In every situation where they’ve occurred, it’s taken longer and cost more than anticipated, and the point here is that this enormously expensive disaster could have been 10x worse if not for a lucky coincidence. There is certainly bias, but there’s also a whole lot of “refuse to acknowledge reality”.Ĭertainly, there is a cost/benefit to compare, but really, bluntly, we’re shit at cleaning up nuclear disasters.

And that 40 years delay was still foolish regardless.

Maybe renewables can do it now in the 20s, but the experience in places like Germany is that they are cheaper but also less effective at maintaining a comfortable society.

It is unfortunate that there was a decision make to test how much stress the margins of society can take rather than making a break for cheap energy in the 80s, 90s, 00s and 10s. The western powers are facing a serious energy crisis because as a body politic there was an insistence on choosing technology ideologically rather than using practical concerns. Even if there is risk of a $10 trillion disaster, once assessing the upside nuclear is still going to be a contender for the best possible form of energy.Īs might have been predicted, Japan struggled for a few years then admitted that having electricity justifies taking some rational risks and is working to undo the damage caused by post-Fukushima overreaction.

This continued focus on cost rather than cost-benefit must be some sort of cognitive bias because it makes no sense. Is it right to ignore the cost of the evacuation of Tokyo, merely because an unplanned flow of water saved us? What if we assume the maximum cost of a nuclear event is not $1 trillion for the Fukushima we lived, but $10 trillion for the Fukushima we escaped

Fallout shelter wiki nuclear reactor