[Eeko]

> The main difference is in my opinion the visible action - reaction relationship. If a nuclear power plant blows up, the whole area is going to look for years to come like a scene from a apocalyptic movie, while with coal plants you might have just people to "cough a bit more".

Not really. Nuclear disasters are bad for the environment, but considerably less bad than say... Building a city somewhere.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/04/120411084107.ht...

And "cough a bit more" is probably the understatement of a day. Those fuckers even create more radioactive waste (which won't get collected) when they work as intended, than nuclear plants when they break down. (http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is...)

You are on track with the insurance policy. Though it's pretty safe to assume, that real costs of coal and carbon-based fuels are not calculated very well for insurance purposes either.

The end-point of unstoppable climate-change could potentially render the entire earth inhabitable via the Venus-effect. Even most apocalyptic local consequences are pretty minor compared to those.

[moe]

Those fuckers even create more radioactive waste (which won't get collected) when they work as intended, than nuclear plants when they break down.

How about reading your own linked article before making a fool of yourself with claims like that? It says coal plants create more radioactive waste than a nuclear plant that has not broken down.

[ori_b]

It's true for common failure modes. Three Mile Island, for example, did leak less radioactive waste than a correctly working coal plant.

The problem is that it's so politically difficult to build new nuclear plants so that old ones can be retired, that we're still using poorly designed plants from the 1960s that are already past their design lifetime. And then people are surprised that they're problematic.

[fabjan]

The reason we're still using the old plants is because even wind power is cheaper per watt hour than a modern nuclear plant.

Finland is building one at the moment. At $4.1 billion it's now 50% over budget.

[ori_b]

Your numbers are incorrect. The cost for nuclear is cheaper than oil and gas, and only somewhat more expensive than coal, when factoring in the full lifecycle costs.

And Finland's reactor is remarkably cheap, if it only cost $4.1B. I believe typical plants cost closer to $10B. Nuclear plants are not cheap to build.

[moe]

The cost for nuclear is cheaper than oil and gas

That's a lie.

The equation breaks down when you factor in any of the following:

A) Waste handling and disposal

B) Reactor upgrades and replacement on a sane schedule (i.e. more frequently than the current ~35 years)

C) Hardening against deliberate attacks such as airplanes

or

D) A single catastrophic event due to continued negligence of B and C

The nuclear industry operates on the premise of being able to push the cost for all of the above upon society at some indefinite point in the future (cf. Fukushima). You may or may not agree with that approach (i.e. you could argue "it's worth it"), but let's not drink their kool-aid please.

[ori_b]

If you didn't factor those in, then the cost would be almost nothing, even when compared to coal. Almost all the cost of nuclear power is in the construction and decommissioning.

When you factor those in, it becomes more expensive than coal, and slightly cheaper than oil or gas.

Also, airplanes pack very little punch compared to other things like internal steam buildup that plants are already hardened against. In a properly designed plant, you get airplane tolerance effectively for free.

[bluthru]

>but considerably less bad than say... Building a city somewhere.

Living densely is one of the most sustainable things humans can do.

Nothing benefits from a nuclear disaster.

[batista]

>Not really. Nuclear disasters are bad for the environment, but considerably less bad than say... Building a city somewhere.

Only you have to built a city to house people, whereas you don't have to build a nuclear reactor to give them energy, there are other options. Next argument?

>And "cough a bit more" is probably the understatement of a day. Those fuckers even create more radioactive waste (which won't get collected) when they work as intended, than nuclear plants when they break down.

Not so. The article you link to says the researchers found comparable or slightly higher levels to that of a nuclear factory in normal operation. And it goes on to say:

McBride and his co-authors estimated that individuals living near coal-fired installations are exposed to a maximum of 1.9 millirems of fly ash radiation yearly. To put these numbers in perspective, the average person encounters 360 millirems of annual "background radiation" from natural and man-made sources, including substances in Earth's crust, cosmic rays, residue from nuclear tests and smoke detectors.

Quite quaint. Not at all what happens in a nuclear plant accident.

A lot of geek people like to support nuclear plants because they think it's the pro-science thing to do ("oh, those ignorant masses, they are afraid of science"), and will twist the facts as fast as any bible-yielding evolution-denier to do so.

Well, nuclear plants are not science: they are technology, that is applied science.

Unlike, say, math, technology is not perfect: it's shaped by private interests, it's prone to human error (from the design to the development, to the operation stage), and it can also do a lot of bad shit, from blowing up people a la Challenger to Chernobyl.

[Retric]

That's for a single coal power plant many areas have dozens of them near coal rich areas. Also, they dump most of this stuff in the upper atmosphere so the majority of pollution ends up more than a thousand miles from the actual plant. Is it a big deal? probably not. Sure, statistically speaking radiation exposure from coal power plants has probably killed more people than from nuclear accidents. But, impossible to track who specifically was killed which limits their liability.

PS: Of course this is also because the nuclear industry has killed so few people.