7 ms·

Fascinating that an article with so much detailed information doesn't include a discussion of waste and the costs associated with handling and storing it safely

Fascinating that an article with so much detailed information doesn't include a discussion of waste and the costs associated with handling and storing it safely for [checks notes] 10,000 years.

markdown 7y ago
It doesn't take up much space so I imagine the cost is just as much as it would cost to dig a very deep hole in the ground in a location unlikely to be exposed even if all record of its location was lost... perhaps under the ocean.
- droithomme 7y ago
  All of it needs to be processed in a breeder reactor before storage. Processing in a breeder reactor is illegal under US law.
- loeg 7y ago
  Just dump it in the Marianas Trench. > a crescent-shaped trough in the Earth's crust averaging about 2,550 km long and 69 km wide. It's still better for humans and the environment than burning fossil fuels (and arguably better than solar/wind).
CptFribble 7y ago
All the nuclear waste we've ever made in the USA stacks about 3 barrels high on a single football field, about .002 square miles. One of USA's deserts is around 190,000 square miles. I'm sure we can find someplace to store it all.
- giomasce 7y ago
  If it is so simple, I wonder why the problem takes so much discussion to be solved...
  - grumpydba 7y ago
    Because of the irrational fear of nuclear.
    - maweki 7y ago
      The waste is irrationally still radiating for 10.000 years? A reactor might be safe in some sense, but the waste certainly is not.
      - Twixes 7y ago
        Obviously nuclear waste is dangerous, but it's still safer for the planet than the massive amounts of gasses emitted to the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels. As opposed to radioactive casks, these gasses cannot be contained deep, deep under ground forever, they can only be released to change our environment in ways neither we nor the nature are prepared to deal with.
      - DuskStar 7y ago
        I mean, the chemical waste from photovoltaic production is also still poison for 10,000+ years - lots of heavy metals and other nasty shit there. But we don't seem to be quite so afraid of it...
      - grumpydba 7y ago
        What percentage of the waste is radiating for 10000 years? And how radioactive is it? Without facts, precise facts to back it up your statement looks irrational indeed.
      - cynusx 7y ago
        I'd rather manage nuclear waste in a remote site for 10000 years than needing to build up a permanent desalination effort to keep mankind supplied with drinkable water. Don't forget that there are already nuclear waste sites that are managed by the government. It's just a small operational cost for today's governments. There doesn't seem to be a believe that governments will be around for 10000 years to keep this managed securely. But honestly, if society deteriorates to the point it can no longer organize a government, a few highly radioactive spots on earth are not going to be a huge deal. Nuclear waste facilities also have nice economies of scale in the sense that a single site's incremental cost of storing an additional ton of nuclear waste is negligible. So unlike global warming, you're not saddling the future generations up with a massive bill.
- ldnandrew 7y ago
  There’s 90000 tons of nuclear waste waiting for disposal around the US. And every proposal in the last 60 years has been rejected https://www.gao.gov/mobile/key_issues/disposal_of_highlevel_nuclear_waste/issue_summary https://www.gao.gov/mobile/key_issues/disposal_of_highlevel_...
  - Mirioron 7y ago
    Yep, that's more like 30 barrels high. The parent's point still stands though - there isn't that much of it.
  - ClumsyPilot 7y ago
    That number is potentially misleading. Only a small portion of that waste is high level waste, like fuel. 90% of that does not need to be stored for 1000 years. Once you look at waste, most of nuclear waste is not 'waste', and some countries like france and Russia use chemical reprocessing to separate long lives waste from unburnt fuel. That gives a further >90% reduction. What you are left with is a small amount of High level waste, that can be stored in deep repositories like sweeden is doing. That's a permanent solution, because we know that bedrock has not moved for 10s of millions of years.
    - ClumsyPilot 7y ago
      To downvoters: it's a waste of time to discus nuclear waste without realising that 95% is the original fuel and only 1% of it is the actual long-lived waste. Is there something in the tone of my comment you are unhappy about? http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_VyTCyizqrHs/TCWrO7OFt4I/AAAAAAAAIFI/Ll76hclkzGw/s1600/nuclearfuelchanges.jpg http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_VyTCyizqrHs/TCWrO7OFt4I/AAAAAAAAIF...
- droithomme 7y ago
  > I'm sure we can find someplace to store it all. Yes, on an indian reservation.
  - droithomme 7y ago
