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The other poster doesn't know how many people will die from the meltdown especially since there's no agreement on estimating Chernobyl deaths. The pro-nuclear

by 2AF3 10y ago

The other poster doesn't know how many people will die from the meltdown especially since there's no agreement on estimating Chernobyl deaths. The pro-nuclear crowd proudly boasts the number is zero which I don't believe, the plant manager died of radiation as many of the sailors on the USS Reagan, which brings the total up from zero.

vidarh 10y ago
A reasonable boundary on excess deaths can be identified by taking the number of cancers and adjust for pre-fukushima cancer rates. There's no reason to under-estimate it - even with absolute worst case estimates based on past experience from Chernobyl etc., nuclear comes favourably out in terms of health effects / deaths per unit of energy. The biggest harm that Fukushima might do would be to reduce investment in nuclear vs. more harmful power plants like coal (which incidentally releases more radioactive material every few years than every nuclear accident combined), or hydro (dam accidents have killed shocking numbers of people). Even rooftop solar (people fall off roofs, and since each installation on average produces so little, the numbers add up; larger purpose built solar installations are as far as I know far safer)
- 2AF3 10y ago
  Not all radioactive material is created equal. I would read an article about how dangerous the coal plant radioactive material if anyone knows of one.
  - vidarh 10y ago
    Here [1]. Fly ash from coal plants tends to contain concentrated amounts of uranium and thorium. In countries with stringent enough regulation, the biggest problem is disposal of the fly ash - other place the problem also include substantial amounts being pumped into the atmosphere, and overall coal ends up killing a lot of people. Note that this is not just radiation but also heart attacks and respiratory problems. E.g. here [2] are numbers claiming deaths from US coal fired plants alone (which are by no means the worst ones) kill 13,000 people in the US every year. [1] http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste/ http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-r... [2] http://www.rmi.org/RFGraph-health_effects_from_US_power_plant_emissions http://www.rmi.org/RFGraph-health_effects_from_US_power_plan...
  - opo 10y ago
    >...A 1978 paper from Oak Ridge National Laboratory estimated that coal-fired power plants of that time may contribute a whole-body committed dose of 19 µSv/a to their immediate neighbours in a 500 m radius.[46] The United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation's 1988 report estimated the committed dose 1 km away to be 20 µSv/a for older plants or 1 µSv/a for newer plants with improved fly ash capture, but was unable to confirm these numbers by test. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_the_coal_industry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_the_co... But really the radioactive emissions from coal plants (and the exposure through their unmonitored waste piles) is really an insignificant danger compared to the air pollution problems where tens of thousands of people are killed each year from burning coal. The mercury emissions are also helping to poison the oceans and the CO2 emissions are also a big cause of climate change.
    - Gibbon1 10y ago
      Problem citing a 1978 paper on coal power plant emissions is the emissions controls that have been added over the last 40 years. And of course the ancient plants that have been closed down. Bonus, coal is going away and soon[1]. [1] We're fast reaching the tipping point where the global elites are getting scared of global warming.
      - opo 10y ago
