Worst Nuclear Accidents in History

What Hacker News said

Strong rec dijit · 2021-02 · on “The World’s Aging Dams”

This reminds me of a video I watched, just 6 days ago[0]. The video goes into detail about how deadly each of our energy gathering methods are. It also goes into detail about how many are killed per kWh. I had no idea hydro was as deadly as it is before this video, I highly recommend anyone with 10 minutes to spare give it a watch. The channel is incredibly great in general. [0]: [this video]

Strong rec 0xTJ · 2021-04 · on “Japan decides to release water from Fukushima plant into sea”

I really find it gross the extent to which fear mongering over nuclear happens. Countries decommissioning nuclear plants to switch to coal, which kill far more people, even scaling by use. Instead of using a source of power that's overall incredibly safe, and which produces relatively small amounts of highly manageable waste, people have pushed to switch to these incredibly environmentally harmful power sources. This is especially surprising from countries like Germany that, as someone who doesn't live anywhere near them, see them as technically adept. My province in Canada got 60% of our power in 2018 from nuclear (plus 1/4 from hydro), and a different province got 95% of theirs from hydro,

Recommends piplikoc · 2021-03 · on “Why Nuclear Must Be Part Of The Energy Solution (2018)”

Yes, there were a lot of deaths from these nuclear disasters, they were horrible, we should have avoided them. But nuclear energy is still much less deadly than fossil fuels. Air pollution-caused diseases are lung cancer and stroke for example. I think nuclear plants have become much safer and there is more international regulation to maintain their safety. I recommend this excellent video on this topic from Kurzgesagt: [this video]

Recommends michaelbarton · 2021-03 · on “Nuclear power must be well regulated, not ditched”

Did a control-F for "kurzgesagt" and saw that it had not been mentioned yet. I really recommend watching this short video which gives a really excellent overview of the dangers of nuclear power in the context of the alternatives. The TLDW is even if a very pessimistic estimate of the dangers of nuclear power is still much better than a very optimistic take on the dangers of fossil fuels once you combine the effects of air pollution and climate change. That includes both Chernobyl and Fukushima. [this video]

Recommends Mrdarknezz · 2021-03 · on “Nuclear power must be well regulated, not ditched”

Mining and shipping is required for all forms of energy. Of course it's gonna be per twh because that is the only way to measure that makes any sense. Kurzgesagt has a great video explaining everything here: [this video]

Recommends wlpu · 2021-03 · on “Nuclear technology’s role in the world’s energy supply is shrinking”

So much anti nuclear absolutism I recommend watching this [this video] for a pragmatic lense Fossil fuels, even temporary, kills several magnitudes more people than nuclear

Recommends Wowfunhappy · 2022-03 · on “NY energy grid: Real-time dashboard”

Will you be factoring in the healthcare costs associated with burning more diesel and natural gas? (Not even getting into the externalities of climate change.) --- I thought Kurzgesagt did a pretty good job of breaking this down: [this video] . Basically, no matter how you look at it, nuclear is among the safest forms of energy we have, behind only solar, wind, and hydropower. Admittedly, deaths ≠ costs, but I imagine the numbers would be similar.

Cites Wowfunhappy · 2021-02 · on “Activists who embrace nuclear power”

It's worth noting that, even taking second-order effects into account, the total number of deaths from nuclear accidents is actually quite low compared to other methods of generating electricity. [this video] Nuclear seems more dangerous for the same reason planes seem more dangerous than cars—when something goes wrong, it's a big news event.