at risk of destruction), though the far bigger problem with hydro is environmental impacts and displacement of people.

The point is that these debates do not happen in isolation. It's not a matter of disliking one so we turn it off, and that's it. It's a matter of relative risk and relative damage. When you argue against nuclear, without giving another option, the reality is that today you argue for more dangerous, more lethal, more environmentally damaging options, because we are unable to build out sufficient replacement capacity of safer renewables, and lack sufficient storage capacity for them to be suitable for base load.

The number of dead from the panicked early decommissioning in Germany due to their dependence on coal, for example, will measure in the thousands, not just in Germany but across Europe - they can't contain their air. The decision was a staggering display of ignorance of the relative risks, and part of the reason why some of us get really upset about these debates. It's not hypotheticals - peoples fears are literally killing people.

⬐ mpweiher

Yeah, it is.

The only thing that rates as catastrophe is Chernobyl, so singular. And that was 56 direct deaths. Fifty-six. Fukushima, which is widely regarded as a "catastrophe" has zero direct deaths and so far it looks unlikely that effects on mortality will be statistically detectable.

What was the worst energy-generation catastrophe? Banqiao Dam, 1973[1]. 170,000 direct deaths. Or that coal explosion with >1000 direct deaths. On those types of scales, even Chernobyl doesn't actually register.

And when you take into account long term effects, there simply is no comparison. 100K deaths per T-kWH for coal, 90 for nuclear. So for every death due to nuclear power, there are 1000 deaths due to coal.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam

⬐ onli

You are aware that your numbers are wrong?

As dark as it is to argue about something like that, but Chernobyl caused many more deaths. Even the WHO predicted 4000, and that is one of the lower figures. This is heavily debated, but to say it was 56 is not even a base for discussion. The cleanup crews alone died in higher numbers.

Second: If you look at coal like that, you have to factor in all the deaths caused by nuclear energy, including uran production. That number raises fast as well.

Third: I never mentioned coal. Bashing against coal is a typical defence strategy of the nuclear industry, and something I see again and again repeated on HN. It's a very weak strategy imo: It is an obvious strawman, and many people who are against nuclear energy are also against coal.

Edit

Four: No, it is no case consistent logic. Something does not become not a catastrophe only because another thing is a catastrophe. It might become a lesser evil (that is not the case here), but that's as far as it goes.

⬐ mpweiher

> You are aware that your numbers are wrong?

No, the numbers are correct.

> but Chernobyl caused many more deaths.

No, 56 direct deaths. Check the Wikipedia article.

"56 direct deaths (47 accident workers and nine children with thyroid cancer) and it is estimated that there may eventually be 4,000 extra cancer deaths among the approximately 600,000 most highly exposed people."

> Even the WHO predicted 4000

(a) that is an estimate and (b) those are classified as indirect deaths, not least because they are estimated to occur over a span of 30-40 years. Also, these estimates are hard because cancer rates in the area have significant fluctuation due to other causes. And these are the estimates that were revised downward with every iteration of the report (every 10 years AFAICT).

So 4000 is the best number we have and, given the history of these projections, still likely to be on the high side.

> that is one of the lower figures.

It is likely to be the most accurate one, and they have been revising that estimate down with each report they publish. The other figures are generally from organizations with agendas to push and usually without any actual evidence.

> to say it was 56 is not even a base for discussion

Actually, that is the correct number of direct deaths, and the only ones where we can be certain of the causation.

> all the deaths caused by nuclear energy...including uran production

Please read the other linked article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents

Or these:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-d...

http://www.theenergycollective.com/willem-post/191326/deaths...

So nuclear is safer not just than coal (which is the main alternative), but also than oil, natural gas, biofuel/biomass, Peat, solar rooftop, wind and hydro.

And yes, it is logically consistent to say there are no "catastrophes" (plural) when there is only one event that rates as a catastrophe (singular). And yes, scale matters. When you are talking about catastrophes that take thousands or hundreds of thousands of direct casualties, events that have 56 direct casualties are probably not properly rated as catastrophes.

And when you include long-term effects, it is somewhat hard to rate as "catastrophic" something that's significantly safer than rooftop solar.

⬐ onli

Okay. So for Chernobyl, you are talking about direct deaths. For coal, the important figure are the indirect deaths. I think I said enough.

⬐ mpweiher

Nope.

