We've had Chernobyl where the core was fully exposed and recently-high-power radionuclides were aerosolize by a graphite fire and the people in nearby population centers were not quickly evacuated nor given iodine tablets nor told to not drink the milk, and by the UN consensus study UNSCEAR (parallel to IPCC) showed that 60 first heroic responders died from acute radiation syndrome and "up to 4000" will die of early cancers, on top of a population where millions would die from cancer naturally (small increase). In later revisions, they refused to even give a number [1] due to uncertainties associated with the conservative linear no-threshold model.

Also: the operation error and design flaws at Chernobyl were astounding [2].

Then we had Fukushima, where an earthquake trigggered an automatic shutdown of the reactors, which worked great. Then the tsunami knocked out the backup cooling generators and decay heat melted fuel and released nuclides through an in-tact reactor vessel to the atmosphere. Multiple meltdowns. What does UNSCEAR have to say? 0 deaths from radiation. Some sources say "up to 1 death from radiation".

I think it's really, really hard to postulate millions dying from nuclear.

4 million die per year from air pollution due to non-nuclear energy [3].

[1] https://www.unscear.org/docs/reports/2008/09-86753_Report_20...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_accident#Accident

[3] https://www.who.int/airpollution/en/

Air pollution causes 4.2 million deaths a year.[1]

From the data in this link, we can infer that historically this adds up to 467 times nuclear.

[1] https://www.who.int/gho/phe/outdoor_air_pollution/burden_tex...

>One could imagine a nuclear accident where millions die.

I can't. Care to share?

The post is irresponsibly spreading fear based on imagination.

Sure. A Maximum Credible Accident (the industry term) at Turkey Point (near Miami) or Indian Point (near NYC).

I can see those potentially displacing millions. Can't imagine how millions would die.

How do you evacuate Miami or New York should an MCA occur? Large numbers of people would be irradiated while stuck in traffic.

I can only assume plans exist, otherwise the plants wouldn't be allowed to operate.

Potassium iodide would probably be distributed, which protects against thyroid cancers. Unless there's some gamma/neutron threat from failing plants I'm unaware of, people would probably stay put until they can safely evacuate. Even the inside of a car should be pretty safe.

It would suck, but I can't imagine a million people dying.

No, one couldn't. Chernobyl was a perfect storm of negligence and incompetence and still killed less than 60 people, including fallout cancer deaths. Nuclear reactors are not bombs.

I'm all for nuclear but let's be honest here, many more people died prematurely because of Chernobyl, the nuclear cloud were all over Europe, the thousands of people who were on site to contain the disaster got very high doses of radiation too.

https://ourworldindata.org/what-was-the-death-toll-from-cher...

> In the published estimates below, studies have utilised a methodology termed the 'linear no-threshold model'

The numbers already round to 0 when compared to pretty much any other industrial process we undertake. Then on top of that the model used is the LNT. That model needs extraordinary evidence to support its wild assumptions. I haven't been able to find a source for that evidence yet.

LNT is a paranoid model. Under the LNT, building with granite is killing people through increased radiation. The airplane industry has probably killed more people with radiation under the LNT model than Chernobyl has. We have yet to picket airports for their radiation risk.

The unproovable deaths from Chernobyl may as well be ignored. We don't count that sort of statistical hypothesizing for any other anything that is comparable to building a power plant.

> While there is rough agreement that a total of either 31 or 54 people died from blast trauma or Acute Radiation Syndrome (ARS) as a direct result of the Chernobyl disaster (see § Differing direct, short-term death toll counts), there is considerable debate concerning the accurate number of deaths due to the disaster's long-term health effects, with estimates ranging from 4,000 (per the 2005 and 2006 conclusions of a joint consortium of the United Nations and the governments of Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia), to no fewer than 93,000 (per the conflicting conclusions of various scientific, health, environmental, and survivors' organizations).

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

More like at least 4000 and up to nearly 100000: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_due_to_the_Chernobyl_di...

More like "up to 4000" in a population that would have had millions of cancer deaths says the UN scientist group (like IPCC but for Chernobyl) and nearly 1,000,000 says one whack-job who anti-nukes picked up and pointed at for years.

60 people? The cleanup crew had far more deaths than that.

