Still support nuke power plants?

Great Debates
1481

Death and disease attributable to fine particle pollution from Potomac River Station

In 2010, Abt Associates issued a study commissioned by the Clean Air Task Force, a nonprofit research and advocacy organization, quantifying the deaths and other health effects attributable to fine particle pollution from coal-fired power plants.[4] Fine particle pollution consists of a complex mixture of soot, heavy metals, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen oxides. Among these particles, the most dangerous are those less than 2.5 microns in diameter, which are so tiny that they can evade the lung’s natural defenses, enter the bloodstream, and be transported to vital organs. Impacts are especially severe among the elderly, children, and those with respiratory disease.

The study found that over 13,000 deaths and tens of thousands of cases of chronic bronchitis, acute bronchitis, asthma, congestive heart failure, acute myocardial infarction, dysrhythmia, ischemic heart disease, chronic lung disease, and pneumonia each year are attributable to fine particle pollution from U.S. coal plant emissions.

These deaths and illnesses are major examples of coal’s external costs, i.e. uncompensated harms inflicted upon the public at large. Low-income and minority populations are disproportionately impacted as well, due to the tendency of companies to avoid locating power plants upwind of affluent communities. To monetize the health impact of fine particle pollution from each coal plant, Abt assigned a value of $7,300,000 to each 2010 mortality, based on a range of government and private studies. Valuations of illnesses ranged from $52 for an asthma episode to $440,000 for a case of chronic bronchitis.[5]
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Potomac_River_Generating_Station#Table_1:_Death_and_disease_attributable_to_fine_particle_pollution_from_Potomac_River_Station

1482

When you speak of “external costs, i.e. uncompensated harms inflicted upon the public at large”, it’s right into the realm of lawsuits and damages, but not any actual actions. If so, power companies could be sued in court.

1483

You and I have been in this thread long enough if you’re going to dismiss everything I’ve said in this thread because I sarcastically add a “yo” to dumb-down my argument to reach the audience that thinks non-existent future nuke tech is going to stop climate change then don’t bother reading what I post. It’s not for you anyway. There’s not much I need to explain to you, you don’t already know except high-risk to society vs. low-risk to society, or IOW, slightly lowered global average life expectancies due to air pollution vs. uninhabitable radiation zones that have to be quarantined and guarded for centuries or millenia at costs of 100’s of billions now and certainly trillions of dollars eventually in the future.

Whenever I explain this to you, you seemingly ignore me and pretend I’m all for increased air-pollution and its accompanying reduction is global life-spans and ignore the fact I’m actually all for making cleaner coal and adjusting its price. You also need to understand that coal isn’t going away and coming up with ways to replace coal anytime within the next century or more isn’t going to fly. It’s not going away. You can make it cleaner, or you can keep complaining about how it should go away. It’s not going away, however.

The time and money wasted on molten-graphite-fast-breeder whatsits is time and money not used where it could be making a difference right now.

There are people reading these threads who honestly believe we could convert the world to nuke and halt global warming in ten years. That flavor of ignorance needs fighting and the calm rational approach only works on certain readers. The “yo, listen up” approach is directed at the others for whom seemingly no amount of rational calm reasoning will make the slightest difference.

Nope. After having participated in this thread for as long as you have and to call me deluded makes your debate style kinda asshole-ish.

Don’t be obtuse. You know damn well there are still way too many people who seem to honestly think nuclear is going to replace coal and save the earth - in only a decade or two, no less!

Good for them. Let them continue, but please stop pretending words like “recycle” mean we won’t be producing even hotter, more concentrated, more highly radioactive “waste” that has to cool even longer, thereby mitigating any benefit there is to saving a little more space in our ever-growing underground mountains of nuclear material that don’t actually have any underground space yet.

Coal isn’t going away. I need to disabuse you of that notion. That fact that coal isn’t going away does not mean it won’t be cleaner and more expensive. Renewables can’t do it alone. The idea of nuke doing it alone is ridiculous. Renewables and nuke doing it together isn’t worth the long-term cost and risk that the nuke portion represents. Not in the US at any rate. Build nukes all over Asia if you want. Asia isn’t giving up coal either though. You need to understand that and fight to make it cleaner and safer instead of wasting time insisting it go away in a world where it is not going away.

