Nuclear plant shutdowns tied to coal pollution, decreased birth weights
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Re: Nuclear plant shutdowns tied to coal pollution, decreased birth weights
#2While I don't doubt that coal pollution is harmful, I do have to wonder how much the study controlled for other conditions that could cause these changes (like economic factors).
I can't help but wonder if this is confusing correlation with causation even if just a little.
Re: Nuclear plant shutdowns tied to coal pollution, decreased birth weights
#3Closing nuclear power plants and replacing them with coal power plants is simply criminal. In Europe, coal pollution kills ~20,000 people each year (), nuclear never killed a single person, and no study could ever provide any mortality increase due to nuclear energy (outside the Tchernobyl accident, which killed between 200 and 4000 people depending on estimations, after 20 years of study)
To be clear: nuclear is not the perfect solution, is not a renewable energy, and will have to be replaced by something else in the future. But this is the least deadly energy, even safer than wind or solar power ()
() https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/jun/12/european... () http://www.nextbigfuture.com/2016/06/update-of-death-per-ter...
Re: Nuclear plant shutdowns tied to coal pollution, decreased birth weights
#4Electrostatic precipitators fix the particulate problem very effectivly
Re: Nuclear plant shutdowns tied to coal pollution, decreased birth weights
#5A very weird way to study the outcome of coal air pollution. It seems like this is not really about air pollution but trying to push nuclear energy. Luckily shutting down nuclear plants does not necessarily mean turning on coal power (e.g. in Germany they were replaced by renewables).
Some questions arise though: Which coal power air pollutant is to blame for the birth weight decrease. Which coal pollution mitigation techniques[1] (which are probably now more common) were used by the coal plants?
Re: Nuclear plant shutdowns tied to coal pollution, decreased birth weights
#6 ...the difference in birth weights between the two time
periods is roughly the difference in birth weights between
a baby born to a mother with a disadvantaged background
who received supplemental nutrition during pregnancy and a
baby born to a similar mother who didn't get that help.
Here seems to be an older version of the source, with power plant maps:
http://conference.iza.org/conference_files/environ_2015/seve...
Paywalled version:
http://www.nature.com/articles/nenergy201751
Infant vital statistics are drawn from county-level sources.
Re: Nuclear plant shutdowns tied to coal pollution, decreased birth weights
#7Closing nuclear power plants and replacing them with coal power plants is simply criminal. In Europe, coal pollution kills ~20,000 people each year ( ), nuclear never killed a single person, and no study could ever provide any mortality increase due to nuclear energy (outside the Tchernobyl accident, which killed between 200 and 4000 people depending on estimations, after 20 years of study) To be clear: nuclear is no…
Fukushima has demonstrated that humans aren't great at controlling or predicting the real risk of nuclear. The fact is, even if no one dies from acute radiation poisoning, nuclear disasters are costly and devastating.
Re: Nuclear plant shutdowns tied to coal pollution, decreased birth weights
#8Closing nuclear power plants and replacing them with coal power plants is simply criminal. In Europe, coal pollution kills ~20,000 people each year ( ), nuclear never killed a single person, and no study could ever provide any mortality increase due to nuclear energy (outside the Tchernobyl accident, which killed between 200 and 4000 people depending on estimations, after 20 years of study) To be clear: nuclear is no…
In other words nuclear never killed anybody apart from the ones it killed:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_and_radiation_...
Re: Nuclear plant shutdowns tied to coal pollution, decreased birth weights
#9Closing nuclear power plants and replacing them with coal power plants is simply criminal. In Europe, coal pollution kills ~20,000 people each year ( ), nuclear never killed a single person, and no study could ever provide any mortality increase due to nuclear energy (outside the Tchernobyl accident, which killed between 200 and 4000 people depending on estimations, after 20 years of study) To be clear: nuclear is no…
> (outside the Tchernobyl accident, which killed between 200 and 4000 people depending on estimations, after 20 years of study)
Wikipedia seems to give 4000 as an estimate on those exposed to the highest levels of radiation alone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster#Cancer_proj...
On the other hand coal, wind and solar never poisoned our food (wild boars in Germany thousands of km away still often are too radioactive to be eaten ). Coal, wind and solar never led to emergency evacuations. Coal, wind and solar cannot be used to make atomic bombs.
Re: Nuclear plant shutdowns tied to coal pollution, decreased birth weights
#10A very weird way to study the outcome of coal air pollution. It seems like this is not really about air pollution but trying to push nuclear energy. Luckily shutting down nuclear plants does not necessarily mean turning on coal power (e.g. in Germany they were replaced by renewables). Some questions arise though: Which coal power air pollutant is to blame for the birth weight decrease. Which coal pollution mitigation…
in Germany they were replaced by renewables
Do you have a reference for this? Germany has a very aggressive (and highly commendable) plan to move to renewables, but my understanding was that the closing of nuclear plants post-Fukushima was covered by coal. Wikipedia seems to agree (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Germany):
At the same time, Germany continues to rely heavily on coal power, with usage increasing to offset the phase-out of nuclear energy.