Nope. It was 60 from short-term ARS, plus "up to 4000" early cancer fatalities over the decades in a population where a few million would get natural cancers anyway. [1]

[1] https://www.unscear.org/docs/reports/2008/09-86753_Report_20...

If you're going to say stuff, please provide credible references. There are some whackjob studies that say 1000000 died from Chernobyl, but they've been discredited by the scientists of the UN working groups. Even Greenpeace doesn't believe that number. UNSCEAR is the Chernobyl equivalent of today's IPCC for climate change.

Sure... Here's one:

https://www.wired.com/story/chernobyl-liquidators-photo-gall...

Wired. The most credible of references.

Questioning one's credulity without any factual basis to discredit the argument at hand is a form of ad hominem attack. I've noticed these are common when the topic of nukes comes up. Everyone who disputes any industry claim is labeled an idiot, a whacko, etc. Not a great debate technique, IMHO.

That's exactly what the climate change deniers say about the IPCC studies. In this case, I am quoting UN groups of scientists and you are throwing up wired articles. There is some level of respect for scientific consensus that we need to have. Certainly, skepticism must be considered, but people who keep throwing up fringe skeptical articles on highly politicized information eventually appear to be lacking good faith.

You have to understand that pro-nuclear people are lambasted with popular culture that's highly anti-nuclear. Simpsons, MacGyver, Captain planet, HBO, Peter Paul and Mary wishing we had more wood stoves, everything. You can see why we might be a little more sensitive to misinformation. We have more work to do to get the science out there.

And I would say that those of us who are equally well informed and still opposed (ie: Arnie Gunderson) also have more work to do to get the truth out there. It's good to live in a place where we have that option.

The fact is that the nuclear industry is dying out all over the world. It's not a fact they want to admit, but still a fact, regardless.

Accidents of the Fukushima level are only ok if they don't affect where you live. Fear of such an event is not irrational, with most of today's plants approaching or exceeding their design lifespans.

Global warming affects everyone regardless of where we live. That's a much bigger existential threat than nuclear accidents. More environmentalists are starting to understand this.

Lots of nukes getting built outside the USA. In USA economics of cheap natural gas are causing closures. This is stupid and should be adjusted by counting carbon as an externality in the market.

Here's another...

http://www.foejapan.org/energy/evt/pdf/121214.pdf

Death is unlikely, but permanent contamination with resulting shortened lifespan and nasty conditions is the risk. Especially birth defects. Doesn't fit neatly into a headline number.

You might be surprised to know that increased birth defects were never detected in the population irradiated by Chernobyl. This is surprising considering the scare-literature that has come out on it, but it turns out if you look you can find birth defects everywhere.

And also, the land is not permanently uninhabitable. You have to postulate that living things have no tolerance above background radiation to say that. But there are lots of reasons to think that's not true at all. For instance, places like Ramsar, Iran have background levels 80x normal and there's no sign of decreased lifespan or other health impacts.

Also, checkout this wildlife around Chernobyl: https://thoughtscapism.com/2019/05/08/what-about-radioactive...

Really?

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-defect-chernobyl/higher-b...

Yes, really. Well, I should clarify that increased birth defects have never been linked to increased radiation. Behold:

"But Wertelecki is keen to point out that the study does not claim that radiation exposure is definitively the cause of the defects. The study lacked data about prenatal drinking and the diet of mothers in the region, he stresses. Both are key to under-standing the causes of the defects as fetal exposure to alcohol and a lack of folates during pregnancy can lead to both types of birth defects.Alcoholism is rife in the Ukraine and generally low standards of living for much of the population also mean diet can be poor. “Alcohol and folates are among the factors involved in certain birth defects. A lack of folates combined with ionizing radiation could multiply the risks of birth defects or at least greatly enhance them. Alcohol is a factor in microcephaly, as ionizing radiation can also be, and combined their effects could be enhanced”, says Weretlecki."

https://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lancet/PIIS0140-6736...

I'm very pleased that they didn't claim direct correlation, as you never can - regardless - it is a possible outcome and that a marked and measurable increase was seen in that area is important. And goes against your statement in the parent comment. Yes a link cannot be proven but birth defects did increase.

"You might be surprised to know that increased birth defects were never detected in the population irradiated by Chernobyl." was what you stated and I've just shown that is not true. The cause is unknown but your statement is provably incorrect.

