This is exactly the point the article is missing. According to the german public, for the environment and the whole humanity the risks from nuclear plant are that high that coal plants, even though they are now used more and are unhealthy, are way less dangerous.
Keep in mind that the plan is to shutdown all nuclear plants, substitute them with green energy and use coal only as long as needed in between the change.
Yes, and the German public is flat-out wrong.
I know that people on HN obviously like technology, and noticed that many people who like technology like nuclear plants. Maybe because they see them as great technology and are able to believe in that.
But given the facts, no, the german public is not wrong. They are undisputably right. The Super-GAUs prove that.
As opposed to the air pollution from coal burning, and accidents installing solar and air; which are fatal every year.
So what? Those accidents are miniscule in comparison to the everyday operation of a coal plant. The damage caused by the worst nuclear accidents in human history is still less than the every day operation of a coal plant. Hell, we've lost more people to coal mine cave ins than we have to nuclear accidents.
>But given the facts, no, the german public is not wrong. They are undisputably right.
No, they're not. You're insane. The German public thinks nuclear power is more dangerous than coal power, and they're just wrong. It's not even an argument.
2. We do coal mines way longer. Even if the number is right, that "we've lost more people to coal mine cave ins than we have to nuclear accidents", (which is hard to agree with, cause it is statistically a hard problem to count the ones still dying from cancer years later because of Tschernobyl for example), that number would be meaningless.
3. Coal power is highly disputed in Germany. It is only accepted as a transition-help while heading to green energy. And yes, i think that's a good thing - and no, i'm not insane.
The estimates on radioation related deaths of infants is of the same order, and there are Russian claims that 90% of liquidators (at least 747,000 people according to the German Gesellschaft für Strahlenschutz) are invalid.
[1] http://www.scribd.com/doc/50890761/Nuclear-s-Endless-Nightma...
Fukushima: a series of cock-ups magnified by one of the world's most destructive tsunamis. This nuclear plant should never have been built where it was, and its old technology should have been decommissioned years ago. Yet the death toll due to the accident is still, what, five?
Three Mile Island: injured fewer people than a single typical high speed road accident.
Just because there hasn't been a Tsunami in Bavaria YET doesn't mean we should take the chance.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fly_ash
Over 71 million tons of the stuff per year (According to wikipedia sources) in the US alone that has to be stored somewhere. Mostly* in landfill sites or ash ponds which renders them "waste areas of uninhabitable land", and this is part of normal operating procedures, not when something goes catastrophically wrong.
* Recycling accounts for 43% according to wikipedia sources.
Citation needed.
What do the USSR nuclear accidents say about German or US or Japanese reactors? Look at how many nuclear accidents USSR Navy ships had compared to US Navy ships.
I can see an argument to 'close the old ways, we do it better now'. But 'close all of them, because I don't know the difference between them and I'm afraid of anything with the world nuclear in it' is just fear mongering and it's a shame that Germany fell for it.
Accidents have happened, will happen again and carry a cost that's hard to accurately quantify (death toll among the hundreds of thousands of Chernobyl liquidators is approaching 10% according to their Union and still on the rise; a new sarcophagus is being built right now, and I won't even guess at the cost to public health).
Thorium reactors can help with some of the issues, but are decades away from being viable in Germany. Investing in a smarter European grid seems to me the most rational choice.
And to all these people talking about the environmental cost of coal plants - there are two things you should take into account: They are intended as a short to medium term solution, and only about 45% of the total C02 emission of Germany is due to energy production.
45% sounds very high; did you mean 4.5%?
That's excluding all the other pollutants they send out, from mercury to lead to carbon, which are far worse.
Edit: For the downvoters: http://www.cejournal.net/?p=410 - It IS disputed, I didn't say what is right. Stay fair.
For instance:
"What it really means is that radiation emissions to the environment from an operating nuclear power plant actually are lower than the radioactivity emitted from a coal plant through fly ash residues. That’s because the reactor vessel, fuel rods, and any radioactive waste on site are well shielded, whereas fly ash, with small amounts of deadly radioactive substances, simply is emitted into the environment."
The author appears to be saying, well, if you ran an un-shielded nuclear reactor and threw all the pollution in the air on purpose instead of containing it, then coal ash emits less radiation into the atmosphere. Well, okay, fair enough, but in practice we don't purposely take nuclear waste and fertilize our crops with it, and I don't think anyone's arguing for that.