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Comment by dest | Hacker News Reader

I think it is misleading to display a picture of chimneys of nuclear power plants, when the only thing they release is clean water droplets: no SO2, NO2 or PM10.

edit: Actually, not 100% sure it's a nuclear power plant. Thanks for your comments

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Do you know for sure that it's a nuclear plant in the picture? I'm asking because those iconic cooling towers are also used for coal plants.

> The hyperboloid cooling towers are often associated with nuclear power plants,[1] although they are also used in some coal-fired plants and to some extent in some large chemical and other industrial plants.

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooling_tower

Direct link to the picture from the article https://www.unenvironment.org/sites/default/files/styles/art...

Example cooling towers from a coal-fired power plant https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-eon-scholven-power-station...

And just to show what a nuclear plant can look like, [0] is a few miles away from me, and looks like [1]

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torness_Nuclear_Power_Station

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torness_Nuclear_Power_Station#...

It also looks like https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Torness_Nuclear_Powe... :)

Some of these plants use a local source of water for cooling, not the traditional cooling towers.

If it's inland or starved for water you need cooling towers.

Even if it's not a nuclear power plant it's still a cooling tower releasing only water vapor.

Some new designs release both water vapor and other gases in the same tower, but yeah, those look like cooling towers releasing just vapor.

It's a picture of a power station, the cooling towers are just the most noticeable feature.

The same picture is used to illustrate a coal power station elsewhere:

https://international.thenewslens.com/article/81575

It seems to be a coal station in China.

Those are cooling towers (steam -> water), and there is no indication whether that is a power station or industrial plant.

I agree there are worse types of power plants than nuclear: no SO2, NO2 or PM10, but at the risk of the release of Cesium-134, Cesium-137, Iodine-131, Xenon-133, strontium-90, plutonium-239.

  https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/radioactive-isotopes-from-fukushima-meltdown-detected-near-vancouver/
  https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/radiation/nuclear-accidents-fact-sheet

Depending on the rates, I'd take a risk of Cesium than the certainty of SO2, CO2, NO2, etc.

Aren't coal plants releasing small amounts of heavy metals and radioactivity from burning coal too? I recall some discussion here couple of months ago mentioning oceans pollution (and thus mainly predatory fish) mainly comes down to all coal plants churning all this at slow but steady pace.

Somebody also mentioned that old decommissioned plants have their smelter quite radioactive and need to be handled accordingly. Can't find it now though...

Coal ash, the waste from burning coal has significant amounts of radioactive heavy metals. It is stored in 'ash ponds' which can leach into the ground water and the ash can be blown into surrounding neighborhoods as they are not capped. Analysis of EPA data found that living around a coal plant can give you up to a 1 in 50 chance of cancer.

Clearly a biased source (not necessarily bad though) but the data is likely accurate, make of it what you will.

https://earthjustice.org/news/press/2009/epa-data-show-highe...

Does coal ash concentrate valuable metals found in coal? If so the ash could be a valuable source of radioisotopes... Presumably it's not profitable though, cause its not a very original idea

I'd rather tariffs were taken off solar panels so they weren't rendered artificially uncompetitive.

If you're concerned about radioactive elements, coal plants and fracking also release a lot of nuclear contamination.

Yeah there are a ton of pictures of Natural gas and Coal power plants. Either one of them could have been used in the picture.

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