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>You're terrified of a nuclear meltdown, so instead you subject global civilization to decades of unnecessary fossil fuel burning.

It's kind of fair enough to be afraid with a chances of meltdown projected at 1/3704 reactor years:

https://lemielleux.com/what-are-the-chances-of-a-nuclear-pow...

Those odds are why not a single insurance company will insure a nuclear reactor for more than 0.3% the cost of a nuclear disaster.

Speaking of fallacies, your argument squarely falls under the false dilemma fallacy. Nuclear is not the only form of green energy. In fact it is by far the most expensive one as well as the only one that imparts a small chance of catastrophe.

It isnt needed to provide reliable power either. Wind, solar, pumped storage, batteries and demand shaping can, together, do it cheaper:

https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/3539703-no-mi...

https://www.anu.edu.au/news/all-news/anu-finds-530000-potent...



> chances of meltdown projected at 1/3704 reactor years

That is for existing reactors. The point of new designs is to do better:

"The likelihood of core damage due to NuScale reactor equipment failures while at full power conditions is 1 event per module every ~3 Billion Years."

https://www.nuscalepower.com/benefits/safety-features/emerge...


And I'll believe it once the price-anderson cap is eliminated and they can still buy insurance.

Otherwise it's all talk. Manufacturers will always claim on that their product is 99.9% safe.

The closest realistic measure is how much financial liability their insurer is willing to shoulder and at what cost.

Which is still capped at 0.03% of 1 fukushima in the US because the government thinks pushing it any higher would spook them.


That would be progress, but I don't think we'll get there until the new reactors have a proven operational safety record, and enough are built to retire the old reactors.




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