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Nuclear plant shutdowns tied to coal pollution, decreased birth weights

reuters.com

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Re: Nuclear plant shutdowns tied to coal pollution, decreased birth weights

#61

Post by mpweiher »

lispm wrote: post #28
bpodgursky wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fukushima has demonstrated that relying on 60's technology and refusing to upgrade or invest because of political sensitivities exposes you to disasters 50 years down the line. It's like if everyone got afraid of airplanes in the 1980's and kept flying the same ones from the 60s through today because people were afraid to build new ones. Would you say air travel was unsafe, or that we made poor technology investments…

Now you understand a tiny part of the Energy business. 'Nuclear' is not only a technical problem, it is a financial problem. Old plants will be run until they collapse - unless a regulator keeps the companies from doing that. But then the regulator comes onto pressure, because there is huge amount of money/corruption involved to keep the plant online. Every single plant is a multi-billion dollar investment, jobs, sur…

Yes, and despite the technical failings, the political failings and the corruption, the effects were comparatively benign.

Re: Nuclear plant shutdowns tied to coal pollution, decreased birth weights

#62

Post by [deleted] »

mpweiher wrote: post #56
whiskers08xmt wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the important difference is killing people when running as intended, versus killing people when disasters occur. In a way, a Nulcear power plant is similar to dam; when the dam breaks, it's a serious disaster, but as long as it runs as intended, humans aren't really at risk.

Yes, except that dam disasters have killed a lot more people than nuclear disasters.

[deleted]

Re: Nuclear plant shutdowns tied to coal pollution, decreased birth weights

#63

Post by lostlogin »

blowski wrote: post #20
tonyedgecombe wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In other words nuclear never killed anybody apart from the ones it killed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_and_radiation_...

I'm no expert on Chernobyl or power generation. But I think Chernobyl was the result of under-investment and poor management, whereas many of the deaths from coal are an unavoidable consequence of burning coal. Hence, you can say nuclear is safer as long as it's managed well.

Where is it managed well?

Re: Nuclear plant shutdowns tied to coal pollution, decreased birth weights

#64

Post by blowski »

lostlogin wrote: post #63
blowski wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm no expert on Chernobyl or power generation. But I think Chernobyl was the result of under-investment and poor management, whereas many of the deaths from coal are an unavoidable consequence of burning coal. Hence, you can say nuclear is safer as long as it's managed well.

Where is it managed well?

I have no idea. I don't even know if it is practically possible to manage well enough to guarantee zero disasters.

But there are many nuclear plants around the world that have operated with no problems. As I said, I'm no expert.

Re: Nuclear plant shutdowns tied to coal pollution, decreased birth weights

#65

Post by bhgraham »

xroche wrote: post #3

Closing 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…

Energy Source Mortality Rate (deaths/trillionkWhr)

Coal – global average 100,000 (41% global electricity)

Coal – China 170,000 (75% China’s electricity)

Coal – U.S. 10,000 (32% U.S. electricity)

Oil 36,000 (33% of energy, 8% of electricity)

Natural Gas 4,000 (22% global electricity)

Biofuel/Biomass 24,000 (21% global energy)

Solar (rooftop) 440 (Wind 150 (2% global electricity)

Hydro – global average 1,400 (16% global electricity)

Hydro – U.S. 5 (6% U.S. electricity)

Nuclear – global average 90 (11% global electricity w/Chern&Fukush)

Nuclear – U.S. 0.1 (19% U.S. electricity)

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-d...

Re: Nuclear plant shutdowns tied to coal pollution, decreased birth weights

#66

Post by LoSboccacc »

blowski wrote: post #64
lostlogin wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where is it managed well?

I have no idea. I don't even know if it is practically possible to manage well enough to guarantee zero disasters. But there are many nuclear plants around the world that have operated with no problems. As I said, I'm no expert.

new design exist that in case of disaster self contains under most conditions, trouble is it's very hard to obtain certifications needed for operation today as opposed to decades ago, so we're mostly stuck with old designs.

Re: Nuclear plant shutdowns tied to coal pollution, decreased birth weights

#67

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

legulere wrote: post #35
TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is incredibly myopic. Burning coal for electricity generation has released in to the environment more radiation, heavy metals, and other pollutants than civil nuclear power could ever hope to.

Nuclear plants in normal use release less radionuclides into the environment than coal. But is this still the case with malfunction? It is fairly common that huge amounts get released. E.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascó_Nuclear_Power_Plant How about Fukushima and Chernobyl. Do you have numbers to back up your claim?

As a sibling comment pointed out, you may have selected a poor example there.

However, you raise a good point with the Fukushima and Chernobyl examples. It's not hard to imagine that if we had, globally, built nuclear power plants as enthusiastically as we have coal power plants, there would likely have been a lot more serious incidents. It's a sobering thought for my usually rose-tinted view of nuclear.

While I could probably have found a more dramatic reference, this one[1] is a bit more calm saying that the risks of adverse health affects from radiation exposure from coal vs nuclear are, in both cases, very slim. It would seem, then, that coal would have other negative health affects before the radiation exposure aspect became a problem. You have to live extraordinarily close to either a coal or nuclear plant to have higher than background radiation exposure from either, under normal operating conditions.

1. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-...

Re: Nuclear plant shutdowns tied to coal pollution, decreased birth weights

#68

Post by mpweiher »

WalterBright wrote: post #42
Tomte wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We still don't know how to handle spent fuel. So nuclear apologists are simply offering a calculation, where the biggest risk/liability has been left out, because "what number should we put in?". Also, I'm always fascinated of the "Chernobyl was unsafe, today reactors are safe" argument. The exact same line was fed to us when Chernobyl was state of the art. There are good reasons to think that it may indeed be so thi…

> Chernobyl argument Consider airliners. Airliners have been around for 80 years, and get substantially safer every decade. This is a statistical fact. Every crash is used as a learning experience and designs, procedures, and training is adjusted as a result. There's no reason to believe that such does not apply to nuclear power stations.

One of the biggest problems with nuclear is that we aren't building new plants.

Re: Nuclear plant shutdowns tied to coal pollution, decreased birth weights

#69

Post by LoSboccacc »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #22
legulere wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (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…

This is incredibly myopic. Burning coal for electricity generation has released in to the environment more radiation, heavy metals, and other pollutants than civil nuclear power could ever hope to.

talking about miopic

http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-pro...

:(

fearmongering works wonder against an uneducated population.

Re: Nuclear plant shutdowns tied to coal pollution, decreased birth weights

#70

Post by danmaz74 »

lispm wrote: post #28
bpodgursky wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fukushima has demonstrated that relying on 60's technology and refusing to upgrade or invest because of political sensitivities exposes you to disasters 50 years down the line. It's like if everyone got afraid of airplanes in the 1980's and kept flying the same ones from the 60s through today because people were afraid to build new ones. Would you say air travel was unsafe, or that we made poor technology investments…

Now you understand a tiny part of the Energy business. 'Nuclear' is not only a technical problem, it is a financial problem. Old plants will be run until they collapse - unless a regulator keeps the companies from doing that. But then the regulator comes onto pressure, because there is huge amount of money/corruption involved to keep the plant online. Every single plant is a multi-billion dollar investment, jobs, sur…

The OP was talking specifically about closing existing plants before they reach their "end of life" date though.
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