Nuclear Power is not cost effective

Capt'n Midnight

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/News/Releases/2003/06/3698

At 31 March 2002 the total estimated undiscounted cost was
£47.9 billion. This expenditure will cover the decommissioning
and eventual demolition of irradiated plant and buildings; the
processing, storage and final disposal of nuclear wastes; and
carrying out any necessary environmental restoration. Annual
expenditure is expected to be well over £1 billion in each of
the next 10-15 years.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/nuclear/article/0,,1755714,00.html - interesting accusations about the true cost and finance for the Finnish nuclear power plant.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,6-2187270,00.html

The Government itself estimated that the use of current commercially available energy-efficiency measures could reduce energy demand by 30 per cent in the economy as a whole. Take Woking Borough Council: over 14 years it reduced energy demand by nearly 50 per cent and made CO2 savings of 77 per cent. It has demonstrated conclusively that change can be brought about by green procurement, by basic energy conservation, community use of combined heat and power, biomass, photovoltaics, electric vehicles and even fuel cells.

The Prime Minister has rightly called for a step change in energy efficiency. But it is only by moving to new low-carbon technologies that we can reach our target of 60 per cent CO2 reductions by 2050. It is argued that nuclear is essential to this low carbon future. It is not. It is possible now to calculate CO2 emissions from new nuclear on-stream in 2024. The Sustainable Development Commission found a mere 4 per cent CO2 advantage in nuclear over gas.

http://www.rmi.org/sitepages/pid305.php

Contrary to an argument nuclear apologists have recently taken to making, nuclear power isn't a good way to curb climate change. True, nukes don't produce carbon dioxide—but the power they produce is so expensive that the same money invested in efficiency or even natural-gas-fired power plants would offset much more climate change.

DublinWriter

Yeah, umpteen thousand more people die in the production of fossil fuels every year than in the production of nuclear energy.

But let's not let get facts get in the way.

Right now Nuclear power is percevied as being just as bad as paedophilia or GM crops (non-GM crops consume almost four times much land and release far more carbon into the atmosphere).

Why bother having a scientific debate about this when you can rant and rave and bring the "won't anyone think of the children!" card into play.

Capt'n Midnight

DublinWriter wrote:

GM crops (non-GM crops consume almost four times much land and release far more carbon into the atmosphere).

Have a look at this for the energy used in food.
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=2324828&postcount=13
Gotta be worth a few power stations.

GMO as it usually used to day isn't renewable ! To get the increased yield you have to use lots of fertilizer, most likely made from fossil fuel. GMO crops have been optimised for increased pesticide resitance too. Handy stuff if your company sells seeds, fertilizer and pesticide and other agri-chemicals.

BTW: I'm quite ok with GMO for medical reasons, like nuclear power I just don't trust big companies who have a duty to shareholders and a scary track record to how they treat the public.

There is no food shortage. The problems are usually supply and demand. In Ireland during the potato famine, food was being exported from the affected country, just as it was in recent African famines.

/RANT

Pocari Sweat

All big companies should be banned, none of them are quite right.

Ban nuke stations sure, but ban all coal mining and its culture of mass extinction of miners and the using public.

Although nuclear is currently the officially areed lowest cost form of power generation alongside gas, and wind is 4 times the cost, maybe it should be banned because it is part of the large company culture.

Nuke power generation, from year to year, has virtually no listed deaths of workers, and in UK, France, USA etc all the main countries generating nuke electric, never a single death of the public.

50 years and not a single death of the public in all these countries.

Take coal, it executes a quarter million yanks every year.

Some may not like yanks and say this is a good thing, but in the argument for looking at costs, and deaths and insurance costs for deaths of workers and population, then coal is not viable. The future won't allow it.

bonkey

DublinWriter wrote:

Yeah, umpteen thousand more people die in the production of fossil fuels every year than in the production of nuclear energy.

More importantly, the rate of deaths is higher. If 100x more people worked in one industry (A) than another (B), and its death-toll were 10x higher, then although more people would die in A, it would actually be 10 times safer.

But let's not let get facts get in the way.

Lets not.

The facts are that the majority of deaths caused in the mining industry are in illegal mines. These mines are not being used to supply power stations with coal, so replacing coal-stations with nuclear won't save their lives. Nor will the lives of peopel lost mining coal for anything other than power generation be saved.

The facts are also that very few people are suggesting coal as the main preferable option to nuclear (although I admit its possible that it will become so now that there are designs for cost-effective, clean coal plants on the table). Why bother exlpaining why nuclear might not be as attractive as, say, natural gas, when you can point to the coal-workers plight, eh?

Should we also not accept the fact that the human cost of obtaining raw materials is only one aspect of a far more complex equation? Having accepted that, would it not be disingenouus to continue beating people over the head with some argument that suggests its all that matters.

If nuclear is far more expensive than its been made out to be, then insisting it doesn't kill as many people as coal is no more than an atetmpt to avoid discussing the problem of cost. Whether we like it or not, cost is a problem. Its not much use saying we have a 0-death system if no-one can afford to use it in the scale we'd need to. Its even less use saying we shouldn't be looking at whether or not we can afford it, because dammit these are people's lives we're talking about.