I compare direct coal deaths (for example the coal mine explosion in China, >1000) with direct nuclear deaths (Chernobyl, 56) and indirect coal deaths with indirect nuclear deaths (that's where the 100K vs. 90 or 0.01 figure comes from).

But it is true that you have said enough. More than enough, in fact, because it has all been devoid of any facts.

⬐ dang

> But it is true that you have said enough. More than enough, in fact, because it has all been devoid of any facts.

Please edit uncivil swipes out of your comments here. It makes them less substantive and is destructive of thoughtful conversation.

⬐ vidarh

> Even the WHO predicted 4000, and that is one of the lower figures. This is heavily debated, but to say it was 56 is not even a base for discussion. The cleanup crews alone died in higher numbers.

The WHO number is number of people expected to die prematurely as a result of Chernobyl. The deathcount he gave is an estimate of direct deaths. They mean very different things. The WHO number includes anyone who can be expected to die sooner, whether their life expectancy has been cut by a decade or a year. It's an important consideration, but it's not in any way directly comparable to the direct deaths numbers.

> Second: If you look at coal like that, you have to factor in all the deaths caused by nuclear energy, including uran production. That number raises fast as well.

Uranium mines used to be bad. In most present mines the amount of radon miners inhale is no higher than you risk in residential housing in areas with high natural occurence of radon. Even if you went back to unventilated mines to kill miners on purpose, it would still cause fewer radiation deaths than fly ash from coal plants, before even factoring in the other major causes of death from coal plants.

> Third: I never mentioned coal. Bashing against coal is a typical defence strategy of the nuclear industry, and something I see again and again repeated on HN. It's a very weak strategy imo: It is an obvious strawman, and many people who are against nuclear energy are also against coal.

It is relevant because power plants do not exist in isolation. If you shut down nuclear, it needs to be replaced. None of the alternative we currently have for base load are as safe as nuclear. So if you shut down nuclear plants over fears about them, odds are your replacement generation load will kill far more people. And a lot of places the goto replacement is still coal or oil/gas, which are some of the worst.

Stoking fears over nuclear is outright immoral, given the consequences such fears have already had. E.g. the nuclear phaseout in Germany has resulted in continued use of coal at much higher levels than otherwise, to the extent that assuming lethality quivalent to US levels, the phaseout has likely already killed several magnitudes as many as all nuclear accidents combined, on top of the environmental effects.

⬐ onli

Actually, the coal thing in Germany is interesting. As a consequence of the end of nuclear energy they did construct new coal plants, against the protests of the very people that wanted the Atomausstieg. But the funny thing is that those new coal plants can't be properly used today, because they are just too expensive. Energy prices fell that low, thanks to green energy sources, that those new coal plants are not profitable anymore.

Sucks for the cities and energy companies that backed them, but is a win for society as a whole.

⬐ vidarh

Even without those new plants, Germany's dependence on coal has been substantially extended in time. And it's not just Germany - the shutdown has also affected Germany's ability to export electricity, and so increased other countries depdency on more dangerous means of generation.

The death toll from Germany's shutdown is likely to be in the tens of thousands before the baseload capacity is fully replaced by safer alternativs.

⬐ maxerickson

That energy accident table could really use a row for utility solar.

edit: No, it's not out of wack, it's just that one uses trillion kilowatt hours and one uses terawatt hours. Oops.

It's also hugely out of wack with this article:

http://www.nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energ...

Do we trust that article and it's many sources or the basically unsourced Forbes article Wikipedia relies on (https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-d... )

It doesn't matter a great deal for the comparison, both articles point to many less deaths from nuclear.

⬐ _ph_

Well, obviously, if the regions are evacuated generously, then indeed the health impact by radiation should be close to zero. Do you have any data on how large the health impact would have been without an evacuation? Of course, it is a very difficult to have precise impact numbers of radiation when we are speaking about effects talking place on the scale of decades, but we unfortunately have enough experience that the accepted safety levels are based on reasonable research.

⬐ mpweiher

It now looks like a smaller evacuation zone would have been beneficial in the case of Chernobyl, and the same probably goes for Fukushima.

We are overcautious as to the effects of the radiation, and undercautious as to the effects of the evacuation etc., as the data gathered over the decades around Chernobyl shows. Look at the WHO reports over the decades, each one downgrades the previous estimate of the radiation effects.

> the accepted safety levels are based on reasonable research.

