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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

#171

Post by opo »

rurban wrote: post #91
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_...

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.

Right now nuclear waste can and should be recycled which would reduce the amount of waste: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste

Soon it will be possible to use most of the waste as fuel:

"...Fast reactors can "burn" long lasting nuclear transuranic waste (TRU) waste components (actinides: reactor-grade plutonium and minor actinides), turning liabilities into assets. Another major waste component, fission products (FP), would stabilize at a lower level of radioactivity than the original natural uranium ore it was attained from in two to four centuries, rather than tens of thousands of years"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_fast_reactor

The worry people have about nuclear waste is greatly overblown. The amounts generated are small and in a relatively short amount of time we can use most of this "waste" to generate electricity.

As a comparison, how does coal waste compare to that?

"Coal ash – the waste material left after coal is burned – contains arsenic, mercury, lead, and over a dozen other heavy metals, many of them toxic."

http://www.psr.org/environment-and-health/code-black/coal-as...

"The study found that levels of radioactivity in the ash were up to five times higher than in normal soil," https://phys.org/news/2015-09-radioactive-contaminants-coal-...

How much coal waste is produced per year? Is it small enough to deal with easily?

"According to the American Coal Ash Association's Coal Combustion Product Production & Use Survey Report, nearly 130 million tons of coal ash was generated in 2014."

https://www.epa.gov/coalash/coal-ash-basics#03

Has any of the general public been killed though coal waste disasters? Lots of times:

http://www.catawbariverkeeper.org/issues/coal-ash-1/coal-ash...

NASA has estimated that using nuclear power has saved an estimated 1.8 million lives that would have been lost if the power has been replaced by fossil fuels: https://climate.nasa.gov/news/903/coal-and-gas-are-far-more-...

(And yes, I know the people who oppose nuclear power usually will say they don't like coal and natural gas either, but we are going to need a predictable, reliable form of base load power for a long time. One of these three ways of generating electricity has much fewer health consequences than the other.)

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

#172

Post by opo »

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…

>...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.

While we may want to replace nuclear with a different power source in the future, there is enough uranium and thorium to last hundreds of thousands (or more likely millions) of years.

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

#173

Post by opo »

mpweiher wrote: post #52
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…

> We still don't know how to handle spent fuel. Actually we do, technically, and the amount is trivial (and can be reused, though that isn't currently being done). Spent fuel is a political problem. In fact, last time I checked even just the radiation from coal power plants is greater than from nuclear plants. > The exact same line was fed to us when Chernobyl was state of the art Chernobyl was never state of the art…

>Chernobyl was never state of the art...

That is being pretty charitable. A plant like Chernobyl would have been illegal to build in any other country.

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

#174

Post by Maakuth »

hannob wrote: post #60
Maakuth wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty remarkable growth in PV! I do remember that Germany already had quite a bit of wind generators in the early 2000s, yet they seemed to have generated around the same amount of energy as the PV capacity of today. And that's been mostly build during this decade. What's missing from this graph, however, are imports. I believe Germany imports quite a bit of nuclear power from France and coal power from Poland.

> I believe Germany imports quite a bit of nuclear power from France and coal power from Poland. No, that is totally wrong. While in an open net and marked there are always small exports and imports going on, overall Germany is an electricity exporter and imports are very small overall and not very relevant.

That might be true for net flows, but it seems that German production does not meet demand at nights very often, as per these statistics: https://www.energy-charts.de/power.htm . I do think that situation will get worse with increased PV installations, as they don't produce during nights. Grid storage is going to be needed.

Of course it's an open market and the German expensive production such as gas turbines will not produce if cheaper power can be imported.

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

#175

Post by opo »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #58

An irony I've noticed recently is fans of nuclear saying: "Coal is killing people, if you say anything bad about Nuclear then you are killing people" and then turning round and attacking other, non-coal alternatives like wind, solar or even natural gas. Initially I assumed these were actually coal supporters doing some devious concern trolling to delay the roll out of alternatives that are viable in the short term bu…

The world will need base load power for a long time. Yes, there is a lot of research into grid storage, but except for pumped hydro we are a long way away from that being a major component of the power system. (For example, Gates is investing in startups that are working on innovative nuclear plant designs and startups that are working on storage - maybe they all succeed, maybe none of them will.)

