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Comment by credit_guy | Hacker News Reader

> There's enough radiation released as a result of the activity of operating nuclear plants

"An operating nuclear power plant produces very small amounts of radioactive gases and liquids, as well as small amounts of direct radiation. If you lived within 50 miles of a nuclear power plant, you would receive an average radiation dose of about 0.01 millirem per year. To put this in perspective, the average person in the United States receives an exposure of 300 millirem per year from natural background sources of radiation."

[1] https://www.nrc.gov/about-nrc/radiation/related-info/faq.htm...

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That 0.01 millirem is roughly 1 Banana Equivalent Dose, the radiation you get from eating a banana.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_equivalent_dose

I think they're referring to the radiation emitted because of nuclear plants, like nuclear accidents at Marcoule, Fukishima, Paks, etc, transport and waste disposal and so on.

The meme that coal plants emit more radioactivity than nuclear power plants originated with this Scientific American article [1] (linked somewhere else in this thread too). The article has the title "Coal Ash Is More Radioactive Than Nuclear Waste". The comparison is obviously preposterous, nuclear waste is probably trillions of times more radioactive than coal ash. When SA realized the mistake they added an explanation just at the end of the article that states

"As a general clarification, ounce for ounce, coal ash released from a power plant delivers more radiation than nuclear waste shielded via water or dry cask storage." (emphasis mine)

By adding the qualification "shielded" the comparison becomes meaningless. Brazil nuts, bananas, beer, carrot juice and drinking water [2] all release more radiation than shielded nuclear waste.

Nowhere in the SA article they compare coal ash with Chernobyl of Fukushima.

[1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-...

[2] https://www.thoughtco.com/common-naturally-radioactive-foods...

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