[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?