Germany Looking for Nuclear Graveyard to last One Million Years.

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Germany is closing all its nuclear power plants. Now it must find a place to bury the deadly waste for 1 million years

I'm curious. Quite a few folks around here have said that nuclear power is not really a problem wrt waste. And to be honest I thought some nations like France were recycling their spent fuel rods and spent fuel. So what gives?

Germany decided to phase out all its nuclear power plants in the wake of the Fukushima disaster in 2011, amid increasing safety concerns.

The seven power stations still in operation today are due to close by 2022.

With their closure comes a new challenge — finding a permanent nuclear graveyard by the government’s 2031 deadline.

 

[bilby]

Germany is closing all its nuclear power plants. Now it must find a place to bury the deadly waste for 1 million years

I'm curious. Quite a few folks around here have said that nuclear power is not really a problem wrt waste. And to be honest I thought some nations like France were recycling their spent fuel rods and spent fuel. So what gives?

Germany decided to phase out all its nuclear power plants in the wake of the Fukushima disaster in 2011, amid increasing safety concerns.

The seven power stations still in operation today are due to close by 2022.

With their closure comes a new challenge — finding a permanent nuclear graveyard by the government’s 2031 deadline.

The German attitude towards nuclear power is batshit insane on pretty much every level.

This is just more insanity.

Spent nuclear fuel isn't uniquely hazardous; There are plenty of industrial chemical wastes that are more dangerous.

It's not uniquely long lived, either. Indeed, nuclear waste is unusual in that it has a finite lifespan - and it's level of risk drops off very rapidly. How long you "need" to store it is dependent on how much activity you are prepared to tolerate in the final material that you stop containing and managing. And to say that a million years is "necessary" is to disregard the level of hazard that would be tolerated in any other context.

If you have dangerously carcinogenic chemical waste, say from manufacturing solar panels, then your waste management likely consists of dumping it in a lake in Mongolia or a remote part of China, and walking away with your hands in your pockets, whistling and trying to look innocent.

The one characteristic that sets nuclear waste apart from all other industrial wastes is that nuclear waste is contained and managed to prevent all possible harm to humans or the environment. No other waste stream is treated in this way.

The German waste is currently in perfectly good and perfectly safe storage. That storage could be managed indefinitely without any harm ever befalling a single person. But that's not good enough for the radiophobic German public; They need to set conditions on the handling of this material that are shocking, expensive, and overwhelmingly arduous. So that they can then point to them and say "I told you nuclear power was a bad idea".

There are a huge number of excellent solutions to the nuclear waste "problem"; including what we have been doing for the last six decades without a single injury of any kind to any person from this allegedly highly dangerous commercial nuclear reactor waste.

Better still, we could use this material as fuel for molten salt reactors, and render it a valuable resource, rather than 'waste'.

But the people who are scared of nuclear waste don't want a solution. They want to be scared of nuclear waste.

Nuclear waste - Ideas vs Reality

Nuclear waste is actually very boring. It's not glowing green goo; It's a heavy ceramic solid, and doesn't tend to move around much. It's largely insoluble, and won't hurt you if you simply stand back from it. The current dry cask storage systems in use around the world are overkill, and deep repositories are even more overkill. An accident impacting a dry cask that resulted in any exposure of humans to harm from spent nuclear fuel is incredibly unlikely; But if something incredibly unlikely and dramatic did occur, the hazard would be very limited. If a large jet aircraft crashed into the storage area of an existing nuclear power plant, it might break open a cask or two - but the contents wouldn't go far. Perhaps a couple of unfortunate first responders could get enough exposure to suffer fatal radiation effects; But it's almost impossible to envisage a scenario where the nuclear waste causes a tenth of the casualties that were caused by the plane crash.

The only problem here is pure, irrational, unthinking, blind terror. And a super repository that could last a million, or a billion, or a quadrillion years would do nothing to mitigate that - indeed, quite the reverse.

The nuclear industry takes extreme (to the point of insanity) precautions to make the spent fuel completely safe. But nothing is completely safe - and the more precautions the industry takes, the more their opponents say "It must be hugely dangerous, because otherwise they wouldn't bother with all these extreme precautions".

Meanwhile the genuinely hazardous wastes from other electricity generation technologies are just dumped in the environment and ignored.

Nuclear power is the ONLY electricity generation technology whose wastes have never killed anyone. Those German wind turbines can't make such a claim; Indeed, the rare earth metals used in their construction are responsible for more radioactive contamination of the environment than the global nuclear industry - although its the chemical hazards that are more significant.

The demands for a million year repository are an attempt to improve on a record of zero injuries and zero deaths. Only a crazy person would demand that such a record be improved upon.

 

[fromderinside]

... and yet proposed budgets, even with Trump admin decreases of 400 million in 2020 are over two billion for the year for Hanford decontamination efforts.