        >Problem citing a 1978 paper on coal power plant emissions is the emissions controls that have been added over the last 40 years. And of course the ancient plants that have been closed down. The transuranic elements in coal will either by emitted through the stack or kept in unmonitored piles of waste which might leach not water supplies. The reason there likely isn't much research into doses from radiation from coal plants is that it is the very least of the problems with using coal as an energy source. The deaths from air pollution alone will be orders of magnitude greater than any possible deaths from radiation exposure. >... Bonus, coal is going away and soon[1]. Well I guess that depends on how one defines "soon". Hopefully someday coal will be priced to cover its externalities since stopping the use of coal would literally save millions of lives. Unfortunately that hasn't happened yet - whether the use of coal ends soon enough to stop environmental catastrophe isn't clear yet. Currently coal provides about 40% of world power and it is actually still slowly increasing: >...With government policies and incentives promoting the use of nonfossil energy sources in many countries, renewable energy is the world’s fastest-growing source of energy, at an average rate of 2.6%/year, while nuclear energy use increases by 2.3%/year, and natural gas use increases by 1.9%/year (Figure 1-5). Coal is the world’s slowest growing form of energy in the Reference case, at an average rate of 0.6%/year (compared with an average increase of 1.4%/year in total world energy demand). http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/ieo/world.cfm http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/ieo/world.cfm
ChuckMcM 10y ago
Except we do, we know that it is likely nobody will die from the meltdown. We know that because we have 30 years of Ukrainian data and we can see that there was no measurable increase in cancers or cancer related deaths from people in the surrounding area. Human beings have grown up in a "radiation rich" environment in the form of background radiation from natural sources. We have evolved many mechanisms to deal with that. We don't have enough experience or data to precisely know how much radiation you can be exposed to before your body's natural defense mechanism is compromised but after Chernobyl and Fukishima we know that it is a lot higher than the levels experienced outside the fences of the facilities. We know that by studying people who have experienced the exposure. That is the same reason we know a lot about how quickly people can be killed by coal dust, or arsenic, or any number of heavy metals that fall out of the sky when you you live down wind (or down stream) of a coal fired power plant. We have documented the thousands of people who have died and gotten sick from unfiltered coal stacks and we have created regulations that prevent that from happening in the future. Sometimes it means that a coal fired plant has to close (because it is too expensive to retrofit scrubbers to the output) and sometimes it means the cost of your power goes up as retrofit costs are passed on to the consumers.
- jellicle 10y ago
  > We know that because we have 30 years of Ukrainian data and we can see that there was no measurable increase in cancers or cancer related deaths from people in the surrounding area. What? There is plenty of evidence of increased cancer in the surrounding area. https://www.cancer.gov/news-events/press-releases/2011/ChernobylRadiation https://www.cancer.gov/news-events/press-releases/2011/Chern... http://chernobyl.cancer.gov http://chernobyl.cancer.gov http://www.unscear.org/unscear/en/chernobyl.html http://www.unscear.org/unscear/en/chernobyl.html Note that many of the rosy assessments are about people who weren't really affected. If you live in France, you got a little radiation from Chernobyl, but not enough to measurably affect your health. That's good! It's reassuring to most of the population of Europe! But the health impact on people local to the event who got significantly more radiation exposure is far from zero. We should also keep in mind that the country receiving the most fallout, Belarus, is a dictatorship that is essentially a black hole of public health data and does not report radiation problems.

