Coal is more dangurous than Nuclear?

[Unesh52]

Source on that last bit?

Sigh... I knew coming in here that I was going to have to go dredge up my sources again. It's very responsible of you to ask for them though. My main source is the Chernobyl Forum [http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Booklets/Chernobyl/chernobyl.pdf], which is a meta-report on the research of an international collection of groups, including several UN organizations, with expertises in health, radiation, economics, ecology, etc., and covers a wide range of topics. In particular, I'm referencing the sub-section on the radiation induced effects on plants and animals, in the section on environmental impact:

Following the natural reduction of exposure levels due to radionuclide decay and migration, biological populations have been recovering from acute radiation effects. As soon as by the next growing season following the accident, population viability of plants and animals had substantially recovered as a result of the combined effects of reproduction and immigration from less affected areas.

...

The recovery of affected biota in the exclusion zone has been facilitated by the removal of human activities, e.g., termination of agricultural and industrial activities. As a result, populations of many plants and animals have eventually expanded, and the present environmental conditions have had a positive impact on the biota in the Exclusion Zone. Indeed, the Exclusion Zone has paradoxically become a unique sanctuary for biodiversity.

The Exclusion Zone is an area about 30 miles wide from which most of the people evacuated after the accident. You can even go hiking there now. I hear it's quite beautiful up there.

I love your avatar, by the way.

 

[Gilhelmi]

Not to mention that nuclear power is about 20% cooler than coal

Wow, unrelated pony meme in the very first response. And it's not even clever. And my Pinkamina is better than your Pinkamina.

OT: I've been saying this for a long time now. People overact to nuclear power on a startling scale. It's not a bomb, it's not going to blow up and kill millions, Chernobyl won't happen again and wasn't that bad in the first place (the reaction to it - evacuations and sensationalizing - had worse effects than the disaster ever could have), and radiation is not going to turn your babies into weird fish creatures. That being said, there are serious issues with nuclear power that do need to be addressed, specifically, what are we going to do with the waste? Thankfully, smart folks in clean white lab coats are working on ways to reduce or even completely eliminate it. Unfortunately they can't get any funding for it because people are terrified of the concept of nuclear anything.

Green energy sources don't pollute, but they are very inefficient. Thankfully, other smart people in white lab coats are working on that too. The simple fact of the matter is that we're going to need both if we're going to deal with our energy needs now, and that with a little foresight and research, we can do it without causing any serious damage to the environment or anyone's economy. But people getting up in arms about nuclear power because of how it's portrayed in The Simpsons and getting cynical about green alternatives just because they like to feel smart by supporting nuclear isn't getting us anywhere.

I agree, I have even started pricing small Wind Turbines to power my farm and house in town. I know it will not cover my power need 10 days out of 30 but it would help with the power bills. The darn things cost 25k to buy (another couple thousand to install) and I am thinking that I will need permits and other government BS redtape to put it in. I like the wind turbines, they are part of the solution, but I get annoyed by hippies, with a BA in Arts (no science or real world skills or experience) who claim crazy things that make conspiracy theorist sound sane.

Try solar, it's much cheaper and if you can get the right surface area, you won't need to be hooked up to the grid.

We do for things that are not easy to get power to, like wells too far from power lines or electric fences, ect. Thing is Solar is not that great for anything bigger than a well pump. You need so many of them and they are expensive, also the sun is not up at night, so it would still need to be hooked up too the grid just like wind. Its not bad, just takes up so much more room.

 

[Gilhelmi]

Yes, nuclear is much safer than coal in nearly all ways.

Also, i do find the whole fukishima media frenzy entertaining in a way. They suddenly started blaming nuclear power being unsafe, refraining from mentioning that the plant survived a tsunami relatively intact, when it decimated the surrounding town.

Also, due to the design, such an issue where cooling would be an issue would never happen in UK/EU reactors in any situation that could affect them. No, i do not expect the UK to be hit by a Japan style tsunami any time soon.

That's all based on nuclear fission anyway! God knows what the hippies are going to cry about when nuclear fusion becomes viable. No meltdown possibilities, very little in the way of potentially radioactive 'waste' (well, the 'waste will mainly be elements like lithium, which is useful) and ridiculously low levels of radiation. Oh, and it produces monstrous amounts of power. At the moment the massive bottleneck with the US style inertial confinement reactors are simply the laser efficiency (which is ~0.0001), if we can get lasers to be a mere 4 times more efficient nuclear fusion will be insanely powerful.

