[jshen]

This argument is popular, but I don't find it compelling. The dangers of most other energy sources are front loaded (let's ignore global warming for a moment), while the risks from nuclear power are spread over many many many years.

[yummyfajitas]

The carcinogens and particulates emitted by coal do all their damage immediately? They don't build up in people's lungs and cause cancer and other diseases many years later?

Surface coal mining doesn't leave many square miles of more or less uninhabitable wasteland that remains uninhabitable for many years in the future? Underground coal mines don't catch fire and render entire towns completely uninhabitable?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia,_Pennsylvania

Many other energy sources have risks which are spread over many years. They just don't have that "omfg, scary scientific stuff I don't understand" factor.

[tptacek]

... to say nothing of the stats for coal miners themselves; coal has killed tens of thousands of miners since 1950.

[pohl]

Does anybody know if coal and uranium/plutonium miners are included in those death-per-Kwh stats?

[ximeng]

Sorry accidental downvote due to fiddly touch screen

[tptacek]

I'm only talking about the miners.

[jshen]

"The carcinogens and particulates emitted by coal do all their damage immediately? They don't build up in people's lungs and cause cancer and other diseases many years later?"

There are orders of magnitude differences between this time span and radioactive material, right? The same is true of all your points, right?

I'm not anti nuclear, it may be preferable to coal, but it doesn't make the logic of those stats any better.

[tptacek]

The half life of some plutonium radionuclides is spectacularly long. But because of the nature of nuclear power (to wit: turning very big atoms into smaller ones), the stuff that actually contaminates the environment in the worst accidents is more boring. Cesium-137, one of the more obnoxious contaminants, has a half life of 30 years.

Coal will do more damage than nuclear on this metric, too.

[jshen]

how long until spent fuel rods are safe?

[tptacek]

So, your argument is that because it's harder to make judgements about the impact of fossil fuels, surely our judgement about nuclear power must be worse?

[jshen]

My argument is that I don't find those stats compelling. Nothing more, nothing less.

[tptacek]

Isn't your analysis a victim of what Nassim Taleb calls the narrative fallacy? The fight is between "true" and "false", not "compelling" and "abstruse".

[jshen]

I don't understand what you're saying. I am skeptical that the conclusion drawn from the previous stats follows logically from the stats themselves.