I guess we just need omniscient philosopher-kings to tell us ahead of times which safety regulations were actually necessary. Is there R&D into crystal balls?
I am asking you how one determines which regulations are actually necessary. Those of you making this "too much regulation" argument never seem to go into detail on that. Judging by every other industry that has ever existed, this is not a tractable problem -- one determines what regulations are necessary by failing and learning from the experience. With nuclear, how many meltdowns are you willing to tolerate to get this experience?
> I am asking you how one determines which regulations are actually necessary.
This is something that experts need to work out.
> Those of you making this "too much regulation" argument never seem to go into detail on that.
Our arguments don't require us to specify specific regulation to eliminate, it suffices to note that we tolerate tens of thousands of annual deaths due to fossil fuels and we tolerate virtually zero deaths due to nuclear. We can be sure that there are regulations which are onerous for relatively little safety gains, but to your point most of us aren't experts here and can't speak to specific regulations or how they work.
> Judging by every other industry that has ever existed, this is not a tractable problem -- one determines what regulations are necessary by failing and learning from the experience.
Not at all. The number of deaths we're willing to tolerate is a choice, largely one driven by lobbyists. For example, we tolerate tens of thousands of annual fossil fuel deaths, transportation deaths, etc. The only reason we tolerate so few nuclear deaths is because of FUD campaigns.
> With nuclear, how many meltdowns are you willing to tolerate to get this experience?
Well, we could look to our own past experience or the experience of other countries which had extensive nuclear experience and virtually zero meltdowns despite far less regulation.
