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It is also well-known coal power plants emit way more radiation than nuclear ones. And air pollution caused by coal burning (e.g. in Ulan Bator) is beyond any r
by qwerty456127 7y ago
It is also well-known coal power plants emit way more radiation than nuclear ones. And air pollution caused by coal burning (e.g. in Ulan Bator) is beyond any reason. The very fact people still burn coal in cities in the 21st century is mind-boggling.
- adaisadais 7y agoSource?
- whatshisface 7y agohttps://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-...
- credit_guy 7y agoOne thing to mention is that nuclear power plants do not emit radiation. So, sure, coal power plants emit more radiation, and bananas too.
- maxerickson 7y agoThere's enough radiation released as a result of the activity of operating nuclear plants for your emphasis to be a bit off. "usually do not directly emit radiation" is pretty defensible.
- credit_guy 7y ago> There's enough radiation released as a result of the activity of operating nuclear plants "An operating nuclear power plant produces very small amounts of radioactive gases and liquids, as well as small amounts of direct radiation. If you lived within 50 miles of a nuclear power plant, you would receive an average radiation dose of about 0.01 millirem per year. To put this in perspective, the average person in the United States receives an exposure of 300 millirem per year from natural background sources of radiation." [1] https://www.nrc.gov/about-nrc/radiation/related-info/faq.html#9 https://www.nrc.gov/about-nrc/radiation/related-info/faq.htm...
- CapriciousCptl 7y agoI think they're referring to the radiation emitted because of nuclear plants, like nuclear accidents at Marcoule, Fukishima, Paks, etc, transport and waste disposal and so on.
- credit_guy 7y agoThe meme that coal plants emit more radioactivity than nuclear power plants originated with this Scientific American article [1] (linked somewhere else in this thread too). The article has the title "Coal Ash Is More Radioactive Than Nuclear Waste". The comparison is obviously preposterous, nuclear waste is probably trillions of times more radioactive than coal ash. When SA realized the mistake they added an explanation just at the end of the article that states "As a general clarification, ounce for ounce, coal ash released from a power plant delivers more radiation than nuclear waste shielded via water or dry cask storage." (emphasis mine) By adding the qualification "shielded" the comparison becomes meaningless. Brazil nuts, bananas, beer, carrot juice and drinking water [2] all release more radiation than shielded nuclear waste. Nowhere in the SA article they compare coal ash with Chernobyl of Fukushima. [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-... [2] https://www.thoughtco.com/common-naturally-radioactive-foods-607456 https://www.thoughtco.com/common-naturally-radioactive-foods...
- lsb 7y agoThat 0.01 millirem is roughly 1 Banana Equivalent Dose, the radiation you get from eating a banana. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_equivalent_dose https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_equivalent_dose
- Gibbon1 7y agoDoes spreading this bit of nonsense around make you feel guilty?
- philipkglass 7y agoThis is not actually correct. See this NRC publication "Radioactive Effluents From Nuclear Power Plants: Annual Report 2008." https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1036/ML103620452.pdf https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1036/ML103620452.pdf Power reactors discharge a small amount of radioactive material into the environment under normal operating conditions. See figures 4.1 through 4.12 in the report. The Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station in Arizona [0] released 1844 curies of radionuclides in a year from gaseous, liquid, and particulate discharges. In SI units, that's 6.8 * 10^13 becquerels. According to the World Nuclear Association, a kilogram of coal ash contains about 2000 becquerels of radioactive material [1]. In 2012, the United States coal fleet generated about 110 million tons of coal ash [2]. In 2012, the United States generated 1514 terawatt hours of electricity from coal [3]. That puts the coal ash radioactive burden to the environment at roughly 1.45 * 10^11 becquerels per TWh of electricity generated in coal plants. The Palo Verde annual radioactive effluent discharge of 6.8 * 10^13 becquerels from an average of 32.3 TWh electricity generation [0] comes to 21 * 10^ 11 becquerels per TWh of electricity. Its radioactive discharge to the environment is significantly higher than the average discharged via coal ash to produce an equivalent amount of electricity. However, before getting alarmed, see figure 2.1 in the NRC Radioactive Effluents report that I linked at the beginning of this post. Even though nuclear plant effluent adds more radiation to the environment than coal ash does, industrial sources of radiation (including nuclear plants) account for about 0.1% of general population radiation exposure. Natural background sources add up to about 50%. So the marginal danger of radioactive exposure from normally operating nuclear plants or coal ash dumps is very small. People who say that coal plants emit more radiation than nuclear plants are not helping to counter "radiophobia." They are in fact attempting to exploit "radiophobia" to stir up fear over a very minor aspect of coal's environmental harms. (And coal really is an environmental disaster in many other ways.) Worse, people making this argument are not even correct about the underlying numbers. Many of them are just parroting a Scientific American article [4] which itself is a misleadingly garbled retelling of an actual research report [5] [6]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palo_Verde_Nuclear_Generating_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palo_Verde_Nuclear_Generating_... [1] http://www.world-nuclear.org/uploadedFiles/org/Features/Radiation/1_RadiationandRadioactivity(2).pdf http://www.world-nuclear.org/uploadedFiles/org/Features/Radi... [2] https://www.epa.gov/coalash https://www.epa.gov/coalash [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_United_States#Electricity_generation_by_source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_United_States#El... [4] "Coal Ash Is More Radioactive Than Nuclear Waste" https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-... [5] "Radiological Impact of Airborne Effluents of Coal and Nuclear Plants" https://science.sciencemag.org/content/202/4372/1045 https://science.sciencemag.org/content/202/4372/1045 [6] Detailed examination of what the authors were actually reporting in "Radiological Impact of Airborne Effluents of Coal and Nuclear Plants" via my past comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14466887 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14466887
- LatteLazy 7y agoI'm very confused how anyone can claim nuclear plants don't emit radiation...
