[derleth]

> The anti-nuclear movement is not based on anti-scientific and scaremongering - we have Nobel price winners who support that cause and wrote scientific papers of this very issue

This doesn't necessarily follow, logically. In order to make the case, we'd need to go point-by-point.

> What happens to the radioactive stuff that is created at the end of every of the energy producing process?

Coal just puts it into the atmosphere.

[lispm]

Coal power plants filter radioactive substances, at least here in Germany.

[rhino42]

but they spit out a bunch of other nasty stuff too. Plus: consider death tolls of each power source per KWh:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/the-human-toll-of-coa...

[lispm]

The more dramatic numbers are for old US coal power plants.

Newer or upgraded coal power plants have less effects.

But generally this is not a beauty contest. Coal power plants have to go. Unfortunately it will take a lot of time and money to replace (or even upgrade) the existing ones.

[GlennS]

Power needs to be generated one way or another. Keeping nuclear for longer would mean we can get rid of coal sooner. Those numbers show that this would be a worthwhile trade.

[rimantas]

And what happens with filters then?

[lispm]

Used as a material similar to concrete.

[wapper]

The fun thing about this argument, is that it's pro-nuclear. Nuclear fission reactors are the only thing on this planet that reduce radioactive emissions. By quite a bit even. Of course, after that reduction, we massively concentrate what is left and then store that absurd concentration in a really small spot, where "nothing can ever go wrong".

The problem with radioactivity is not nuclear power, it's the idiotic way we do nuclear disposal.

We should do what coal power plants do : simply process it into building materials. 10x thinner than background levels and just use it for anything and everything.

There are plenty of places on this planet where natural radioactivity levels are more dangerous than inside a modern nuclear reactor (Ramsar in Iran being the canonical example). A city built straight on top of radioactive rock, 200-500 times normal background radiation levels (like a constant dental scan, a little more than you'd get swimming in the primary coolant circuit of a nuclear reactor, 3 meters from an active fission reaction, without any separation between you and the reaction other than the water that sustains the reaction), yet you will not find a single trace of a nuclear power plant. And yes, they have a history of higher cancer rates (though not nearly as high as our radiation disease models predict they should be).

[lispm]

Good luck putting plutonium into building materials.

[konstruktor]

Which is fine, because those who get the cheap power breathe it, i.e. the risk/reward system is mostly local. As I have written several times before, nuclear power is a black swan type of risk with non-local risk realization, whereas coal has a more typical distribution of risk realization, and the effects are more local. This makes it hard to compare them by comparing average risk. As somebody from a country which decided against Nuclear by referendum just years before getting a lot of fallout from Chernobyl, I am also very sensitive to the fact that I have hardly any political influence on nuclear power plants that can affect me.