Air pollution is hugely, hugely costly. It kills thousands a year in the US alone and way more than that globally.I don't think Chernobyl or Fukashima are relevant to the US nuclear industry with its complex regulations. TMI happened 45 years ago and was not exactly catastrophic. Taken as a whole, the US nuclear industry and its governing regulations have an excellent safety record. ANd we're not the only ones. France has 55 reactors, most for 50+ years, and has never had a single accident.
When you compare the net impact of nuclear since the 1950's to the burning of fossil fuels, fossil fuels have caused at least 2 orders of magnitude more deaths.
TMI was hours or less away from being a much bigger deal.I don't think Chernobyl or Fukashima are relevant to the US nuclear industry with its complex regulations. TMI happened 45 years ago and was not exactly catastrophic. Taken as a whole, the US nuclear industry and its governing regulations have an excellent safety record. ANd we're not the only ones. France has 55 reactors, most for 50+ years, and has never had a single accident.
When you compare the net impact of nuclear since the 1950's to the burning of fossil fuels, fossil fuels have caused at least 2 orders of magnitude more deaths.
Yeah, generally killing hundreds due to one mistake or error gets more attention than killing one. As it should. The philosophy of higher consequences need lower probability of failure is why air travel has gotten so much safer.Air pollution is hugely, hugely costly. It kills thousands a year in the US alone and way more than that globally.
Nuclear vs. fossil fuels is like the plane crash vs. car crash phenomenon. Statistically car travel is way less safe than plane travel yet the big plane crashes are the ones everyone remembers.
If you're talking about US commercial aviation then driving is vastly, vastly worse. Essentially for US commercial aviation the passenger death risk from crashes is zero (last commercial aviation crash was in 2009). It's 1.1 per 100 million highway miles as per BTS. (2015 most recent year available)Yeah, generally killing hundreds due to one mistake or error gets more attention than killing one. As it should. The philosophy of higher consequences need lower probability of failure is why air travel has gotten so much safer.
Car fatality rates also aren't that high, there is just a shit ton of driving in this country, so it seems like a lot. Again because people are bad at probabilities. Car fatality are about 12.5 deaths per billion miles, or approximately 375 per billion hours. I don't have all the numbers in front of me, but this likely isn't much worse than commercial aviation.
Also, we have driven a ton of safety features into cars over the last couple decades.
I wasn't only comparing to US commercial aviation. And there have been US fatalities since 2009 in aviation.If you're talking about US commercial aviation then driving is vastly, vastly worse. Essentially for US commercial aviation the passenger death risk from crashes is zero (last commercial aviation crash was in 2009). It's 1.1 per 100 million highway miles as per BTS. (2015 most recent year available)
This was my point though - I think the average person considers flying to be less safe than driving due to the publicity behind crashes despite the fact that this is manifestly not the case.
Edit - I think the same is the case with nuclear. People think it is unsafe because of some high profile accidents but it has killed a lot fewer people than fossil fuels.
I did provide you with verification though?I wasn't only comparing to US commercial aviation. And there have been US fatalities since 2009 in aviation.
I'm absolutely not saying flying is less safe than cars, I'm saying people have been using that same expression for 30 years without any verification. From a fatality rate standpoint, driving is not orders of magnitude less safe than aviation, especially not to the point that your risk is lower on a multi hour flight than a 15 minute drive to the airport.
1.1 deathes per 100M miles is actually less than the rate I said of 12.5 per billion miles.
TMI was hours or less away from being a much bigger deal.
The problem with these debates is that people fundamentally have little understanding of probability, especially with regards to risk severity. The 737Max has a better accident rate than US nuclear power.
Aircraft that must be analyzed to have no catastrophic single point failures and no multipoint catastrophic failures with a rate more than 1 in a billion flight hours still crash. Aircraft use the same fault tree analysis techniques developed by the NRC for nuclear power plants. When you do this analysis it becomes clear that you can not eliminate the risk, only push the probability below acceptable levels. What is the acceptable probably of wiping out a large part of the US and associated watersheds? While remembering the same method that said the 737Max MCAS couldn't result in a catastrophic accident is what is used for these plants.
The idea that the safety record of 100 reactors in the US or 55 in France proves a major accident will never occur is a bad use of probability. The comparison to fossil fuels is like saying conventional weapons have killed many orders of magnitude more people than nuclear weapons, so we shouldn't worry about nukes.
I was a big supporter of nuclear power for a long time, but between becoming trained in safety engineering and learning more about the accidents that did happen and how close they were to being much worse I've lost faith humans can operate it error free over the long term. I am very much excited about new nuclear power technologies that might have far lower consequences of failure.
To me the people more casual about human life would be the ones who opt for the power generation method that kills more people.Logic says to itself that logic is best. That does not answer the question of what logic is. One kind of logic looks at the risks and concludes that because reactors are safe they should be built. Another form of logic looks at the risks and the consequences of an accident anyway and concludes the risk though minimal, is owing to potential consequences still just too great.