Yes. They are people's lives that are being lost and its a tragedy. But how will we pay for saving them? And what will that money be taken from? And will that rediversion of monies cost lives? And can it work? And are there other problems? And what will we do (and how will we pay) for all the miners we put out of work?

Lets go a bit further and ask what the facts are about nuclear storage. The facts are that we have no more than a theoretical solution which should work, if we're willing and able to implement it correctly and if nothing deviates from theory too much and if there are no unexpected factors we've overlooked. Oh...and if we can and choose to pay to do it right.

Why bother having a scientific debate about this when you can rant and rave and bring the "won't anyone think of the children!" card into play.

A scientific debate is not where one knocks all other issues with a response of "but look at the lives one of the alternatives costs".

Seriously...replace "children" with "coal miners" and you've just described your own post.

silverharp

I believe I have read in the past that the total energy consumed by the Nuclear life cycle is more then the output from a 40 year plant. I don't know if this is true or not or what assumptions were made, however even if this was true it doesn't necessarily rule out nuclear power, in the same way that pumping water up a mountain to generate electricity involves a loss of energy it helps in certain situations.


The whole debate rests on what society’s goals are, if it’s the continuation of the status quo at all costs, living in suburbs and living the consumer dream then Nuclear should be part of the solution for certain countries (Ireland might not need it directly). Otherwise you have to convince the “west” to give up it’s current lifestyle and the East to stop industrializing. Modern life if based on oil, I believe we are probably 3-5 years away from peak oil, there could be a plateau for a few years then it is 2-3% less oil per year thereafter. At that point modern lifestyles will be forced to change. The time for planning effectively has probably passed as Gov. and the masses are in denial.

Nuclear is probably my least favorite option, but if it keeps the US or China from rolling into other middle east or African country, and it keeps the city lights on somewhere around the world then I’ll not object to it, if world wide gov’s can come together and agree we are in serious doo doo and force their voters to accept change now, then you can write nuclear out of the picture but good luck!

Pocari Sweat

Trying to avoid the holistic approach of the expense of using coal regarding the 250,000 direct loss of civilian lives in america each year versus zero loss of life via nuclear means, could be ignored anyway, as nuclear was clearly listed as the least expensive option in the production of electricity generation in a series of TV news reports concerning the recent oil price hikes.

Forget the loss of life of using coal and its vast expense, forget the vast expense of wind and solar, and other problems that the nuclear route is free of, and remember nuclear power stations have zero CO2 emmissions.

So, no loss of life, lowest cost means of electric supply and zero emmissions.

SeanW

The facts are also that very few people are suggesting coal as the main preferable option to nuclear

Capt'n Midnight is.

I may write a more detailed post later, but for now I'll say this much.

The French, Finns, Russians and Ukrainians wouldn't be in this game if they didn't think nuclear power was a valuable asset.

Did I just say the Ukraine? Yep, that's where Chernobyl was, and the Ukranians should have good reason to be skeptical of nuclear power, right?

Wrong. Even though their economy collapsed in 1990, they stuck with nuclear power. What's more, their government can't seem to get enough of reactors in the country and that remains to this day. See an an analysis of the Ukranian energy sector here. That pretty much says it all in my book.

Maybe the Ukranians didn't learn their lesson? Or maybe they did but that wasn't the one Capt'n Midnight would like to teach them (burn more coal).

leeroybrown

I doubt I'll see a clear clean objective debate on the subject of nuclear power in the country at any stage soon. Whenever it comes up it's always a discussion of polar opposites where each side fixates on the worst or best case situations. I ultimately end up feeling that both sides are weakening their own argument by attacking each other. Anyone even remotely official will then engage in copious amounts of fence sitting.

I have no inherent objection to nuclear power but in my experience of large state run projects Ireland has a poor track record of dealing with projects anywhere even close to this scale with any degree of efficiency, cost effectiveness or timeliness.

And ultimately if we ever do build one I'd like to see it put in the area that has yielded the most 'not in my backyard campaigns' in the previous 20 years. Just for fun ...

bonkey

Pocari Sweat wrote:

Trying to avoid the holistic approach of the expense of using coal regarding the 250,000 direct loss of civilian lives in america each year versus zero loss of life via nuclear means, could be ignored anyway, as nuclear was clearly listed as the least expensive option in the production of electricity generation in a series of TV news reports concerning the recent oil price hikes.

Ah, well. If it was on TV it must be true, eh?

Where, as a matter of interest, does this figure of a quarter million come from?

The closest figure I can find is an order of magnitude smaller (24,000) and was part of an article which also mentioned that 22,000 of those 24,000 are avoidable through the implementation of currently available technology.

In other wods, coal kills so many because the Americans choose not to pay to use it more cleanly, not because it has some inherent "killing effect" that is an unavoidable effect of using coal.

leeroybrown wrote:

I doubt I'll see a clear clean objective debate on the subject of nuclear power in the country at any stage soon.

I doubt you'll see it anywhere at any stage soon...forget about only in the country.

