26 ms·

Nuclear advocate here. With radiation, people often conflate measureable with hazardous. But when you can measure a single nucleus decaying there are like 20 o

Nuclear advocate here. With radiation, people often conflate measureable with hazardous. But when you can measure a single nucleus decaying there are like 20 orders of magnitude between them. Radioactive cleanup article often fail to mention that we don't see biological harm with doses less than 100 mSv acute or 300 mSv over a long period of time. Articles without mSv in them are borderline meaningless. Anyway even with some historical cleanup issues, the facts remain that 8 million people die per year due to air pollution from fossil and renewable biofuel combustion, climate change is happening due to atmospheric CO2 emissions, nuclear power has among the lowest possible cradle-to-grave CO2 emissions per kWh, we are about 80% fossil fueled today, and nuclear accidents cause far less life and environmental harm than fossil/biofuel. That's why lots of people like nuclear. Coal kills a Chernobyl worth of people every 8 hours while operating normally and has to pay nothing for it. Think about that.

bayesian_horse 4y ago
The problem with all those assumptions is that the "radiological harm" is cumulative and it can accumulate in unexpected ways which aren't random. For example some isotopes enrich in certain organs and then do their damage for a long time. And there's no good framework for treating or checking "acceptable" risks for example with radioactive dirt or whatever. Russian soldiers dug trenches in the hot zone in Tschernobyl just this year. Do we expect people to remember these sites for the next few millenia? The same goes for any potential spill of radioactive material, and that's why long term storage is such a difficult problem. We don't want any to get out, because we'll never be able to tell who gets what dose. And "nuclear advocates" like to say coal, preferrably burned in the least effective or safe way, is the only alternative to nuclear power. Which it's not, of course. They like to forget that replacing coal (and other fossil fuels) means an extreme scaleup in access to radioactive material, thereby scaling up the risks. Especially those from bad intentions, but accidents can't be calculated either. They like to forget that while not that many people die even in major accidents, that's just because a large area is evacuated and cleaned up. At horrendous cost. The Fukushima cleanup may reach a trillion Dollar in cost, btw.
- acidburnNSA 4y ago
  Actually it's the anti-nuclear crowd that frames pro-nuclear people in a way that pretends it's only coal or nuclear. The reality is that we are 80% fossil and biofuel and need everything that is at least 10x better on climate and health, which includes major expansion of wind, solar, hydro, nuclear, geothermal. The amount of energy transition we need is nearly unfathomable. To tie our hand behind our back because we are afraid of nuclear in this race is unwise. Antinuclear scare mongerers are forcing the Fukushima people to purify water so far below the natural radioactivity of seawater (which does contain slightly radioactive potassium and uranium) that it's truly ridiculous. That drives up costs unecessarily. Anyway what's the cost of failing to solve climate change or the cost of killing 8 million people per year with combustion? https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2019/09/12/its-really-ok-if-japan-dumps-radioactive-fukushima-water-into-the-ocean/?sh=68b8d045b298 https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2019/09/12/its-reall...
  - bayesian_horse 4y ago