- pas 7y agoThe typical plant by itself just sits there producing heat, and it's well shielded so emits no radiation. If we look at all the NPPs (so we factor in all the accidents) and average out then we get a higher number. And if we look at a full lifecycle analysis (so from uranium oxide mining to plant building, to long-term nuclear waste storage, and/or reprocessing and whatnot), then we'll get an even higher number. But all of that is quite meaningless, because the real question is health impact anyway.
- LatteLazy 7y agoSo not a single gamma ray is escaping during normal, correct operation?
- LegitShady 7y agocoal power plants dont emit any bananas at all.
- crispinb 7y agoCitation?
- thaumasiotes 7y ago> The very fact people still burn coal in cities in the 21st century is mind-boggling. There are a lot of interesting things you could say about this. A coal plant needs workers and it also needs good transportation links. (To bring the coal in.) It needs to support the workers. It needs to be hooked up to an electrical grid. So it's sort of a natural nexus for the development of a city. People who can live in some other city might prefer that, but there will be plenty of people for whom the Coal City is a natural choice. If cities naturally grow around coal plants, then it doesn't make sense to be surprised that there are cities with coal plants in them. Taking the original comment in a totally different direction, this is an angle I don't think is discussed enough in relation to electric cars. We may not need to burn coal inside cities, but we burn oil all the time, so we can move around. This produces the same undesirable smog that coal does. There's a big fight over whether electric cars release more or less smog well-to-wheels than gasoline cars do. But I almost never see anyone asking whether, even if electric cars release more smog, it might not be better to have the smog all produced centrally at a power plant somewhere than widely distributed in the middle of concentrated residential areas.
- maxerickson 7y agoThey are talking about home heating with coal. You can site a power plant regionally, it doesn't have to be particularly adjacent to residences.
- KarlKemp 7y agoThere is no discussion if electric cars release “more smog than gasoline cars” just due to the fact that “smog” isn’t any specific substance. It’s a phenomenon that depends just as much on the wind direction as on air quality. In less literal terms, there might be a debate about relative amounts of CO2. But that is mostly a debate that happens online instigated by ideological opponents of electrification. Electric cars use less energy even including production and even if the energy mix consists mostly of fossile fuels. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_aspects_of_the_electric_car https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_aspects_of_the_e.... The advantages are even starker for other emissions such NOX or particulates: even without renewables and nuclear energy in the mix, electric cars need less energy because the efficiency of one large power plant is higher than thousands of engines. And that energy is generated with fewer emissions because, again, centralized generation allows more investment into clean technology.
- xvedejas 7y agoSwitching from wood to coal for home heating does improve air quality, at least. That's the one benefit I'm aware of.
- frank2 7y agoAnd switching from coal to number 2 heating oil also improves air quality -- drastically.
- KarlKemp 7y agoNext we have natural gas, which doesn’t emit anything with an impact on your health (and is also somewhat better, although far from perfect, in its impact on climate).
- mirimir 7y agoIt's hard to avoid emitting NOx.
- ComodoHacker 7y agoMalfunctioning or poor quality equipment emit CO.
- spqr0a1 7y agoThere are plenty of wood stoves available these days with what are effectively catalytic converters. Wood stove particulate emission can be a lot lower than it used to.
- grecy 7y agoAnd in fact it's the law in many places (Canada)
- dboreham 7y agoIt depends if they're melting down or not.
- AtlasBarfed 7y agoNeither nuclear or coal is price competitive anyway with wind/solar or gas turbine, and they are falling behind with every successive year of developments in wind/solar