Nuclear startup Oklo gets thumbs-down from regulators

Re:Nuclear startup Oklo gets thumbs-down from regulators by throwaway894345 on Friday January 14, 2022 @02:51PM (#29939426)

This is pretty straightforward survivorship bias, i.e., you don't hear about the astronomically low-probability scenarios which don't result in real-world catastrophes (consider every building, bridge, etc which hasn't collapsed).

We have to balance that against the millions of annual fossil fuel deaths (tens of thousands die each year just in the US and just due to coal pollution https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-other-reason-...) and the cliff toward which climate science tells us we're careening.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Nuclear startup Oklo gets thumbs-down from regulators by RandomBK on Friday January 14, 2022 @08:42PM (#29942773)

Survivorship bias may explain why these events are so vivid in people's minds, but when the bar is that _there should be no survivors at all_ (i.e. no catastrophes), the fact that there _are_ survivors with which to form a bias is in and of itself a concern.

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Re:Nuclear startup Oklo gets thumbs-down from regulators by throwaway894345 on Friday January 14, 2022 @11:39PM (#29943597)

It’s a concern which must be weighed against the alternative. In the case of nuclear vs fossil fuels, it’s millions of annual deaths in the near term (air pollution) and much more with climate change.

[ Parent | on HN ]