    Now it sounds like "fossil and biofuel" is only coal. Not quite getting this. We should all be afraid of nuclear power. The risks are uncalculateable. Whoever thinks he can calculate the risks is delusional. It's not just that "impossible" accidents have happened a bit too often in the past. The bigger problem is that Humans are not that predictable and any nuclear waste stored is in danger of getting blown up by some army or warlord in the next few milennia. Same for active power plants, though for a shorter period. Ukraine is having this problem right now. What are the chances that Putin causes an incident with one of their plants? You can never say zero, and the situation is very fluid. For any reasonable estimation of risk, you'd have to assume a couple of decades of peace in your region: No war, civil war or major political upheaval. Some are willing to make that bet. I'm not, for any country.
    - acidburnNSA 4y ago
      Fossil and biofuel are the ones that kill 8M per year. Not just coal. That nice smell of wood burning in the air is pretty deadly, sadly enough. https://www.who.int/health-topics/air-pollution#tab=tab_2 https://www.who.int/health-topics/air-pollution#tab=tab_2
jmyeet 4y ago
> Radioactive cleanup article often fail to mention that we don't see biological harm with doses less than 100 mSv acute or 300 mSv over a long period of time. Waste from fission plants and incidents is hard to estimate for a variety of reasons. It tends to be incredibly long-lived. Small non-lethal (even non-harmful) amounts can accumulate in animals and plants to the point where there's still an impact from Chernobyl on widespread populations decades later [1]: > The German boars roam in forests nearly 950 miles (1,500 kilometers ) from Chernobyl. Yet, the amount of radioactive cesium-137 within their tissue often registers dozens of times beyond the recommended limit for consumption and thousands of times above normal. It's worth noting that not all toxic byproducts are radioactive. Cesium is toxic on its own. The Uranium and Plutonium decay chains include a lot of metals that even if you ignore the radioactive element, they're toxic, sometimes incredibly so. > ... 8 million people die per year due to air pollution from fossil and renewable biofuel combustion. [citation needed] This study [2] argues 1M/year, most of those concentrated in SE Asia (due to lack of regulation combined with coal use) and it's predominantly coal. For the US it's around 20,000. It's also not clear to me if this study includes emissions from automobiles. > ... nuclear accidents cause far less life and environmental harm than fossil/biofuel. The Chernobyl Absolute Exclusion Zone, decades later, still stands at (literally) a thousand square miles. Nuclear advocates always bring up coal (as a false dichotomy and it paints nuclear in the best light) and deaths because it's in many ways the least impactful dimension for nuclear. Likewise, they always talk about operational costs while brushing over capital costs (and thus the total cost of ownership) and the costs of waste handling and storage and ultimately the site cleanup costs. As the article notes here the current estimate for this one site sits at 121 billion pounds and will likely rise and take a century or more. [1]: https://phys.org/news/2011-04-germany-radioactive-boars-legacy-chernobyl.html https://phys.org/news/2011-04-germany-radioactive-boars-lega... [2]: https://www.healtheffects.org/publication/global-burden-disease-major-air-pollution-sources-gbd-maps-global-approach https://www.healtheffects.org/publication/global-burden-dise...
- acidburnNSA 4y ago
  Do you know the dose rates from the boar in mSv/yr, and how it compares to background? Lol. See this is exactly what I'm talking about! Thank you. As for air pollution citation, here: https://www.who.int/health-topics/air-pollution#tab=tab_2 https://www.who.int/health-topics/air-pollution#tab=tab_2

