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porridgeraisin 2 days ago

What sort of nonsense statistic is fatalities per watt hour?

People agree with fatalities per hour of travel because it makes sense. If you're a really frequent flyer, you are more likely to die. In nuclear, I don't give a crap how many watt hour the plant 1000km away from me is generating, I don't want it to affect me. I am however OK with the plant next door affecting me, because I have a say in that. I can choose to live elsewhere.

Someone mentioned rooftop solar causing more deaths. If my rooftop solar falls on my head, only I die.

You can't just reduce everything to aggregate statistics. The relationship and proximity of the affected to the thing that causes the accident also matters.

> Coal

Yes, but the miners die, and only his family face the consequences. Some unrelated guy 50km away doesn't. BIG difference.

Now, modern nuclear plants have way better containment, and e.g I advocate heavily for SMRs [1]. But the fear of nuclear pre-SMR is completely justified and correct as I argued above.

[1] I suppose practically, the ones with 10km radius are also OK. Gen III I think? That is a reasonable region to tell people "if you live here, you might have to evacuate and you might be screwed". Any system with a zone beyond that should always be opposed.