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This should be a fairly simple calculation: coal kills a lot more people than nuclear. It has also, over the course of the last 100 years, produced far more nuc

This should be a fairly simple calculation: coal kills a lot more people than nuclear. It has also, over the course of the last 100 years, produced far more nuclear waste exposed to the environment than nuclear power has (including if you normalize for power contribution, etc; the numbers aren't close).

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
pgt 7y ago
Good to know: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more- https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more- radioactive-than-nuclear-waste/ To be clear, I was not defending coal. But I do have to ask over what time period radioactive coal wastes "kills a lot more people than nuclear," because being alive is fatal. I think the variance matters even if the mean is lower.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  Radiation isn’t the only way coal kills people.
- patio11 7y ago
  Coal kills more people than nuclear over all time periods, including nuclear accidents. The numbers are not close. The death toll attributed to coal is down to a historical low of (low-end estimate!) 7,500 people per year in the US.
coldtea 7y ago
>This should be a fairly simple calculation: coal kills a lot more people than nuclear. That's neither here nor there, if it kills them in more accumulated ways, and with less or no chance of mass killing accidents. Cars also hit millions, but we are ok with it, because of the cost/benefit, and the mode that it does so (isolated in different car accidents, etc). If cars were able to kill 20,000 people in a single bad accident, then we'd have found something else instead...
- hoseja 7y ago
  But this is entirely a fault in human thinking that we should strive to overcome.
  - coldtea 7y ago
    I don't think. It's an entirely rational calculation. Absolute death counts are not the be all end all... Spread over time, spread over incident, etc, are all things to also consider.
    - hoseja 7y ago
      But why? The only difference I see is that one is less shocking to humans, makes worse news headlines.
      - coldtea 7y ago
        For the same reason regular cars that kill e.g. 1 in 10,000 in accidents (as we know them), are more acceptable than a design that might be far more safe individually, but when in the (far more seldom case) one blows up, it kills everybody in its 2km periphery. Even if the total death count is the same (or even if its less for the new design), the widespread small scale pattern is more acceptable than sudden mayhem. For one, you could just not get in a car, and avoid recklessly crossing the street in the first case, and you'll be fine. In the other case, in the off chance of a new-car blowing up, it can destroy your whole 5-10 block periphery. I wouldn't accept that...
        icebraining 7y ago
        > For one, you could just not get in a car Yeah, but what's the coal plant equivalent? You can try to avoid living near nuclear plants as well.
        coldtea 7y ago
        >Yeah, but what's the coal plant equivalent? You can try to avoid living near nuclear plants as well And then the wind blows in this or that direction, after an accident, and your 1000 mile away "safe" place gets all kinds of radiation....
akamaka 7y ago
It’s not a simple calculation when people in Japan are still debating what the final cost of the Fukushima disaster will eventually add up to. To do a simple calculation, you need to know the real costs of things, and right now those are unbounded. “Think tank puts cost to address nuke disaster up to 81 trillion yen” http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201903100044.html http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201903100044.html
- ovi256 7y ago
  His point is that coal costs are just as high, if not higher, but we prefer not to think about them that way because it makes us uncomfortable. Just have your pick of examples of this thinking among the comments containing "uncomfortable".
- reacweb 7y ago
  I think the $2.4 trillion of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_cost_of_the_Iraq_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_cost_of_the_Iraq_War is more trustworthy.
feral 7y ago
I'm uncomfortable with this argument. The implied conclusion is that nuclear is safer than coal. That may be true, I don't know. But it's not clear you can argue this from historical data. For comparison, you could argue nuclear weapons are safer than conventional ones, as they have killed fewer people, and that bioweapons are the least dangerous. The issue is whether there is a tail to the distribution of nuclear event impacts (costs or fatalities), which we may not have seen much of empirically yet. It seems hard to address that empirically with nuclear (although you could argue that perhaps the same is true for climate change for coal?)
- pmorici 7y ago
  Coal power plants release radiation into the atmosphere as a matter of routine. If you live near one your radiation exposure is guaranteed to be much hire than if you live near a nuclear power station.
- Cthulhu_ 7y ago
  Facts are that a nuclear power plant can fail catastrophically and its waste is dangerous for 100.000 years. These are easy to explain, and instances of catastrophic failure are known by pretty much everyone. Coal however is a lot more problematic because it's invisible; people are shaken when there's nuclear material leaking out in the water around e.g. Fukushima, but the gradual emission of burning coal waste (33.1 gigatons of CO2 alone; see another comment about coal ash as well) happens unseen. And that's emitted into the air, whereas the (according to wikipedia) 12,000 tonnes of nuclear waste is solid, much easier to keep contained.