Moving on to more sci-fi territory:

Give us a few decades to further improve lasers and we may even be able to start shrinking the reactors, maybe even to the point of using them for vehicle use when the lasers are an order of magnitude or two more efficient than currently!

We already have small ones on our (US NAVY) subs. I heard that a new US submarine can go 30 years without refueling its reactor. I do not know the exact amounts of power they put out but that time period is still impressive.

 

[Gilhelmi]

Source on that last bit?

Sigh... I knew coming in here that I was going to have to go dredge up my sources again. It's very responsible of you to ask for them though. My main source is the Chernobyl Forum [http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Booklets/Chernobyl/chernobyl.pdf], which is a meta-report on the research of an international collection of groups, including several UN organizations, with expertises in health, radiation, economics, ecology, etc., and covers a wide range of topics. In particular, I'm referencing the sub-section on the radiation induced effects on plants and animals, in the section on environmental impact:

Following the natural reduction of exposure levels due to radionuclide decay and migration, biological populations have been recovering from acute radiation effects. As soon as by the next growing season following the accident, population viability of plants and animals had substantially recovered as a result of the combined effects of reproduction and immigration from less affected areas.

...

The recovery of affected biota in the exclusion zone has been facilitated by the removal of human activities, e.g., termination of agricultural and industrial activities. As a result, populations of many plants and animals have eventually expanded, and the present environmental conditions have had a positive impact on the biota in the Exclusion Zone. Indeed, the Exclusion Zone has paradoxically become a unique sanctuary for biodiversity.

The Exclusion Zone is an area about 30 miles wide from which most of the people evacuated after the accident. You can even go hiking there now. I hear it's quite beautiful up there.

I love your avatar, by the way.

I saw some of that on the History Channels "Life after People". They were talking about how well and diverse the wildlife population is in the forests in that area. Even some endangered animal populations were growing. It is fascinating stuff.

 

[Soviet Steve]

Personally I hope for a time where we can be sustained with nothing but renewable power. Not having to rely on a fuel to source power should be the ultimate goal. Solar power should be used anywhere possible. I have always liked geothermal power stations and wind when it has a minimal impact on the local environment.

Have you ever been at a roundabout where 150 cars are all held up for 30 minutes while a windmill has to pass through a tight corner?

That happens here twice a day, every day. Here in Denmark we have no natural resources, everything is shipped in from various parts of the world parts driven around by container ship, trains, trucks etc. Shit has to be mined for the parts, it has to be melted around, it has to be transported around, and there's the massive construction efforts and infrastructure issues arising from it.

Why is it nobody ever brings this up when they're jerking off into my face about the cleanliness of wind power? >_>

 

[Daverson]

Statistically speaking, Nuclear power is the safest form of energy production we've got. It kills people at about a third the rate of wind power, and about 1/10th the rate of Solar power.

Energy Source Death Rate (deaths per TWh)

Coal - world average 161 (26% of world energy, 50% of electricity)
Coal - China 278
Coal - USA 15
Oil 36 (36% of world energy)
Natural Gas 4 (21% of world energy)
Biofuel/Biomass 12
Peat 12
Solar (rooftop) 0.44 (less than 0.1% of world energy)
Wind 0.15 (less than 1% of world energy)
Hydro 0.10 (europe death rate, 2.2% of world energy)
Hydro - world including Banqiao) 1.4 (about 2500 TWh/yr and 171,000 Banqiao dead)
Nuclear 0.04 (5.9% of world energy)

[source] [http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html]
(Forums seem to be messing up the formatting, not that it was that good to begin with!)

Personally, I reckon the fear surrounding nuclear power is about as well placed as the fear of witchcraft in the middle ages...

 

[Xanadu84]

Nuclear power if the greenest energy source there is. Because it is actually viable, and is much cleaner, safer, and sustainable then oil, coal, natural gas etc. Reality based eco-types support Nuclear power wholeheartedly. The rest decry Nuclear power, pretend that some solar pipe dream is feasible in the short term, and end up using oil or coal instead.

Also, if we want to research an alternative energy source that could realistically replace all the major ones, we should be looking at Tidal power. None of the rest are consistent, while we know the exact energy output of a tidal power location from now until the year 20,000. Solar, wind and the like might be a fine supplement, but they arn't realistic on a large scale without dramatic improvement in battery technology. In the meantime, Nuclear is the way to go. People just hear Nuclear and freak out because they don't understand it.

 

[SpAc3man]

Have you ever been at a roundabout where 150 cars are all held up for 30 minutes while a windmill has to pass through a tight corner?

