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The Forum > Article Comments > Giving Green the red light > Comments

Giving Green the red light : Comments

By Ben Heard, published 12/4/2011

The United Nations is quite clear that deaths from Chernobyl were only in the tens.

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I was recently challenged on the suggestion that nuclear gives a 99% improvement in outcomes compared to coal, and therefore not a "defeatist" option. My responses may be of interest to the readers of this post.

GHG from coal (Australian average): about 1,000 g CO2 per kWh for full fuel cycle (NGA Factors 2010)
GHG from nuclear operated in Australia (best estimate) for full lifecycle: 60g CO2e/kWh (University of Sydney, 2006) (so only a 94% improvement there, but would be better against lifecyle of coal).

Radiation pollution to the surrounding environment is about 100 times greater from a coal fired power plant than a nuclear plant (Scientific American 13 December 2007)

Other pollution from coal (figures are annual from Loy Yang in Victoria, taken from their 2009 report):
• 577,800m3 of fly ash for “disposal at the on-site overburden dump”
• 2,070 tons of fly ash emitted to the atmosphere
• 56,428 tons of SO2
• 29,398 tons of NOx
• 2,577 tons of CO
• (18,232,826 tCO2e)
Several of these make a major contribution to particulate air pollution which is responsible for the slow and painful deaths of around 700,000 people per year (estimate from WHO 1997, reported in UNEP 2002, The Aisan Brown Cloud: Climate and Other Environmental Impacts). Let’s be generous to coal and say it is only responsible for 1% of that. That’s 7,000 deaths, every year. A still low 5% gives 35,000 deaths every year. There is also acid rain with its damage to environments and economies.

Energy content of coal: 30 GJ/t (World Energy Council Conversion Factors)
Energy content of uranium (once through a light water reactor): 420,000- 675,000 GJ/t (World Energy Council Conversion Factors). Mining impacts per unit of energy provided are therefore orders of magnitude lower.

The major trade off for those benefits is high level nuclear waste, which is very hazardous but pretty uncomplicated to manage (acknowledging due lessons from Fukishima), very small in volume, and has a future as fuel in a 4th generation reactor.

Hope that's interesting.
Posted by Ben Heard, Friday, 15 April 2011 12:32:08 PM
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Here are some the studies Ben ignores:

Reports by the UN Chernobyl Forum and the World Health Organisation in 2005-06 estimated up to 4000 eventual deaths among the higher-exposed Chernobyl populations and an additional 5,000 deaths among populations exposed to lower doses in Belarus, the Russian Federation and Ukraine.
http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Booklets/Chernobyl/chernobyl.pdf
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2006/pr20/en/index.html

A study by Cardis et al. reported in the International Journal of Cancer estimates 16,000 deaths.
http://www.iarc.fr/en/media-centre/pr/2006/pr168.html

UK radiation scientists Dr Ian Fairlie and Dr David Sumner estimate 30,000 to 60,000 deaths.
http://www.chernobyl.info/index.php?userhash=&navID=590&lID=2

A 2006 report, commissioned by Greenpeace and involving 52 scientists, estimates a death toll of about 93,000.
http://www.greenpeace.org/international/news/chernobyl-deaths-180406

Ben, re this:
"Jim, did you actually write that? If I have this straight, you are asking us to condemn an industry based on supposed deaths that are so small in number as to be impossible to detect despite looking for 20 years? And if anyone did detect it, we couldn't trust them? WTF?"
- my point was about very low exposures, hence the use of the words "very low exposures".
- by far the greatest problem with nuclear power is the repeatedly-demonstrated connection with WMD proliferation
http://www.choosenuclearfree.net/power-weapons
and the failure of the industry and its supporters to truthfully acknowledge that profound problem or to do anything to fix it e.g. with a rigorous safeguards system and responsible policies regarding reprocessing, selection of uranium customer countries, etc.

over and out from me but happy to field questions or abuse or whatever at jim.green AT foe.org.au
Posted by Jim Green, Friday, 15 April 2011 3:29:07 PM
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