  - feral 7y ago
    >instances of catastrophic failure are known by pretty much everyone. I don't think anyone says we've seen the worst possible failures of nuclear plants. As an extreme example, what if some crazy terrorist deliberately blows one or several up attempting to maximize damage? How bad would that be? How frequently does this occur? I guess my point is that if there's real risks of that magnitude, they are just as invisible as coal radiation.
cletus 7y ago
> coal kills a lot more people than nuclear. There's so many problems with this statement I barely know where to begin. 1. Are we talking total or per kWH of generated power? 2. "Deaths" is a questionable measure. One should look at the environmental impact of digging up, processing (enriching in the case of nuclear), transporting and the storage of byproducts from processing (eg UrF6) as well as spent fuel. 3. Here's the important one: you need to look at failure modes. Coal plants pollute but they also do it very slowly and no coal plant has ever blown up to the point where it's made 1000 square miles of land uninhabitable for decades (to compare, the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone is 1000 square miles). 4. Coal vs nuclear is a straw man argument. Coal is terrible. Everyone knows this. Coal is becoming the power source for the developing world as it is naturally dying in the developed world, being replaced by renewables and fossil fuels that while not great, are at least better than coal (eg natural gas). 5. How many of the externalities of nuclear power aren't factored into the price? Like the cost of storage and clean ups. These seem to be borne by governments not the companies profiting from the power (of course, some nuclear power in some countries is state-owned and run; depending on the country I'm not sure if this is better or worse). Personally I find the apologism on HN about nuclear to be disingenuous, exhausting and naive.
- empath75 7y ago
  If every current nuclear reactor melted down, how much of earth would be uninhabitable?
- kbutler 7y ago
  1. per kWH. Nuclear is very, very safe. Global avg 90 deaths per trillion kwh, vs coal 100,000 deaths per trillion kwh. https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-price-always-paid/#31d9a269709b https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-d... If you really want to be surprised, nuclear is even safer than solar https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/publications/magazines/bulletin/bull21-1/21104091117.pdf https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/publications/magazi... (Note that residential rooftop solar is crazy risky as well as inefficient - all those installers up on random roofs...) 2. Coal requires lots more fuel so lots more digging up and transportation, spent fuel is dissipated via atmosphere, as well as solid ash. 3. Concentrated harm vs dispersed harm. still coal. Note that the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone is great for wildlife - it is basically an environmental preserve, since humans (the largest impact on wildlife & environment) are largely excluded. 4. Focus on "nuclear vs CO2". If you're serious about global warming, nuclear is the only viable technology. 5. Storage and cleanups - there's a lot more for coal than you think. Coal byproducts are one of the largest industrial waste streams. https://www.epa.gov/coalash/frequent-questions-about-2015-coal-ash-disposal-rule https://www.epa.gov/coalash/frequent-questions-about-2015-co... Nuclear vs coal is like airplane crashes vs car crashes. Airplane accidents make the news because they are unusual and affect many people in a single incident, even though car crashes kill (and injure) far more people every year (per mile traveled). The fact that you know the names Chernobyl, Fukushima, and Three Mile Island (probably?) should help you realize how SAFE nuclear is - the exceptions become scare stories for decades.
mantap 7y ago
In the UK coal is becoming obsolete, we use natural gas turbine generators instead. "Better than coal" is damning with faint praise.
- jbay808 7y ago
  I think the argument is that it's better than coal with respect to radioactivity, and better than any fossil fuel with respect to CO2, and better than most renewables with respect to land usage.
Hoasi 7y ago
> This should be a fairly simple calculation: coal kills a lot more people than nuclear. That is a good argument against coal. Why not trying to develop better solutions? That is, including nuclear. The nuclear solution as it stands is obsolete, by the industry's standards, expensive and doesn't make much sense. The next-generation is not ready—more effort needed there. Alternative solutions exist that are both safer and economically sound.
jayd16 7y ago
Seems disingenuous considering how wide spread coal use is.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

pgt 7y ago

Good to know: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more- https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more- radioactive-than-nuclear-waste/ To be clear, I was not defending coal. But I do have to ask over what time period radioactive coal wastes "kills a lot more people than nuclear," because being alive is fatal. I think the variance matters even if the mean is lower.

