<story><title>After 48 years, Democrats endorse nuclear energy in platform</title><url>https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertbryce/2020/08/23/after-48-years-democrats-endorse-nuclear-energy-in-platform/#3c7687df5829</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tbenst</author><text>I’m continuously baffled by those that claim that nuclear power is safe. Look at Fukushima for example. It seems hard to imagine a nuclear power plant design, even Gen III or IV that would be immune to &lt;i&gt;any&lt;/i&gt; possible natural disaster.&lt;p&gt;Analysis of nuclear power should take into account Black Swan events: no matter how well designed, some fraction of plants will cause INES Level 7 disasters. If the resulting cost (ie $100s of billions for cleanup), environmental damage, and health impacts are still less than wind or solar, I’m all for it, but pro-nuclear arguments continuously give the tired argument that with new designs “this time is different.”</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Lazare</author><text>&amp;gt; I’m continuously baffled by those that claim that nuclear power is safe.&lt;p&gt;Nuclear power is &lt;i&gt;relatively&lt;/i&gt; safe. Nothing is 100% safe. Rooftop solar actually has a surprisingly high fatality rate from &lt;i&gt;installers falling off of roofs&lt;/i&gt;! Fossil fuels release horrible byproducts into the atmosphere, hydro sometimes causes floods...everything has drawbacks.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Analysis of nuclear power should take into account Black Swan events&lt;p&gt;Quite right. Analysis of &lt;i&gt;all&lt;/i&gt; power options should take into account black swan events (eg, a hydro dam failure taking out a city), but they should also do the reverse, and take into account the normal risks of operations. A coal power plant is subject to any particularly terrible catastrophic failure modes, but every day it operates it spews out a &lt;i&gt;lot&lt;/i&gt; of carcinogens.&lt;p&gt;Imagine a system that kills 5k people once every 20 years, versus a system that kills 1 person a day. You end up with scary headlines about the first one, but the second one kills significantly more people over time.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; pro-nuclear arguments continuously give the tired argument that with new designs “this time is different.”&lt;p&gt;The pro-nuclear arguments I have seen are much more conservative than that. They point out, correctly, that &lt;i&gt;even counting Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima&lt;/i&gt;, nuclear energy is relatively safe. If the future ends up safer than the past that would be a bonus, but the past has been shockingly safe.&lt;p&gt;Coal kills around 13k people every single year in the US alone. How many people have died due to nuclear power in the US in the entire history of nuclear energy?</text></comment>
<story><title>After 48 years, Democrats endorse nuclear energy in platform</title><url>https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertbryce/2020/08/23/after-48-years-democrats-endorse-nuclear-energy-in-platform/#3c7687df5829</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tbenst</author><text>I’m continuously baffled by those that claim that nuclear power is safe. Look at Fukushima for example. It seems hard to imagine a nuclear power plant design, even Gen III or IV that would be immune to &lt;i&gt;any&lt;/i&gt; possible natural disaster.&lt;p&gt;Analysis of nuclear power should take into account Black Swan events: no matter how well designed, some fraction of plants will cause INES Level 7 disasters. If the resulting cost (ie $100s of billions for cleanup), environmental damage, and health impacts are still less than wind or solar, I’m all for it, but pro-nuclear arguments continuously give the tired argument that with new designs “this time is different.”</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>etrautmann</author><text>Yes, and even when you consider those costs, it pales in comparison to the lives lost and negative externalities of coal, oil, and gas usage. These include climate change, particulate pollution, environmental release of mercury, devastation of vast swaths of the environment worldwide, and other factors that may be hard to quantify but negatively impactful.</text></comment>