> The first thing human beings did after discovering nuclear energy was use it for mass murder

this is nothing but FUD designed to evoke a connection to death. technology isn't responsible for what its used for, and any negative past uses in no way preclude future beneficial uses.

even if you don't like nuclear you should be ashamed of saying things like this.

> I don't know how anybody can believe the resistance to nuclear is purely out of ignorance

because antinuclear arguments look like yours.

Please don't post in the flamewar style to HN, regardless of how wrong someone else is or you feel they are. It leads to repetitive, tedious, nasty discussion. We don't want that here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I'm sorry, but the history of WW2 is not "FUD". You can't just scream "FUD!" at anything to instantly dismiss it.

And we're still making nuclear weapons. That is a connection to death, they're used to kill people. I'm against that personally.

And I'm not even anti nuclear power, I'm certainly support it more than petroleum. I just realize why people are skeptical of nuclear too.

Although nuclear bombs were the major threat deployed in the war, nuclear power in vessels is the major actually-used application for the technology in the military.

Nuclear power and a general surplus of energy might have prevented WWII altogether. The era of nuclear and fossil fuels has been remarkably peaceful and prosperous. It is prudent to preserve as much of that as possible.

But pretty much everything is connected to death. Computers are used for missile-targeting systems, but also for Wikipedia. I'd argue that anyone that's skeptical of computers in all their uses is missing the forest for the trees.

Does nuclear fission not produce produce incredibly toxic substances, both during mining the resources and from operating?

My computer isn't doing that at the moment, these are such bad analogies...

And I'm skeptical of gasoline-powered vehicles "in all their uses" for the same reason. It's sane to be skeptical of things that could potentially poison you. Why do I have to explain this?

> It's sane to be skeptical of things that could potentially poison you.

Kidney beans can potentially poison you. Salad can potentially poison you. Nutmeg can potentially poison you.

It's fine to be skeptical, yes. But if they have strong merits, abstaining solely based on their potential downsides is irrational.

Taking a stance of weighing the upsides and downsides and deciding that the upsides aren't worth it is fine. Saying "there are downsides" and using that as a basis for rejection is just silly, as that's true of basically everything you'll ever interact with.

The toxicity of nuclear waste does not even begin to compare with kidney beans. I'm not sure why you're making that analogy, but it's a bit absurd to me.

It's like there's a conscious tactic to compare nuclear power to things people consider harmless.

You're also lecturing me about properly weighing in on upsides and downsides, but you just compared it to salad!

> The toxicity of nuclear waste does not even begin to compare with kidney beans. I'm not sure why you're making that analogy, but it's a bit absurd to me.

Canned kidney beans (and other canned foods) are linked with botulism, which is literally one of the most toxic substances to humans. The absurdity of the argument is exactly the point, though. You aren't against canned food (despite botulism killing roughly the same number of people as nuclear accidents in the same timeframe), because it has obvious upsides. The same reasoning should be afforded to other areas too, including nuclear power.

> It's like there's a conscious tactic to compare nuclear power to things people consider harmless.

This is literally my exact tactic, yes. Not to convince you that nuclear is harmless, but to point out that the same criteria should be used. You already consider the aforementioned items harmless, despite their obvious upsides and everyday use and their potentially harmful downsides. The same line of reasoning should be used in both cases.

It's absolutely fine if you say "Kidney beans downsides don't outweigh their upsides, nuclear power's downsides do outweigh its upsides." That's applying the same reasoning to both. However, the logic of "Nuclear power is linked to death, so it is bad" is just as rational as "Canned food is linked to death, so it is bad". Which is, as you say, a bit absurd.

> You're also lecturing me about properly weighing in on upsides and downsides, but you just compared it to salad!

To be totally clear, the point of the analogy is not to convince you that nuclear waste and salad are the same. It is to convince you that the cost-benefit analysis is the same between everyday things like beans and salad, all the way to totally different areas like nuclear power or skydiving or using a computer.

e.g. for salad the risk is very low of death, and the benefits are super high. Salad gets the green light.

Internal-combustion engines allow for a great deal of commerce and personal travel, but they also cause a lot of pollution. Should we ban them, and only let people with EVs or bikes drive? (The same thought process should apply here)

Nuclear power has downsides (nuclear waste), but it also has upsides (Small-footprint, CO2-free energy). I don't care if people weigh those sides and disagree that it's a good option. I care if they look at the downsides and determine that it's bad based solely on those (just as I would in every other decision/policy-making process).

If you could cook the toxicity out of nuclear waste on stovetop, then you'd have a good argument.

Simply because botulism and nuclear accidents kill roughly the same number of people (depending on the time period chosen) does not address the issue of nuclear waste. It's a good way of distracting from it though...

I think we're going around in circles, my only objection is with the line of reasoning that a "connection to death" can be sufficient to reasonably discount something. I'll try to outline my good-faith understanding of where we disagree.

My argument: Support for a choice or policy should be made by one's evaluations of both its upsides and downsides. Something with big downsides could still be okay if its upsides are substantially bigger. It is irrational to make a choice based only on either the upsides or downsides of a choice. This approach should be applicable to all kinds of situations, from boring everyday ones to global policy ones.

My understanding of your argument: Support for a choice or policy can be rational based on only its upside or its downside, so long as its upside or downside is sufficient enough in magnitude. While comparing upsides and downsides might work in some scenarios (e.g. everyday scenarios, foods), it might not work in bigger-scale scenarios, such as the situation of what to do with highly toxic nuclear waste.