Some people don’t calculate. They just have a moral instinct that creating poisons that remain deadly for thousands of years and have yet to be, so called, safely stored with all the same risks as the reactors themselves, just looks like insanity. I think most mothers have similar instinctive feelings. Men are more willing to be casual about human life than women it seems. This forum is like nerd city in that respect, in my opinion, lots of brains and low on intuitive feelings. It’s like looking at things through a telescope logically with the intellect and looking down the other end emotionally.
I think the biggest impediment here is that people do not realize just how bad air pollution is.I didn't say a major accident will never occur. I'm working off risk analysis exactly as you said. The long history of no serious accidents in both those countries suggests it is an improbable occurence. Yet even if it happens, and we end up with 35K deaths which was basically the result in Chernobyl, we've had 10's of millions die from inhaling smoke particulates from fossil fuel emissions. And the results from Chernobyl have not had the long term consquences predicted. The radiation levels even in the nearest town are at livable levels and have been at least since the early 90's.
Those 10's of millions of deaths from cancer and COPD aren't even taking account of climate change. Any serious look at risk analysis will tell you that nuclear is way less risk in the longrun, orders of magnitude less. The problem with this particular risk fixation is it isn't only based on the association with nuclear weapons. It's also based on the risk stemming from terrible accidents, which always garner more attention and fear than silent killers like air pollution. We simply aren't rational in the way we evaluate and compare risks.
Logic says to itself that logic is best. That does not answer the question of what logic is. One kind of logic looks at the risks and concludes that because reactors are safe they should be built. Another form of logic looks at the risks and the consequences of an accident anyway and concludes the risk though minimal, is owing to potential consequences still just too great.
So using real numbers:I did provide you with verification though?
I would agree that non-commercial aviation is not so much more safe (less safe?) but when people are talking about flying just about everyone is talking about flying commercial.
It is hard to quantify the flight vs. the 15 minute drive to the airport in recent years as the flight number is literally zero but regardless I think the idea that flying is much safer than driving is well founded.
And again this relates to the topic at hand. I think the average person would be more afraid of living next to a nuclear power plant than a coal power plant despite the coal one being way more likely to kill you.
The purpose of travel is to cross distances though, not count hours spent sitting in something, so miles travelled is the important thing here. Cars are much more dangerous because if I’m trying to go from A->B I am much more likely to die driving there than in a plane. I am willing to accept the possibility that for short flights the risks could be more comparable but people don’t usually use planes for that. (As the very large majority of airplane accidents occur during takeoff or landing)So using real numbers:
From 2012 to 2021 there have been 1,743 fatalities in commercial aviation (per Boeing) and 584.4 Million Flight hours, this works out to a falaty rate of 2,982.5 fatalities per 1 Billion flight hours. As opposed to cars that are at about 375 per billion driving hours. Yes this is worldwide aviation versus US auto, but the point stands, the idea that cars are so so much more dangerous than airplanes is because people don't sit down and do the math to realize there are vastly more hours in a car than an airplane.
I never said anything about non-commercial aviation, these numbers only include Part 121 and 135 operations.
I would personally much rather live by a nuke plant than a coal plant. As the risk of a small consequence (me haing health problems from pollution, contaminated water supply, etc) is much higher. At a state level though, that is different has a nuke plant has some probability of taking out a large chunk of your state while a coal plant have zero probability of doing so.
Chernobyl could've been much worse if the soviet union hadn't ordered people, like the miners, to give up their life to prevent the situation from getting worse. I seriously doubt that would happen in the US. So you could end up contaminating a large watershed with a meltdown.I didn't say a major accident will never occur. I'm working off risk analysis exactly as you said. The long history of no serious accidents in both those countries suggests it is an improbable occurence. Yet even if it happens, and we end up with 35K deaths which was basically the result in Chernobyl, we've had 10's of millions die from inhaling smoke particulates from fossil fuel emissions. And the results from Chernobyl have not had the long term consquences predicted. The radiation levels even in the nearest town are at livable levels and have been at least since the early 90's.
Those 10's of millions of deaths from cancer and COPD aren't even taking account of climate change. Any serious look at risk analysis will tell you that nuclear is way less risk in the longrun, orders of magnitude less. The problem with this particular risk fixation is it isn't only based on the association with nuclear weapons. It's also based on the risk stemming from terrible accidents, which always garner more attention and fear than silent killers like air pollution. We simply aren't rational in the way we evaluate and compare risks.
I literally never ever ever said that nuclear caused more death than fossil fuels. I said the consequence of failure is potentially much much higher.The purpose of travel is to cross distances though, not count hours spent sitting in something, so miles travelled is the important thing here. Cars are much more dangerous because if I’m trying to go from A->B I am much more likely to die driving there than in a plane. I am willing to accept the possibility that for short flights the risks could be more comparable but people don’t usually use planes for that. (As the very large majority of airplane accidents occur during takeoff or landing)
That’s the thing here. The math for flying and nuclear are both clear and they cause fewer deaths than their counterparts.