NASA has estimated that using nuclear power has saved an estimated 1.8 million lives that would have been lost if the power has been replaced by fossil fuels: https://climate.nasa.gov/news/903/coal-and-gas-are-far-more-...

We are going to need a predictable, reliable form of base load power for a long time. When you compare nuclear, coal and natural gas, one of these three ways of generating electricity has much fewer health consequences than the others. Lives depend on having reliable, affordable electricity and as we transition the vehicle fleet to electric, we will need more electricity, not less.

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

#176

Post by petre »

Maakuth wrote: post #37
legulere wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This graphic shows it pretty well in my opinion: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c9/Energiem... Purple is nuclear energy. Dark green is biomass, light blue is wind power, yellow is solar power

Pretty remarkable growth in PV! I do remember that Germany already had quite a bit of wind generators in the early 2000s, yet they seemed to have generated around the same amount of energy as the PV capacity of today. And that's been mostly build during this decade. What's missing from this graph, however, are imports. I believe Germany imports quite a bit of nuclear power from France and coal power from Poland.

> Pretty remarkable growth in PV!

No wonder. They have PV on almost every roof. Most of them have the south facing part fully covered as well.

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

#177

Post by chadgeidel »

vidarh wrote: post #141
blowski wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Over a period of 50 years, you can mismanage a couple of plants and still kill fewer people. But not the entire industry.

I don't know what you are trying to say. 50 years of operation of hundreds of plants. We could have had a repeat of all of the accidents every year and it would still be one of the safest alternatives. Heck, we could have Chernobyl every year, and even based on the current worst case estimates of reduced life expectancy and counting every one of them as a death, we'd still not compensate for 1 Banqiao failure, or mor…

I'm not saying you are wrong - I actually want to believe this statistic, but has anyone actually compiled the data to back this up?

Specifically - "we could have Chernobyl every year ... we'd still not compensate for more than 1-2 years worth of coal"

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

#178

Post by josefx »

josefx wrote: post #158
ekianjo wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hydro means dams and dams can cause a number of accidents if they are not properly maintained.

Also when they are properly maintained. You don't want to be the maintenance guy getting killed by the combination of high water pressure and a 1cm wide opening.

Here an actuall video on the topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEtbFm_CjE0 . It is the pressure difference that results on a large force on any unlucky diver.

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

#179

Post by davrosthedalek »

bildung wrote: post #111
davrosthedalek wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

..except for maintenance. Does anybody have up-to-date numbers how long hydro/solar/wind have to run to recoup the energy used in production? For a while, Solar was essentially "let's import energy from Asia in the form of pretty sand", but I think this has changed.

> For a while, Solar was essentially "let's import energy from Asia in the form of pretty sand", but I think this has changed. Considering the fact that efficient pv panels need less than 4% of their lifetime output for production (if in service 25 years (most panels last up to 40 years)), that must have been the late 70s or so. You were probably remembering that 2010 study talking about the rapidly growing solar ind…

The numbers I heard had a 50% replacement/failure rate or so after 10 years. However, that might have been related to the roof installations in Germany.

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

#180

Post by davrosthedalek »

vidarh wrote: post #141
blowski wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Over a period of 50 years, you can mismanage a couple of plants and still kill fewer people. But not the entire industry.

I don't know what you are trying to say. 50 years of operation of hundreds of plants. We could have had a repeat of all of the accidents every year and it would still be one of the safest alternatives. Heck, we could have Chernobyl every year, and even based on the current worst case estimates of reduced life expectancy and counting every one of them as a death, we'd still not compensate for 1 Banqiao failure, or mor…

I think you have to be careful here. It's entirely unclear how small dose exposure over long times damage humans. There might be a threshold effect: Some people speculated that low doses actually help, as they trigger the DNA self-repair systems. Slightly more, and that self-repair can't help anymore. So 1 Chernobyl might be fine for people further way, let's say, in the US, 2 or 10 or ... and you suddenly get a lot of Cancer deaths.

If you look at what medicine deemed as safe, the limits were reduced every couple of years.

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