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This isn't very useful information. I'm sure Chernobyl and Fukushima have released more radioactivity than every coal fired plant that has ever been or ever wi

This isn't very useful information. I'm sure Chernobyl and Fukushima have released more radioactivity than every coal fired plant that has ever been or ever will be.

_jal 9y ago
...So, if I told you the number of deaths per year due to car assembly accidents, you'd call it not useful, because car crashes cause way more deaths? To be clear, my suggestion would be to google "category error".
astrodust 9y ago
There are a lot of coal plants that constantly emit a lot of waste into the atmosphere. Nuclear events are, thankfully, quite rare and have been largely contained. Plus, as bad as radioactive incidents can be, they don't affect the climate. Once the radiation dies down or is mitigated through clean-up efforts there will be no lasting impact on the world. In other words, with the right insurance policy you can recover from a disaster. Hiroshima and Nagasakia were both deliberately targeted by nuclear weapons and are still inhabited. Cleaning up the mess can be expensive, but it's not impossible. Cleaning up the mess made by a coal plant is basically impossible, the effects are too far reaching.
- tibarun 9y ago
  https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/09/fukushima-nuclear-cleanup-falters-six-years-after-tsunami https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/09/fukushima-nucl... Seriously? "Expensive but not impossible"?
  - astrodust 9y ago
    There's a huge difference between cleaning up the surrounding landscape and dealing with the broken reactors themselves. Eventually we'll figure out how to fix those. Nothing an X-Prize contest or two can't help address if things get truly desperate. I'd take a contaminated room any day over a whole planet slowly cooking itself to death.
    - coldtea 9y ago
      >Nothing an X-Prize contest or two can't help address if things get truly desperate. Yeah, because technology advances magically if you will it enough...
      - astrodust 9y ago
        We have a number of commercial space-flight companies now and a dozen self-driving car platforms that work quite well. Neither of these really existed before their respective X-Prize type challenges.
wonderwonder 9y ago
The difference is that there was a focused effort to cleanup after those disasters. Coal plants dump tons of ash into the environment on a daily basis with only lax regulation. Coal ash is intentionally not regulated as toxic waste due to politics rather as simply solid waste. Thus it builds up in our ground water and atmosphere with no warnings and little community notification.
InclinedPlane 9y ago
More people have died from design failures, mishandling, and, in fact, normal operations of non-nuclear power generation facilities than nuclear plants, including the Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters. If a gas pipeline explodes what is the conclusion? If a dam breaches and kills thousands, what is the conclusion? If a coal plant kills thousands even when it's working correctly, what is the conclusion?
dotancohen 9y ago
You think that you are sure, but you are wrong. The numbers are found a few posts above.

This isn't very useful information. I'm sure Chernobyl and Fukushima have released more radioactivity than every coal fired plant that has ever been or ever will be.

_jal 9y ago

...So, if I told you the number of deaths per year due to car assembly accidents, you'd call it not useful, because car crashes cause way more deaths? To be clear, my suggestion would be to google "category error".

astrodust 9y ago

There are a lot of coal plants that constantly emit a lot of waste into the atmosphere. Nuclear events are, thankfully, quite rare and have been largely contained. Plus, as bad as radioactive incidents can be, they don't affect the climate. Once the radiation dies down or is mitigated through clean-up efforts there will be no lasting impact on the world. In other words, with the right insurance policy you can recover from a disaster. Hiroshima and Nagasakia were both deliberately targeted by nuclear weapons and are still inhabited. Cleaning up the mess can be expensive, but it's not impossible. Cleaning up the mess made by a coal plant is basically impossible, the effects are too far reaching.

tibarun 9y ago
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/09/fukushima-nuclear-cleanup-falters-six-years-after-tsunami https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/09/fukushima-nucl... Seriously? "Expensive but not impossible"?
- astrodust 9y ago
  There's a huge difference between cleaning up the surrounding landscape and dealing with the broken reactors themselves. Eventually we'll figure out how to fix those. Nothing an X-Prize contest or two can't help address if things get truly desperate. I'd take a contaminated room any day over a whole planet slowly cooking itself to death.
  - coldtea 9y ago
    >Nothing an X-Prize contest or two can't help address if things get truly desperate. Yeah, because technology advances magically if you will it enough...
    - astrodust 9y ago
      We have a number of commercial space-flight companies now and a dozen self-driving car platforms that work quite well. Neither of these really existed before their respective X-Prize type challenges.

wonderwonder 9y ago

The difference is that there was a focused effort to cleanup after those disasters. Coal plants dump tons of ash into the environment on a daily basis with only lax regulation. Coal ash is intentionally not regulated as toxic waste due to politics rather as simply solid waste. Thus it builds up in our ground water and atmosphere with no warnings and little community notification.

InclinedPlane 9y ago

More people have died from design failures, mishandling, and, in fact, normal operations of non-nuclear power generation facilities than nuclear plants, including the Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters. If a gas pipeline explodes what is the conclusion? If a dam breaches and kills thousands, what is the conclusion? If a coal plant kills thousands even when it's working correctly, what is the conclusion?

dotancohen 9y ago

You think that you are sure, but you are wrong. The numbers are found a few posts above.