[caddywompus]

I don't think you can really compare the poisonous emissions of diesel exhaust leaked materials from a reactor.

I see your point, any nuclear excursion tends to get blown out of proportion, but it does have some unique dangers.

In particular, diesel fumes eventually dissipate, whereas radioactive materials will settle and continue to be a problem for decades. Which may not be a problem if it's left alone, but anyone unlucky enough to interact with it could end up with it on their body/clothing unaware that they're absorbing an unsafe dose over a period of days or weeks.

But yes, I agree, we do need to move away from fossil fuel sources one way or another.

[Johnny555]

I don't think you can really compare the poisonous emissions of diesel exhaust leaked materials from a reactor.

Sure you can, you just need to agree on the comparison criteria, like, for example, the total number of illnesses/death from normal (and predicted abnormal) operation of the device. Burning fossil fuels still leads to deaths even if they are spread over a large area and/or time.

[powderpig]

I am afraid I don't have the numbers to back up my claim but when I was at university, my thermodynamics lecturer showed us a calculation that background dose from radioactive material at a coal powered fire station is higher than that of a nuclear power station. This is because of the shear amount of coal power stations burn through, and in that fuel, there is a trace amount of radioactive material that eventually gets out into the atmosphere.

I've previously worked on a nuclear licenced site and we were not even allowed to throw smoke alarms in the general rubbish due to there being radioactive material inside.

[caddywompus]

Yes, absolutely! Coal is pretty much the worst of the worst.

My concerns are solely with how fuel would be managed, so that it isn't lost, and subsequently broken. One example was scrap workers taking a radioactive source to a scrap yard to be melted down, not realizing what it was.

[glogla]

Diesel fumes will dissipate locally, but they will cause Global Climate Change that threatens to destroy human civilization as we know it.

Meanwhile, radioactive toxic stuff will remain toxic locally.

[caddywompus]

I mean, you're not wrong. I'm just thinking that the larger nuclear plants are a safer than deploying many small reactors