That's apparently not the case. As others have suggested look up the LNT model and its criticism in light of (a) how it was derived and (b) data that strongly contradicts it.

⬐ Diederich

> It now looks like a smaller evacuation zone would have been beneficial in the case of Chernobyl, and the same probably goes for Fukushima.

BIG TIME citation needed. See my other post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13829400

Again, I'm going on about Chernobyl, not Fukushima. A lot of people received pretty high doses in the former case, and the results have been pretty terrible.

⬐ mpweiher

Hmm...I did give citations, the WHO reports among many others. Where are yours?

> I'm going on about Chernobyl, not Fukushima.

Yes, and the WHO reports clearly state in unequivocal terms that the mental health effects were the most serious effects.

Note that this does not mean "there were no effects and people were just imagining things". No, it means that there were significant effects, just the the most significant effects were mental health related, which then caused other negative outcomes.

And I'd agree with you that Chernobyl was much more significant than Fukushima, which means that the relationship between actual radiation effects and other (mental health etc.) effects is going to be even more lopsided in Fukushima.

⬐ Diederich

> citations ... among many others.

I must have missed non-WHO citations about how the mental health impact of the Chernobyl disaster was greater than the actual physical affect.

For many people in Belarus, Chernobyl was a very real, very physical health disaster.

> Where are yours?

Linked in the article I linked. Google trivially returns all kinds of well-documented health impacts in Belarus and neighboring areas.

Also, as reported, an eye-witness account of the suffering that Chernobyl brought to so many people.

⬐ mpweiher

> Linked in the article I linked.

Except the article says nothing of the sort. In fact, it explicitly states in the first paragraph that we don't know what the cause of those birth defects is.

> eye-witness account of the suffering that Chernobyl brought

Once again, you seem to miss the point: the point is not whether or not there was suffering, but what the biggest causes of the suffering was. And once again, the WHO concludes that the biggest cause of suffering were (sometimes severe) mental health effects (which can cause physical suffering).

Also there were external effects such as the fall of the Soviet Union and the consequences of that. For example, life expectancy of Russian men dropped by ~10 years in the late 1980s and 1990s. Not due to radiation, but mostly due to alcohol (due to psycho-social/mental health effects).

⬐ Diederich

Disclosure: I am and have long been very pro nuclear power.

My wife lived near Chojniki, Belarus, for a number of months in 1996.

I skimmed the WHO evaluation you linked, and, unless it has some context I'm not aware of, it just doesn't jive with the actual impact, on the ground, near Chernobyl.

A quick link: http://www.businessinsider.com/birth-defects-related-to-cher...

From that article: "A study by UNICEF suggested that more than 20% of adolescent children in Belarus suffer from disabilities caused by birth defects."

In her time there, 10 years after the disaster, she witnessed many gross birth defects in children, and very many cancers in children and adults.

I hesitate to bring anecdotes up as anything like a refutation to a formal and proper report from the WHO, but it's clear that something is missing.

I'd like to note that, in terms of acute human exposure, there's no comparison between Fukushima and Chernobyl.

> Also, the health impact of fairly low radiation dosages is effectively unknown to date, but data from the Chernobyl incident keeps correcting the effect downward every 10 years.

Citation needed, though you did mention 'low radiation doses'. That's the thing: a whole lot of people received a pretty stiff dose from Chernobyl. Perhaps the health impact of low doses isn't well understood, but that's not the case with much higher doses.

⬐ mpweiher

> WHO report doesn't agree with actual impact

Hmm...so you think the WHO report is lying? Or did you misread it?

> Business-insider

Hmm...this is the first paragraph of that Business Insider article: "The scientific debate is ongoing over whether congenital birth defects can be linked to radiation from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster that happened 30 years ago this month."

So on the one hand you have the WHO saying something backed by 30 years of observation and analysis of the data, and you contradict that with a Business Insider article saying "we don't know".

I think that one thing you are missing is that radiation is not the only or even primary cause of birth defects or cancer. This is one of the things the WHO reports dig into. For example, roughly and from memory, the economic/psycho-social situation brought on a strong increase in alcoholism, which increases the chance of cancer and birth defects.

So once again, saying that the mental health problems exceed the (direct) radiation problems is no way of saying that there are no problem. It is saying that the mental health problems were sometimes severe and in any case exceeded the problems directly attributable to radiation.