SeanW

bonkey wrote:

The closest figure I can find is an order of magnitude smaller (24,000) and was part of an article which also mentioned that 22,000 of those 24,000 are avoidable through the implementation of currently available technology.

In other wods, coal kills so many because the Americans choose not to pay to use it more cleanly, not because it has some inherent "killing effect" that is an unavoidable effect of using coal.

Well, by your own admission that leaves 2000 deaths annually from coal than can be prevented, in the U.S. alone.

So the coal proponents disregard the vast majority of coal-miner deaths (tens of thousands annually, if not hundreds counting Black Lung deaths etc) because they were caused by bad practice.

Ok, but to compare this with Nuclear Power fairly, you have to totally disregard all those who died at or because of Chernobyl, because, as I deatailed before in previous threads, the whole Soviet nuclear programme, and Chernobyl in particular, was a disaster waiting to happen.

That leaves a total death toll from Nuclear power in all of human history at a relatively small number, I don't have exact stats but I know the number is very small, I'm guessing around 100. Considering that many of these were caused by operator error (more bad practice) they must also be ignored.

That leaves you with an "inherent danger kill" figure in the single digits or low double, for Nuclear power, in all of human history which is several orders of magnitude lower than the unavoidable deaths from coal in one year, in the U.S. alone..

No matter what way you look at it, Nuclear power is safer than coal, for everyone involved.

Now if we factor in the grave costs to human civilisation of runaway CO2 emissions, radioactive emissions from coal plant, and miner deaths, costed at, say €1,000,000 per human life lost (cold I know, but think about it), Nuclear power starts to look like a really good deal, at least it does to me.

And remember that the Ukranians have absolutely no hesitiation about Nuclear power despite their first-hand experience of Atomic power going wrong, they're broke, and their economy is in the toilet and they can't afford to waste money on flights of fancy, and their coal reserves, which I suspect are large enough to give (certain coal-lovers on here) a lot of pleasent dreams.

Yet here we are, the exact diametric opposite of the Ukraine, no contaminated land, no logical reason to fear nuclear power, no natural resources worth talking about, runaway CO2 emissions and almost total reliance on fossil fuel energy imports, yet we all stick our heads up our rear ends in fear any time anyone mentions the dreaded N-word.

Capt'n Midnight

SeanW wrote:

Well, by your own admission that leaves 2000 deaths annually from coal than can be prevented, in the U.S. alone.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/12/04/2600_us_annual_death_toll/

phone-related auto accidents account for 2,600 deaths in the US per year.

The research, which is an update to similar work carried out two years ago, says that mobile phone-related car crashes are linked to 330,000 moderate to critical injuries and 240,000 minor injuries per year in the US. There are an additional 1.5 million instances of property damage due to these types of events.
...
In 2000, nearly 42,000 people were killed on US highways and close to 3.2 million were injured, US Department of Transportation (DOT) figures say.

SeanW wrote:

I don't have exact stats .... I'm guessing

http://www.ratical.org/radiation/CNR/XHP/ColdWarP.html

How the Cold War Caused Millions of American Deaths
* Fifty years of ridiculing the fear of low-dose ionizing radiation ("radio-phobia") have had a tragic unintended consequence:

* Two or three generations of practicing physicians and their professors at medical schools have mistakenly believed that danger from x-ray imaging procedures was either absent or trivial.

* The evidence in my 1999 monograph (Ref.4), which no one has refuted, indicates that about 250,000 persons each year in the USA are dying prematurely from cancer and coronary heart disease due to the unnecessary half of the x-ray doses which they accumulated earlier in life, during x-ray imaging procedures. This has been going on for 50 years, and continues. Indeed, per capita dose from x-ray imaging is probably rising today, not falling, because of the increasing use (without dose measurement) of CT scans, and of fluoroscopic imaging during surgery and cardiac catheterization.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_Exposure_Compensation_Act
In all cases there are additional requirements which must be satisfied (proof of exposure, establishment of length of employment, establishment of certain medical conditions, etc.).
...
As of March 29, 2006, 15,222 claims under the act were approved

SeanW

This post is so full of rubbish, issue-dodging and FUD, that I have to laugh every time I read it. I'm going to enjoy tearing it to shreds.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/12...al_death_toll/

Has absolutely NOTHING to do with atomic electricity.

http://www.ratical.org/radiation/CNR/XHP/ColdWarP.html

Ditto.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_Exposure_Compensation_Act

Ditto for the bulk of RECA claimant categories.

Where to start. My figure of 2000 comes from the number of coal miners who die in the U.S. annually who could not possibly have been saved no matter how much investment was made in mine safety. That figure comes from an annual death toll of 24000. The 2600 people figure you mention is a result of similar carelessness and could be eliminated if people would learn to STFU while driving.

So for you to compare the best-case-scenario of 2000, to those 2600 who die of total carelessness is grossly disingenuous. What's more, road safety is totally unrelated to the current debate.

It would be like someone saying "look Charles Taylor, Saddam, Osama, whoever isn't really such a bad guy compared to Idi Amin, he used to eat children! THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!"