saagarjha 7y ago
Radiation isn’t the only way coal kills people.
patio11 7y ago
Coal kills more people than nuclear over all time periods, including nuclear accidents. The numbers are not close. The death toll attributed to coal is down to a historical low of (low-end estimate!) 7,500 people per year in the US.

coldtea 7y ago

>This should be a fairly simple calculation: coal kills a lot more people than nuclear. That's neither here nor there, if it kills them in more accumulated ways, and with less or no chance of mass killing accidents. Cars also hit millions, but we are ok with it, because of the cost/benefit, and the mode that it does so (isolated in different car accidents, etc). If cars were able to kill 20,000 people in a single bad accident, then we'd have found something else instead...

hoseja 7y ago
But this is entirely a fault in human thinking that we should strive to overcome.
- coldtea 7y ago
  I don't think. It's an entirely rational calculation. Absolute death counts are not the be all end all... Spread over time, spread over incident, etc, are all things to also consider.
  - hoseja 7y ago
    But why? The only difference I see is that one is less shocking to humans, makes worse news headlines.
    - coldtea 7y ago
      For the same reason regular cars that kill e.g. 1 in 10,000 in accidents (as we know them), are more acceptable than a design that might be far more safe individually, but when in the (far more seldom case) one blows up, it kills everybody in its 2km periphery. Even if the total death count is the same (or even if its less for the new design), the widespread small scale pattern is more acceptable than sudden mayhem. For one, you could just not get in a car, and avoid recklessly crossing the street in the first case, and you'll be fine. In the other case, in the off chance of a new-car blowing up, it can destroy your whole 5-10 block periphery. I wouldn't accept that...
      - icebraining 7y ago
        > For one, you could just not get in a car Yeah, but what's the coal plant equivalent? You can try to avoid living near nuclear plants as well.
        coldtea 7y ago
        >Yeah, but what's the coal plant equivalent? You can try to avoid living near nuclear plants as well And then the wind blows in this or that direction, after an accident, and your 1000 mile away "safe" place gets all kinds of radiation....

akamaka 7y ago

It’s not a simple calculation when people in Japan are still debating what the final cost of the Fukushima disaster will eventually add up to. To do a simple calculation, you need to know the real costs of things, and right now those are unbounded. “Think tank puts cost to address nuke disaster up to 81 trillion yen” http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201903100044.html http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201903100044.html

ovi256 7y ago
His point is that coal costs are just as high, if not higher, but we prefer not to think about them that way because it makes us uncomfortable. Just have your pick of examples of this thinking among the comments containing "uncomfortable".
reacweb 7y ago
I think the $2.4 trillion of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_cost_of_the_Iraq_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_cost_of_the_Iraq_War is more trustworthy.

feral 7y ago

I'm uncomfortable with this argument. The implied conclusion is that nuclear is safer than coal. That may be true, I don't know. But it's not clear you can argue this from historical data. For comparison, you could argue nuclear weapons are safer than conventional ones, as they have killed fewer people, and that bioweapons are the least dangerous. The issue is whether there is a tail to the distribution of nuclear event impacts (costs or fatalities), which we may not have seen much of empirically yet. It seems hard to address that empirically with nuclear (although you could argue that perhaps the same is true for climate change for coal?)

