6 ms·

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/

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.

buboard 7y ago
> per kWH. Nuclear is very, very safe Then again, per land area wasted , nuclear is 23 Km2 per year vs ... something tiny? Plus the comparison with coal only is unfair. > 4. Focus on "nuclear vs CO2". If you're serious about global warming, nuclear is the only viable technology. Here the question is how to remove excess CO2 without destroying the rest of the planet.
- rwmj 7y ago
  A lot of coal is strip-mined, which damages large amounts of land.
  - buboard 7y ago
    It's not permanent though, the land is reclaimed after mining
    - evan_ 7y ago
      Oh they rebuild those mountains?
  - ryanmercer 7y ago
    And let us not forget about towns like Centralia which had to be abandoned (by nearly all residents) due to an underground coal fire that has now been burning for 57 years. https://www.history.com/news/mine-fire-burning-more-50-years-ghost-town https://www.history.com/news/mine-fire-burning-more-50-years... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia_mine_fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia_mine_fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia,_Pennsylvania https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia,_Pennsylvania
    - derefr 7y ago
      That had nothing to do with coal mining, per se, though. The spark was set off in a hole in the ground made by previous mining, yes, but it was an entirely-untapped coal vein that caught fire, and basically anything could have caught it on fire if it was ever exposed to surface air. (A meteorite impact, or earthquake fissure, or sinkhole collapse, could have made a similar crater and exposed the coal vein, for example.) Centralia is more of a weird natural disaster. It's essentially a slow-motion, underground forest fire. And, like most forest fires, while usually a human with a match is the proximal cause, if the human wasn't there, nature would still have supplied a spark eventually.
      - saalweachter 7y ago
        Coal seam fires aren't particularly rare, and while they can occur "naturally", almost all of the thousand or so burning around the world at any given time (some for months, some for centuries) are explicitly linked to mining. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal-seam_fire https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal-seam_fire
- Cthulhu_ 7y ago
  > Here the question is how to remove excess CO2 without destroying the rest of the planet. Nature already scrubs CO2 and actually thrives on the elevated amounts; reducing production means nature will have a chance to catch up. That is, assuming we've not already reached a catastrophic tipping point where e.g. algae (responsible for most CO2 sequestration) die from the heat and the CO2 sequestered in permafrost is released.
- kbutler 7y ago
  Coal and nuclear (and natural gas) are about the same land use area footprint (https://www.strata.org/pdf/2017/footprints-full.pdf https://www.strata.org/pdf/2017/footprints-full.pdf graph on last page). Solar (3x), wind (5x), hydro (25x) are much higher land use. Note that resource extraction use is considered temporary (and in the US, companies are required to pay for restoration, per the link above). Wind uses a large area, but agricultural use can proceed at the same time. We currently have no viable CO2 removal technology. Nuclear power has no chance of destroying the planet (or even the biosphere).
babuskov 7y ago
> Concentrated harm vs dispersed harm. still coal. Note that the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone is great for wildlife Let's remove humans from Earth completely and all the environmental problems will be solved. I tend to agree with your other arguments.
- Cthulhu_ 7y ago
  You're not wrong; the best way to fight climate change is population decrease (and therefore consumption decrease), but that'll require some serious dystopian measures - population control (like China's strict child birth laws), inaction (do not help in case of natural disasters, famine), genocide, etc. And that's probably not a guarantee either.
- kjeetgill 7y ago
  I think the point was just that it didn't leave that zone a barren inhospitable wasteland, not that we should count that as a plus.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
ourlordcaffeine 7y ago
>If you're serious about global warming, nuclear is the only viable technology. This is simply untrue. Overprovisioned renewables can get us to the point where the few times gas peakers are needed becomes negligible. This is the false "binary choice" that the other comment was pointing out.
- driverdan 7y ago
  > Overprovisioned renewables Requiring far more investment.
- kbutler 7y ago
  "For the US to be powered exclusively by wind power it would require 26,619,401 acres of land, an area nearly equivalent to the state of Tennessee." https://www.strata.org/pdf/2017/footprints-full.pdf https://www.strata.org/pdf/2017/footprints-full.pdf (wind farm size, not windmill size) The area of California is 105 million acres, so cover 1/4 of the area of California in wind farms. Urban land in the US is about 70 million acres (https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/major-land-uses/major-land-uses/#Summary%20tables https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/major-land-uses/major...), so this would be another 3rd the amount of urban sprawl of all cities and towns in the country. Solar is a little bit better - only 16,393,234 acres, or 1/6 of California, but you can't really do agriculture on that land like you could with wind farms. And this is without overprovisioning or increasing electricity use to replace gasoline. Do you consider either of those options viable? What overprovisioning factor are you going to shoot for? I don't think it's just a binary choice: I think it's a blended choice, but you've got to have a heavy reliance on nuclear if you want to dramatically cut CO2 emissions.