> Citation needed, though you did mention 'low radiation doses'.

The WHO site has reports roughly every ten years after the accident. Each time they downgrade the estimate for radiation effects. Once again, that does not mean there are no radiation effects. I have other references in my other comments.

Also, yes, this is for low dosages. If you were in the crew that went into the reactor core you were a walking corpse, immediately.

⬐ oftenwrong

Why is this interesting? Wild boars in Japan are common in areas where there are few people because they are generally scared of people. If you come across one in the forest, most likely it will run away from you.

⬐ arippberger

They're gonna end up with some real-life Princess Mononoke demon boars.

⬐ ctack

DNA damage from radiation could potentially affect future generations of boars.

⬐ kristianov

What's scarier than wild boars are radioactive wild boars.

⬐ hinkley

The Princess Mononoke scenario.

⬐ nallerooth

I bet the boars planned this from the very beginning! ;-)

⬐ emodendroket

Smarter than the average boar, you might say.

⬐ _ph_

You meant it as a funny statement, but it is actually true. Here in Bavaria, we actually have too many wild boars in the forests, but hunting them for meat is limited by the fact that they are still partially contaminated by the radiation left from the Chernobyl disaster. So about 1 out of 3 animals shot have to be destroyed.

⬐ None

None

⬐ tasuki

Wild boars in Bavaria contaminated by radiation from Chernobyl? Do you have any citations/links?

⬐ sabertoothed

Not OP but German as well. Can confirm statement.

Sources are easy to find but are mostly in German, e.g.

https://www.welt.de/wissenschaft/umwelt/article139797061/Geh...

http://www.faz.net/aktuell/gesellschaft/tschernobyl-folgen-r...

http://www.umweltinstitut.org/themen/radioaktivitaet/tschern...

⬐ tasuki

Genau - danke schoen :)

⬐ vidarh

Same with sheep and reindeer in Norway, and I'm sure other animals elsewhere.

The problem is not direct exposure, but that the prevailing winds carried various radioactive particles to large parts of Northern Europe.

These particles gets sucked up by plants and mushrooms over time, and depending on weather conditions and other food supplies and type of animals, the concentration of radioactivity in these animals can vary greatly from year to year.

It's not harmless, but all it means is you need to check certain types of animals and plants from certain regions before eating them.

The radioactivity itself is not a problem, but some of these particles will bio-accumulate, and so while e.g. picking some mushrooms or plants may be mostly harmless, eating lots of meat with lots of accumulated radioactive material will concentrate it further, and keep irradiating you from the inside, which increases the risk substantially.

⬐ vixen99

In view of its geographical proximity, eating wild boar meat in Romania sounds even more risky. Are all carcasses checked for radiation? I have my doubts.

⬐ phreanix

How do you determine which ones are good to eat? Geiger counter?

⬐ phreanix

How do you determine which ones are good to eat? Geiger counter?

⬐ vermontdevil

Same if you hunt near Oak Ridge. I recall seeing signs there that ask you to bring hunted deer for radioactivity checkups.

Found this blog about statistics from that area: http://knoxblogs.com/atomiccity/2008/11/27/checking_out_hot_...

⬐ zeristor

I think the bigger issue here is why have these radio nuclides escaped into the environment?

Has there been an incident, a fire? Have these been dumped, or leaked into the water?

Surely this shouldn't be happening.

⬐ vidarh

Oak Ridge held the uranium separation facility for the Manhattan project, and also held materials storage, at a time when standards were rather more lax.

⬐ Lasher

Aren't radioactive wild boars (or rats) the first enemy you encounter on pretty much every post apocalyptic video game ever? Funny how things turn out...

⬐ jlebrech

Maybe we should relocate endangered species to Fukushima or Chernobyl.

Noone's going to buy a radioactive tusk.

⬐ maxerickson

I think lots of people would buy radioactive tusk, often because they wouldn't even know it was radioactive.

⬐ jlebrech

and the rumours will do the rest of the work.

⬐ maxerickson

It won't be all that radioactive so there won't really be rumors.

⬐ Sunset

They would deserve it.

⬐ mholmes680

Isn't this just nature trying her best to redistribute the radiation threat? Or does radiation not work that way?

⬐ andygates

That's remarkably goal-orientated for a bunch of competing randomness. No, it's just that wildlife doesn't care about moderate contamination, doesn't especially care about stillbirths and birth defects, won't sue and can't be kept out.

