Link to long article:
A quote from this article:
<< Despite its reputation, nuclear energy has a number of advantages. It’s not only carbon-free, it’s emissions free. It produces tremendous amounts of power with a very small area footprint. It can be sited in any region. And, surprisingly, it has the lowest per kilowatt death rate of any energy source. >>
I reply to those claims.
1.) Carbon and emissions free
During operation, the power supplied to the grid generates no carbon dioxide or emissions. The mining, transportation, processing, manufacturing, assembling, and especially the disposal of the nuclear fuel is *not* carbon and emissions free.
Vaclav Smil has a lot to say about this.
2.) Small footprint
The plant itself doesn’t take up much area. But in the US, nuclear plants must have an exclusion zone around them, many square kilometers in area. So this is a false assertion.
3.) “It can be sited in any region.”
Because of NIMBYs, new nuclear plants cannot be sited near populated areas. In the US the nuclear plants within 50 km of a populated area must have evacuation plans, warning sirens and other emergency procedures for the population. Radioactive fallout from Chernobyl and Fukushima left areas of land uninhabitable. So that assertion is not true.
4.) “…lowest per kilowatt-hour death rate…”
The shills for the nuclear power industry often use the narrow claim. But looking behind to see the real data, there were hundreds of uranium miners who died of lung cancer due to radon. There were millions of Europeans exposed to excessive radioactive fallout after Chernobyl, causing an increase in cancers. This claim is *not* what it seems to be.
See “The Myths of August” by S. Udall for more information.
The costs to clean up Fukushima will come to almost a Trillion dollars.
My reply:
Guy Mendez
Nuclear bombs kill everyone and everything for miles around. But nuclear reactors are safe, and there have been few deaths caused directly by nuclear accidents. They just don’t tell you about how many livestock had to be slaughtered and buried because they were contaminated by the radioactive fallout from Chernobyl that fell on the grass they ate. Or the contaminated milk from those livestock. Or the radioactive cesium and strontium that got into the food, and went into the bones of humans and may have caused cancer long after the Chernobyl or Fukushima accidents.
Source:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0265931X94900558
“…The total amount of deposited cesium-137 in Europe is 8 ∗ 1016 becquerel and the major part of this amount affects European countries in the following manner: Belarus 33.5%, Russia 24%, Ukraine 20%, Sweden 4.4%, Finland 4.3%, Bulgaria 2.8%, Austria 2.7%, Norway 2.3%, Romania 2.0%, Germany 1.1% (Izrael et al., 1996). Vast studies have been done in order to understand the effect of cesium in food chain, air, water and soil contamination as well as on livestock after Chernobyl Disaster (Paasikallio et al., 1994; Thomas and Martin, 1986; Mattsson and Moberg, 1991; Davidson et al., 1987; Lavi et al., 2006; Vakulovsky et al., 1994; Koulikov and Ryabov, 1992). Radionuclides of cesium were identified in large amounts at numerous places, months after the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant disaster (Long et al., 2012)…”