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What do you mean by "safer"? Less accidents compared to eg coal plants? No exploding coal plant will render a whole region unlivable for >30 years. Both happen

What do you mean by "safer"? Less accidents compared to eg coal plants? No exploding coal plant will render a whole region unlivable for >30 years. Both happened at Tschernobyl and Fukushima.

rich_sasha 5y ago
Areas around coal power plants can exceed radioactivity limits for nuclear power plants, due to trace elements in the soot landing back down. Never mind all the other stuff. That’s pretty nasty, I’d rather be close to a nuclear power plant.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- germandiago 5y ago
  I did not know this.
sigmoid10 5y ago
Coal plants might render the entire planet unlivable within the next century. When weighed against the theoretical worst case impact of climate collapse, the theoretical worst case impact for nuclear power (that is, every single plant exploding and contaminating a 30 mile radius) is still vanishing by comparison.
itsangaris 5y ago
Checkout deaths per capita statistics https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-production-per-twh https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-p...
mdavidn 5y ago
Coal plants release ash into the air and groundwater continuously, in the course of normal operation. This ash is around five times more radioactive than soil.
UnFleshedOne 5y ago
Instead coal plants working normally slowly pump more radiation into atmosphere than occasionally exploding nuclear plants...
mrighele 5y ago
I guess deaths per energy unit produced ? According to this [1], for every death caused by nuclear power, 350 people die because of coal power. Note that most of these people died as a consequence of Chernobyl accident (~4000 vs ~500), so by current standards Nuclear Power is probably even safer. The issue with nuclear is that deaths are concentrated in a few "big" accidents, that have much more visibility and leave a lasting impressions, thus scaring the population much more. (This is not unique to nuclear power though, something similar happens with plane vs car travel: the latter causes generally more deaths, but plan accidents are more newsworthy). [1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-production-per-twh https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-p...
- germandiago 5y ago
  Exactly this is what I meant.
bananabreakfast 5y ago
burning coal kills people and does a whole lot of damage just by running normally. it doesn't have to explode
Cybiote 5y ago
> No exploding coal plant will render a whole region unlivable for >30 years Unlivable for humans. The exclusion zone around Chernobyl became a de facto wild-life sanctuary. To the extent that some environmentalists now argue benefits of officially maintaining it as one indefinitely. Human supporting activities such as farming, mining and habitat expansion often come at a serious cost to local ecosystems. Nature ends up flourishing over time in humans excluded regions exactly because they are unlivable for > 30 years. As pointed out by others, one effect of burning coal is the concentration of its radioactive elements in fly ash. And since less care is taken, more radioactive material ends up released into the environment by coal plants than nuclear plants. It's worth pointing out however, when contrasted with background, risks from exposure to radioactivity is not significantly raised by living near coal plants. The real killer from coal is pollution. Having said that, accumulation of fly ash over time could be a concern, especially wherever it gathered under non-uniform dispersal. As far as I know, this is yet to be shown. Perhaps a stronger example of society's inconsistent reasoning about radioactivity exposure is inhalation of tobacco smoke. It's curious that information on the significant amounts of radioactive material in tobacco smoke did not percolate widely and probably would not have changed habits anyway, given its known carcinogenic nature was already not enough to do so.
- red_trumpet 5y ago
  I mean, the radioactive material in tobacco smoke is already included in the carcinogenic nature of smoking, right? So knowing about radioactive smoke might enable us to explain the dangers more precisely, but it doesn't change risks, which were previously known.

What do you mean by "safer"? Less accidents compared to eg coal plants? No exploding coal plant will render a whole region unlivable for >30 years. Both happened at Tschernobyl and Fukushima.

rich_sasha 5y ago

Areas around coal power plants can exceed radioactivity limits for nuclear power plants, due to trace elements in the soot landing back down. Never mind all the other stuff. That’s pretty nasty, I’d rather be close to a nuclear power plant.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
germandiago 5y ago
I did not know this.

sigmoid10 5y ago

Coal plants might render the entire planet unlivable within the next century. When weighed against the theoretical worst case impact of climate collapse, the theoretical worst case impact for nuclear power (that is, every single plant exploding and contaminating a 30 mile radius) is still vanishing by comparison.

itsangaris 5y ago

Checkout deaths per capita statistics https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-production-per-twh https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-p...

mdavidn 5y ago

Coal plants release ash into the air and groundwater continuously, in the course of normal operation. This ash is around five times more radioactive than soil.

UnFleshedOne 5y ago

Instead coal plants working normally slowly pump more radiation into atmosphere than occasionally exploding nuclear plants...

mrighele 5y ago

I guess deaths per energy unit produced ? According to this [1], for every death caused by nuclear power, 350 people die because of coal power. Note that most of these people died as a consequence of Chernobyl accident (~4000 vs ~500), so by current standards Nuclear Power is probably even safer. The issue with nuclear is that deaths are concentrated in a few "big" accidents, that have much more visibility and leave a lasting impressions, thus scaring the population much more. (This is not unique to nuclear power though, something similar happens with plane vs car travel: the latter causes generally more deaths, but plan accidents are more newsworthy). [1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-production-per-twh https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-p...

germandiago 5y ago
Exactly this is what I meant.

bananabreakfast 5y ago

burning coal kills people and does a whole lot of damage just by running normally. it doesn't have to explode

Cybiote 5y ago

> No exploding coal plant will render a whole region unlivable for >30 years Unlivable for humans. The exclusion zone around Chernobyl became a de facto wild-life sanctuary. To the extent that some environmentalists now argue benefits of officially maintaining it as one indefinitely. Human supporting activities such as farming, mining and habitat expansion often come at a serious cost to local ecosystems. Nature ends up flourishing over time in humans excluded regions exactly because they are unlivable for > 30 years. As pointed out by others, one effect of burning coal is the concentration of its radioactive elements in fly ash. And since less care is taken, more radioactive material ends up released into the environment by coal plants than nuclear plants. It's worth pointing out however, when contrasted with background, risks from exposure to radioactivity is not significantly raised by living near coal plants. The real killer from coal is pollution. Having said that, accumulation of fly ash over time could be a concern, especially wherever it gathered under non-uniform dispersal. As far as I know, this is yet to be shown. Perhaps a stronger example of society's inconsistent reasoning about radioactivity exposure is inhalation of tobacco smoke. It's curious that information on the significant amounts of radioactive material in tobacco smoke did not percolate widely and probably would not have changed habits anyway, given its known carcinogenic nature was already not enough to do so.

red_trumpet 5y ago
I mean, the radioactive material in tobacco smoke is already included in the carcinogenic nature of smoking, right? So knowing about radioactive smoke might enable us to explain the dangers more precisely, but it doesn't change risks, which were previously known.