4 ms·

But nuclear meltdowns would have killed a lot of people and made a lot of land uninhabitable.

by jlelse 5y ago

beeboop 5y ago
There is no evidence for this and it's baseless speculation at best.
jedimastert 5y ago
More than coal has? Honestly, I kinda doubt it.
- NaturalPhallacy 5y ago
  Coal burning literally releases more radiation into the environment than nuclear power would.
  - dredmorbius 5y ago
    True, but utterly irrelevant. Quantities of radiation released by coal plants under normal operations are not a health concern. Coal has plenty of other health, and environmental, concerns. Quanities of radiation released by a coal plant are unlikely to vary much at all, no matter how critically mismanaged the plant might be. Quantities of radiation emitted by a badly-mismanaged, sabotaged, or attacked nuclear power plant, on the other hand, become a health concern for people across continents and beyond, as with Chernobyl and Fukushima. (Note that "concern" need not mean "realised risk", but given that one of the characteristics of nuclear incidents to date has been inaccurate or misleading information on precisely the levels of risk presented, prudence and caution strongly recommends presuming a worst case until otherwise conclusively demonstrated.)
    - NaturalPhallacy 5y ago
      I was just pointing out that nuclear power plants don't pollute the planet with radiation. Coal plants do.
      - dredmorbius 5y ago
        https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28900238 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28900238
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- jlelse 5y ago
  Of course, coal kills a lot of people. But instead of investing the money in nuclear power plants, one could also build wind/hydro power plants and solar plants...
  - onepointsixC 5y ago
    And have no scalable storage technology other than running natural gas turbines to stablize the grid. No thanks.
- unknownOrigin 5y ago
  The difference in deaths and severe effects on health and ecology is incomparable. Coal absolutely dwarfs nuclear. Like hundreds or thousands to one. Even if a Chernobyl happened twice a year, like it or not, the resulting pollution and death would be less than what coal mining and coal power plants do. THAT is the reality people don't want to admit because the anti-nuclear propaganda and scaremongering has worked so well. (All of which gets kinda exposed when there's opposition also to fusion, so many nay sayers, and it won't work this, and it takes 40 years that... also, I swear, if I'm going to see one more "fusion reactor in the sky" tweet from Elon, my head's gonna explode. Dirtbag manipulator.)
celestialcheese 5y ago
I count 12 deaths in the US from nuclear related accidents in the US since 1955. [1]. Chernobyl, the worst recorded nuclear disaster, was directly responsible for 33 deaths and estimates on total attributable deaths due to health complications from radiation range from 4,000 to 60,000 [2]. In 2018, it is estimated that fossil fuel air pollution was responsible for over 8m deaths worldwide. [3] Mortality rate by tWH isn't even close [4]. Fossil fuels are significantly more damaging both in terms of loss-of-life and habitability on this planet. 1 -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reactor_accidents_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reactor_accidents_in_t... 2 - https://ourworldindata.org/what-was-the-death-toll-from-chernobyl-and-fukushima https://ourworldindata.org/what-was-the-death-toll-from-cher... 3 - https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/c-change/news/fossil-fuel-air-pollution-responsible-for-1-in-5-deaths-worldwide/ https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/c-change/news/fossil-fuel-air-p... 4 - https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldwide-by-energy-source/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldw...
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  During and immediately following the Chernobyl incident, all of Europe and large portions of Asia were under warnings or restrictions due to radiation hazard concerns. Lives of some 450,000,000 people were disrupted for at least weeks, and in cases years and centuries. Around the former site extending 50 km (30 mi) (a bureaucratic rather than scientific determination) is an exclusion zone which must be maintained for 300+ years. Duration for which the former core and reactor itself will remain lethally radioactive extends to tens of thousands of years. Both intervals greatly exceed the span of virtually all human institutions, as well as modern languages, writing systems, let alone civilisation itself. Our measures and senses of risk are very poorly suited to such timeframes. (A problem also in addressing fossil fuel hazards.) https://www.newsweek.com/chernobyl-safe-now-when-will-1414489 https://www.newsweek.com/chernobyl-safe-now-when-will-141448... That said, these aren't an issue with renewables.
  - celestialcheese 5y ago
    These aren't an issue with renewables if you live in a relatively rich area. If you live in Ghana, your perspective might be significantly different. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-29/the-rich-world-s-electronic-waste-dumped-in-ghana https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-29/the-rich-... We don't have a plan for handling this solar waste in 25 years, which is estimated to be 78M metric tons in 2050. [1] This doesn't need to be an either-or scenario, but we can't ignore the waste and environmental cost of solar in these discussions. 1 -https://www.wired.com/story/solar-panels-are-starting-to-die-leaving-behind-toxic-trash/ https://www.wired.com/story/solar-panels-are-starting-to-die...