You must be desperate to avoid discussing how much damage and cost coal consumption causes, and will continue to cause for all segments of society.

Regarding link 2, I'm confused. Is anyone here suggesting that Ireland should develop and atmospherically test nuclear weapons? Remember Atomic electricity and Nuclear weapons are two completely different pursuits. Also the business about physicians and X-rays, has absolutely nothing to do with Nuclear electricity. Again, completely different pursuits. More FUD and issue-dodging. Please stop trying to confuse people by posting links about the supposed "dangers" of Nuclear power that have absolutely nothing at all to do with nuclear power.

Regarding link 3, even 15000 would pale in insignificance compared to coal, in human history, but again, many of those RECA claims have absolutely nothing to do with Nuclear Power, like people who lived downwind of the atmospheric weapons test sites and people who worked on such tests.

Of the remaining categories of Uranium miner and mill/ore worker, I'd question:
1: How many claims have been made by living people?
2: How many claims relate to exposure in the 1950s and 1960s, when the dangers of mishandling radioactivity we're not so well known/covered up?
3: How much Uranium at those time of said exposures was being mined for commerical use vs. nuclear weapons, remember the US used a LOT of Uranium for nuclear weapons at the above time.

I again ask you to tell me what the broke, Chernobyl scarred but coal-rich Ukranians are doing with all those unsafe, cost-ineffective, unsustainable nuclear reactors they've been building? You respond by telling us more about Nuclear weapons, X-Rays, and Road Traffic Accidents. Kinda says it all.

Kelter

Am I a spoilsport to just concentrate on Ireland. You could argue the toss on economics in other countries, but not really in Ireland

I was at the IEI conference a while ago. There were speakers from the World energy council, the OECD Nuclear agency and SEI. They all agreed that Nuclear was not economic for Ireland at this time.

http://www.engineersireland.ie/webpages/pagedetails.pasp?pageid=143&menuid=24


check out the SEI guys presentation Slide 8

Capt'n Midnight

SeanW wrote:

Idi Amin, he used to eat children! THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!".

link please.

IIRC Idi was actually quite good with children despite his other failings.
A bit like the episode of the Simpsons where Lisa was a babysitter.

Foxwood

As a matter of interest, where does the figure of 2000 coal-mining deaths in the US "who could not possibly have been saved no matter how much investment was made in mine safety" come from? According to the United Mine Workers Association (who aren't likely to understate that kind of thing), the average number of deaths in US coal-mines was 45 per year in the 1990's, and it has dropped further since then. An estimated 1500 a year were dying from Back Lung, a number that abslutely could be improved by increased spending on safety.

I don't have a strong preference one way or the other on the issue of Nuclear power, but the use of emotive arguments ("think of the coal miners!") and dodgy statistics by pro-nuclear voices doesn't exactly inspire confidence.

SeanW

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

link please.

IIRC Idi was actually quite good with children despite his other failings.
A bit like the episode of the Simpsons where Lisa was a babysitter.

Well, I once heard that he did. I didn't check the facts on it because it wasn't the point, it was just an example of a hypothetical argument.
Edit: An Idi Amin quote which might have started the rumour I heard:

I want your heart. I want to eat your children.

And another

I ate them before they ate me

The point was your constantly trying to minimise the evils of coal consumption (by saying mobile phones kill more people on the road) while hyping up the evils of nucler power by talking about nuclear weapons and X-Rays (which are totally different pursuits to peaceful Atmoic energy, and are totally unrelated).

As a matter of interest, where does the figure of 2000 coal-mining deaths in the US "who could not possibly have been saved no matter how much investment was made in mine safety" come from?

See the discussion between Pocari Sweat and bonkey above. I don't know how old the article bonkey claims to have read is, and if it's a new one, I don't know what countries it covers, or what types of death are included.

Let's just say that coal mining has killed a large number of people in the past and may continue to do so.

I don't have a strong preference one way or the other on the issue of Nuclear power, but the use of emotive arguments ("think of the coal miners!") and dodgy statistics by pro-nuclear voices doesn't exactly inspire confidence.

You have a point, but replace the above with "think of the children" and "no more Chernobyls" and you've got the anti-nuclear argument all summed up, or "stand up against Nuclear Power, in the name of our children!"

I try to present better arguments than that.

Foxwood

SeanW wrote:

See the discussion between Pocari Sweat and bonkey above.

Not good enough. As of right now, consider the "anti-coal" argument to be exposed as simple propaganda.

Either back up the quarter of a million figure with hard citations, or withdraw it.

(New Scientist had an article last week entitled Human health may be the cost of a nuclear future. Unfortunately, you can only read the start of it without a subscription).

SeanW

Edit: More about Idi Amin's cannibalism here for Capt'n Midnight.

Foxwood wrote:

Not good enough. As of right now, consider the "anti-coal" argument to be exposed as simple propaganda.

Either back up the quarter of a million figure with hard citations, or withdraw it.

I did not make the quarter of a million figure, Pocari Sweat did, I never used his figure as I believe it to be extravagent. I therefore have nothing to withdraw.

