4 ms·

I don't believe in the numbers the nuclear industry publishes. As long as you don't drop dead inside one of their reactors, they don't count nuclear energy as t

by Tepix 8y ago

I don't believe in the numbers the nuclear industry publishes. As long as you don't drop dead inside one of their reactors, they don't count nuclear energy as the reason (not surprising, if i were in their shoes I'd probably do the same). By the way, why are solar panels and wind turbines missing in the list? It's awfully misleading. -- Edit due to downvotes: As an example, here's a study that came to the conclusion that leucemia is twice as common as normal among small children growing up near nuclear plants in Germany: http://doris.bfs.de/jspui/handle/urn:nbn:de:0221-20100317939 http://doris.bfs.de/jspui/handle/urn:nbn:de:0221-20100317939 Why is noone counting the resulting deaths in these statistics for nuclear energy?

DiseasedBadger 8y ago
Do you have any verification for that suspicion? Even coal counts protected deaths from increased cancer rates.
- Tepix 8y ago
  See my other comment. Fukushima has one official dead person from radiation. But what about the 1% increased cancer risk? Has noone dead from this cancer? Is noone going to die from it in the future? The normal rate of Thyroid cancer among children in Japan is 0.35 per 100,000. In Fukushima the rate is now 13.4 children per 100,000. [1] -- [1] http://www.ippnw.de/atomenergie/gesundheit/artikel/de/schilddruesenkrebs-in-fukushima-7-ja.html http://www.ippnw.de/atomenergie/gesundheit/artikel/de/schild...
  - acidburnNSA 8y ago
    Nuclear accidents without iodine pills do indeed increase Thyroid cancers. This is a tragedy. Fortunately, Thyroid cancer these days is almost never fatal, it's totally treatable. However, this still affects the victims lives seriously. The number of kids who get thyroid cancer from nuclear, however, is almost insignificant compared to the number of children who currently die from air pollution, not to mention the ones who will die from CO2 emissions causing global warming. Everything has risks. The risks from nuclear are exceedingly low.
Ensorceled 8y ago
What other deaths due to nuclear energy do you think are missing from the list? Uranium mining?
- Tepix 8y ago
  For one, increased occurances of cancer leading to death. For example the rate of leucemia among small children living near nuclear plants in Germany is twice as high as average (see https://www.bfs.de/DE/bfs/wissenschaft-forschung/ergebnisse/kikk/kikk-studie.html https://www.bfs.de/DE/bfs/wissenschaft-forschung/ergebnisse/... )
  - eMSF 8y ago
    You'd need a solid theory to explain that to assure others it's not just poorly gathered data. Perhaps purposefully so. In any case, the millions of tons of coal that Germany burns instead, thanks to German "greens", will cause a lot more death and suffering.
  - sampo 8y ago
    > the rate of leucemia among small children living near nuclear plants in Germany is twice as high as average Here is a 2013 British study, where kids born in the vicinity of British nuclear power plants, have less leukemia: https://www.nature.com/articles/bjc2013560 https://www.nature.com/articles/bjc2013560 Here is a 2011 article that claims that the 2008 German study did not correct for confounding factors such as socioeconomic status: https://www.nature.com/news/2011/110506/full/news.2011.275.html https://www.nature.com/news/2011/110506/full/news.2011.275.h...
    - acidburnNSA 8y ago
      Exactly. You can confirm a lot of bias looking at noisy data. This is what the Germans did in that study. Germany is very irrationally anti-nuclear. They shut down their nukes after Fukushima and replaced them with burning more coal, killing thousands of people in the process. They mean well but are totally misguided.
lm28469 8y ago
Even if you take the most pessimistic estimate of the worst nuclear accident we experienced (Chernobyl) you top at <100k related death [0]. A far cry from the annual 4+ million death due to outdoor air quality [1]. Outside of direct exposure to radioactive material there isn't much going to kill you. The very big difference is that a functioning nuclear plant doesn't kill people whereas the oil/gas industry kills by default even in the best case scenario. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_due_to_the_Chernobyl_disaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_due_to_the_Chernobyl_di... [1] https://www.who.int/airpollution/en/ https://www.who.int/airpollution/en/
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  If you're gonna talk air quality and radiaton you need to use YPLL (or some other metric that considers age). Wheezing into the grave at 70 or getting cancer at 65 is very different in terms of impact than a 25yo that falls off a roof installing solar or gets run over by heavy equipment in a mine. Of course nobody uses age adjusted metrics because you can't make grandiose "bazillions of lives lost" claims using them.
  - lm28469 8y ago
    The vast majority of people will never encounter any radiation caused by a radioactive plant in their life, so this line of thought doesn't even make sense. > 91% of the world population live in area where air quality exceeds WHO guideline [0] If I had the choice I'd go for a < 0.01% chance of dying of radiation related death over a 100% chance of slowly but surely destroying my respiratory system. And let's be real, accident related deaths are a drop in the bucket. [0] https://www.who.int/airpollution/en/ https://www.who.int/airpollution/en/

by Tepix 8y ago

DiseasedBadger 8y ago

Do you have any verification for that suspicion? Even coal counts protected deaths from increased cancer rates.

