[bayesian_horse]

That "minor nuclear incident" required a clean up that still isn't finished and already ran up a tab of about a trillion Dollars.

Pro-nuclear propaganda tries to focus on "only" one direct fatality, and conveniently ignores all the cost associated with not running up that number.

[trashtester]

> required a clean

Expenditures on the "clean up" was beyond excessive. If Germany tries to "clean up" the harmful emissions from burning lignite to a similar safetly level, they will go broke.

[bayesian_horse]

Bullshit argument. How would such a cleanup even work? The claim that the Fukushima clean up is excessive is completely pulled out of someones ass. What would be the rationale? You DO understand that exposure to radiation is cumulative, and having radioactive dirt lying around or distributing through wind and whatever else is a problem, right? And we don't even perfectly know what damage that would do long term, if you just leave it alone. There is an exclusion zone around Tschernobyl for a reason. Japan can't afford such an exclusion zone.

Cleaning up "harmful emissions from burning lignite" is complete bullshit. How would that even work? For one thing those emissions or whatever is not radioactive, which is a big plus. For another, those emissions are continously reduced and once they are sufficiently reduced, the planet as a whole will actually clean it up by itself. This will take a long time, of course. Not as long as leaving nuclear waste and radioactive dirt alone and hoping it won't get blown around and harm anyone.

[trashtester]

> Bullshit argument. How would such a cleanup even work?

The lowest radiation exposure that is scientifically proven to cause increased cancer risk is ~100mSv, and even then the risk increase is, well, almost unmeasurable.

> You DO understand that exposure to radiation is cumulative

It's not, though, or at least nowhere linear. For continous exposure, <20mSv/year is considered safe enough (if you're a flight attendant, for example). If you compress 50 years of that exposure into a single flight, you get 1000mSv, and probably radiation sickness, possibly death soon after.

When cleaning up after the Fukushima incident, the original plan was to scrub down areas and remove topsoil in areas with >5mSv/year exposure. This was later reduced to anywhere with >1mSv/year. Not only is that 20x lower than what is considered safe, it's also less than the average exposure from "normal" sources in most other areas.

Furthermore, when applying the $1 trillion number, it usually includes compensation to the population, primarily for the evacuation. That part is higher than the actual cleanup.

Now apply this benchmark to lignite. What are the lowest measurable exposure to pollutants that can be shown to increase the risk of severe illness (respiratory, cancer,etc)?

Now find that number, divide by 20, and do the same kind of cleanup (scrub down, topsoil reduction, etc) in all those areas where people are exposed to such levels of pollution. (Hint: it will be most of Germany.)

Then evacuate all areas where people are subjected to health hazards comparable to 50mSv of radiation, from lignite polution. (Probably millions, if not 10s of millions).

On top of that, provide compensation to anyone that has been affected by such polution, at the same amount per unit health impact, as well as, obviously the evacuation above.

Obviously, this is impossible. Germany simply doesn't have the economic resources to do this.

If the Japanese had the same standards for handling the effects of the Fukushima incident as Germans have for dealing with the ongoing polution from lignite, the "cleanup" would be quite cheap.