Sarevok wrote:@Pendelton
Have you realized that a lot of materials in the world are extremely toxic and will lead to death ? For example imagine how many thousands of people you can kill with just one kilogram of mercury. All you have to do is find a way to get it inside their bodies.
Same for nuclear materials. I have not forgotten the fear mongering over the Cassini spacecraft. Supposedly a few hundred kilograms dispersing in the atmosphere would kill several millions.
I think risks need to quantified and measured relatively. The results can be surprising. Did you know
coal ash is more radioactive than nuclear waste ?
This is true, as you say. I work with all manner of compounds, many of which have no actual data behind their impact on human metabolism, or environmental damage. COSSH can only take you so far when you're dealing with engineered New Chemical Entities (NCEs). These compounds will typically never be in sufficient quantities to cause harm, if they even make it to be commercially viable. I've been heavily involved in the EU's REACH project for re-evaluating just about every agrochemical used within the EU's remit. So believe me, I'm under no illusion that there is such thing as a safe chemical. Indeed, as I work with toxicologists all day, the first thing drilled into my mind when thinking about any chemical is the poison is in the dose. You can die from water, vitamin D or any other supposedly benign substances in nature that we still need.
But I digress. I should state that the SciAm article doesn't properly report the information from the original study which looked into fly ash and nuclear waste radiological properties. From the original 1977 research in
Science:
The maximum individual dose commitments
from the model coal plant were greater than
those from the pressurized water reactor, except
for the thyroid dose, but were less than those
from the boiling water reactor, except for the
bone dose. In general, however, the whole-body
and all organ doses for both the coal and nuclear
plants were in the same order of magnitude.
Remember, this was many years before more efficient HEPA electrostatic precipitators and desulphurisation processes for flue gas or wet scrubbers brought about by better environmental regulations after the "silent spring" renaissance in environmentalism. The idea that coal is many times more lethal than nuclear is often cited as a reason against coal (we don't need such a reason which, in actuality, would act as just as much of a reason against nuclear anyway). The NRPB in the UK also looked into these issues with the Didcot coal plant and the use of ash for building materials, which the HPA oversaw in a study in 2006.
The point I am trying to make here is that nuclear power is no different than any other industrial activity. It should be judged under same rational cost benefit ratio as say wind farms or hydro turbines. Rather than say being treated from superstitious perspective where it is so dangerous even one accident would kill millions.
Lets face it we have detonated over 2000 nuclear bombs right in the face of Mother Earth. Any consequence from future nuclear accidents have got nothing on this.
I don't think any one is really putting forth the idea that renewables are without their faults when it comes to heavy industry, so if that's what my posts came across as saying, that is a communication failure on my part.
Steel wrote:
Fundamental point: that book is NOT in 'the literature'. It has not passed peer review, and holds no more validity that scrawling a giant number in crayon on a piece of paper. You cannot counter extensive peer reviewed work with a single or even many studies someone pulled out of thin air without peer review.
I didn't really make the distinction between peer-reviewed and popular science or agenda driven rants, simply that there is a source out there that people can look at and draw conclusions from regarding nuclear. These may be
incorrect conclusions, but it was not my intention to quote the Russian scientist's work and draw a line in the sand stating this was the definitive figure, since it clearly isn't given his prior history in the subject (regardless of his marine biology credentials) and flawed meta-analyses, which in bioinformatics are tricky in far simpler subjects as it is.
This is all down to the problem of public perception which, whether we like it or not, dictates policy far more than any other single factor, even economics at times. I've come across plenty of articles referencing this book, even if there are peer-reviewed papers with actual scientific rigour that can be used to bring a counterpoint to the IAEA/WHO studies (if I remember correctly, I found one by the NAS which put the figure at higher than 5,000, but still way below the 900k+ figure of the listed book, though I can't find the link right now).
Even (in fact especially) when we look at the full life cycle impacts of different power generation methods nuclear comes out (further) on top. Even if uranium mining is as hazardous as coal mining, you need a MILLION times as much coal to equal uranium energy output by mass. Similarly for other 'green' power, you need inordinate quantities of raw materials.
I'm psoting this from a phone on the train so I can't reference things easily and I've trashed your post, but I cant write a full response to you and the other people as I'm about to go underground.
There are other problems relating to nuclear, which could involve a whole new thread in themselves, and so detract from the topic of this one. In summary, they tend to be economic with nuclear fuel being cheap, so long as you have the capital to invest and insure and then decommission nuclear facilities first. Fuel supply, which is limited in where it can be acquired and, if the global nuclear build-out keeps pace, will significantly raise the cost of fuel (I am, of course, ignoring the potential for all new reactors to be fast neutron breeders, which would overcome uranium limitations). And lastly, social concerns, which are self-explanatory and also the biggest wildcard despite the overall trend of public opinion being anti-nuclear in many countries with formerly healthy atomic industries.
