Japan's radiation disaster toll: none dead, none sick
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Re: Japan's radiation disaster toll: none dead, none sick
#2Never mind that coal mining kills almost 6000 people a year, or that populations of coal-mining areas have death rates about 10 per cent higher than non-mining areas, or that coal emissions drive global warming.
I'm fully in favour of nuclear power but using partial evidence and misleading comparisons to back up arguments does not help the cause.
You can't compare the death toll of mining coal to the death toll of a nuclear accident and prove one is more dangerous than the other. They are completely different things having no common factors. How many people died mining Uranium? How many people die per MW produced for both fuels? How many people die in disasters at Coal Power plants?
Re: Japan's radiation disaster toll: none dead, none sick
#3I would have thought that the evacuation response and the ability to restore water supply to the fuel rod cooling pools would have had a bit more to do with the lack of deaths than the safety of radiation disaster..
I support nuclear as An energy source but it really seems like we are doing it wrong at the moment - it costs too much, seems like we are, or have been using reactor designs that we probably shouldn't (ie they have meltdown risk in disasters vs other newer designs).
However it speaks volumes about the changed political environment, and our environmental sensitivity these days, that a response to Japan's tsunami and nuclear shutdown was also the shutdown of German reactors and fast-tracked plans to transition away from nuclear from them and other countries.
Re: Japan's radiation disaster toll: none dead, none sick
#4Never mind that coal mining kills almost 6000 people a year, or that populations of coal-mining areas have death rates about 10 per cent higher than non-mining areas, or that coal emissions drive global warming. I'm fully in favour of nuclear power but using partial evidence and misleading comparisons to back up arguments does not help the cause. You can't compare the death toll of mining coal to the death toll of a…
Here's your figures on deaths per TWh:
http://nextbigfuture.com/2008/03/deaths-per-twh-for-all-ener...
Re: Japan's radiation disaster toll: none dead, none sick
#5Never mind that coal mining kills almost 6000 people a year, or that populations of coal-mining areas have death rates about 10 per cent higher than non-mining areas, or that coal emissions drive global warming. I'm fully in favour of nuclear power but using partial evidence and misleading comparisons to back up arguments does not help the cause. You can't compare the death toll of mining coal to the death toll of a…
> They are completely different things having no common factors.
No common factors? Really? They are both used to make energy.
Coal is 1,888 times more deadly than nuclear power when measured in deaths per MW. According to http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-de...
And that includes Chernobyl, and uses the worst case scenario for the effects of radiation!
If you removed Chernobyl and used http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hormesis instead (which is more likely to be accurate) the deaths attributed to nuclear power would go even lower.
Nuclear power is by far the safest form of energy on earth - it even beats solar power. It is so very very very stupid we don't get 80% of our energy from it.
Re: Japan's radiation disaster toll: none dead, none sick
#6Never mind that coal mining kills almost 6000 people a year, or that populations of coal-mining areas have death rates about 10 per cent higher than non-mining areas, or that coal emissions drive global warming. I'm fully in favour of nuclear power but using partial evidence and misleading comparisons to back up arguments does not help the cause. You can't compare the death toll of mining coal to the death toll of a…
3 people died in uranium mines in the last 10 years
So that is 3 vs. 60,000 deaths for mining
Re: Japan's radiation disaster toll: none dead, none sick
#7So now we're all back to "nuclear power is perfectly safe and cheap." The article fails to take into account that radiation is not like poison where you either die or don't. It's a statistical effect and how large the effect is can only be answered in a couple of decades. I'd not want to bet my life on that. Also, the radiation spills are not over yet. Radiated water still leaks from the reactors and flows into the ground and the sea - how and when those leaks can be plugged is yet unknown. Nobody has any idea how to treat the huge volumes of radiated water that have been captured so far.
Cleanup costs and storage/disposal costs for the nuclear waste are usually also ignored when looking at the costs of nuclear power - as well as the environmental impact of mining uranium. Let's just not talk about the additional dangers associated with nuclear proliferation. Nuclear power generates elements that are extremely dangerous and extremely difficult to handle - unlike solar, wind or even coal power.
Re: Japan's radiation disaster toll: none dead, none sick
#8Never mind that coal mining kills almost 6000 people a year, or that populations of coal-mining areas have death rates about 10 per cent higher than non-mining areas, or that coal emissions drive global warming. I'm fully in favour of nuclear power but using partial evidence and misleading comparisons to back up arguments does not help the cause. You can't compare the death toll of mining coal to the death toll of a…
Every year 1MM lives are shortened from the exhaust of coal power plants.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_the_coa...
Re: Japan's radiation disaster toll: none dead, none sick
#9Never mind that coal mining kills almost 6000 people a year, or that populations of coal-mining areas have death rates about 10 per cent higher than non-mining areas, or that coal emissions drive global warming. I'm fully in favour of nuclear power but using partial evidence and misleading comparisons to back up arguments does not help the cause. You can't compare the death toll of mining coal to the death toll of a…
3 people died in uranium mines in the last 10 years So that is 3 vs. 60,000 deaths for mining
That should be normalized for TWh, but the point stands, of course.
Re: Japan's radiation disaster toll: none dead, none sick
#10So now we're all back to "nuclear power is perfectly safe and cheap." The article fails to take into account that radiation is not like poison where you either die or don't. It's a statistical effect and how large the effect is can only be answered in a couple of decades. I'd not want to bet my life on that. Also, the radiation spills are not over yet. Radiated water still leaks from the reactors and flows into the g…
Every single statement you made, with the exception of handling radioactive waste, applies more to coal than it does to nuclear power.
Coal pollution doesn't "kill outright" - but does so slowly, over many years, and many, many more people than nuclear power.
Coal waste continues to leak into the air, and into water systems.
I'm not arguing that Nuclear power is "safe" (nothing, is - even solar power kills many people a year, mostly installers) - but I am suggesting we stay rational, and realize that there are consequences to any of our energy choices.
If it turns out that C02 will have an outsized impact on global warming, that alone, will likely suggest that Coal powered energy systems are fairly bad for the environment - in a much greater way than the discretely managed radioactive waste put off by nuclear power plants - which can be buried underground without changing the earths environment.