[phre4k]

Nuclear power is pretty cool if you don't build the plants in risky areas or ignore safety measures.

I'm a radiation safety officer and the completeness of precautions taken is inversely proportional to the amount of greediness of the company's CEO.

Until that's solved, nuclear power is a double-edged sword, as seen in Chernobyl and Fukushima. There's currently no perfect solution to that energy problem.

What many people don't know: There's more radiation set free by coal power plants than nuclear power plants because they burn that stuff and blow it into the air.

[iso1631]

Fukushima killed 0 people. The evacuation has 2,000 deaths attributed to it.

In comparison the Earthquake and Tsunami killed 15,000 people.

Even setting aside the global effects of climate change, local air polution from coal burning kills 20,000 people a year in Europe alone [0], and 13,000 in the U.S. [1]

[0] http://www.env-health.org/IMG/pdf/heal_report_the_unpaid_hea...

[1] https://www.catf.us/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/CATF_Pub_TheT...

[dewey]

> Fukushima killed 0 people. The evacuation has 2,000 deaths attributed to it.

Why do you think that distinction is important? It's like saying that bikes don't kill people, only the hard surfaces you fall on when you crash do.

[iso1631]

Because that's not a problem with nuclear power plants per se, more a problem with chaotically evacuating after a massive tsumani has destroyed mass amounts of infrastructure and killed thousands of people

That type of evacuation in circumstances without the tsunami would not have lead to 2,000 deaths.

[pvaldes]

> Fukushima killed 0 people

We could repeat this as many times as we want, but will be still a false statement.

If disinformation will continue to be the standard solution for managing all nuclear challenges, we are not ready for an adult discussion about it. Therefore nobody should be allowed to use this technology until we mature as species and we'll be able to focus in the real issues.

[iso1631]

How many people did Fukishima kill then?

[pvaldes]

The answer for this question will not be available until the last Fukushima radiation will decay. Ask again in 100 years.

But in the meanwhile, I'll gave you something to meditate about. After the first 10 months baby mortality increased suddenly in the areas affected by radiation (and only in those areas). More than 1000 newborn died en excess with respect to the areas not affected. I assume that not all of those were evacuated, so evacuation is not the problem here.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5044925/

Surprise, surprise, human foetuses are very sensitive to even low "safe?" doses of radiation, leading to miscarriages or lack of inner organs in non-viable newborns.

So, if those babies weren't fu*d by Fukushima, how would you explain that? With this information in mind, do you still consider that areas with and without radiation are equally safe?

[LargoLasskhyfv]

Similar thing [1] happened in Berlin 9 months after Chernobyl. More babies than usual/expected were born with Trisomy 21.

[1] https://www.bmj.com/content/309/6948/158.full

Actually that is not what I searched for, but the only thing I found(after a casual search). I remember it to be more, dispersed all over the former German Democratic Republic which accounted for it, while the Bundesrepublik Deutschland didn't, or at least not at the times.

[iso1631]

> Fukushima killed 0 people

Apologies, it caused 1 death. 7 years afterwards.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-45423575

[dewey]

> There's more radiation set free by coal power plants than nuclear power plants because they burn that stuff and blow it into the air.

Trying to understand this: "more radiation set free by coal power plants than nuclear power plants"

Is that for the day-to-day operations of a plant? I actually thought nuclear power plants don't emit any radiation in normal operations and only if something bad happens. Or if it's referring to a Fukushima like event how do you compare that? I have a hard time putting these two in relation.

[goatinaboat]

is that for the day-to-day operations of a plant? I actually thought nuclear power plants don't emit any radiation in normal operations

There are naturally occurring particulates of radioactive elements in coal, these are released into the environment in the exhaust. No-one cares about this but they panic over a nuclear power station which actually emits an order of magnitude less radiation.

[dewey]

> but they panic over a nuclear power station

I don't think anyone panics over a nuclear power station that's working. What people are afraid of is a Fukushima / Chernobyl in their backyard and the non-existing long term storage options that are more sophisticated than burying it in the holes.

[pvaldes]

Is the same kind of radiation?

