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Comment by gizmo | Hacker News Reader

When will the cancerous dust produced by coal plants finally be considered a cost? Nuclear is more expensive than the optimistic napkin math shows, but so is every other energy source! Europe has invested a trillion or two into intermittent green energy sources in the past 30 years —enough to nuclearize the entire energy grid— and is still totally dependent on coal and gas for survival.

The argument has never been that nuclear doesn’t have any downsides. The argument is that without nuclear you’ll freeze. There is no serious alternative. The risks of accidental nuclear contamination are minimal and the risks of nuclear war are greatly underestimated.

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This was considered a cost at least 20 years ago. (Probably those pesky environmentalists making a fuss about nothing though)

There's been a continual fight since then by some states to continue poisoning their fish with mercury and other coal byproducts while other states try to stop them.

Here's a story from a few years ago when the government decided that it wouldn't enforce this 20 year old law anymore:

https://portal.ct.gov/AG/Press-Releases/2020-Press-Releases/...

> Attorney General William Tong today joined a coalition of 25 states, cities and counties in suing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) over its rule reversing the agency’s determination — first made nearly 20 years ago — that it is “appropriate and necessary” under the Clean Air Act to regulate mercury and other toxic air pollution from coal- and oil-fired power plants. The new rule undermines the 2012 Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS), a landmark rule that has substantially reduced emissions of mercury and other hazardous pollutants that harm human health and the environment, and that pose especially significant health risks to children and pregnant women.

> “Mercury emissions are hazardous and must be controlled. These successful standards have protected countless Americans from the devastating health effects of mercury and toxic air pollution. Down-wind and coastal states like Connecticut are particularly vulnerable and rely on strong federal regulation to protect our air and water from harmful air pollution. This rollback is an unlawful gift to the coal and oil industry and must be reversed for the sake of the health and welfare of Connecticut’s citizens,” said Attorney General Tong.

You can see why a state with half their electricity from nuclear would be annoyed by this.

>When will the cancerous dust produced by coal plants finally be considered a cost?

When it becomes an immediate problem, the way nuclear radition is. So, never.

It's not just about impact, how densely concentrated and timely / pressing the impact is matters a lot.

I can stay for a couple of months next to a coal plant just fine. I wouldn't stay for an hour next to a nuclear accident site.

If you look at the list of nuclear incidents/accidents you'll see that in most cases there is minimal radioactive exposure and zero casualties:

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

The typical nuclear accident just results in a temporary shutdown and some extra maintenance/repair work. If you live next to it you'll be just fine.

>in most cases there is minimal radioactive exposure and zero casualties

Yeah, that's the numbers you can get if you sweep increased cancers in the area under the carpet or as "unrelated"...

Are you just unaware of the amount of radiation in normal coal dust and how much of it just ends up pumped into the air like it's nothing?

I once looked up the numbers. Chernobyl alone released more radioactive material (by activity) than the radioactive content of all fossil fuel that was ever burned.

Yes, because every nuclear plant is built/operated like Chernobyl was. Good grief.

The point is that the radioactive material emitted by fossil fuels is completely negligible.

Don't eat the fish you catch though, especially if you are pregnant.

Though you don't need to live next to it for that to apply.

https://www.maine.gov/dhhs/mecdc/environmental-health/eohp/f...

> It's hard to believe that fish that looks, smells, and tastes fine may not be safe to eat. But the truth is that fish in Maine lakes, ponds, and rivers have mercury in them. Other states have this problem too. Mercury in the air settles into the waters. It then builds up in fish. For this reason, older fish have higher levels of mercury than younger fish. Fish (like pickerel and bass) that eat other fish have the highest mercury levels.

Ironically, no faction has done more to stop the expansion of nuclear power than environmemtal groups and green parties.

Even more ironically, environmemtal groups and green parties have essentially created the problem of climate change. If the whole world had switched to nuclear power starting in the 1970s, a large fraction of carbon emissions so far and a larger fraction of future emissions would never have happened.

Basically every regulation or idea that benefits renewables benefits nuclear, and every regulation that fights climate change benefits nuclear.

So environmental groups have done more than most, possibly tied with the military, for nuclear power.

In Germany, the national Green party is the primary instigator behind the planned closure of the country's nuclear power plants.

Greenpeace for its part has lobbied hard against nuclear power for decades.

As for regulation, nuclear is governed by a totally separate regulatory structure, that can have its stringency throttled up by anti-nuclear types to prevent new plant approvals.

One party in one country that's not been in power for a while is hardly decisive. Especially when they fast tracked coal phase out as soon as they had some power.

I can easily name environmentalists who called for more nuclear power. I can even name nuclear PR reps who pretended to be environmentalists (who probably count for this purpose).

Meanwhile, the key benefits of nuclear over coal are various reductions in pollution.

If you dont care about pollution, then there's no reason to not use coal. So Environmentalists win again.

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