by 2AF3 10y ago

vidarh 10y ago

A reasonable boundary on excess deaths can be identified by taking the number of cancers and adjust for pre-fukushima cancer rates. There's no reason to under-estimate it - even with absolute worst case estimates based on past experience from Chernobyl etc., nuclear comes favourably out in terms of health effects / deaths per unit of energy. The biggest harm that Fukushima might do would be to reduce investment in nuclear vs. more harmful power plants like coal (which incidentally releases more radioactive material every few years than every nuclear accident combined), or hydro (dam accidents have killed shocking numbers of people). Even rooftop solar (people fall off roofs, and since each installation on average produces so little, the numbers add up; larger purpose built solar installations are as far as I know far safer)

2AF3 10y ago
Not all radioactive material is created equal. I would read an article about how dangerous the coal plant radioactive material if anyone knows of one.
- vidarh 10y ago
  Here [1]. Fly ash from coal plants tends to contain concentrated amounts of uranium and thorium. In countries with stringent enough regulation, the biggest problem is disposal of the fly ash - other place the problem also include substantial amounts being pumped into the atmosphere, and overall coal ends up killing a lot of people. Note that this is not just radiation but also heart attacks and respiratory problems. E.g. here [2] are numbers claiming deaths from US coal fired plants alone (which are by no means the worst ones) kill 13,000 people in the US every year. [1] http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste/ http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-r... [2] http://www.rmi.org/RFGraph-health_effects_from_US_power_plant_emissions http://www.rmi.org/RFGraph-health_effects_from_US_power_plan...
- opo 10y ago
  >...A 1978 paper from Oak Ridge National Laboratory estimated that coal-fired power plants of that time may contribute a whole-body committed dose of 19 µSv/a to their immediate neighbours in a 500 m radius.[46] The United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation's 1988 report estimated the committed dose 1 km away to be 20 µSv/a for older plants or 1 µSv/a for newer plants with improved fly ash capture, but was unable to confirm these numbers by test. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_the_coal_industry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_the_co... But really the radioactive emissions from coal plants (and the exposure through their unmonitored waste piles) is really an insignificant danger compared to the air pollution problems where tens of thousands of people are killed each year from burning coal. The mercury emissions are also helping to poison the oceans and the CO2 emissions are also a big cause of climate change.
  - Gibbon1 10y ago
    Problem citing a 1978 paper on coal power plant emissions is the emissions controls that have been added over the last 40 years. And of course the ancient plants that have been closed down. Bonus, coal is going away and soon[1]. [1] We're fast reaching the tipping point where the global elites are getting scared of global warming.
    - opo 10y ago
      >Problem citing a 1978 paper on coal power plant emissions is the emissions controls that have been added over the last 40 years. And of course the ancient plants that have been closed down. The transuranic elements in coal will either by emitted through the stack or kept in unmonitored piles of waste which might leach not water supplies. The reason there likely isn't much research into doses from radiation from coal plants is that it is the very least of the problems with using coal as an energy source. The deaths from air pollution alone will be orders of magnitude greater than any possible deaths from radiation exposure. >... Bonus, coal is going away and soon[1]. Well I guess that depends on how one defines "soon". Hopefully someday coal will be priced to cover its externalities since stopping the use of coal would literally save millions of lives. Unfortunately that hasn't happened yet - whether the use of coal ends soon enough to stop environmental catastrophe isn't clear yet. Currently coal provides about 40% of world power and it is actually still slowly increasing: >...With government policies and incentives promoting the use of nonfossil energy sources in many countries, renewable energy is the world’s fastest-growing source of energy, at an average rate of 2.6%/year, while nuclear energy use increases by 2.3%/year, and natural gas use increases by 1.9%/year (Figure 1-5). Coal is the world’s slowest growing form of energy in the Reference case, at an average rate of 0.6%/year (compared with an average increase of 1.4%/year in total world energy demand). http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/ieo/world.cfm http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/ieo/world.cfm

ChuckMcM 10y ago

Except we do, we know that it is likely nobody will die from the meltdown. We know that because we have 30 years of Ukrainian data and we can see that there was no measurable increase in cancers or cancer related deaths from people in the surrounding area. Human beings have grown up in a "radiation rich" environment in the form of background radiation from natural sources. We have evolved many mechanisms to deal with that. We don't have enough experience or data to precisely know how much radiation you can be exposed to before your body's natural defense mechanism is compromised but after Chernobyl and Fukishima we know that it is a lot higher than the levels experienced outside the fences of the facilities. We know that by studying people who have experienced the exposure. That is the same reason we know a lot about how quickly people can be killed by coal dust, or arsenic, or any number of heavy metals that fall out of the sky when you you live down wind (or down stream) of a coal fired power plant. We have documented the thousands of people who have died and gotten sick from unfiltered coal stacks and we have created regulations that prevent that from happening in the future. Sometimes it means that a coal fired plant has to close (because it is too expensive to retrofit scrubbers to the output) and sometimes it means the cost of your power goes up as retrofit costs are passed on to the consumers.

jellicle 10y ago
> We know that because we have 30 years of Ukrainian data and we can see that there was no measurable increase in cancers or cancer related deaths from people in the surrounding area. What? There is plenty of evidence of increased cancer in the surrounding area. https://www.cancer.gov/news-events/press-releases/2011/ChernobylRadiation https://www.cancer.gov/news-events/press-releases/2011/Chern... http://chernobyl.cancer.gov http://chernobyl.cancer.gov http://www.unscear.org/unscear/en/chernobyl.html http://www.unscear.org/unscear/en/chernobyl.html Note that many of the rosy assessments are about people who weren't really affected. If you live in France, you got a little radiation from Chernobyl, but not enough to measurably affect your health. That's good! It's reassuring to most of the population of Europe! But the health impact on people local to the event who got significantly more radiation exposure is far from zero. We should also keep in mind that the country receiving the most fallout, Belarus, is a dictatorship that is essentially a black hole of public health data and does not report radiation problems.