1484

Well nuclear gets very little governmental R&D money right now; renewables much much more. And I agree that such is as it should be. In terms of carbon tax or cap and trade credits, well carbon is carbon. Neither should get preferential treatment.

Coal is not going away. Not by using renewables alone, not by using nuclear alone, and not even putting both together. I am glad we agree on that. So the debate is whether the additional decrease in coal use that nuclear in addition to renewables represents is worth it. You think not. I think that 1/4000 of the death rate is a no brainer.

Glad we’ve cleared that up.

1485

[quote=“FXMastermind, post:1481, topic:574647”]

Death and disease attributable to fine particle pollution from Potomac River Station

In 2010, Abt Associates issued a study commissioned by the Clean Air Task Force, a nonprofit research and advocacy organization, quantifying the deaths and other health effects attributable to fine particle pollution from coal-fired power plants.[4] Fine particle pollution consists of a complex mixture of soot, heavy metals, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen oxides. Among these particles, the most dangerous are those less than 2.5 microns in diameter, which are so tiny that they can evade the lung’s natural defenses, enter the bloodstream, and be transported to vital organs. Impacts are especially severe among the elderly, children, and those with respiratory disease.

The study found that over 13,000 deaths and tens of thousands of cases of chronic bronchitis, acute bronchitis, asthma, congestive heart failure, acute myocardial infarction, dysrhythmia, ischemic heart disease, chronic lung disease, and pneumonia each year are attributable to fine particle pollution from U.S. coal plant emissions.

These deaths and illnesses are major examples of coal’s external costs, i.e. uncompensated harms inflicted upon the public at large. Low-income and minority populations are disproportionately impacted as well, due to the tendency of companies to avoid locating power plants upwind of affluent communities. To monetize the health impact of fine particle pollution from each coal plant, Abt assigned a value of $7,300,000 to each 2010 mortality, based on a range of government and private studies. Valuations of illnesses ranged from $52 for an asthma episode to $440,000 for a case of chronic bronchitis.[5]
Potomac River Generating Station - SourceWatch[/

How exactly is “attributable” defined here? Total incidences of diseases that can be caused by this type of pollution? Or an actual estimate of deaths caused specifically by particulates?

1486

Sorry about the mangled quote, I’m using a mobile browser.

1487

Who, if anyone, is saying coal is going away?

1488

And yet you’re okay with the fact that alcohol, cars and cheeseburgers account for far more deaths, but that’s okay because you like them? But air pollution is intolerable? I don’t know if you’ve heard this or not, but astonishing as it seems, we actually do sometimes enact cleaner-air laws, have been for some time now, and I’m certain will continue to.

Once again, driving a car will kill you faster than coal emmisions. Yet, you can drive all you want because the convenience is worth the low risk to society.

The very high cost to society of an admittedly rare nuclear incident is not worth it. Only half-jokingly, that’s why we don’t all drive nuclear-powered cars. Or even hydrogen-powered cars.

1489

I’ve often wondered when this fallacy will be put to rest. Ultimately the planet is doomed and there is nothing mankind can do about it. Sure, we can do our best not to destroy the planet before the universe gets around to doing it, but we are just prolonging the inevitable. Guess I’m a bit of a fatalist. :wink:

1490

Does blocking replacement nuclear power plants cause more cheeseburgers to be eaten? You are really making a nonsensical point.

We make choices. We have choies between foods and each decide if the cheeseburger is worth its risk. We each decide if driving is worth the risk. We have choices between power generation options as well. For the amount that would be coal despite maximizing the reasonably exploitable renewable resources and natural gas we can use coal (with the current pollution controls) or nuclear to some degree. To the degree it is not nuclear it is coal. What choice do you want to make?

1491

It’s not like we have any choice. The power companies and government/military system controls, the people do not. Or we would all use flying cars that run on broadcast power from clean solar collectors in space.

(hey, I can dream can’t I?)

1492

You’re missing the point, and I suspect you’re missing it on purpose.

Sure we have personal choice. It’s my personal choice to smoke, drink, subsist on junk food and exercise only the extent of getting up from the couch occasionally to go to bathroom, at least until I’m so obese my ass fuses to the couch and the paramedics have to break out a wall in order to haul my fat couch-ass off to the morgue where it will be burned in one of the new fat-people-to-energy plants.

