Prevented mortality from historical and projected nuclear power (2013)

> "Some birds make use of melanin for coloration, but they also make use of the precursor to melanin as an antioxidant, which may provide some measure of defence against the ionizing radiation," said Mousseau.

> In a study, he found that those birds that seemed to show less genetic damage ended up being a bit lighter coloured.

> "It looks like there's a tradeoff in the use of this antioxidant between colouration and defence against oxidative stress or ionizing radiation."

Or, alternatively, to paraphrase, while the animals there haven't yet evolved a complete defense to the ionizing radiation, some species are expressing traits correlated to their ability to withstand it. This gives them a survival advantage, so over time, it stands to reason they will compensate.

> "But it's clear that there's more going on than just the acute exposure effects."

I must have missed the part where the author threw up their hands and yelled "looks like the animals are f'd."

I'm not saying this is good or bad, just that changes to the environment are very much in nature's wheelhouse. Humans, especially individual humans, are the fragile ones. Life has shown itself incredibly resilient, and some increases in background radiation aren't about to stop it. After all, tardigrades are able to survive constant irradiation hundreds of times the lethal dose for humans while frozen solid in space.

The RBMK reactors at Chernobyl were based on a design from the the early 1950s and were crude even by the standards of the time. The reactor design is inherently unsafe for several reasons, which was compounded by inadequate monitoring and containment systems. Safe operation of the reactor was hindered by a deliberate and systematic cover-up of the flawed nature of the reactor design; the emergency response was similarly hindered by a deliberate and systematic cover-up of the scale of the disaster.

Comparing a modern nuclear power plant to Chernobyl is like comparing a 2019 Honda Civic with a 1961 Chevy Corvair. We've learned so many lessons and changed our safety culture so profoundly in in the intervening period. If we are allowed to keep developing and building nuclear reactors, we'll keep building safer and more efficient reactors.

Unless we reduce our use of electricity or come up with a new source, those panels will always be there.

It will also take time for the wild life to grow back and if the the ecosystem has changed enough it won't come back the same. This isn't a problem by itself. But if Chernobyl is an example all you have to do is wait 50 years and wild life will move back in too.

I'm 100% for renewable energy, but we're making a lot of assumptions on how we're going to get rid of and recycle solar panels. That's a lot of material we have to re-process and see how much we can use and how much was consumed.

> First, the land that's being covered is mostly a desert, where no one wanted to live anyway.

So you're fine if we put nuclear plants in the desert then right? That would certainly be more environmentally friendly to the wildlife that live in those areas.

But even ignoring putting nuclear plants in the desert, we should compare the lost utility of land by Chernobyl and Fukushima weighed against that of all hydro and solar, on a per megawatt basis over time.

When showing concern about the lost land to Fukushima and Chernobyl the parent I was replying to exhibited, we should also look at the lost utility of land to climate change vs how much worse it would be without nuclear power in the mix, and how much better it might have been if we'd not substituted nuclear plants for coal and gas over the years. I'm pretty confident the small loss at Fukushima and larger loss at Chernobyl are peanuts on this scale.

> Second, it's being covered in solar panels so that we can generate electricity without emitting CO2, which is rather important given that our planet will be turning mostly to desert in the next 30-50 years.

You do understand that nuclear power does not emit CO2 right?

Nuclear power is worth the risk when faced with the threat of climate change. At very least, we must keep existing plants operating until we decommission all fossil fuel power plants.

The first thing to note is that concentration dramatically decreases as radiation is pushed by the wind. We should also note that we're REALLY good at detecting radiation (it has been a great way to spy on other countries' use of atomic weapons, but since we can't always get into their country we need pretty sensitive devices).

But models are one thing, we have real world data. So let's look at a map of Japan, which has active monitoring[0]. The legal public dosage is 1mSv/yr. So to convert that into a number we can read on this map our hourly dosage needs to be below [(1e-3(mSv/Sv)/365(days)/24(hrs)1e9(nSv/Sv)]= 114nSv/hr. You'll actually find that the vast majority is below that. But this doesn't leave much room for other types of radiation (take note of this point).

But let's talk about that 1mSv limit. Why is it there? Is it where danger starts? Radiation workers have a limit of 20mSv/yr (2283nSv/hr, which is only a handful* of places on the map). Why that? It used to be 50mSv/yr (5707nSv/hr). So let's look it up [1] (PDF, see chapter 3). We see a lot of talk about 100mSv/yr (11,415nSv/hr, nowhere on map) or in a single dose being completely safe. We even see mention of no detectable effects at 0.5Sv (3.3 page 56, page 57 even says little evidence of below 1Gy). Well, the thing is we use a model called the Linear No-Threshold (LNT). We use this because we'd rather be safe than sorry (note the use of "assumption" in the paper). The limits given to just workers has an included safety factor. Then it was decided later than the public should have even lower limits (more factors of safety).

Is having such low thresholds a good idea? Definitely. I agree with the attitude of better safe than sorry. So include factors of safety, because we don't know how many chest x-rays you're getting a year or if you live next to a coal plant. But should we take those legal limits as "you're going to get cancer if you exceed them?" Definitely not. We can realistically see that there is little evidence to support that idea. So is it exactly right to say that these places are uninhabitable? I don't think so, but it is safe to say that there is increased risk. But we should also recognize how much risk that is. (The above might also explain why there's a lot of wildlife in Chernobyl)

[0] https://jciv.iidj.net/map/

[1] https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Hanno_Krieger/post/Why_...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYLzss58CLs

With coal, these have to be scrubbed from the exhaust, which is more difficult and usually less thorough.

So, let’s toss on the 8k instances of cancer from your source, and the 41k cancer rates attributed to Chernobyl by International Agency for Research on Cancer in Lyon, France, and we are still well short of the actual deaths caused by one dam failure.

Yeah, Chernobyl is a tragedy; but let’s not pretend its worse than all the other power generation disasters.

I would never advocate for a nuclear power plant on the side of an active volcano. at all.

You put the right technology in the right spot.

Also, I'm really hoping to see thorium get more time in the sun because it doesn't go critical and cause a catastrophe. They melt down but don't explode (from what I've been able to find).

This isn't true. Global warming, as the name suggests, affects the entire world, as its mechanism is via long term changes to the atmosphere. Also, it's most severe effects won't be in the form of unlikely "events", but gradual increases in sea level and changes in climate which will put cities underwater and make others too hot to live in.

By all means replace nuclear plants with solar. But only after you've finished replacing all the coal plants.