The figures I used for the last few posts come from bonkey's response.

(New Scientist had an article last week entitled Human health may be the cost of a nuclear future. Unfortunately, you can only read the start of it without a subscription).

IN THE mountain village of Kara Agach in Kyrgyzstan people are unwittingly eating radioactive waste. Radium left behind by more than two decades of uranium mining during the Soviet era has contaminated their chickens, milk, potatoes and pears.

Because the Soviet Union is such a great example of how to run a nuclear programme?

If you do some research, for example into the events leading up to the Chernobyl accident, you'd know that nothing the Soviet Union did in their Nuclear programmes bears any relation to safe, modern Nuclear practice.

silverharp

The reason why people around the world are against nuclear power is that people don’t worry about where energy comes from, flick a switch, fill the tank etc etc. try to build a windfarm in California today and you will get slapped with a lawsuit, people in general live in “la la land” when it comes to energy, when oil and gas depletion takes over believe me peoples attitudes will change, anything that has a positive energy return in the short term will be used and voted for.
Society will be forced to become less complex, large cities may become obsolete, I very much doubt that sole dependence on conventional renewable are compatible with current lifestyles. I don’t think nuclear is a magic bullet but if it is used as part of a transition strategy to a post fossil fuel world then that seems reasonable to me, the world population will likely go to 9 or 10 bn before dropping back to under 3bn so talk of the risks of nuclear are trivial in relation to a near certain population catastrophe. In this context if you can argue that windfarms can build windfarms or solar can build solar (better then) or in the absence of a nuclear and fossil fuel backbone then fine, but I don’t think we are there yet.

Pocari Sweat

Sean, I think the pro-coal lobby are giving you the jitters on the stats, when there is clear and regular stats, not so much about safer mining in the US nowadays but more about the cost to life in the US because of its use.

Use of coal in the US does actually cause a regular listed figure of around quarter of a million deaths every year, listed not just by one US department regarding statistics but several. It is not a guessed at figure, it is widely accepted and a regularly studied figure which hovers around the quarter million mark from several official sources on the web.

Take 3 minutes to google - "Coal Deaths", add "US" and you will soon see several confirmations of this figure.

Miner deaths in the US do pale into insignificance compared to actual coal use, but look at China regarding coal mining deaths each year and you will find vast amounts of miner deaths every year.

Get the nearest 10 official sources for stats, add them together (ignore any stats with magnitudes that are multiple factors above or below average figures) and then divide the figure by 10 to get a mean number that you can agree on just to avoid arguements if you want.

Do this for US population deaths per year because of general coal use.

Do the for Chinese miner deaths per year because of coal mining.


Now folks, look at the deaths of just these 2 countries, for particular deaths listed from particular activities for just a single 12 month period ....

And then compare these figures, to the same TOTAL 50 year death total in all countries of the world for the whole history of nuclear generation from mining through to use by end users, and using the same mean numerator divisions of reliable stats, give me something that worries me more about nuclear, than coal in total deaths caused, from decade to decade.

I'll gladly put my money where my mouth is. I'm confident enough to know that the understood coal death stats mean I have 100 euros cash to the first no waffle poster that gives a clear, undisputed argument of this.

You have one week. Infact I'll raise it to 200 cash, no worries.

Pocari Sweat

No takers yet?

Foxwood

Pocari Sweat wrote:

No takers yet?

I'm still waiting for your hard sources. The ones that you say can be found with 3 minutes googling, but that you seem reluctant to actually quote yourself.

I did find this interesting article from the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists that sheds some interesting light on the "zero deaths" statistic for the US's most famous nuclear accident, Three Mile Island.

Pocari Sweat

Rich boy can't be arsed with free 200 euros hand out?

Pocari Sweat

Worst US nuke distaster in 50 years = 0 deaths.

50 years of coal use = approx 10 million deaths.

Close the gap, collect 200 euros.

Foxwood

Worst use of bogus statistics in months = 0 points.

As I said, I don't have strong feelings one way or the other about Nuclear power (or coal, for that matter), but the lazy use of statistics really pisses me off. The sloppy attempts at propaganda (decrying the other sides use of "think of the children" while using exactly the same emotional argument yourself) are also a big no-no in my book - if you want propagandise, at least do it properly.

I've already posted sources that call into question your "0 deaths" statistics (typically, you say "If you don't count them, they didn't happen" for nuclear deaths, but not for coal deaths).

So far, despite all your waffling, you haven't been able to back up your bogus claims. Every additional post you make to this thread that doesn't provide evidence to back up you claims just demonstrates what a sham you are.

Cuauhtemoc

I did a quick search and found the following..

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5174391/

about 25000 a year according to that article from pollution and 20 - 50 deaths in coal mine accidents.

.

SeanW

I've started looking into this too, and the 25000 figure is beginning to emerge as potentially the right one.

See here: another google-linked article. It writes a thoroughly damning case against the continuing health disaster that is coal consumption in the US, which IMO leaves Chernobyl eating (coal) dust.