Sure. I've conceded that birth defects may have gone up. But I've shown that there's no evidence that it's related to radiation, which presumably was the point of your original reply. Birth defects going up because people drank more alcohol as the USSR failed (which is just as or more likely than because of Chernobyl) is irrelevant to this thread.

My personal concern is the waste that we have no way of properly handling and no real plans for.

Give me a proper plan and I'd be fully behind nuclear (well - if it was self funding - currently hugely subsidised and still one of the most expensive ways to make power).

That said - my alternative isn't 'more coal' - it is a combination of renewables and trying to reduce our energy usage. But I know that both of these won't be the breakthrough that we need without cheap storage.

Because of nuclear's high energy density, it's the only energy source that we can account for and store all the waste for the entire lifetime. It is solid ceramic waste that sits in passively cooled steel and concrete containers on parking lots. 3 decades of waste powering a large city fit in a small parking lot. Commercial nuclear waste has never injured anyone. We have consensus technical solutions (deep geologic repository), including one operational repository at WIPP. We just have to get people to stop stonewalling so we can put it in them.

Here's my buddy Jim standing in a parking lot full of decades worth of nuclear waste [1].

The Finns decided to solve their nuclear waste issues and have a repository under construction. [2]

Meanwhile, millions die per year from air pollution and carbon concentration just peaked 415 ppm. I think nuclear waste is honestly a tiny concern compared to those things.

Nuclear operations are not hugely subsidized in the US. They get about 1% of the tax subsidies given to energy sources. They are struggling economically because fracked natural gas pulled the floor out of electricity prices, and nuclear O&M can't just reduce itself with lower fossil prices. In France, where natural gas is more expensive, their nuclear fleet is 20% cheaper than gas.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUvvIzH2W6g

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repo...

You are (purposefully?) confusing spent nuclear fuel and nuclear waste. Many hundreds of thousands or tonnes of HLW are produced each year and also need dealing with.

Long-lived high-level nuclear waste, colloquially known as nuclear waste, as in "but what do you do with the waste" IS spent nuclear fuel. There's also low-level rad waste that goes in special landfills but no one worries too much about that.

This is fission products, actinides, and uranium-238.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste#High-level_w...

There are plans for it, use a next generation reactor that uses waste as fuel. That may take a few decades but it seems the most capitalistic way, and thus the most likely way.

And if solar and wind and storage become cheap enough that the next generation reactors are never needed? Then what?

A plan based on tech which either isn't created or not yet deployable is a little too handwavy for me.

Then we'll be worried about the environmental and economic implications of mining for, manufacturing, maintaining, replacing, and recycling that scale of steel, fiberglass, glass, concrete, rare earths, and 10000 skyscrapers of lithium per USA-sized-country.

Recall that in winter there is 4x less sun, and sometimes the wind doesn't blow for 10 days in a row across massive multi-state regions. The storage implications of that are ludicrous. It's far cheaper to decarbonize with a good mix of variable renewables and nuclear, even with nuclear at its current high price.

We literally do not have time for "few decades". This is why we're building out renewables at the rate we are.

(Also, the breeder reactors only use spent fuel - most "waste" by volume is lower level waste of various kinds. Especially from decommissioning.)

Totally this - I've often seen it stated that all the spent nuclear fuel in the world could fit in a lorry. Great - whoop.

But that ignores the huge amount of other radioactive wastes that are generated each day, and have no 'useful' future ahead of them right now - other than landfill in a 'secure' site.

Totally agree that we need to stop polluting our air and needlessly killing 4 million people a year with emissions - but we really need a realistic plan if we are going to go the nuclear route.

I really could not. Nuclear power stations are not nuclear bombs and current nuclear technology is way safer than those that caused main problems.

Yes, nuclear power stations are safe. But they can lead to nuclear weapons proliferation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_proliferation

> Many UN and US agencies warn that building more nuclear reactors unavoidably increases nuclear proliferation risks.

> Canada sold India the reactor on the condition that the reactor and any by-products would be "employed for peaceful purposes only.". Similarly, the United States sold India heavy water for use in the reactor "only... in connection with research into and the use of atomic energy for peaceful purposes". India, in violation of these agreements, used the Canadian-supplied reactor and American-supplied heavy water to produce plutonium for their first nuclear explosion, Smiling Buddha.