pmorici 7y ago
Coal power plants release radiation into the atmosphere as a matter of routine. If you live near one your radiation exposure is guaranteed to be much hire than if you live near a nuclear power station.
Cthulhu_ 7y ago
Facts are that a nuclear power plant can fail catastrophically and its waste is dangerous for 100.000 years. These are easy to explain, and instances of catastrophic failure are known by pretty much everyone. Coal however is a lot more problematic because it's invisible; people are shaken when there's nuclear material leaking out in the water around e.g. Fukushima, but the gradual emission of burning coal waste (33.1 gigatons of CO2 alone; see another comment about coal ash as well) happens unseen. And that's emitted into the air, whereas the (according to wikipedia) 12,000 tonnes of nuclear waste is solid, much easier to keep contained.
- feral 7y ago
  >instances of catastrophic failure are known by pretty much everyone. I don't think anyone says we've seen the worst possible failures of nuclear plants. As an extreme example, what if some crazy terrorist deliberately blows one or several up attempting to maximize damage? How bad would that be? How frequently does this occur? I guess my point is that if there's real risks of that magnitude, they are just as invisible as coal radiation.

cletus 7y ago

> coal kills a lot more people than nuclear. There's so many problems with this statement I barely know where to begin. 1. Are we talking total or per kWH of generated power? 2. "Deaths" is a questionable measure. One should look at the environmental impact of digging up, processing (enriching in the case of nuclear), transporting and the storage of byproducts from processing (eg UrF6) as well as spent fuel. 3. Here's the important one: you need to look at failure modes. Coal plants pollute but they also do it very slowly and no coal plant has ever blown up to the point where it's made 1000 square miles of land uninhabitable for decades (to compare, the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone is 1000 square miles). 4. Coal vs nuclear is a straw man argument. Coal is terrible. Everyone knows this. Coal is becoming the power source for the developing world as it is naturally dying in the developed world, being replaced by renewables and fossil fuels that while not great, are at least better than coal (eg natural gas). 5. How many of the externalities of nuclear power aren't factored into the price? Like the cost of storage and clean ups. These seem to be borne by governments not the companies profiting from the power (of course, some nuclear power in some countries is state-owned and run; depending on the country I'm not sure if this is better or worse). Personally I find the apologism on HN about nuclear to be disingenuous, exhausting and naive.

empath75 7y ago
If every current nuclear reactor melted down, how much of earth would be uninhabitable?
kbutler 7y ago
1. per kWH. Nuclear is very, very safe. Global avg 90 deaths per trillion kwh, vs coal 100,000 deaths per trillion kwh. https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-price-always-paid/#31d9a269709b https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-d... If you really want to be surprised, nuclear is even safer than solar https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/publications/magazines/bulletin/bull21-1/21104091117.pdf https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/publications/magazi... (Note that residential rooftop solar is crazy risky as well as inefficient - all those installers up on random roofs...) 2. Coal requires lots more fuel so lots more digging up and transportation, spent fuel is dissipated via atmosphere, as well as solid ash. 3. Concentrated harm vs dispersed harm. still coal. Note that the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone is great for wildlife - it is basically an environmental preserve, since humans (the largest impact on wildlife & environment) are largely excluded. 4. Focus on "nuclear vs CO2". If you're serious about global warming, nuclear is the only viable technology. 5. Storage and cleanups - there's a lot more for coal than you think. Coal byproducts are one of the largest industrial waste streams. https://www.epa.gov/coalash/frequent-questions-about-2015-coal-ash-disposal-rule https://www.epa.gov/coalash/frequent-questions-about-2015-co... Nuclear vs coal is like airplane crashes vs car crashes. Airplane accidents make the news because they are unusual and affect many people in a single incident, even though car crashes kill (and injure) far more people every year (per mile traveled). The fact that you know the names Chernobyl, Fukushima, and Three Mile Island (probably?) should help you realize how SAFE nuclear is - the exceptions become scare stories for decades.

mantap 7y ago

In the UK coal is becoming obsolete, we use natural gas turbine generators instead. "Better than coal" is damning with faint praise.

jbay808 7y ago
I think the argument is that it's better than coal with respect to radioactivity, and better than any fossil fuel with respect to CO2, and better than most renewables with respect to land usage.

Hoasi 7y ago

> This should be a fairly simple calculation: coal kills a lot more people than nuclear. That is a good argument against coal. Why not trying to develop better solutions? That is, including nuclear. The nuclear solution as it stands is obsolete, by the industry's standards, expensive and doesn't make much sense. The next-generation is not ready—more effort needed there. Alternative solutions exist that are both safer and economically sound.

jayd16 7y ago

Seems disingenuous considering how wide spread coal use is.