Chernobyl has an excuse: it was run by a reckless, perverse, incompetent, financially and morally bankrupt authoritarian Soviet Union regime. Disaster was inevitable, it was just a question of when and where. The above stats on coal mining is inexcusable from a 1st world (leader of the Free World) country.

It seems coal is full of lots of other crap I wasn't aware of, like arsenic, mercury, chromium, cadmium (all very highly toxic compounds). Also coal smoke are serious souces of NOx, SO2 and, as we all know, the greenhouse gas CO2. Coal burning also has a highly significant impact on air quality, for example, in the previous post, scientists noted major improvements in air quality during the last US power cuts when the plants were forced offline.

What's worse, the figure of deaths from coal mining, which had been declining, is now set to increase as the Bush administration wants to quadruple the allowable levels of coal dust in mines. Not only is this fine dust a major cause of miner health probelms such as black lung, it has contributed to some mining accidents as well.

Now we can throw figures around for the next 10 years about this that and the other, but it should by now be clear how filthy, dangerous, and unsustainable coal consumption is in every way.

I have seen nothing to indicate that Nuclear power is not a dramatically better deal than this: no CO2, SO2, NOx, mercury, cadmium, arsenic emissions, no emissions of any kind except small volumes of manageable solid waste (one handful of solid waste created for a normal persons usage of electricity over a lifetime) and clean steam.

Whats more, Nuclear power gets an almost supernatural level of scrutiny, Nimby-ism, outright opposition yet yet nobody notices all this carnage caused annually by coal. Is it just because the waste gets dumped into the air that no-one (including some environmentalists) notices?

silverharp

SeanW wrote:

Whats more, Nuclear power gets an almost supernatural level of scrutiny, Nimby-ism, outright opposition yet yet nobody notices all this carnage caused annually by coal. Is it just because the waste gets dumped into the air that no-one (including some environmentalists) notices?

I agree with your sentiment and it parallels issues like incenerators, where all the attention gets focued on the one in a million chance, when there are more pressing problems where a fraction of the attention would give multitude of savings.


standing back a bit though, is anyone arguing that either coal or nuclear should be switched off, or is there a tacit agreement that we are talking about incremental new power needs.
My own view is that any energy souce that has a positive power contribution will be used, in the light of the coming oil depletion scenario.

Foxwood

SeanW wrote:

Is it just because the waste gets dumped into the air that no-one (including some environmentalists) notices?

It's not that nobody notices - it's that we've been living with these deaths for generations. They are "built-in" to our expectations, hidden in the statistical noise of life all around us. It's impossible to draw a direct line from a coal-fired power station to someone who dies of lung cancer or a heart attack, whereas it a lot easier to draw a direct line from an accident at a nuclear plant to subsequent deaths (even the deaths that "don't count", such as the increase in infant mortality after Three Mile Island).

There's also the fact that since the 70's, the Clean Air Act in the US has had a major impact on air polution (anyone visiting major east coast cities in the US during the 90s would have noticed how much cleaner the buildings were than buildings in Dublin, for example) constantly reducing the impact of air pollution on society in the US. Bush wants to roll back some of those gains, and articles that claim that one in seven of all babies born in the US "are at risk of neurological damage because of exposure to dangerous mercury levels in the womb" are worse than useless because the ordinary man in the street (ie the voters) read such claims and immediately dismiss them as scaremongering, because they don't see any neurologicalyl damaged babies.

It's not that the risks aren't there, it's that the deliberate abuse of statistical evidence to generate an emotional response is so ham handed that it back fires. Like the claim of "250,000 direct loss of civilian lives in america each year" that kicked this off.

Pocari Sweat

Sean W, is perfectly correct, the annual figure for US coal deaths per annum is around 25,000.

I was probably thinking of the annual coal deaths globally speaking, but I would admit statistics - although not helping the coal lobby with their arguments - can be misleading even if an extra "0" is added.

Really when you get past the first 10,000 deaths caused annually by some mortal danger we live with, day to day, whether smoking, traffic or crap food, the figures don't mean much even with a few extra zeros, if there is something else that is perceived to be more dangerous although it is safe.

Dug this up:


Copyright © 2004 Earth Policy Institute

COAL TAKES HEAVY HUMAN TOLL:

Some 25,100 U.S. Deaths from Coal Use Largely Preventable - Janet Larsen

Startling new research shows that one out of every six women of childbearing age in the United States may have blood mercury concentrations high enough to damage a developing fetus. This means that 630,000 of the 4 million babies born in the country each year are at risk of neurological damage because of exposure to dangerous mercury levels in the womb.

Fetuses, infants, and young children are most at risk for mercury damage to their nervous systems. New studies show that mercury exposure may also damage cardiovascular, immune, and reproductive systems. Chronic low-level exposure prenatally or in the early years of life can delay development and hamper performance in tests of attention, fine motor skills, language, visual spatial skills, and verbal memory. At high concentrations, mercury can cause mental retardation, cerebral palsy, deafness, blindness, and even death.

Humans are exposed to mercury primarily by eating contaminated fish. Forty-five of the 50 states have issued consumption advisories limiting the eating of fish caught locally because of their high mercury content. New analyses of fish samples collected by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from 500 lakes and reservoirs across the country found mercury in every single sample.

