4 ms·
Something that the article didn't mention is that coal plants also produce radiation, and because of the lack of protection against it, the average dose of year
by sneakerblack 4y ago
Something that the article didn't mention is that coal plants also produce radiation, and because of the lack of protection against it, the average dose of yearly radiation you get living near a coal plant is actually higher than living near a nuclear plant. That said, the repercussions of a major disaster are a lot lower with a coal plant than with a nuclear plant.
And, as always, relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/radiation/ https://xkcd.com/radiation/
- fsh 4y agoThis factoid about coal power plants is often repeated, but I have my doubts about the accuracy. It seems to be based on a 44 year old paper [1] which comes to the conclusion that the radiation dose you get from living near a coal plant is on the same order of magnitude as the one from living near a BWR or PWR (Table 5 in the reference). However, emissions regulations for power plants (fossil or nuclear) are surely very different in 2022 than they were in 1978. [1] https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.202.4372.1045 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.202.4372.1045