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Comment by LockeWatts | Hacker News Reader

>Historically, there have been several large accidents, Tschernobyl, Fukushima, Three Mile, and several more smaller ones which would almost been fatal.

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.

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Coal and nuclear power are both dangerous, just in different ways. And there are incidents that don't get much international coverage, but still have a lasting impact. For example there has been a small fire at a German nuclear plant in 1986. Officials say no radioactivity was released. But still, 20 years after the event, cases of childhood leukemia are three times more prevalent in the surrounding area than normal. How many children died because of this small accident? How many other adverse effects exist that we can't see or link to nuclear power? http://www.oh-strahlen.org/docs/ableukkome.pdf [PDF]

1. No modern coal-plant leads to waste areas of uninhabitable land. Nuclear Plants do.

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.

About 6,000 people die from coal mining every year in China alone. By contrast, 6,000 is the median estimate of the total number of people who would die from cancer from Chernobyl. Now, Greenpeace managed to come to an estimate of almost 100,000 by making certain unusual assumptions, but if you make those same assumptions when looking at the pollution that comes out of the stacks of coal power plants you would find at least vaguely comparable numbers of deaths from coal plants every year.

While claims of up to 2 Million deaths related to Chernobyl[1] are probably not credible, the 6,000 figure is bullshit as well:

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...

Chernobyl: a monumental cock-up by incompetent morons in charge of a badly designed and badly built scrapheap. With so much cocked up, a disaster was surely inevitable.

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.

There was also a call to ban the ICE between Munich and Frankfurt following the 2500 people that died when a Japanese train was hit by the Tsunami.

Just because there hasn't been a Tsunami in Bavaria YET doesn't mean we should take the chance.

> 1. No modern coal-plant leads to waste areas of uninhabitable land. Nuclear Plants do.

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.

> The damage caused by the worst nuclear accidents in human history is still less than the every day operation of a coal plant.

Citation needed.

onli's response is spot-on. He is definitely not insane. I agree with his views.

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