In 55 percent of them, mercury levels exceeded the EPA’s “safe” limit for a woman of average weight eating fish twice a week, and 76 percent exceeded limits for children under the age of three. Four out of five predator fish—those higher on the food chain, such as tuna or swordfish—exceeded the limits.

The largest source of mercury pollution is coal-fired power plants.

Airborne mercury emitted by these facilities is deposited anywhere from within a few hundred kilometers of the smokestacks to across continents, far from its source. Biological processes change much of the deposited mercury into methylmercury, a potent neurotoxin that humans and other organisms readily absorb. Methylmercury easily travels up the aquatic food chain, accumulating at higher concentrations at each level. Larger predator species contain the most mercury, which is then passed on to those who eat them.

Since the industrial revolution began, mercury contamination in the environment has jumped threefold.

The 600 plus coal-fired power plants in the United States, which produce over half of the country’s electricity, burn 1 billion tons of coal and release 98,000 pounds (44 metric tons) of mercury into the air each year.

Power plants yield an additional 81,000 pounds of mercury pollution in the form of solid waste, including fly ash and scrubber sludge, and 20,000 pounds of mercury from “cleaning” coal before it is burned. In sum, coal-fired power plants pollute the environment with some 200,000 pounds of mercury annually.

Solid wastes from coal-fired power plants also contain heavy metals like arsenic, selenium, chromium, and cadmium; carcinogenic organic compounds; and radioactive elements. These toxins can leach into streams and groundwater supplies, compromising people’s health.

Other atmospheric emissions from burning coal include sulfur dioxide (SO2), carbon dioxide (CO2), particulate matter, and nitrogen oxides (NOx), which in turn form ground-level ozone. SO2 and ozone are highly corrosive gases that cause respiratory distress and contribute to low birth weight and increased infant mortality. SO2 and NOx are also the primary causes of acid rain. CO2 is the dominant gas responsible for the greenhouse effect that is warming the planet.

Particulate matter from coal combustion has long been known to harm the respiratory system. Now recent research has shown that small airborne particulate matter also can cross from the lungs into the bloodstream, leading to cardiac disease, heart attacks, strokes, and premature death.

In the United States, 23,600 deaths each year can be attributed to air pollution from power plants.

Those dying prematurely due to exposure to particulate matter lose, on average, 14 years of life. Burning coal also is responsible for some 554,000 asthma attacks, 16,200 cases of chronic bronchitis, and 38,200 non-fatal heart attacks each year.

Atmospheric power plant pollution in the United States racks up an estimated annual health care bill of over $160 billion.

The Bush administration’s so-called Clear Skies initiative allows for an increase in SO2, NOx, particulate matter, and mercury pollution above the levels permitted under the existing Clean Air Act, and it does nothing to limit climate-disrupting CO2.

Older coal-burning power plants failing to meet modern air emissions standards release 10 times more NOx and SO2 than modern coal plants do. Under the administration’s plans, these “grandfathered” plants could continue to circumvent emissions controls—with unhealthy effects.

Although pollution scrubbers in modern smokestacks do reduce air pollution, they do nothing to help the coal miners who die each year in mine accidents or from diseases brought on by breathing hazardous coal dust. While the annual number of worker fatalities on-site in the 2,000 U.S. coal mines has fallen to around 30, pneumoconiosis—commonly known as black lung disease—kills an estimated 1,500 former coal miners a year.

One in every 20 miners in the United States has X-ray evidence of this disease, a number that is bound to worsen if the Bush administration succeeds with plans to quadruple allowable levels of coal dust in mines.

Using coal, a hazardous nineteenth-century fuel, when we have twenty-first-century alternatives is hard to understand. Renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar, do not require dangerous mining or mountaintop removal, nor do they pollute the air, land, and water with a slew of toxic chemicals.

Full-cost pricing of coal to include the environmental damages and the enormous health care burden of using it, combined with removing antiquated subsidies on all fossil fuels, could go a long way toward encouraging more investment in renewables.

In addition, simple energy efficiency measures can reduce our reliance on fossil fuels and save money, too. Research from the Alliance to Save Energy indicates that improving efficiency standards for household appliances in the United States could allow 127 power plants to close.

More stringent air conditioner efficiency standards could shut down 93 power plants.

And raising the efficiency standards of both new and existing buildings through mechanisms like tax credits and energy codes could close 380 power plants.

Using these methods to shut down the 600 most polluting coal-fired power plants in the country would be a boon for public health.

Several European countries have begun to lead the transition away from coal. (See data.)

In Germany, coal use has been cut in half since 1990, while expanding wind electric generation is taking its place.

Coal use in the United Kingdom has dropped by 46 percent over the same period, offset by efficiency gains and a shift toward natural gas. Plans are moving ahead for a huge expansion in wind energy in the U.K. and other European countries.