Why do I enjoy those personal choices? Because the risk to society is low.

It is also my choice to build a nuclear reactor in my basement. Guess what? My personal choice isn’t going to last long once the authorities find out what I’m doing with my spare time. Why? High risk to society.

I love my electricity. If the cost of it is a slightly decreased lifespan due to 70 years of breathing coal emissions then so be it. I’m not willing to live with the knowledge that things like Chernobyl and Fukushima sometimes happen but not to me 'cause I don’t live in those places and my personal odds of it are vanishingly small so screw the nameless and faceless who aren’t me, and nuclear power plant accidents are only going to increase along with the total number of plants not to mention the increased risk from nuclear weapons proliferation and terrorism.

As long as we’re dreaming, let’s take all the money spent on nuke and instead spend it on cloning technology so someday we can all smoke and just grow ourselves new hearts and lungs every 50 years or so.

^humor.

1493

My next car likely will be, to at least some significant degree. (I’ve got years yet in my 8 year old Honda Civic hybrid, but my next car is an EV, and locally about 50% of power generation is nuclear.)

1494

lev I had not seen that in cross post. No the risk of coal power to society is not low. It is huge and none the smaller for the fact it does not get the headlines.

Are you not getting that on purpose?

Just in the mining for the coal alone thousands have died, many young adults, but you are willing to accept that, prefer those lives lost, to dealing with your phobic reaction to the word nuclear. Across the planet across the years many many more thousands die, not just losing a year or so at the end of a long life, but after years of suffering from coal related disease, and children too, but this suffering, these deaths, you claim are of low concern to society. Across the planet our massive use of coal contributes mightily to global climate change, with the results that many many tens of thousands will suffer and die, especially in the less developed parts of the world, but that is of low concern to you as well, apparently.

1495

You should start a coal power plant thread.

1496

[QUOTE=FXMastermind]
You should start a coal power plant thread.
[/QUOTE]

Why? It’s germane to the thread. One of the reasons you and others are using to be against nuclear power is the supposed risk. Pointing out that the actual risks from the other power generation methods are more risky is part of the reason being given by those who support nuclear.

BTW, how goes the crisis in Nebraska? Any hope on the ‘OMG!! Horrible nuclear death is about to descend on us ALL!! OMGOMGOMG!’ front? I notice you haven’t mentioned it lately, and I can’t find a lot of information on the front pages of any of the news pages. I’m sure that is just conspiracy on their part and coincidence on yours, so I figured I’d ask how many have died thus far from the nuclear crisis…

-XT

1497

Look, if you’re living in a country where thousands of under-aged slave laborers die from mining you are not the sort of country I plan on giving nuclear power to. Sorry. Get yourself up to the 20th century, and maybe I’ll think about helping you into the 21st. Maybe. I have a little Prime Directive of my own you see, and it precludes giving low-sentients nuclear technology.

I’ll sell them bleeding edge coal technology though. The market - especially India and China - is going to be huuuuuuuuge.

I hear mining is kind of a dangerous job, even with the latest technology, but that’s pretty much any mining, isn’t it? I don’t know. I guess we could make it safer for them or something. Build cooler robots maybe. Pay them more & give them good benefits. People, not robots.

1498

A dozen or so people die in mining accidents in America each year. Last year it was 48. Plus, in America, you have the results of strip mining, both health and environmental.

Yes mining is dangerous work. Yes less nuclear and more coal means more mining. Sure wave your magic wand and make it safer, and while you’re at it make it not cause the others tens of thousands of deaths it still does even after pollution controls have cut down the rate, and make it capture the carbon. But until you wave that wand, know that you are accepting those deaths, and that environmental cost, in America, as just part of the price of your phobic reaction.

1499

And sorry. Nuclear power and cutting edge coal power designs are not yours to give, nor America’s. Increasingly if your are in the market China may be who you buy from.

“Low sentients”? Sheesh.

1500

But the risks of nuclear are constantly being lied about and statistically manipulated by the both the industry and regulators working in collusion with them. cite

[

](http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_AGING_NUKES_PART_1?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2011-06-20-03-38-34)

Those that have something to gain are gaming the system, betting (like the oil drilling industry) that their profits will outweigh their debits, even if a mishap occurs.