Coal is more dangurous than Nuclear?

[Lilani]

-snip-

Coal kills more people than nuclear, but I think it is safe to say that many, MANY more people are working in coal than in nuclear. I'd like to see statistics based on percentages before making any judgments on that, one way or the other.

And I think another with the nuclear is when there's a coal disaster, the area is still inhabitable. You can do something with that. Plus the affected area is very small. But with nuclear, the place can be uninhabitable for YEARS, and people within miles have to evacuate.

Otherwise, yeah we have known for quite a while that the media tends to blow up and demonize what is "scarier" or more unfamiliar. More people are killed by pigs every year than by sharks, though drunk driving and cigarettes are bad stress is still the number one killer in the US, yadda yadda yadda. And they will always be like that. It's up for the viewer to invest in some perspective and common sense of their own.

 

[Gilhelmi]

Yes, nuclear is much safer than coal in nearly all ways.

Also, i do find the whole fukishima media frenzy entertaining in a way. They suddenly started blaming nuclear power being unsafe, refraining from mentioning that the plant survived a tsunami relatively intact, when it decimated the surrounding town.

Also, due to the design, such an issue where cooling would be an issue would never happen in UK/EU reactors in any situation that could affect them. No, i do not expect the UK to be hit by a Japan style tsunami any time soon.

That's all based on nuclear fission anyway! God knows what the hippies are going to cry about when nuclear fusion becomes viable. No meltdown possibilities, very little in the way of potentially radioactive 'waste' (well, the 'waste will mainly be elements like lithium, which is useful) and ridiculously low levels of radiation. Oh, and it produces monstrous amounts of power. At the moment the massive bottleneck with the US style inertial confinement reactors are simply the laser efficiency (which is ~0.0001), if we can get lasers to be a mere 4 times more efficient nuclear fusion will be insanely powerful.

Moving on to more sci-fi territory:

Give us a few decades to further improve lasers and we may even be able to start shrinking the reactors, maybe even to the point of using them for vehicle use when the lasers are an order of magnitude or two more efficient than currently!

We already have small ones on our (US NAVY) subs. I heard that a new US submarine can go 30 years without refueling its reactor. I do not know the exact amounts of power they put out but that time period is still impressive.

The submarines have fission reactors, not fusion.

There are currently two major fusion experiments - the inertial confinement style reactor at the NIC in the USA, and soon the ageing JET experiment in oxfordshire (england) will be replaced by the much bigger ITER project in France, which focusing mainly on ohmic heating and strong magnetic fields to sustain the reaction.

Oh I did not know that. Fission is the better one right?

 

[Crazy Zaul]

If you throw a lump of coal at someone it will hurt, but uranium is only tiny so it won't do much, so yes coal is more dangerous.

 

[Jegsimmons]

Yeah, ever since that one island and Chernobyl melted down, Nuclear Power has gotten a bad rap in the mainstream media, despite both incidents being caused by poor maintenence that could have easily been avoided from what I understand. For some reasons, the term "Nuclear Power" simply evokes negative connotations in the public's mind.

Chernobyl was a sub par nuc plant thats had almost no safety regulations.

three mile island wasn't even a melt down, i pipe just busted. nothing happened.

living in an area with several Nuclear power plants i know a good chunk about the stuff that goes on in their and i can say with no irony, its pretty damn safe.

now if we could make breeder reactors legal again (thanks carter you prick) then we wouldn't have nuclear waste and could re use it as more fuel.

 

[Altorin]

Nuclear is much safer, but it's "scarier". Humans are not logical creatures - we sensationalize, and Nuclear Power is certainly one of those things that have been sensationalized. All the fancy data in the world will not overturn someones gut reaction to things like nuclear power.

 

[emeraldrafael]

I believe it.

why? Oh, just a little place called <url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia,_Pennsylvania>Centralia

seriously, this is blasphemous for me to say since I live in Southwestern PA, but we really should get off coal. Even today in Pittsburgh, you still get crappy air quality from all our coal burning 40-60+ years ago.

then again, like I said, I live in PA, so we're fortunate enough to see how <url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_mile_island>(responsibly used) nuclear power can be used and how safe it is.

We've even got a few windmills up for good measure, and we've got this whole natural gas craze going on. and whatever Marcellus Shale's doing (though Im pretty sure its natural gas). we're pretty much trying just about everything really.

 

[TheComfyChair]

Oh I did not know that. Fission is the better one right?

Nah, fission is the type of nuclear reaction we harness at the moment. It utilises (relatively) large mass elements such as uranium and the energy released when they decay. Unfortunately fission releases quite a lot of radiation too.

Fusion is where two light atoms (typically hydrogen) are fused into one bigger atom, releasing vast amounts of energy while doing so. It produces far less radiation than fission, produces far more energy and uses a far more plentiful (the universe isn't running out of hydrogen any time soon) source of energy. It's what stars are powered by. However, fusion is harder to stabilise in a reactor (it dies out whenever possible) to get enough energy out to warrant the input energy, which is why there's so much research into it - if lasers improve by ~4x their current efficiency, inertial confinement reactors will be viable.

 

[Gilhelmi]

Oh I did not know that. Fission is the better one right?

Nah, fission is the type of nuclear reaction we harness at the moment. It utilises (relatively) large mass elements such as uranium and the energy released when they decay. Unfortunately fission releases quite a lot of radiation too.

Fusion is where two light atoms (typically hydrogen) are fused into one bigger atom, releasing vast amounts of energy while doing so. It produces far less radiation than fission, produces far more energy and uses a far more plentiful (the universe isn't running out of hydrogen any time soon) source of energy. It's what stars are powered by. However, fusion is harder to stabilise in a reactor (it dies out whenever possible) to get enough energy out to warrant the input energy, which is why there's so much research into it - if lasers improve by ~4x their current efficiency, inertial confinement reactors will be viable.

I do not know why but I am always mixing those two up. Even in school I got the descriptions point on but I mixed up the types. The teacher still gave me half credit.

 

[rutger5000]

Of couse nuclear is safer then coal. Those statistics have been well known for quiet a while. Nuclear is in fact 100% safe as long as no total idiots are in charge who refuse to accept/confess that they screwed up and need to resort to somewhat drastic actions (That may or may not cause the plant to be inorporatable for a while).