    For the uninformed individuals downvoting in anger, please inform yourselves by learning about what is currently actually happening. https://thegoodhuman.com/nuclear-waste-on-native-american-reservations/ https://thegoodhuman.com/nuclear-waste-on-native-american-re... http://www.nbcnews.com/id/13458867/ns/us_news/t/store-nuclear-waste-reservation-tribe-split/ http://www.nbcnews.com/id/13458867/ns/us_news/t/store-nuclea... https://www.nirs.org/private-fuel-storages-proposed-interim-high-level-nuclear-waste-dumpsite-on-the-reservation-of-skull-valley-goshute-tribe-40-miles-west/ https://www.nirs.org/private-fuel-storages-proposed-interim-... https://www.wagingpeace.org/radioactive-reservation-the-uphill-battle-to-keep-nuclear-waste-off-native-american-land/ https://www.wagingpeace.org/radioactive-reservation-the-uphi... http://www.healthnewsdigest.com/news/Environment_380/Nuclear_Waste_on_Native_American_Reservations.shtml http://www.healthnewsdigest.com/news/Environment_380/Nuclear... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skull_Valley_Indian_Reservation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skull_Valley_Indian_Reservatio... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_racism#Native_American_reservations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_racism#Native_Am... As is typical with the uneducated groupthink religous cult of HN, facts will continued to be downvoted and threatened by mods for bans.
- morpheuskafka 7y ago
  A location has already been found and selected, but the Democratic Party has single-handedly blocked it for decades to win Nevada votes through a cycle of misinformation whereby they have convinced votes that Las Vegas will somehow be at risk if the approved repository, Yucca Mountain, is used.
  - buzzkillington 7y ago
    It's an indictment of double think that the party which believes we will all die from climate change (rightly) is also the party that has made sure the one power source we have that could have saved us in the last 70 years wasn't used. Had we voted republican across the board in the 1960s we could have solved climate change without ever talking about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atoms_for_Peace https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atoms_for_Peace
- keanzu 7y ago
  Noor II CSP is a 600GWh solar plant which is 2.6 square miles or ~1700 football fields. That's space permanently lost if the powerplant is run forever. A nuclear waste dump is tiny in comparison. Land use of solar is gigantic.
  - jussij 7y ago
    > That's space permanently lost if the powerplant is run forever. Many Australian farmers who lease their land to electricity companies for use as solar farms run sheep on those same solar farms. Since the solar panels track the sun, grass grows under them and sheep being small enough to fit under the panels are perfect at keeping that grass under control. So the farmer actually gets two incomes from the one field.
    - lovemenot 7y ago
      >> Since the solar panels track the sun Really? Such tracking systems do exist, but outside of CSP they are generally not economic. I would be surprised if many PV solar plants in Australia use tracking motors. Not to say grass won't grow under static panels. I have no idea about that.
      - chess_buster 7y ago
        It does. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPTetKHb7Yw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPTetKHb7Yw
  - llukas 7y ago
    Open pit brown coal mining destroys bigger areas in irreversible manner. Solar plant at least doesn't exhaust.
    - therealdrag0 7y ago
      I think everyone here wants to move away from fossil fuels. The discussion is bout what to move to next.
belorn 7y ago
Comparing waste from coal, oil and natural gas to nuclear waste is a difficult discussion to have. Climate change is not caused by nuclear waste. We can hit any temperature goal we want regardless of how much nuclear waste is generated. My own personal view is that the threat from global warming is worse than the threat of nuclear waste buildup. This is why I usually comment that we should ban burning fossil fuels for power generation and then first afterward start the discussion on how we want to create the energy grid of the future. Nuclear waste is a very relevant topic once we got to the point that we agree that burning fossil fuels has to stop and we decided which day the fossil fueled power plants must shut down.
droithomme 7y ago
> doesn't include a discussion of waste and the costs associated with handling and storing it safely Right, so French nuclear waste is given to private shipping companies who take it to Somalia and dump it just off the shore there. The rise of Somalian "piracy" 30 years ago was due to villagers tired of the poison washing up on shore and so they would take rafts out to ships to inspect them, as is their right as an impromptu but only existing coast guard.
- droithomme 7y ago