That happens here twice a day, every day. Here in Denmark we have no natural resources, everything is shipped in from various parts of the world parts driven around by container ship, trains, trucks etc. Shit has to be mined for the parts, it has to be melted around, it has to be transported around, and there's the massive construction efforts and infrastructure issues arising from it.

Why is it nobody ever brings this up when they're jerking off into my face about the cleanliness of wind power? >_>

Zeppelins. Solar powered zeppelins to transport the windmills from geothermal powered factories and refineries. The raw materials will be mined using will power. The cleanest power known to man.

 

[McMullen]

But does anyone know if nuclear power plants give out other radiation than this "ionizing radiation"? (Sorry if that sounds stupid, I really am stupid at science).

Sure, pretty much the same kind that you give off.

Ionizing radiation refers to electromagnetic radiation (also known as light) that carries enough energy to ionize atoms or molecules. This is a problem when those atoms and molecules happen to be components of your cells, especially your DNA. Radiation is considered ionizing somewhere towards the middle or high part of the ultraviolet range. Below that are things like visible light, infra-red, and radio waves, which can still kill you, but only when they hit you in such ridiculous amounts that they simply heat your skin till it burns.

 

[poodlenoodles]

i have never conidered nuclear power a danger so this doesn't suprise me. i think most people are scared of nuclear power just because they don't understand it. most people probably think that nuclear power plants are just ticking timebombs ready to blow up like a hydrogen bomb, but really, the uranium inside a nuclear fuel rod is not enriched enough to create an explosion anywhere near that size. also, spent nuclear fuel rods only have to be stored in a crate for a few years before you can reuse them because you have only lost 5% of it's potential energy after it's been used.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

most people probably think that nuclear power plants are just ticking timebombs ready to blow up like a hydrogen bomb, but really, the uranium inside a nuclear fuel rod is not enriched enough to create an explosion anywhere near that size.

Even weapons grade plutonium is a ***** to get to go into explosive/cascade critical mass. Hell, you could run a powerplant on weapons grade plutonium and pretty much any conceivable disaster still wouldn't result in explosive critical mass. Yeah, it'd leave a fuck off mess to clean up and probably wreck the local real estate market for a while but that's about it.

Nuclear weapons have to be precisely designed and constructed to actually result in an explosive/cascade critical mass. Cock it up and all you do it spread a lot of plutonium around the place... which isn't good but extremely anticlimactic if you were hoping for a nuclear fireball.

 

[TheComfyChair]

Yes, nuclear is much safer than coal in nearly all ways.

Also, i do find the whole fukishima media frenzy entertaining in a way. They suddenly started blaming nuclear power being unsafe, refraining from mentioning that the plant survived a tsunami relatively intact, when it decimated the surrounding town.

Also, due to the design, such an issue where cooling would be an issue would never happen in UK/EU reactors in any situation that could affect them. No, i do not expect the UK to be hit by a Japan style tsunami any time soon.

That's all based on nuclear fission anyway! God knows what the hippies are going to cry about when nuclear fusion becomes viable. No meltdown possibilities, very little in the way of potentially radioactive 'waste' (well, the 'waste will mainly be elements like lithium, which is useful) and ridiculously low levels of radiation. Oh, and it produces monstrous amounts of power. At the moment the massive bottleneck with the US style inertial confinement reactors are simply the laser efficiency (which is ~0.0001), if we can get lasers to be a mere 4 times more efficient nuclear fusion will be insanely powerful.

Moving on to more sci-fi territory:

Give us a few decades to further improve lasers and we may even be able to start shrinking the reactors, maybe even to the point of using them for vehicle use when the lasers are an order of magnitude or two more efficient than currently!

We already have small ones on our (US NAVY) subs. I heard that a new US submarine can go 30 years without refueling its reactor. I do not know the exact amounts of power they put out but that time period is still impressive.

The submarines have fission reactors, not fusion.

There are currently two major fusion experiments - the inertial confinement style reactor at the NIC in the USA, and soon the ageing JET experiment in oxfordshire (england) will be replaced by the much bigger ITER project in France, which focusing mainly on ohmic heating and strong magnetic fields to sustain the reaction.

 

[somonels]

Art this bad, a large, poorly readable but solidly systematic chart, they must be right - PC gamer.
Are we going to abandon air travel and tear down, stone, brick and concrete houses? No.

