Well I cheated somewhat, in that Cecil asked me to look up mining stats last summer and I had some info handy. Or maybe that’s not cheating; I still had to go to the library and do the work instead of sitting at home and relaxing…in any event, I hope it at least provides some useful data points for folks in any relative comparison of total fuel-cycle safety.
Coal is worse and there is no other alternative.
BTW do you power your computer with solar or wind? Mine is nuke and coal.
I disagree when he says it is not a failure but proof of the robustness of nuke plants. The containment buildings are blowing up leaving the cooling tanks exposed. There is cesium being vented.and now the workers have abandoned the plants. This could get super ugly.
According to the experts, it’s already seriously seriously bad. If only there was a way to measure the radiation coming out of the plant somehow. And a way to fly a craft over the plant and take video.
But until such things exist, we wait. In the dark, so to speak.
Do you think that there will be more overall danger from materials emitted into the environment than would have been created by the hundreds of coal fired plants that would have been required over the last half century to replace Japan’s nuclear power industry?
My biggest objection to nuclear as opposed to other energy sources is the worst case scenario. If everything goes sideways in a coal plant or coal mine or anywhere in between, It can never be as bad as the worst case scenario for nuclear.
No matter how reassuring the proponents wax, no matter how remote the statistics suggest the worst may be, the fact remains that if the stars align to beat the odds, we could be well and royally fucked for a long time. We are seeing some of that play out in Japan, so claims that “that could never happen here” are ringing very hollow.
Some of the nuclear plants on the west coast are constructed to withstand only withstand a 7.0 earthquake. Are you really willing to stake the future of a large swath of California on the hope that the Big One that is way overdue will respect the design limits of San Onofre?
http://www.deccanherald.com/content/146030/japan-pm-nuclear-power-firm.html It is the same all over the world. Money trumps safety and the public health. The Japanese have had repeated problems with safety violations.
It’s not lost on me. A while back a dump truck full of yellowcake overturned on the highway in Colorado Springs. There was a little worry, but it turns out uranium ore and yellowcake are fairly innocuous. Its transport is governed by hazmat, but it’s not considered nuclear material. I wouldn’t take a bath in it, but it’s no reason to run screaming, either.
And more coal plants would fix this how?
As I said in post #9, it isn’t the odds, it’s the stakes.
Last I heard, the reactor containments were all intact and the seawater flooding had gone successfully. The decay heat is dropping off all the time and the reactors may be okay for the moment. The fuel pools are a different matter and the radiation released by the fuel pool fire at reactor 4 has driven all personnel off site.
I think no matter how bad it gets, pro nukers will still be claiming nuclear power is safe.
Do you have a link to any reasoned argument that coal is an overall safer way to generate power?
What’s the worst that could happen?
Not to sound like an ass, but it depends how you define safer. I don’t think anyone cares if terrorists get their hands on a bucket of coal and set it on fire.
When you say worse case scenario do you mean like Chernobyl or something even worse?
Chernobyl was a very bad industrial accident but there have been others just as bad or worse in other industries, industries which are still intact presumably because society deems the risk to be worthwhile. And the up side of nuke power, all that power, is a big one.
Part of the appeal of a dirty bomb would be the hysteria caused by the reporting of a dirty bomb, regardless of how effective an actual weapon had been constructed. There are all kinds of nasty chemicals around and many other ways to do damage that would be easier and more practical than finding and carting around nuclear fuel, including buckets of burning coal. It is always easier to destroy than to create.
Well the not-for-profit chernobyl went to fuck and back so maybe you could stick a pin in your profit-is-eevil montra for a bit. There are hundreds of other nuclear plants running just fine.
A child who would otherwise have cured cancer/ ended war/ invented cool moon base technology, gets mercury poisoning and brain damage from burnt coal. Then we get hit by a huge asteroid that we would have been able to escape otherwise. You asked for the worst.
http://climateprogress.org/2010/11/29/royal-society-special-issue-4-degrees-world/
Mind you, you are asking for the worst, that piece is missing the expected ocean acidification and other bad effects. That is the picture if the high end of the uncertainties comes to pass, you do not want to see the less supported effects that alarmists outside of science or with less support are claiming the high end could be.
Tell the Japanese ,the people at Chernobyl ,the people at 3 mile island and the people around the Fermi plant in Detroit , that nuclear power is fine. What is it, they are safe until 50 percent of them blow up? At what point do you question? Probably none.