Nuclear technology’s role in the world’s energy supply is shrinking

Re:Nuclear technology’s role in the world’s energy supply is... by kergonath on Tuesday March 09, 2021 @06:59PM (#26406123)

This is pointless. Everything we do kills people. The choice we can make is between something that kills more and something that kills less, amongst other tradeoffs. Quantifying the number of deaths or cancers in this case tells you nothing relevant to make a decision or risk assessment: what are the costs of the alternatives?

The problem with pressurised water reactors is that failure is a very low probability but potentially very large consequences event. The advantage of fossil fuels (for public acceptance) is whilst the risk and the number of deaths are much higher (by a couple of orders of magnitude), the effects are spread out across space and time, and so are easy to ignore in our daily lives.

All this is a tragic misunderstanding of the situation we’re in. Ultimately, 100% renewables is a worthy goal. In the short to long term, shutting down nuclear power plants means burning fossil fuel. Climate is already spiralling out of control. The time to clean up our acts was 50 years ago, and now every decade we spend burning gas, oil, and coal is something we will pay dearly.

So yeah, nuclear is not ideal. It’s still part of the best strategy we have to produce clean energy.

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Re:Nuclear technology’s role in the world’s energy supply is... by Supermancho on Wednesday March 10, 2021 @03:30PM (#26415774)

> The choice we can make is between something that kills more and something that kills less, amongst other tradeoffs.

> Quantifying the number of deaths or cancers in this case tells you nothing relevant to make a decision or risk assessment

The two conflicting viewpoints posited in the same paragraph, seems ironic. The first is the issue, but requires veracity. The second is nonsensical. Humans make these decisions every day.

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Re:Nuclear technology’s role in the world’s energy supply is... by kergonath on Thursday March 11, 2021 @02:16PM (#26427830)

This is not contradictory. If you want to compare two solutions, you need to have a number for both. So in itself a number you assign to nuclear energy is useless (for the purpose of demonstrating that nuclear is either terrible or bad as an energy production source), unless you contrast it with the equivalent for the alternative.

Humans make a lot of stupid decisions rooted in gut feeling and prejudice all the time. A small subset of these decisions involve long-term industrial strategy at a national level or the life of millions of people. For these decisions we ought to do better.

[ Parent | on HN ]