Tepix 8y ago
See my other comment. Fukushima has one official dead person from radiation. But what about the 1% increased cancer risk? Has noone dead from this cancer? Is noone going to die from it in the future? The normal rate of Thyroid cancer among children in Japan is 0.35 per 100,000. In Fukushima the rate is now 13.4 children per 100,000. [1] -- [1] http://www.ippnw.de/atomenergie/gesundheit/artikel/de/schilddruesenkrebs-in-fukushima-7-ja.html http://www.ippnw.de/atomenergie/gesundheit/artikel/de/schild...
- acidburnNSA 8y ago
  Nuclear accidents without iodine pills do indeed increase Thyroid cancers. This is a tragedy. Fortunately, Thyroid cancer these days is almost never fatal, it's totally treatable. However, this still affects the victims lives seriously. The number of kids who get thyroid cancer from nuclear, however, is almost insignificant compared to the number of children who currently die from air pollution, not to mention the ones who will die from CO2 emissions causing global warming. Everything has risks. The risks from nuclear are exceedingly low.

Ensorceled 8y ago

What other deaths due to nuclear energy do you think are missing from the list? Uranium mining?

Tepix 8y ago
For one, increased occurances of cancer leading to death. For example the rate of leucemia among small children living near nuclear plants in Germany is twice as high as average (see https://www.bfs.de/DE/bfs/wissenschaft-forschung/ergebnisse/kikk/kikk-studie.html https://www.bfs.de/DE/bfs/wissenschaft-forschung/ergebnisse/... )
- eMSF 8y ago
  You'd need a solid theory to explain that to assure others it's not just poorly gathered data. Perhaps purposefully so. In any case, the millions of tons of coal that Germany burns instead, thanks to German "greens", will cause a lot more death and suffering.
- sampo 8y ago
  > the rate of leucemia among small children living near nuclear plants in Germany is twice as high as average Here is a 2013 British study, where kids born in the vicinity of British nuclear power plants, have less leukemia: https://www.nature.com/articles/bjc2013560 https://www.nature.com/articles/bjc2013560 Here is a 2011 article that claims that the 2008 German study did not correct for confounding factors such as socioeconomic status: https://www.nature.com/news/2011/110506/full/news.2011.275.html https://www.nature.com/news/2011/110506/full/news.2011.275.h...
  - acidburnNSA 8y ago
    Exactly. You can confirm a lot of bias looking at noisy data. This is what the Germans did in that study. Germany is very irrationally anti-nuclear. They shut down their nukes after Fukushima and replaced them with burning more coal, killing thousands of people in the process. They mean well but are totally misguided.

lm28469 8y ago

Even if you take the most pessimistic estimate of the worst nuclear accident we experienced (Chernobyl) you top at <100k related death [0]. A far cry from the annual 4+ million death due to outdoor air quality [1]. Outside of direct exposure to radioactive material there isn't much going to kill you. The very big difference is that a functioning nuclear plant doesn't kill people whereas the oil/gas industry kills by default even in the best case scenario. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_due_to_the_Chernobyl_disaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_due_to_the_Chernobyl_di... [1] https://www.who.int/airpollution/en/ https://www.who.int/airpollution/en/

dsfyu404ed 8y ago
If you're gonna talk air quality and radiaton you need to use YPLL (or some other metric that considers age). Wheezing into the grave at 70 or getting cancer at 65 is very different in terms of impact than a 25yo that falls off a roof installing solar or gets run over by heavy equipment in a mine. Of course nobody uses age adjusted metrics because you can't make grandiose "bazillions of lives lost" claims using them.
- lm28469 8y ago
  The vast majority of people will never encounter any radiation caused by a radioactive plant in their life, so this line of thought doesn't even make sense. > 91% of the world population live in area where air quality exceeds WHO guideline [0] If I had the choice I'd go for a < 0.01% chance of dying of radiation related death over a 100% chance of slowly but surely destroying my respiratory system. And let's be real, accident related deaths are a drop in the bucket. [0] https://www.who.int/airpollution/en/ https://www.who.int/airpollution/en/