 

[Wintermoot]

when nuclear goes wrong it goes horribly wrong good thing is that this pretty much never happens (before you say Chernobyl that was a primitive powerplant and a ticking timebomb also Fukushima went wrong DUE TO A FUCKING EARTHQUAKE!)
Nuclear power isn't perfect but it,s that best we have (at least until we invent nuclear fusion which is safer uses less fuel and produces more power)

 

[Lilani]

-snip-

Coal kills more people than nuclear, but I think it is safe to say that many, MANY more people are working in coal than in nuclear. I'd like to see statistics based on percentages before making any judgments on that, one way or the other.

And I think another with the nuclear is when there's a coal disaster, the area is still inhabitable. You can do something with that. Plus the affected area is very small. But with nuclear, the place can be uninhabitable for YEARS, and people within miles have to evacuate.

Otherwise, yeah we have known for quite a while that the media tends to blow up and demonize what is "scarier" or more unfamiliar. More people are killed by pigs every year than by sharks, though drunk driving and cigarettes are bad stress is still the number one killer in the US, yadda yadda yadda. And they will always be like that. It's up for the viewer to invest in some perspective and common sense of their own.

 

[Gilhelmi]

Yes, nuclear is much safer than coal in nearly all ways.

Also, i do find the whole fukishima media frenzy entertaining in a way. They suddenly started blaming nuclear power being unsafe, refraining from mentioning that the plant survived a tsunami relatively intact, when it decimated the surrounding town.

Also, due to the design, such an issue where cooling would be an issue would never happen in UK/EU reactors in any situation that could affect them. No, i do not expect the UK to be hit by a Japan style tsunami any time soon.

That's all based on nuclear fission anyway! God knows what the hippies are going to cry about when nuclear fusion becomes viable. No meltdown possibilities, very little in the way of potentially radioactive 'waste' (well, the 'waste will mainly be elements like lithium, which is useful) and ridiculously low levels of radiation. Oh, and it produces monstrous amounts of power. At the moment the massive bottleneck with the US style inertial confinement reactors are simply the laser efficiency (which is ~0.0001), if we can get lasers to be a mere 4 times more efficient nuclear fusion will be insanely powerful.

Moving on to more sci-fi territory:

Give us a few decades to further improve lasers and we may even be able to start shrinking the reactors, maybe even to the point of using them for vehicle use when the lasers are an order of magnitude or two more efficient than currently!

We already have small ones on our (US NAVY) subs. I heard that a new US submarine can go 30 years without refueling its reactor. I do not know the exact amounts of power they put out but that time period is still impressive.

The submarines have fission reactors, not fusion.

There are currently two major fusion experiments - the inertial confinement style reactor at the NIC in the USA, and soon the ageing JET experiment in oxfordshire (england) will be replaced by the much bigger ITER project in France, which focusing mainly on ohmic heating and strong magnetic fields to sustain the reaction.

Oh I did not know that. Fission is the better one right?

 

[Crazy Zaul]

If you throw a lump of coal at someone it will hurt, but uranium is only tiny so it won't do much, so yes coal is more dangerous.

 

[Jegsimmons]

Yeah, ever since that one island and Chernobyl melted down, Nuclear Power has gotten a bad rap in the mainstream media, despite both incidents being caused by poor maintenence that could have easily been avoided from what I understand. For some reasons, the term "Nuclear Power" simply evokes negative connotations in the public's mind.

Chernobyl was a sub par nuc plant thats had almost no safety regulations.

three mile island wasn't even a melt down, i pipe just busted. nothing happened.

living in an area with several Nuclear power plants i know a good chunk about the stuff that goes on in their and i can say with no irony, its pretty damn safe.

now if we could make breeder reactors legal again (thanks carter you prick) then we wouldn't have nuclear waste and could re use it as more fuel.

 

[Altorin]

Nuclear is much safer, but it's "scarier". Humans are not logical creatures - we sensationalize, and Nuclear Power is certainly one of those things that have been sensationalized. All the fancy data in the world will not overturn someones gut reaction to things like nuclear power.

 

[emeraldrafael]

I believe it.

why? Oh, just a little place called <url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia,_Pennsylvania>Centralia

seriously, this is blasphemous for me to say since I live in Southwestern PA, but we really should get off coal. Even today in Pittsburgh, you still get crappy air quality from all our coal burning 40-60+ years ago.

then again, like I said, I live in PA, so we're fortunate enough to see how <url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_mile_island>(responsibly used) nuclear power can be used and how safe it is.

We've even got a few windmills up for good measure, and we've got this whole natural gas craze going on. and whatever Marcellus Shale's doing (though Im pretty sure its natural gas). we're pretty much trying just about everything really.