But nuclear meltdowns would have killed a lot of people and made a lot of land uninhabitable.

by jlelse 5y ago

But nuclear meltdowns would have killed a lot of people and made a lot of land uninhabitable.

beeboop 5y ago

There is no evidence for this and it's baseless speculation at best.

jedimastert 5y ago

More than coal has? Honestly, I kinda doubt it.

NaturalPhallacy 5y ago
Coal burning literally releases more radiation into the environment than nuclear power would.
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  True, but utterly irrelevant. Quantities of radiation released by coal plants under normal operations are not a health concern. Coal has plenty of other health, and environmental, concerns. Quanities of radiation released by a coal plant are unlikely to vary much at all, no matter how critically mismanaged the plant might be. Quantities of radiation emitted by a badly-mismanaged, sabotaged, or attacked nuclear power plant, on the other hand, become a health concern for people across continents and beyond, as with Chernobyl and Fukushima. (Note that "concern" need not mean "realised risk", but given that one of the characteristics of nuclear incidents to date has been inaccurate or misleading information on precisely the levels of risk presented, prudence and caution strongly recommends presuming a worst case until otherwise conclusively demonstrated.)
  - NaturalPhallacy 5y ago
    I was just pointing out that nuclear power plants don't pollute the planet with radiation. Coal plants do.
    - dredmorbius 5y ago
      https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28900238 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28900238
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
jlelse 5y ago
Of course, coal kills a lot of people. But instead of investing the money in nuclear power plants, one could also build wind/hydro power plants and solar plants...
- onepointsixC 5y ago
  And have no scalable storage technology other than running natural gas turbines to stablize the grid. No thanks.
unknownOrigin 5y ago
The difference in deaths and severe effects on health and ecology is incomparable. Coal absolutely dwarfs nuclear. Like hundreds or thousands to one. Even if a Chernobyl happened twice a year, like it or not, the resulting pollution and death would be less than what coal mining and coal power plants do. THAT is the reality people don't want to admit because the anti-nuclear propaganda and scaremongering has worked so well. (All of which gets kinda exposed when there's opposition also to fusion, so many nay sayers, and it won't work this, and it takes 40 years that... also, I swear, if I'm going to see one more "fusion reactor in the sky" tweet from Elon, my head's gonna explode. Dirtbag manipulator.)

celestialcheese 5y ago

I count 12 deaths in the US from nuclear related accidents in the US since 1955. [1]. Chernobyl, the worst recorded nuclear disaster, was directly responsible for 33 deaths and estimates on total attributable deaths due to health complications from radiation range from 4,000 to 60,000 [2]. In 2018, it is estimated that fossil fuel air pollution was responsible for over 8m deaths worldwide. [3] Mortality rate by tWH isn't even close [4]. Fossil fuels are significantly more damaging both in terms of loss-of-life and habitability on this planet. 1 -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reactor_accidents_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reactor_accidents_in_t... 2 - https://ourworldindata.org/what-was-the-death-toll-from-chernobyl-and-fukushima https://ourworldindata.org/what-was-the-death-toll-from-cher... 3 - https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/c-change/news/fossil-fuel-air-pollution-responsible-for-1-in-5-deaths-worldwide/ https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/c-change/news/fossil-fuel-air-p... 4 - https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldwide-by-energy-source/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldw...

dredmorbius 5y ago
During and immediately following the Chernobyl incident, all of Europe and large portions of Asia were under warnings or restrictions due to radiation hazard concerns. Lives of some 450,000,000 people were disrupted for at least weeks, and in cases years and centuries. Around the former site extending 50 km (30 mi) (a bureaucratic rather than scientific determination) is an exclusion zone which must be maintained for 300+ years. Duration for which the former core and reactor itself will remain lethally radioactive extends to tens of thousands of years. Both intervals greatly exceed the span of virtually all human institutions, as well as modern languages, writing systems, let alone civilisation itself. Our measures and senses of risk are very poorly suited to such timeframes. (A problem also in addressing fossil fuel hazards.) https://www.newsweek.com/chernobyl-safe-now-when-will-1414489 https://www.newsweek.com/chernobyl-safe-now-when-will-141448... That said, these aren't an issue with renewables.
- celestialcheese 5y ago
  These aren't an issue with renewables if you live in a relatively rich area. If you live in Ghana, your perspective might be significantly different. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-29/the-rich-world-s-electronic-waste-dumped-in-ghana https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-29/the-rich-... We don't have a plan for handling this solar waste in 25 years, which is estimated to be 78M metric tons in 2050. [1] This doesn't need to be an either-or scenario, but we can't ignore the waste and environmental cost of solar in these discussions. 1 -https://www.wired.com/story/solar-panels-are-starting-to-die-leaving-behind-toxic-trash/ https://www.wired.com/story/solar-panels-are-starting-to-die...