You didn’t though. The data shows I am correct.As to what metric to use I picked the most widely used one because it’s simple and clear. As per wiki car travel is ~750x more dangerous than air travel in the US.I literally never ever ever said that nuclear caused more death than fossil fuels. I said the consequence of failure is potentially much much higher.
I love how you claim "the math" shows the exact opposite of what I just showed the math shows, though. Long live tried cliches from a time before airbags. Maybe we should do it by "trips" because every trip is important, so let's change the denominator to "trips" instead of time or distance, since I really don't care how far I go I am not doing miles for the fun of it, a trip is what is important. I'm guessing cars will massively win that comparison.
Your exposure rate is in hours. Regardless, the original point was that people take aviation safety more seriously because the consequence of a single event is much higher than for auto accidents.You didn’t though. The data shows I am correct.As to what metric to use I picked the most widely used one because it’s simple and clear. As per wiki car travel is ~750x more dangerous than air travel in the US.
I don’t think this is a particularly controversial point. Air travel is safer because we invest an enormous amount of time and money into making it safe and for the vast majority of an air trip the risk of colliding with something is near zero. Of course it’s safer.
I‘m happy that we share an opinion on nuclear power because I agree it’s the one that’s backed up by the math. I think the same is true for air travel.
Your life time chance of death from a car accident is approximately 1/101So using real numbers:
From 2012 to 2021 there have been 1,743 fatalities in commercial aviation (per Boeing) and 584.4 Million Flight hours, this works out to a falaty rate of 2,982.5 fatalities per 1 Billion flight hours. As opposed to cars that are at about 375 per billion driving hours. Yes this is worldwide aviation versus US auto, but the point stands, the idea that cars are so so much more dangerous than airplanes is because people don't sit down and do the math to realize there are vastly more hours in a car than an airplane.
I never said anything about non-commercial aviation, these numbers only include Part 121 and 135 operations.
I would personally much rather live by a nuke plant than a coal plant. As the risk of a small consequence (me haing health problems from pollution, contaminated water supply, etc) is much higher. At a state level though, that is different has a nuke plant has some probability of taking out a large chunk of your state while a coal plant have zero probability of doing so.
For 2 years, I lived approximately 4 miles from the Milestone power plant in Waterford, CT. I thought it would have been decommissioned by now, but, it still lives. As a side note, I was working in the GD, Electric Boat shipyard at the time installing a data acquisition system for the Trident strategic weapons system. One of the guys that worked in our company used to work for RADCON in the shipyard, and the only time their monitors went off is when Milestone was venting. Oops! here's the link.I’m outside the immediate danger zone if something happens at the Pickering nuclear power plant here in the northern Toronto area. Unsure where else we’d get our power from without it with proposed decommissioned of it slated in 2025.
Yeah, you are much more likely to die from things that are done multiple hours a day versus things you do a couple hours a year. I already showed the death rate per hour of US driving is lower than worldwide commercial aviation. In the last decade, per the Boeing stats posted earlier, there have been ~7.3 deaths per million flights. I think you are looking at the flights with a fatality per million flights data, which is obviously not comparable to total deaths per X in cars. My point was, people suck at probability and risk analysis, pointing out that this thing you do all the time is more likely to kill you than this thing you rarely do is an example of that. That is like saying more people die walking around their house than skiing, therefore walking in your house is more dangerous than skiing.Your life time chance of death from a car accident is approximately 1/101
Odds of Dying - Injury Facts
Knowing the odds of dying is the first step in beating them. New 2022 data shows the risks from plane crashes, guns, falls and more.injuryfacts.nsc.org
That source couldn’t calculate the odds of dying in an airline crash because so few happen.
From what I could find the average American flys 1.4 times per year while “airline flyers” fly 3.6 times per year. With the risk found in. 2018 on a different site of 1 death per 4.2M flights the lifetime risk (assuming 70 years of flying ) of simply being on flight where a death occurs would be 1/16,667
This site shows the European nuclear industry to have a lifetime risk of 1 in 61,000 dying from nuclear power - similar to wind and solar.
Nuclear Energy
Explore global data on nuclear energy production and the safety of nuclear technologies.ourworldindata.org
To me the people more casual about human life would be the ones who opt for the power generation method that kills more people.
There is a right and wrong answer here though. It comes when you compare the risks of nuclear reactors to the well documented risks of burning fossil fuels. Then realize that every reactor not built is x more oil, NG and/or coal being burned. If we had enough solar panels and wind turbines to put down in the next 5 years so as to reduce carbon emissions to zero, then I'd agree. But we do not.
I don't see any way for logic to dictate against nuclear unless you're just looking at the risks in a vacuum. It's going to take us a lot longer to reach zero emissions if we're waiting for enough solar, wind and geo to do it all for us.