  Downvoted by the ignorant for sharing uncontested facts. Typical. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxic_waste_dumping_by_the_%27Ndrangheta https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxic_waste_dumping_by_the_%27... https://somaliagenda.com/eu-dumping-nuclear-waste-in-somalia/ https://somaliagenda.com/eu-dumping-nuclear-waste-in-somalia... https://www.expertsure.com/2011/03/27/more-illegally-dumped-radioactive-waste-found-on-somalias-coast/ https://www.expertsure.com/2011/03/27/more-illegally-dumped-... Thank you so much.
  - walterstucco666 7y ago
    > allegedly sent to Somalia Italian here, 'ndrangheta dumped toxic waste (including radioactive waste, but _not_ including nuclear waste, which is heavily guarded!) almost entirely on Italian soil. Ilaria Alpi and Miran Hrovatin have been killed because they were investigating on weapons and toxic waste trafficking, in which they believed members of Italian Army and secret services were involved. We are talking about toxic waste, produced by regular industrial activities. It has nothing to do with nuclear waste produced in nuclear power plants. It's even written in the Wikipedia link you posted > Shipments to Somalia continued into the 1990s, while the 'Ndrangheta clan also blew up shiploads of waste, including radioactive hospital waste, and sending them to the sea bed off the Calabrian coast Also: the rise of Somalian piracy was due the war. In Somalia control of the territory was in the hand of clans that accepted to bury waste from Europe and let them fish in the Somali sea in exchange for weapons and money. That led to fish stock depletion, the local fishermen banded and started attacking foreign ships, asking for a ransom. When some Somali former military with deep pockets noticed the profitability of the operations, they started financing them.
briwang2050 7y ago
96% of the mass of nuclear "waste" is uranium 238. This can be fissioned when neutron are 1000 times faster. This occurs in fast reactors. Uranium 238 is unused fuel. Coal, oil, natural gas waste sit in the air you breath and in pools or dumps on land. Plus there is the CO2. Solar and Wind use ten times the cement and steel to generate the same power as nuclear. Cement and steel generate pollution and CO2 in their production.
- qiqitori 7y ago
  > Solar and Wind use ten times the cement and steel to generate the same power as nuclear. I'd be interested in a reference for this. My intuition goes like this: I can see wind using a lot of steel and cement for the towers (though masts built incorporating other materials do exist) and solar using just a small amount of cement and steel -- but solar doesn't produce much power for the same area compared to a nuclear power plant, so I can see that amounting to a lot of steel and cement if you build a bunch of solar in the same way you'd build nuclear power plants. However, solar power plants and some wind power are often not far away from where the power will be used, which means that less steel is used for the electrical masts and power lines. And solar is often mounted on roofs, which means that very little structural cement is needed. Plus... while the article says that solar and wind power needs to be replaced every 20-25 years (note: there are turbines in operation that are older than that), when you replace a wind turbine, you'll often keep the tower and just replace the turbine on the top, so it's not like you need to scrap the whole thing every 20-25 years.
bsder 7y ago
You are continually getting radioactive sulfur and carbon into your lungs from coal--and they're beta emitters. And, while people talk about Chernobyl and Fukushima, they never talk about coal fires that have been burning for decades in places like Centralia and Xinjian--which are WAY worse than all of our nuclear disasters.
- pfdietz 7y ago
  Since the longest lived isotope of sulfur has a half-life of 87 days, those coal deposits must be REALLY young.
  - hollerith 7y ago
    Not necessarily: the sulfur might be continually created from the decay of a radioisotope of longer half-life.
    - pfdietz 7y ago
      It's not. Let's be clear: the claim that burning coal releases radioactive sulfur and carbon is wrong. There are radioactive materials released, but they are from contaminants like uranium and its decay products.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
jillesvangurp 7y ago
I'm not going to repeat all the arguments against this article as countless other HN commenters have already done a fine job of this. But it's worth making the point that this article is revealing in its use of lies, misrepresentations, flimsy arguments and circular reasoning. It all looks rather desperate. There's so much of it going on that you have to wonder whether the author is aware of this. I.e. is this an intentionally misleading article written to green wash highly lucrative government spending on new nuclear plants? Without this spending no nuclear plants get built. Just a theory but this article looks a lot like it is written with this kind of agenda in mind.

