[rdl]

Marginal additional energy in CA (to replace the nuclear capacity) means either burning more natural gas in-state or burning more coal in the Pacific Northwest.

Coal (and even natural gas, surprisingly) puts more radioactivity into the environment than nuclear fission. Plus, all the other negatives of fossil fuels (particulates, acid rain, risky mining, etc.). And global warming.

So, yay?

[rogerbinns]

For anyone who wants numbers - coal puts out approximately 100 times the amount of radioactivity as nuclear power plants do and is responsible for about 1,000 times the deaths. There is a good stackexchange discussion with more detailed statistics, nuances etc http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1018/do-coal-pla...

[waps]

But people just don't want to believe that. Renewable energy also has caused more deaths than nuclear power, even if you (completely unfairly) count the deaths resulting from the use of nuclear weapons. And the public reaction is to simply ignore this, and even deny it.

I find it easy to believe : mounting slippery glass panels on rooftops ... not very safe, maintaining and cleaning them, again obviously not safe[1]. There are also recorded accidents with solar panels falling off rooftops into people (they are large, heavy glass shards by the time they hit the ground, so you can imagine what happens, let's just skip the photos). Putting generators on poles 50m or 100m above the ground (or 150m above the sea surface) is not a safe occupation and those generators cannot be as safe as the ones on the ground. So maintaining those is generating a steady stream of death and disfigurement[2], and catastrophic failure means the tower collapses, you don't want to be below one, like a catastrophic failure in the UK where a wind turbine locked up and crashed into a school playground, thankfully an empty one. Or just search youtube [4][5][6]. And dam-based electrical power has the same problem as nuclear power : if it works, great. If it fails, it can fail catastrophically, taking a lot of people with it[3].

[1] http://asiancorrespondent.com/54571/green-deaths-the-forgott...; [2] http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100200909/...; [3] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWcdDwECZU0 [4] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMNqjirbWoQ [5] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ovHFTSBQ54 [6] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCyQD83NLDc

Also keep in mind the EROI of the different solutions. Meaning how much energy is produced given input energy. Renewables (except hydro) are in the 0.5-2 range (and "small" renewables, like solar recharging bluetooth headsets, are 0.1 at best), oil used to be 20-30 but have dropped to 15 at best and is rapidly decreasing (a fact that has been accused of being the real cause of the global economic slowdown). Coal is also around 10-15 range average globally. Nuclear, is at least 150000. Whatever disadvantages nuclear power has is related to the amount of material used, and that amount is tiny.

[rogerbinns]

> And the public reaction is to simply ignore this, and even deny it.

That pattern seems to apply to most risk. There is huge fear over rare plane accidents that affect up to a few hundred at once, while ignoring the traffic accidents that kill 3,000 people a month (US) in ones and twos. Even terrorism is rare, and 9/11 is a blip compared to those traffic accidents. A nuclear accident could affect lots of people at once, while coal/renewables are doing it in dribs and drabs for far greater totals.

[rdl]

If you want to include deaths from nuclear weapons, nuclear is way negative, in that nuclear weapons largely kept the cold war cold. A hot ww3 would have been in the millions.