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Worst Nuclear Accidents in History

Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell · 10.9M views · 2021-02-02 · 9:13

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Overview

Kurzgesagt compares how many people nuclear accidents have killed against other energy sources. It walks through the worst nuclear accidents and puts their death tolls in context per unit of energy.

On Hacker News

HN uses it as a short, well-sourced overview showing that fossil fuels kill far more people than nuclear power.

Recommended by 7 HN people across 4 months · HN mentions 2021–2023

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What people said

0xTJ · 2021-04 · Strong recommendation

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, but then that's offset by other provinces that get 90% of theirs from natural gas and coal. Sure not every place is ideally suited for a lot of nuclear (though hopefully SMRs will help), but 90% is too high. We need less fossil fuels and more nuclear to bridge the gap to more renewables. For an interesting comparison of the deaths from nuclear energy, compared to other sources, I highly recommend "How Many People Did Nuclear Energy Kill? Nuclear Death Toll" [1]. [1] [VIDEO]

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dijit · 2021-02 · Strong recommendation

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]: [VIDEO]

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Wowfunhappy · 2022-03 · Recommendation

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: [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.

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Video by Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell, played through YouTube.

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