Fascinating that an article with so much detailed information doesn't include a discussion of waste and the costs associated with handling and storing it safely for [checks notes] 10,000 years.

markdown 7y ago

It doesn't take up much space so I imagine the cost is just as much as it would cost to dig a very deep hole in the ground in a location unlikely to be exposed even if all record of its location was lost... perhaps under the ocean.

droithomme 7y ago
All of it needs to be processed in a breeder reactor before storage. Processing in a breeder reactor is illegal under US law.
loeg 7y ago
Just dump it in the Marianas Trench. > a crescent-shaped trough in the Earth's crust averaging about 2,550 km long and 69 km wide. It's still better for humans and the environment than burning fossil fuels (and arguably better than solar/wind).

CptFribble 7y ago

All the nuclear waste we've ever made in the USA stacks about 3 barrels high on a single football field, about .002 square miles. One of USA's deserts is around 190,000 square miles. I'm sure we can find someplace to store it all.

giomasce 7y ago
If it is so simple, I wonder why the problem takes so much discussion to be solved...
- grumpydba 7y ago
  Because of the irrational fear of nuclear.
  - maweki 7y ago
    The waste is irrationally still radiating for 10.000 years? A reactor might be safe in some sense, but the waste certainly is not.
    - Twixes 7y ago
      Obviously nuclear waste is dangerous, but it's still safer for the planet than the massive amounts of gasses emitted to the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels. As opposed to radioactive casks, these gasses cannot be contained deep, deep under ground forever, they can only be released to change our environment in ways neither we nor the nature are prepared to deal with.
    - DuskStar 7y ago
      I mean, the chemical waste from photovoltaic production is also still poison for 10,000+ years - lots of heavy metals and other nasty shit there. But we don't seem to be quite so afraid of it...
    - grumpydba 7y ago
      What percentage of the waste is radiating for 10000 years? And how radioactive is it? Without facts, precise facts to back it up your statement looks irrational indeed.
    - cynusx 7y ago
      I'd rather manage nuclear waste in a remote site for 10000 years than needing to build up a permanent desalination effort to keep mankind supplied with drinkable water. Don't forget that there are already nuclear waste sites that are managed by the government. It's just a small operational cost for today's governments. There doesn't seem to be a believe that governments will be around for 10000 years to keep this managed securely. But honestly, if society deteriorates to the point it can no longer organize a government, a few highly radioactive spots on earth are not going to be a huge deal. Nuclear waste facilities also have nice economies of scale in the sense that a single site's incremental cost of storing an additional ton of nuclear waste is negligible. So unlike global warming, you're not saddling the future generations up with a massive bill.
ldnandrew 7y ago
There’s 90000 tons of nuclear waste waiting for disposal around the US. And every proposal in the last 60 years has been rejected https://www.gao.gov/mobile/key_issues/disposal_of_highlevel_nuclear_waste/issue_summary https://www.gao.gov/mobile/key_issues/disposal_of_highlevel_...
- Mirioron 7y ago
  Yep, that's more like 30 barrels high. The parent's point still stands though - there isn't that much of it.
- ClumsyPilot 7y ago
  That number is potentially misleading. Only a small portion of that waste is high level waste, like fuel. 90% of that does not need to be stored for 1000 years. Once you look at waste, most of nuclear waste is not 'waste', and some countries like france and Russia use chemical reprocessing to separate long lives waste from unburnt fuel. That gives a further >90% reduction. What you are left with is a small amount of High level waste, that can be stored in deep repositories like sweeden is doing. That's a permanent solution, because we know that bedrock has not moved for 10s of millions of years.
  - ClumsyPilot 7y ago
    To downvoters: it's a waste of time to discus nuclear waste without realising that 95% is the original fuel and only 1% of it is the actual long-lived waste. Is there something in the tone of my comment you are unhappy about? http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_VyTCyizqrHs/TCWrO7OFt4I/AAAAAAAAIFI/Ll76hclkzGw/s1600/nuclearfuelchanges.jpg http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_VyTCyizqrHs/TCWrO7OFt4I/AAAAAAAAIF...
droithomme 7y ago
> I'm sure we can find someplace to store it all. Yes, on an indian reservation.
- droithomme 7y ago
