https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_in_fish#Origins_of_mer...
If coal plants had the same radiation rules as nuclear plants, they couldn't run.
I think you mean if nuclear plants had the same radiation output as coal plants, they would be required to shut down.
Edit: thanks for the downvotes, I realise now that I'm basically stating the same thing as OP.
Quite the double standard that coal plants are allowed to spew so much radiation when all other forms of power generation are held to a higher standard.
There's no way we could hope to capture all the radioactive particles from a coal plant exhaust, not in the foreseeable future with any reasonable efficiency.
Nowadays yes, but this wasn't always the case. The earliest Soviet reactors were open cycle and discharged directly into Lake Kyzyltash. [0]
Burning coal for electricity generation has released in to the environment more radiation, heavy metals, and other pollutants than civil nuclear power could ever hope to.
http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-pro...
:(
fearmongering works wonder against an uneducated population.
Ah the irony! It is the environmentalists themselves who are directly to blame for the situation we find ourselves in now. We could have relatively-carbon-free electricity today if they had supported nuclear power.
But, putting my tin-foil hat on for a minute, I am lead to believe that the anti-nuclear movement is actually perpetuated by the fossil-fuel industry. Or maybe my B12 dependant psychosis is playing up again.
Now I'm not sure what to do. At this point in time I believe drawing penises on the ballot paper provides the best value.
It is fairly common that huge amounts get released. E.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascó_Nuclear_Power_Plant
How about Fukushima and Chernobyl. Do you have numbers to back up your claim?
However, you raise a good point with the Fukushima and Chernobyl examples. It's not hard to imagine that if we had, globally, built nuclear power plants as enthusiastically as we have coal power plants, there would likely have been a lot more serious incidents. It's a sobering thought for my usually rose-tinted view of nuclear.
While I could probably have found a more dramatic reference, this one[1] is a bit more calm saying that the risks of adverse health affects from radiation exposure from coal vs nuclear are, in both cases, very slim. It would seem, then, that coal would have other negative health affects before the radiation exposure aspect became a problem. You have to live extraordinarily close to either a coal or nuclear plant to have higher than background radiation exposure from either, under normal operating conditions.
1. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-...
Another thing I like to point out is how much of a wildlife haven Chernobyl is compared to any moderate city. The fear that keeps the humans away, has transformed a "safe" dump into a paradise.
Don't mix coal... with wind and solar.
Coal releases proportional amounts of carbon dioxide when used to generate power. On the other hand, wind and solar release fixed amounts of carbon dioxide (during construction and transport) then generate energy C02 free.
Considering the fact that efficient pv panels need less than 4% of their lifetime output for production (if in service 25 years (most panels last up to 40 years)), that must have been the late 70s or so.
You were probably remembering that 2010 study talking about the rapidly growing solar industry as a whole becoming net producers of energy, e.g. current industry energy input is now lower than current running PV output (http://news.stanford.edu/news/2013/april/pv-net-energy-04021...). But that doesn't say much about net energy production per panel over the panel's lifetime, e.g. if the PV industry would disappear this very moment, existing PV installations would still produce energy for decades.
Good point. Q. Would the amount of energy generated by a solar/wind system outstrip energy used to maintain?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1340225/Twin-towers-built-to...
And the initial design was 30 floors less.
The Fukushima plant had a wall to protect it from tsunami and the motors to keep the pumps working when there the electricity fails. The whole design however didn't cover that particular wave:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1388629/Japan-tsunam...
The tsunamis like that happened there "only once in a thousand years" so nobody (who made the executive decisions) expected that one.
Still there were the stone markers in Japan, many hundreds of years old, with the marking "Do not build your homes below this point!"
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/21/world/asia/21stones.html
"As time passes, people inevitably forget."
Wikipedia seems to give 4000 as an estimate on those exposed to the highest levels of radiation alone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster#Cancer_proj...
On the other hand coal, wind and solar never poisoned our food (wild boars in Germany thousands of km away still often are too radioactive to be eaten ). Coal, wind and solar never led to emergency evacuations. Coal, wind and solar cannot be used to make atomic bombs.