By moving beyond coal, the United States could avoid a legacy of smog-filled skies, acid rain, polluted waterways, contaminated fish, and scarred landscapes. This could each year save some 25,000 lives, reduce respiratory and cardiovascular illnesses, avert potential neurological damage for 630,000 babies, and erase a health care bill of over $160 billion.

Copyright © 2004 Earth Policy Institute

SeanW

Pocari Sweat wrote:

Several European countries have begun to lead the transition away from coal. (See data.)

In Germany, coal use has been cut in half since 1990, while expanding wind electric generation is taking its place.

Coal use in the United Kingdom has dropped by 46 percent over the same period, offset by efficiency gains and a shift toward natural gas. Plans are moving ahead for a huge expansion in wind energy in the U.K. and other European countries.

Let's not forget about those pesky Ukranians, the fly-in-the-ointment of all pro-coal and anti-nukes alike. Here they are, Chernobyl-meltdown scarred, broke, and with enough coal reserves to give certain posters here a green-eye for the next century, yet their use of thermal energy has been falling almost every year since 1990, while generation from other forms has increased.

This chart kind of explains it all IMO, as does the attendant World Nuclear Association article.

A large share of primary energy supply in Ukraine comes from the country's uranium and substantial coal resources. The remainder is oil and gas, mostly imported from Russia. . In 1991, due to breakdown of the Soviet Union, the country's economy collapsed and its electricity consumption declined dramatically from 296 billion kWh in 1990 to 170 in 2000, all the decrease being from coal and gas plants.

Fossil fuel advocates (be honest?) please explain the above ...

Pocari Sweat

they can't

Pocari Sweat

If coal was put under hyper-scrutiny like nuclear, imagine the range of disasters you could look at, not just in terms of colossal death figures of coal users globally, and the historic mass slaughter of miners, or things ignored such as CO2 and sulphur emmissions, air pollution, smog and global warming, or even the slag heaps left over, and even slag heaps collapsing on schools in Wales killing most of the kids, much more than chernobyl.

Just put one minor thing cast aside by the pro-coal lobby such as mercury.

This is pretty nasty stuff when it is let loose in our atmosphere and oceans in large quantities.

Looking back at my recent post, lets review mercury:

[Q]Humans are exposed to mercury primarily by eating contaminated fish. Forty-five of the 50 states have issued consumption advisories limiting the eating of fish caught locally because of their high mercury content. New analyses of fish samples collected by the ... (EPA) from 500 lakes and reservoirs across the country found mercury in every single sample.

In 55 percent of them, mercury levels exceeded the EPA’s “safe” limit for a woman of average weight eating fish twice a week, and 76 percent exceeded limits for children under the age of three. Four out of five predator fish—those higher on the food chain, such as tuna or swordfish—exceeded the limits.

The largest source of mercury pollution is coal-fired power plants.

Airborne mercury emitted by these facilities is deposited anywhere from within a few hundred kilometers of the smokestacks to across continents, far from its source. Biological processes change much of the deposited mercury into methylmercury, a potent neurotoxin that humans and other organisms readily absorb. Methylmercury easily travels up the aquatic food chain, accumulating at higher concentrations at each level. Larger predator species contain the most mercury, which is then passed on to those who eat them.

Since the industrial revolution began, mercury contamination in the environment has jumped threefold.

The 600 plus coal-fired power plants in the United States, which produce over half of the country’s electricity, burn 1 billion tons of coal and release 98,000 pounds (44 metric tons) of mercury into the air each year.

Power plants yield an additional 81,000 pounds of mercury pollution in the form of solid waste, including fly ash and scrubber sludge, and 20,000 pounds of mercury from “cleaning” coal before it is burned. In sum, coal-fired power plants pollute the environment with some 200,000 pounds of mercury annually.[/Q]


So then, 200,000 pounds of mercury let loose into the environment every year. Thats 2,000 pounds to the imperial ton, or 200 old tons or approximately 180 metric tonnes every year, just for one tiny fraction of the overall output in terms of pollution from burning coal.

180 tonnes of mercury per year let loose from the United States alone!

Now, if degenerating diseases of the nervous system became endemic globally, which they are to a good extent, it would still take a while before people would start getting rational on coal pollution versus nuclear.

As hyper-scrutinised levels of low-level radioactive waste have fallen to less than 1% of their original figures of the fledgling nuclear industry in the last 40 years or so, because of public concern, and diametrically the gross tonnage of mercury has increased with population increase over the same period despite "so called cleaner coal plants", where is all the mercury going that was once safely tucked away underground in coal reserves?

If half the 600 US coal plants were shut down because they cannot meet environmental pollution standards and the rest became hyper efficient and "clean", then where would they dump the mercury, that they would need to clean out of coal before they burn it in the atmosphere?

Dump it of course. And decades later after 1000's of tonnes of mercury, dumped with slag, that is rained upon and vast levels of mercury are washed through the water systems and aquifiers, rivers and oceans, and higher mercury levels are found in fish, the pro-coal lobby may have to give excuses about mercury being shifted from atmospheric output to terrestrial output in coal fired power stations still ending up in the eco-system.

I have not looked fully into what mercury does to the body in high accumulative doses, but I will in due course.