  For the uninformed individuals downvoting in anger, please inform yourselves by learning about what is currently actually happening. https://thegoodhuman.com/nuclear-waste-on-native-american-reservations/ https://thegoodhuman.com/nuclear-waste-on-native-american-re... http://www.nbcnews.com/id/13458867/ns/us_news/t/store-nuclear-waste-reservation-tribe-split/ http://www.nbcnews.com/id/13458867/ns/us_news/t/store-nuclea... https://www.nirs.org/private-fuel-storages-proposed-interim-high-level-nuclear-waste-dumpsite-on-the-reservation-of-skull-valley-goshute-tribe-40-miles-west/ https://www.nirs.org/private-fuel-storages-proposed-interim-... https://www.wagingpeace.org/radioactive-reservation-the-uphill-battle-to-keep-nuclear-waste-off-native-american-land/ https://www.wagingpeace.org/radioactive-reservation-the-uphi... http://www.healthnewsdigest.com/news/Environment_380/Nuclear_Waste_on_Native_American_Reservations.shtml http://www.healthnewsdigest.com/news/Environment_380/Nuclear... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skull_Valley_Indian_Reservation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skull_Valley_Indian_Reservatio... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_racism#Native_American_reservations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_racism#Native_Am... As is typical with the uneducated groupthink religous cult of HN, facts will continued to be downvoted and threatened by mods for bans.
morpheuskafka 7y ago
A location has already been found and selected, but the Democratic Party has single-handedly blocked it for decades to win Nevada votes through a cycle of misinformation whereby they have convinced votes that Las Vegas will somehow be at risk if the approved repository, Yucca Mountain, is used.
- buzzkillington 7y ago
  It's an indictment of double think that the party which believes we will all die from climate change (rightly) is also the party that has made sure the one power source we have that could have saved us in the last 70 years wasn't used. Had we voted republican across the board in the 1960s we could have solved climate change without ever talking about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atoms_for_Peace https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atoms_for_Peace
keanzu 7y ago
Noor II CSP is a 600GWh solar plant which is 2.6 square miles or ~1700 football fields. That's space permanently lost if the powerplant is run forever. A nuclear waste dump is tiny in comparison. Land use of solar is gigantic.
- jussij 7y ago
  > That's space permanently lost if the powerplant is run forever. Many Australian farmers who lease their land to electricity companies for use as solar farms run sheep on those same solar farms. Since the solar panels track the sun, grass grows under them and sheep being small enough to fit under the panels are perfect at keeping that grass under control. So the farmer actually gets two incomes from the one field.
  - lovemenot 7y ago
    >> Since the solar panels track the sun Really? Such tracking systems do exist, but outside of CSP they are generally not economic. I would be surprised if many PV solar plants in Australia use tracking motors. Not to say grass won't grow under static panels. I have no idea about that.
    - chess_buster 7y ago
      It does. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPTetKHb7Yw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPTetKHb7Yw
- llukas 7y ago
  Open pit brown coal mining destroys bigger areas in irreversible manner. Solar plant at least doesn't exhaust.
  - therealdrag0 7y ago
    I think everyone here wants to move away from fossil fuels. The discussion is bout what to move to next.

belorn 7y ago

Comparing waste from coal, oil and natural gas to nuclear waste is a difficult discussion to have. Climate change is not caused by nuclear waste. We can hit any temperature goal we want regardless of how much nuclear waste is generated. My own personal view is that the threat from global warming is worse than the threat of nuclear waste buildup. This is why I usually comment that we should ban burning fossil fuels for power generation and then first afterward start the discussion on how we want to create the energy grid of the future. Nuclear waste is a very relevant topic once we got to the point that we agree that burning fossil fuels has to stop and we decided which day the fossil fueled power plants must shut down.

droithomme 7y ago

> doesn't include a discussion of waste and the costs associated with handling and storing it safely Right, so French nuclear waste is given to private shipping companies who take it to Somalia and dump it just off the shore there. The rise of Somalian "piracy" 30 years ago was due to villagers tired of the poison washing up on shore and so they would take rafts out to ships to inspect them, as is their right as an impromptu but only existing coast guard.

