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A comment on Nuclear fusion: it's time for a reality check. Parent comment

Re:Nuclear fusion: it's time for a reality check by touisteur on Wednesday January 29, 2025 @11:05AM (#42866682)
I've always found xkcd's radiation chart interesting: https://xkcd.com/radiation/ where it talks about coal vs nuclear plant at the beginning. Maybe his sources would help. ISTR that lignite would often be a bit radioactive and burning so much of it would spread it through leftover emissions ? If you find a proper source, I'm interested too.
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Re:Nuclear fusion: it's time for a reality check by wqaatwt on Thursday January 30, 2025 @05:50AM (#42876636)
I didn’t mean radiation specifically. Rather overall damage due to pollution compared to the casualties in Chernobyl and Fukushima.

e.g. NIH estimates 460k excess deaths (just in the US alone) between 1999 and 2020 were caused by emission from coal plants. And that’s the period when coal became relatively “clean”.

So it must have been much worse back in the 70s and 80s.

The highest estimate for Chernobyl is 60,000. But 16,000 is probably more realistic.

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Re:Nuclear fusion: it's time for a reality check by natmaka on Thursday January 30, 2025 @06:07AM (#42876723)
> The highest estimate for Chernobyl is 60,000

Nope: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl:_Consequences_of_the...

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Re:Nuclear fusion: it's time for a reality check by wqaatwt on Thursday January 30, 2025 @06:11AM (#42876748)
Obviously I implied [mainstream/non-fringe] estimate.
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Re:Nuclear fusion: it's time for a reality check by natmaka on Friday January 31, 2025 @03:40AM (#42885773)
AFAIK it is a well-known estimation, and 'fringe' may be considered weird given its main author's pedigree: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl:_Consequences_of_the...
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Re:Nuclear fusion: it's time for a reality check by wqaatwt on Friday January 31, 2025 @03:45AM (#42885804)
> may be considered weird

It may. I don’t think that’s the consensus view though and again something being well-known doesn’t make it the consensus.

I’m not saying that WHO’s and IAEA‘s figures are perfect and flawless but they aren’t widely challenged either.

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