bayesian_horse 4y ago

The problem with all those assumptions is that the "radiological harm" is cumulative and it can accumulate in unexpected ways which aren't random. For example some isotopes enrich in certain organs and then do their damage for a long time. And there's no good framework for treating or checking "acceptable" risks for example with radioactive dirt or whatever. Russian soldiers dug trenches in the hot zone in Tschernobyl just this year. Do we expect people to remember these sites for the next few millenia? The same goes for any potential spill of radioactive material, and that's why long term storage is such a difficult problem. We don't want any to get out, because we'll never be able to tell who gets what dose. And "nuclear advocates" like to say coal, preferrably burned in the least effective or safe way, is the only alternative to nuclear power. Which it's not, of course. They like to forget that replacing coal (and other fossil fuels) means an extreme scaleup in access to radioactive material, thereby scaling up the risks. Especially those from bad intentions, but accidents can't be calculated either. They like to forget that while not that many people die even in major accidents, that's just because a large area is evacuated and cleaned up. At horrendous cost. The Fukushima cleanup may reach a trillion Dollar in cost, btw.

acidburnNSA 4y ago
Actually it's the anti-nuclear crowd that frames pro-nuclear people in a way that pretends it's only coal or nuclear. The reality is that we are 80% fossil and biofuel and need everything that is at least 10x better on climate and health, which includes major expansion of wind, solar, hydro, nuclear, geothermal. The amount of energy transition we need is nearly unfathomable. To tie our hand behind our back because we are afraid of nuclear in this race is unwise. Antinuclear scare mongerers are forcing the Fukushima people to purify water so far below the natural radioactivity of seawater (which does contain slightly radioactive potassium and uranium) that it's truly ridiculous. That drives up costs unecessarily. Anyway what's the cost of failing to solve climate change or the cost of killing 8 million people per year with combustion? https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2019/09/12/its-really-ok-if-japan-dumps-radioactive-fukushima-water-into-the-ocean/?sh=68b8d045b298 https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2019/09/12/its-reall...
- bayesian_horse 4y ago
  Now it sounds like "fossil and biofuel" is only coal. Not quite getting this. We should all be afraid of nuclear power. The risks are uncalculateable. Whoever thinks he can calculate the risks is delusional. It's not just that "impossible" accidents have happened a bit too often in the past. The bigger problem is that Humans are not that predictable and any nuclear waste stored is in danger of getting blown up by some army or warlord in the next few milennia. Same for active power plants, though for a shorter period. Ukraine is having this problem right now. What are the chances that Putin causes an incident with one of their plants? You can never say zero, and the situation is very fluid. For any reasonable estimation of risk, you'd have to assume a couple of decades of peace in your region: No war, civil war or major political upheaval. Some are willing to make that bet. I'm not, for any country.
  - acidburnNSA 4y ago
    Fossil and biofuel are the ones that kill 8M per year. Not just coal. That nice smell of wood burning in the air is pretty deadly, sadly enough. https://www.who.int/health-topics/air-pollution#tab=tab_2 https://www.who.int/health-topics/air-pollution#tab=tab_2

jmyeet 4y ago

> Radioactive cleanup article often fail to mention that we don't see biological harm with doses less than 100 mSv acute or 300 mSv over a long period of time. Waste from fission plants and incidents is hard to estimate for a variety of reasons. It tends to be incredibly long-lived. Small non-lethal (even non-harmful) amounts can accumulate in animals and plants to the point where there's still an impact from Chernobyl on widespread populations decades later [1]: > The German boars roam in forests nearly 950 miles (1,500 kilometers ) from Chernobyl. Yet, the amount of radioactive cesium-137 within their tissue often registers dozens of times beyond the recommended limit for consumption and thousands of times above normal. It's worth noting that not all toxic byproducts are radioactive. Cesium is toxic on its own. The Uranium and Plutonium decay chains include a lot of metals that even if you ignore the radioactive element, they're toxic, sometimes incredibly so. > ... 8 million people die per year due to air pollution from fossil and renewable biofuel combustion. [citation needed] This study [2] argues 1M/year, most of those concentrated in SE Asia (due to lack of regulation combined with coal use) and it's predominantly coal. For the US it's around 20,000. It's also not clear to me if this study includes emissions from automobiles. > ... nuclear accidents cause far less life and environmental harm than fossil/biofuel. The Chernobyl Absolute Exclusion Zone, decades later, still stands at (literally) a thousand square miles. Nuclear advocates always bring up coal (as a false dichotomy and it paints nuclear in the best light) and deaths because it's in many ways the least impactful dimension for nuclear. Likewise, they always talk about operational costs while brushing over capital costs (and thus the total cost of ownership) and the costs of waste handling and storage and ultimately the site cleanup costs. As the article notes here the current estimate for this one site sits at 121 billion pounds and will likely rise and take a century or more. [1]: https://phys.org/news/2011-04-germany-radioactive-boars-legacy-chernobyl.html https://phys.org/news/2011-04-germany-radioactive-boars-lega... [2]: https://www.healtheffects.org/publication/global-burden-disease-major-air-pollution-sources-gbd-maps-global-approach https://www.healtheffects.org/publication/global-burden-dise...

acidburnNSA 4y ago
Do you know the dose rates from the boar in mSv/yr, and how it compares to background? Lol. See this is exactly what I'm talking about! Thank you. As for air pollution citation, here: https://www.who.int/health-topics/air-pollution#tab=tab_2 https://www.who.int/health-topics/air-pollution#tab=tab_2