droithomme 7y ago
Downvoted by the ignorant for sharing uncontested facts. Typical. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxic_waste_dumping_by_the_%27Ndrangheta https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxic_waste_dumping_by_the_%27... https://somaliagenda.com/eu-dumping-nuclear-waste-in-somalia/ https://somaliagenda.com/eu-dumping-nuclear-waste-in-somalia... https://www.expertsure.com/2011/03/27/more-illegally-dumped-radioactive-waste-found-on-somalias-coast/ https://www.expertsure.com/2011/03/27/more-illegally-dumped-... Thank you so much.
- walterstucco666 7y ago
  > allegedly sent to Somalia Italian here, 'ndrangheta dumped toxic waste (including radioactive waste, but _not_ including nuclear waste, which is heavily guarded!) almost entirely on Italian soil. Ilaria Alpi and Miran Hrovatin have been killed because they were investigating on weapons and toxic waste trafficking, in which they believed members of Italian Army and secret services were involved. We are talking about toxic waste, produced by regular industrial activities. It has nothing to do with nuclear waste produced in nuclear power plants. It's even written in the Wikipedia link you posted > Shipments to Somalia continued into the 1990s, while the 'Ndrangheta clan also blew up shiploads of waste, including radioactive hospital waste, and sending them to the sea bed off the Calabrian coast Also: the rise of Somalian piracy was due the war. In Somalia control of the territory was in the hand of clans that accepted to bury waste from Europe and let them fish in the Somali sea in exchange for weapons and money. That led to fish stock depletion, the local fishermen banded and started attacking foreign ships, asking for a ransom. When some Somali former military with deep pockets noticed the profitability of the operations, they started financing them.

briwang2050 7y ago

96% of the mass of nuclear "waste" is uranium 238. This can be fissioned when neutron are 1000 times faster. This occurs in fast reactors. Uranium 238 is unused fuel. Coal, oil, natural gas waste sit in the air you breath and in pools or dumps on land. Plus there is the CO2. Solar and Wind use ten times the cement and steel to generate the same power as nuclear. Cement and steel generate pollution and CO2 in their production.

qiqitori 7y ago
> Solar and Wind use ten times the cement and steel to generate the same power as nuclear. I'd be interested in a reference for this. My intuition goes like this: I can see wind using a lot of steel and cement for the towers (though masts built incorporating other materials do exist) and solar using just a small amount of cement and steel -- but solar doesn't produce much power for the same area compared to a nuclear power plant, so I can see that amounting to a lot of steel and cement if you build a bunch of solar in the same way you'd build nuclear power plants. However, solar power plants and some wind power are often not far away from where the power will be used, which means that less steel is used for the electrical masts and power lines. And solar is often mounted on roofs, which means that very little structural cement is needed. Plus... while the article says that solar and wind power needs to be replaced every 20-25 years (note: there are turbines in operation that are older than that), when you replace a wind turbine, you'll often keep the tower and just replace the turbine on the top, so it's not like you need to scrap the whole thing every 20-25 years.

bsder 7y ago

You are continually getting radioactive sulfur and carbon into your lungs from coal--and they're beta emitters. And, while people talk about Chernobyl and Fukushima, they never talk about coal fires that have been burning for decades in places like Centralia and Xinjian--which are WAY worse than all of our nuclear disasters.

pfdietz 7y ago
Since the longest lived isotope of sulfur has a half-life of 87 days, those coal deposits must be REALLY young.
- hollerith 7y ago
  Not necessarily: the sulfur might be continually created from the decay of a radioisotope of longer half-life.
  - pfdietz 7y ago
    It's not. Let's be clear: the claim that burning coal releases radioactive sulfur and carbon is wrong. There are radioactive materials released, but they are from contaminants like uranium and its decay products.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

jillesvangurp 7y ago

I'm not going to repeat all the arguments against this article as countless other HN commenters have already done a fine job of this. But it's worth making the point that this article is revealing in its use of lies, misrepresentations, flimsy arguments and circular reasoning. It all looks rather desperate. There's so much of it going on that you have to wonder whether the author is aware of this. I.e. is this an intentionally misleading article written to green wash highly lucrative government spending on new nuclear plants? Without this spending no nuclear plants get built. Just a theory but this article looks a lot like it is written with this kind of agenda in mind.