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Re:Coal plants emit more radioactive waste than nuclear plan... by IanDrake on Thursday June 01, 2017 @08:49PM (#14466519)
This isn't very useful information. I'm sure Chernobyl and Fukushima have released more radioactivity than every coal fired plant that has ever been or ever will be.
Re:Coal plants emit more radioactive waste than nuclear plan... by astrodust on Thursday June 01, 2017 @09:06PM (#14466626)
There are a lot of coal plants that constantly emit a lot of waste into the atmosphere. Nuclear events are, thankfully, quite rare and have been largely contained.

Plus, as bad as radioactive incidents can be, they don't affect the climate. Once the radiation dies down or is mitigated through clean-up efforts there will be no lasting impact on the world. In other words, with the right insurance policy you can recover from a disaster.

Hiroshima and Nagasakia were both deliberately targeted by nuclear weapons and are still inhabited. Cleaning up the mess can be expensive, but it's not impossible.

Cleaning up the mess made by a coal plant is basically impossible, the effects are too far reaching.

Re:Coal plants emit more radioactive waste than nuclear plan... by tibarun on Thursday June 01, 2017 @09:46PM (#14466822)
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/09/fukushima-nucl...

Seriously? "Expensive but not impossible"?

Re:Coal plants emit more radioactive waste than nuclear plan... by astrodust on Thursday June 01, 2017 @10:22PM (#14466956)
There's a huge difference between cleaning up the surrounding landscape and dealing with the broken reactors themselves. Eventually we'll figure out how to fix those. Nothing an X-Prize contest or two can't help address if things get truly desperate.

I'd take a contaminated room any day over a whole planet slowly cooking itself to death.

Re:Coal plants emit more radioactive waste than nuclear plan... by coldtea on Friday June 02, 2017 @12:52AM (#14467538)
>Nothing an X-Prize contest or two can't help address if things get truly desperate.

Yeah, because technology advances magically if you will it enough...

Re:Coal plants emit more radioactive waste than nuclear plan... by astrodust on Friday June 02, 2017 @06:21PM (#14473731)
We have a number of commercial space-flight companies now and a dozen self-driving car platforms that work quite well. Neither of these really existed before their respective X-Prize type challenges.
Re:Coal plants emit more radioactive waste than nuclear plan... by wonderwonder on Thursday June 01, 2017 @09:12PM (#14466655)
The difference is that there was a focused effort to cleanup after those disasters. Coal plants dump tons of ash into the environment on a daily basis with only lax regulation. Coal ash is intentionally not regulated as toxic waste due to politics rather as simply solid waste.

Thus it builds up in our ground water and atmosphere with no warnings and little community notification.

Re:Coal plants emit more radioactive waste than nuclear plan... by _jal on Thursday June 01, 2017 @09:04PM (#14466614)
...So, if I told you the number of deaths per year due to car assembly accidents, you'd call it not useful, because car crashes cause way more deaths?

To be clear, my suggestion would be to google "category error".

Re:Coal plants emit more radioactive waste than nuclear plan... by InclinedPlane on Thursday June 01, 2017 @09:36PM (#14466779)
More people have died from design failures, mishandling, and, in fact, normal operations of non-nuclear power generation facilities than nuclear plants, including the Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters. If a gas pipeline explodes what is the conclusion? If a dam breaches and kills thousands, what is the conclusion? If a coal plant kills thousands even when it's working correctly, what is the conclusion?
Re:Coal plants emit more radioactive waste than nuclear plan... by dotancohen on Friday June 02, 2017 @01:18AM (#14467652)
You think that you are sure, but you are wrong. The numbers are found a few posts above.