⬐ mholmes680

I was only being half-flippant - maybe there's a better way to leverage this situation. Alas, tho, I don't have one.

⬐ marze

Did anyone see a measurement on just how radioactive the boars are?

⬐ btreecat

Can we name one Bebop?

⬐ MrFantastic

Do you want orks? Because that's how we get orcs.

⬐ n00b101

Or Bebop [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bebop_and_Rocksteady

⬐ None

None

⬐ rodionos

There was a report on Chernobyl the other day. Apparently, the nature there is experiencing a renaissance of sorts with a measurable growth both in biodiversity as well as in the sheer number of species, including endangered ones.

For animal world, the radiation is the lesser of two evils, the first one being humans.

Here's a BBC article: http://www.bbc.com/russian/science/2015/02/150205_ukraine_ch...

It's in Russian, but the pictures are telling if you can't read it.

⬐ eriknstr

Are those wild horses? If so then that's awesome. Also, Lynx are great, happy to see them too.

⬐ rimantas

In case you will be able to see this comment: these are https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Przewalski%27s_horse

⬐ rimliu

Those are https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Przewalski%27s_horse brought there in the nineties.

⬐ perilunar

My first thought after reading about the wildlife around Chernobyl many years ago was that Greenpeace or similar groups should arrange 'accidental' radiation spills in threatened environments. Good for a few decades of protection.

⬐ fusiongyro

It's worth remembering that hundreds of thousands of people's work and billions of dollars have been spent trying to reduce the surface radiation levels around Chernobyl. A huge amount of earth was moved to bury surface radiation. Chernobyl 01:23:40 goes into a lot of detail about the sheer scale of work that was poured into the cleanup project.

It's easy to get romantic about nature, animals, biodiversity etc. but if that work had not been done the situation today would be a lot less inspiring.

⬐ M_Grey

The only difference is the time-frame. Almost anything in history short of massive asteroid impacts has been less destructive than humanity.

⬐ fusiongyro

Your depression has nothing to do with my comment.

⬐ jcoffland

Humans have also created a lot. Domestic animal breeds for example. Nature left to it's own devices does not always do better than it does under the stewardship of humans. A garden is a simple example.

⬐ M_Grey

"Better" means nothing in this context anyway. Domestic breeds do not "do better" in some global sense either... often they do much worse on their own. You need to trim a horse or sheep's hooves. You need to check them for parasites. They need vaccines and antibiotics, and a tailored diet.

They're great for what we bred them for... live fat, die young... they're terrible in the wild. When you see pigs in the wild, they rapidly return to "boar" states, and lose those lovely "piggy" qualities you see on a small farm. Corn is great... for us. Without us, it all dies and can't reproduce alone.

A garden isn't our creation, it's our specific modification to suit our specific needs. It serves only us, and those forms of life which can adapt to us. It's also wildly artificial, requiring chemicals, or constant attention to achieve the "garden" state. A tulip is only "better" in a garden because it's one of the organisms we permit to live in the garden. Obviously the dandelions are much "better" overall though, because given a month alone it will be their garden, and not the tulips'.

⬐ jcoffland

> "Better" means nothing in this context anyway.

By that argument neither does "worse".

⬐ Arizhel

The radiation levels near Chernobyl probably aren't that bad anyway; if you lived there, you could probably expect to die of cancer 2-3 decades earlier than normal, I'm guessing. So expect to die at 40-55 maybe. For modern humans, that doesn't sound all that appealing, so we stay away.

But animals don't live that long in the wild typically anyway, and tend to reproduce fairly quickly. So dying of cancer in middle-age probably isn't all that noticeable to them, because they're probably going to die by then anyway, or either accident or predation or (non-radiation-related) disease.

⬐ AstralStorm

2-3x is likely an overestimate. That may be a good estimate for people who actually lived at the time of the incident, but not for anyone living there today.

⬐ vanattab

Is that even a good estimate for people living in the city at the time? I don't think so, maybe for people in the immediate vicinity.

⬐ sbarre

Only slightly related is the excellent Arkady Renko novel Wolves Eat Dogs which is partly set in the Chernobyl exclusion zone (and touches on the wolves that have taken over that area):

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

Also, there was a great episode of Nature of PBS about this too:

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/radioactive-wolves-introducti...