[svara]

> What many people don't know: There's more radiation set free by coal power plants than nuclear power plants because they burn that stuff and blow it into the air.

That's misleading the way you state it. The total amount is not a relevant measure without also knowing the concentration.

[bergoid]

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-...

> In fact, the fly ash emitted by a power plant—a by-product from burning coal for electricity—carries into the surrounding environment 100 times more radiation than a nuclear power plant producing the same amount of energy.

> In a 1978 paper for Science, J. P. McBride at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and his colleagues looked at the uranium and thorium content of fly ash from coal-fired power plants in Tennessee and Alabama. To answer the question of just how harmful leaching could be, the scientists estimated radiation exposure around the coal plants and compared it with exposure levels around boiling-water reactor and pressurized-water nuclear power plants.

> The result: estimated radiation doses ingested by people living near the coal plants were equal to or higher than doses for people living around the nuclear facilities. At one extreme, the scientists estimated fly ash radiation in individuals' bones at around 18 millirems (thousandths of a rem, a unit for measuring doses of ionizing radiation) a year. Doses for the two nuclear plants, by contrast, ranged from between three and six millirems for the same period. And when all food was grown in the area, radiation doses were 50 to 200 percent higher around the coal plants.

[ClumsyPilot]

It absolutely is the relevant measure, as anything can be diluted: at Fukushima Tepco is not allowed to relase tritium water into the ocean because its technically radioactive. It would dilute in the oceans and make no actual difference. If they released it, there would be public outcry.

They are instead storing giant amounts of it on site.

Meanwhile coal powerplants throw radiation into air all day and noone raises an eyebrow.

[Tepix]

> It would dilute in the oceans and make no actual difference.

Before it got diluted, would it lead to unwanted contamination of fish in the area?

[ClumsyPilot]

Are we talking about a competent proffeshional, or someone who escaped the asylum?

You don't just dump it all at once at the local beach, you take it out to sea and do the diluting over several months.

You can even release it in the abbysal zone, where hardly anything lives.

Half-life of tritium is 12 years, so it would be mostly gone fairly quickly.

[pvaldes]

We definitely need a name for this. I will suggest "nuclear terraplanism".

Nuclear terraplanism is defined as refusing to understand basic biology and scientific knowledge known since much before to put men in the moon to promote a nuclear agenda, so the risks remain hidden or are deliberately left out of the master plan.

I'm talking about concepts that each biologist understand like vertical migration or bioaccumulation, or physical properties of water (Warm water ascends to surface... duh, who would suspect that?)

[LargoLasskhyfv]

Just fill some old ultra large crude oil carriers [1] which aren't needed anymore with that stuff. Strip them of anything reusable, tow them to the Marianas Trench or some other abyss, hang some weights onto them, maybe giant bags of contaminated topsoil.

Sink.

Kanpai!

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_tanker#Size_categories

[ClumsyPilot]

Surely all issues you outlined apply to radioactive particles released by coal power-plants even more?

Example of "warm water rises" is silly - global ocean is not a teapot, water on the abyssal plain is not heated from the bottom.

[Tepix]

It's not just Tritium. TEPCO, a Japanese power company, estimates that more than 70% of the tanks — that’s 700,000 tons of water — will need secondary treatment before the water is in any state to be released.

Also my guess would be that they lay a pipe from these tanks into the water to dump the 1 million tons, meaning there would be some spots with fairly high concentration for a long time.

[ClumsyPilot]

We diverged a lot from initial claim of:

"total amount is not a relevant measure .." concentration.

That claim is incorrect - it is obviously possible to release tritium water without causing damage.

The actual management of Fukushima is a rabbithole, but if they spent years containing it, I dont think they will just flush it down a tube and call it a day.

[Tepix]

We don't know how much radiation is set free by nuclear power plants because the highly radioactive nuclear waste they leave behind will be around for tens of thousands of years and we don't know if and when it will contaminate the planet.

[ryathal]

We know that waste is sitting in a pond, it's not set free, it's not capable of magically moving itself. We have no idea where any of those coal emissions ended up, and we still have piles of extremely toxic ash just like the nuclear waste.