buboard 7y ago

> per kWH. Nuclear is very, very safe Then again, per land area wasted , nuclear is 23 Km2 per year vs ... something tiny? Plus the comparison with coal only is unfair. > 4. Focus on "nuclear vs CO2". If you're serious about global warming, nuclear is the only viable technology. Here the question is how to remove excess CO2 without destroying the rest of the planet.

rwmj 7y ago
A lot of coal is strip-mined, which damages large amounts of land.
- buboard 7y ago
  It's not permanent though, the land is reclaimed after mining
  - evan_ 7y ago
    Oh they rebuild those mountains?
- ryanmercer 7y ago
  And let us not forget about towns like Centralia which had to be abandoned (by nearly all residents) due to an underground coal fire that has now been burning for 57 years. https://www.history.com/news/mine-fire-burning-more-50-years-ghost-town https://www.history.com/news/mine-fire-burning-more-50-years... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia_mine_fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia_mine_fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia,_Pennsylvania https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia,_Pennsylvania
  - derefr 7y ago
    That had nothing to do with coal mining, per se, though. The spark was set off in a hole in the ground made by previous mining, yes, but it was an entirely-untapped coal vein that caught fire, and basically anything could have caught it on fire if it was ever exposed to surface air. (A meteorite impact, or earthquake fissure, or sinkhole collapse, could have made a similar crater and exposed the coal vein, for example.) Centralia is more of a weird natural disaster. It's essentially a slow-motion, underground forest fire. And, like most forest fires, while usually a human with a match is the proximal cause, if the human wasn't there, nature would still have supplied a spark eventually.
    - saalweachter 7y ago
      Coal seam fires aren't particularly rare, and while they can occur "naturally", almost all of the thousand or so burning around the world at any given time (some for months, some for centuries) are explicitly linked to mining. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal-seam_fire https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal-seam_fire
Cthulhu_ 7y ago
> Here the question is how to remove excess CO2 without destroying the rest of the planet. Nature already scrubs CO2 and actually thrives on the elevated amounts; reducing production means nature will have a chance to catch up. That is, assuming we've not already reached a catastrophic tipping point where e.g. algae (responsible for most CO2 sequestration) die from the heat and the CO2 sequestered in permafrost is released.
kbutler 7y ago
Coal and nuclear (and natural gas) are about the same land use area footprint (https://www.strata.org/pdf/2017/footprints-full.pdf https://www.strata.org/pdf/2017/footprints-full.pdf graph on last page). Solar (3x), wind (5x), hydro (25x) are much higher land use. Note that resource extraction use is considered temporary (and in the US, companies are required to pay for restoration, per the link above). Wind uses a large area, but agricultural use can proceed at the same time. We currently have no viable CO2 removal technology. Nuclear power has no chance of destroying the planet (or even the biosphere).

babuskov 7y ago

> Concentrated harm vs dispersed harm. still coal. Note that the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone is great for wildlife Let's remove humans from Earth completely and all the environmental problems will be solved. I tend to agree with your other arguments.

Cthulhu_ 7y ago
You're not wrong; the best way to fight climate change is population decrease (and therefore consumption decrease), but that'll require some serious dystopian measures - population control (like China's strict child birth laws), inaction (do not help in case of natural disasters, famine), genocide, etc. And that's probably not a guarantee either.
kjeetgill 7y ago
I think the point was just that it didn't leave that zone a barren inhospitable wasteland, not that we should count that as a plus.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

ourlordcaffeine 7y ago

>If you're serious about global warming, nuclear is the only viable technology. This is simply untrue. Overprovisioned renewables can get us to the point where the few times gas peakers are needed becomes negligible. This is the false "binary choice" that the other comment was pointing out.

driverdan 7y ago
> Overprovisioned renewables Requiring far more investment.
kbutler 7y ago
"For the US to be powered exclusively by wind power it would require 26,619,401 acres of land, an area nearly equivalent to the state of Tennessee." https://www.strata.org/pdf/2017/footprints-full.pdf https://www.strata.org/pdf/2017/footprints-full.pdf (wind farm size, not windmill size) The area of California is 105 million acres, so cover 1/4 of the area of California in wind farms. Urban land in the US is about 70 million acres (https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/major-land-uses/major-land-uses/#Summary%20tables https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/major-land-uses/major...), so this would be another 3rd the amount of urban sprawl of all cities and towns in the country. Solar is a little bit better - only 16,393,234 acres, or 1/6 of California, but you can't really do agriculture on that land like you could with wind farms. And this is without overprovisioning or increasing electricity use to replace gasoline. Do you consider either of those options viable? What overprovisioning factor are you going to shoot for? I don't think it's just a binary choice: I think it's a blended choice, but you've got to have a heavy reliance on nuclear if you want to dramatically cut CO2 emissions.