If that's where our disagreement does lie, I'm happy to chock it up to a difference in opinion. If I'm misunderstanding your position, that's definitely not my intent.

> My computer isn't doing that at the moment

Your computer was produced using all green energy, using eco-friendly manufacturing with resources that are mined in sustainable ways? Wow, it must have cost a fortune.

This argument makes it seem like you're fine with people being poisoned as long as it's somewhere else.

> It's sane to be skeptical of things that could potentially poison you. Why do I have to explain this?

Would you say we are poisoning ourselves by blasting carbon into the air? I would. And by that metric, it obviously makes sense to look at the alternatives, and it seems to me that nuclear is currently the least-poisonous way to power our collective needs. Solar just cannot do it. Maybe on a bright sunny day it can! But it's not always bright and sunny, sometimes it's night or it's cloudy. So you need to overproduce, and store the energy somewhere. Where is it stored? According to 90% of the solar advocates here, in batteries filled with poison, that are produced using poisonous manufacturing.

Solar and other renewables are not as "clean" as we'd like to think, and they also are just not up to the task yet. Nuclear is.

I get that you're not anti-nuclear, but maybe this is some ammo you can use when you're arguing for it.

I made sure to specify "at the moment" as I'm well aware of the consequences of mining the resources to produce both computers and nuclear energy. I was trying to avoid this exact conversation.

I'd be dead if my computer was producing anything comparable to nuclear fission at the moment.

Also, I've lived off grid on solar power for over a year, I'm well aware of what it's like.

> The first thing human beings did after discovering nuclear energy was use it for mass murder, and we're still using it to create weapons.

Unlike fire, which of course has never been used to kill anybody.

Unlike fertilizer, which of course gas never been used to kill anybody.

(FWIW it isn't hard to argue that fertilizer has saved more lives than any other technology. But nitrates are also how you make bombs...)

For those who find this a bit too obscure Fritz Haber [0] - one of the people heavily involved in the development of the fertiliser revolution - was also a leading mind in the German gas warfare effort.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_Haber#World_War_I

Actually I think they just mean that ammonium nitrate is rather explosive

Eh. Fertiliser was distressingly closely linked to a weapons program used for one of the archetypal mass murders.

If they didn't mean that, they accidentally made an excellent comparison. Humans will attempt to weaponise everything and generally succeed. List of technologies deployed in war to kill people include:

* Architecture * Physics * Maths * Positive emotions * Fertiliser * Horses * GPS * Drones

The key point here is just because people make bombs using nuclear tech really doesn't set it very far apart from everything else. Solar power will be used to support war and atrocities, somehow. Military men are inventive.

I actually was going with the nitrates because I thought Fritz would be too obscure and not in line with the pattern established above. The breakthrough from Fritz furthered the ability to create nitrates in mass and pack more nitrogen to molecules, thus making things more explosive.

I'm glad Fritz was brought up though because it really shows how complicated science is and why when doing it we have to think hard about the ethics. As I said before, it isn't hard to argue that Fritz saved more human lives than any other single person in the entire history, even if we make it a percentage. But he is also known as the father of chemical warfare (he developed and weaponized chlorine gas). It is easy to call him a hero. It is easy to call him a villain. Truth is much more complicated. And while we're talking about nuclear I think this conversation is extremely important. Cheap nuclear power plants (which would require significant research and funding, and a modification of bureaucracy) could change the world but the same technology has created some of the most destructive weapons we've ever seen.

> Solar power will be used to support war and atrocities, somehow.

Without these a lot of satellites wouldn't operate. The reason we have a Space Force isn't because Trump, it is because our space assets are so valuable that it was necessary to break them out of the Air Force (as has happened with other branches). This is where a significant amount of the intelligence comes from. Information is arguably one of the most valuable components in warfare, arguably more important than actual man power.

> unlike fire

> unlike fertilizers

Yes, we all know that there are lots of things that can kill lots of humans, we could add cars, or fast food to the list. The difference is that hamburguers only explode in your arteries, not wipe an entire city burning everybody alive, and don't create billionary debt in the process for everybody and for decades.

So, can we forget whataboutism and keep moving on?

Banning all fire or all fertilizers is out of the discussion (we could make exceptions for arsonists or bomb makers, but this is not a problem). We can't do it without killing half of the human population by hunger or freezing and would not solve anything.

> not wipe an entire city burning everybody alive, and don't create billionary debt in the process for everybody and for decades.

Like chlorine gas? Land mines? Phosphorous weapons? Sarin?

Yes, like chlorine gas, land mines, phosphorus weapons, sarin and tigers. You got it. Exactly like those. Those things are dangerous.

And this is why everybody thinks that planning to build a net of small containers of chlorine gas or sarin in every neighborhood, or having phosphorus weapons and land mines at our backyards and in our children's room, would be an incredibly stupid idea.

Are we hording fire in such a way that we can wipe out most of the human population? There's a big difference here...

> and we're still using it to create weapons.

Not sure why this is down voted, it's only true. Uncomfortable truth I guess?

You're not allowed to criticize nuclear power here. You're either pro-nuclear or ignorant, there's no middle ground. It's not this incredibly complex subject with various positives and negatives.

And don't mind nuclear waste or nuclear weapons...