Nuclear plant shutdowns tied to coal pollution, decreased birth weights

Re:Nuclear plant shutdowns tied to coal pollution, decreased... by vidarh on Wednesday April 05, 2017 @09:30AM (#14041916)

I don't know what you are trying to say.

50 years of operation of hundreds of plants. We could have had a repeat of all of the accidents every year and it would still be one of the safest alternatives.

Heck, we could have Chernobyl every year, and even based on the current worst case estimates of reduced life expectancy and counting every one of them as a death, we'd still not compensate for 1 Banqiao failure, or more than 1-2 years worth of coal.

But we're not having a Chernobyl every year. What we are having is vast numbers of preventable deaths due to other types of power generation.

We're talking millions dead over the last 50 years due to other types of plants.

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Re:Nuclear plant shutdowns tied to coal pollution, decreased... by davrosthedalek on Wednesday April 05, 2017 @04:44PM (#14045451)

I think you have to be careful here. It's entirely unclear how small dose exposure over long times damage humans. There might be a threshold effect: Some people speculated that low doses actually help, as they trigger the DNA self-repair systems. Slightly more, and that self-repair can't help anymore. So 1 Chernobyl might be fine for people further way, let's say, in the US, 2 or 10 or ... and you suddenly get a lot of Cancer deaths.

If you look at what medicine deemed as safe, the limits were reduced every couple of years.

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Re:Nuclear plant shutdowns tied to coal pollution, decreased... by chadgeidel on Wednesday April 05, 2017 @04:25PM (#14045295)

I'm not saying you are wrong - I actually want to believe this statistic, but has anyone actually compiled the data to back this up?

Specifically - "we could have Chernobyl every year ... we'd still not compensate for more than 1-2 years worth of coal"

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