Nuclear plant shutdowns tied to coal pollution, decreased birth weights • Hacker News Board

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

#91

Post by rurban » Wed, Apr 05, 2017, 10:23 AM UTC

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #8

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…

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

Nuclear killed a lot of people already and will for the next thousands of generations. There is still no proper prospect of how to get rid of that poison. That's not comparable to any other technology. That's why nuclear energy needs to demolished and banned.

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

#92

Post by agroot12 » Wed, Apr 05, 2017, 10:25 AM UTC

mpweiher wrote: post #57

pdog wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Dunno. The Tsunami killed upwards of 15000 people. I don't have figures, but I am sure that a good number of these were not killed by the wave directly, but by technical contraptions that failed, crushed them or what have you. One of these many technical contraptions that was damaged/destroyed by the Tsunami was the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. Yet, so far not a single person has been killed as a result of…

There would be more deaths if Japan and Tepco would not pour billions of dollars into collecting as much waste as possible.

The waste of Fukushima is still an unsolved problem that will eat many billions more (see https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/03/11/world/asia/struggling-...).

In fact, even when your reactor does NOT explode, you still have to manage the waste for 10,000 to 1,000,000 years (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_waste#Long_term_manage...). The radioactive materials are not only deadly due to their radiation; most of them are also highly toxic.

So even without a meltdown, you risk many lives in the future. Just because not many people have died yet does not make it a safe energy choice. Who in their right mind can guarantee safe storage of the waste for 10,000+ years?

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

#93

Post by ageofwant » Wed, Apr 05, 2017, 10:33 AM UTC

Tomte wrote: post #36

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…

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…

Of course we do. You need to update your ken on nuclear and stop being willfully ignorant. Spent fuel is fuel for breeder reactors, at the end you sit with material that is less radioactive than Guarapari beach.

You blame the nuclear industry, I blame my own party, the Greens, and their relentless demonising of the one thing that could have reversed doubling of atmospheric CO2, and I forgot how many times sea C02 levels. And you and your anti-nuclear agitpop is pulling us further into this mess. Please educate yourself and stop being part of the problem.

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

#94

Post by sfifs » Wed, Apr 05, 2017, 10:35 AM UTC

mpweiher wrote: post #61

lispm wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Possibly to you sitting on the other side of the world. Not so for the thousands of people displaced who lost their homes and communities through no fault of their own and might be exposed to higher cancer rates in their lifetimes.

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

#95

Post by johan_larson » Wed, Apr 05, 2017, 10:36 AM UTC

terminado wrote: post #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. I think a map correlating power plant pollution plume estimates with the reporting hospitals or physicians that provided infant data,…

I suspect the drop in infant birth weights is caused by the economic disruption of closing a major local employer, rather than by the increased pollution from the coal-fired power plants.

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

#96

Post by ageofwant » Wed, Apr 05, 2017, 10:40 AM UTC

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #81

LoSboccacc wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

talking about miopic http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-pro... :( fearmongering works wonder against an uneducated population.

Yep. What really astounds me is that, when I was younger I used to associated with a lot of self-proclaimed environmentalists , the sort of people who would go to anti- protests. They were strongly against nuclear. Ah the irony! It is the environmentalists themselves who are directly to blame for the situation we find ourselves in now. We could have relatively-carbon-free electricity today if they had supported nucle…

Absolutely. We Greens (I am a loyal Australian Greens voter) scoff and roll our collective superior eyes at the stupid Libs and their proven boken models and then we demonise the one solution we have and have had for 60 years, and I wonder if we are so different from those we despise.

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

#97

Post by mpweiher » Wed, Apr 05, 2017, 10:44 AM UTC

lyschoening wrote: post #89

mpweiher wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is research from the 1980s Nope, it is research from now, about an event in the 80s. These are long-term effects, so obviously there is a delay.

That is just semantics. I am arguing that a nuclear shutdown event would have different long-term effects today. In the short term of course, fossil fuel plants would still be able to pick up the slack, but there would be a larger share of natural gas than in the 1980s and were the shutdown to last longer it would be less costly to set up renewable energy plants. People in this thread are also using the article to ar…

> That is just semantics.

Yes, it emphatically is semantics. Semantics: the meaning of things, particularly words. That's important.

You probably meant "nit-picking", and I would suggest it was you who was engaging in nit-picking (though incorrectly) that this is outdated/irrelevant because it is from the past. So I see your incorrect nit-pick and raise you a correct nit-pick.

> I am arguing that...

Yes you are. Arguing, that is. And back then, you probably would have argued that shutting down that nuclear plant would have been a boon to health, because "evil/bad nuclear".

The thing is that this article is not about arguing about what you believe will/should happen, however strongly you believe that, but about what actually did happen.

> no longer automatically means more coal pollution.

It wasn't automatic back then either, just as it isn't automatic now. However, then and now the actual replacement is largely with coal, no matter what your preferences might be.

Germany: missing nuclear largely replaced with "new coal"

http://www.theenergycollective.com/robertwilson190/328841/wh...

Japan: an industry savior? (The coal industry, mind you)

https://www.worldcoal.com/special-reports/13052015/japan-coa...

So your "arguments" don't hold water. Reality is different from what you think it should be.

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

#98

Post by ageofwant » Wed, Apr 05, 2017, 10:45 AM UTC

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #67

legulere wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 coul…

Coal have unavoidable casualties in human health and environmental degradation built into normal operations. Nuclear much less so, so while I also wear those specs, I still believe the argument for Nuclear is sound.

Another thing I like to point out is how much of a wildlife haven Chernobyl is compared to any moderate city. The fear that keeps the humans away, has transformed a "safe" dump into a paradise.

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

#99

Post by TheSpiceIsLife » Wed, Apr 05, 2017, 10:46 AM UTC

ageofwant wrote: post #96

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. What really astounds me is that, when I was younger I used to associated with a lot of self-proclaimed environmentalists , the sort of people who would go to anti- protests. They were strongly against nuclear. Ah the irony! It is the environmentalists themselves who are directly to blame for the situation we find ourselves in now. We could have relatively-carbon-free electricity today if they had supported nucle…

Absolutely. We Greens (I am a loyal Australian Greens voter) scoff and roll our collective superior eyes at the stupid Libs and their proven boken models and then we demonise the one solution we have and have had for 60 years, and I wonder if we are so different from those we despise.

I used to vote for the Australian Greens, until I had the realisation I wrote about above.

Now I'm not sure what to do. At this point in time I believe drawing penises on the ballot paper provides the best value.

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

#100

Post by The_Double » Wed, Apr 05, 2017, 10:49 AM UTC

kostyash wrote: post #40

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…

How sweet, the study that guardian refers returns 404: http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/silentkillers/

Working link: http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/publications/Camp...