The proposed budget cuts come after the release of a Hanford “lifecycle” cost report in January that put the remaining cost of environmental cleanup at Hanford at an estimated $323 billion to $677 billion.

https://www.tri-cityherald.com/news/local/hanford/article228363169.html

BTW you're not the one who had people come out to our house twice between 1957 and 1960 to check, remove, and treat contaminated items and areas in our home just because my dad was one of those who volunteered to knock rods free after they had heated during operations.

I'm happy to report that glass embedding plant for contaminated material has become operational at Hanford. Now if we can just get rid of of 75 year old facilities and collapsing storage areas in a timely fashion .....

 

[bilby]

... and yet proposed budgets, even with Trump admin decreases of 400 million in 2020 are over two billion for the year for Hanford decontamination efforts.

The proposed budget cuts come after the release of a Hanford “lifecycle” cost report in January that put the remaining cost of environmental cleanup at Hanford at an estimated $323 billion to $677 billion.

https://www.tri-cityherald.com/news/local/hanford/article228363169.html

BTW you're not the one who had people come out to our house twice between 1957 and 1960 to check, remove, and treat contaminated items and areas in our home just because my dad was one of those who volunteered to knock rods free after they had heated during operations.

I'm happy to report that glass embedding plant for contaminated material has become operational at Hanford. Now if we can just get rid of of 75 year old facilities and collapsing storage areas in a timely fashion .....

For fucks sake, Hanford is NOT a power station. It's a military site, where they made Plutonium for atomic bombs. The armed forces fuck things up - this has three eighths of fuck all to do with nuclear power generation.

You might as well declare automobile use unacceptable because of the vile consequences of napalm as declare nuclear power waste unsafe because of the idiocy perpetrated by atom bomb makers at Hanford.

Fuck off, and come back IF you have something relevant to discuss - the Germans have NEVER made atomic weapons, so they have no sites anything like Hanford, and none of the problems that Hanford has.

In other news, steelmaking shouldn't be banned on the basis that the tanks that crushed the Prague Spring and Tiannanmen Square demonstrations were made of steel; And we shouldn't ban all chemistry because of Mustard Gas.

Conflating the problems caused by atom bomb manufacturing with the benefits of nuclear power generation has been the height of fucking stupid since the mid-1950s. Bloody stop it. You're not helping anyone.

 

[skepticalbip]

Scientific American published an article that should be an eye opener for the anti-nuclear crowd.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste/

Coal Ash Is More Radioactive Than Nuclear Waste.

The popular conception of nuclear power is straight out of The Simpsons: Springfield abounds with signs of radioactivity, from the strange glow surrounding Mr. Burn's nuclear power plant workers to Homer's low sperm count. Then there's the local superhero, Radioactive Man, who fires beams of "nuclear heat" from his eyes. Nuclear power, many people think, is inseparable from a volatile, invariably lime-green, mutant-making radioactivity.

Coal, meanwhile, is believed responsible for a host of more quotidian problems, such as mining accidents, acid rain and greenhouse gas emissions. But it isn't supposed to spawn three-eyed fish like Blinky.

Over the past few decades, however, a series of studies has called these stereotypes into question. Among the surprising conclusions: the waste produced by coal plants is actually more radioactive than that generated by their nuclear counterparts. In fact, the fly ash emitted by a power plant—a by-product from burning coal for electricity—carries into the surrounding environment 100 times more radiation than a nuclear power plant producing the same amount of energy.

 

[Harry Bosch]

Scientific American published an article that should be an eye opener for the anti-nuclear crowd.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste/

Coal Ash Is More Radioactive Than Nuclear Waste.

The popular conception of nuclear power is straight out of The Simpsons: Springfield abounds with signs of radioactivity, from the strange glow surrounding Mr. Burn's nuclear power plant workers to Homer's low sperm count. Then there's the local superhero, Radioactive Man, who fires beams of "nuclear heat" from his eyes. Nuclear power, many people think, is inseparable from a volatile, invariably lime-green, mutant-making radioactivity.

Coal, meanwhile, is believed responsible for a host of more quotidian problems, such as mining accidents, acid rain and greenhouse gas emissions. But it isn't supposed to spawn three-eyed fish like Blinky.

Over the past few decades, however, a series of studies has called these stereotypes into question. Among the surprising conclusions: the waste produced by coal plants is actually more radioactive than that generated by their nuclear counterparts. In fact, the fly ash emitted by a power plant—a by-product from burning coal for electricity—carries into the surrounding environment 100 times more radiation than a nuclear power plant producing the same amount of energy.

Yea, the left wants to believe that it is more evolved on scientific issues than the right. But we have just as many people on the left who don't understand science as the right. In addition to nuclear power, some on the left also promote wacky vegetarian and anti-vax beliefs also.

 

[barbos]

Scientific American published an article that should be an eye opener for the anti-nuclear crowd.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste/

Coal Ash Is More Radioactive Than Nuclear Waste.

The popular conception of nuclear power is straight out of The Simpsons: Springfield abounds with signs of radioactivity, from the strange glow surrounding Mr. Burn's nuclear power plant workers to Homer's low sperm count. Then there's the local superhero, Radioactive Man, who fires beams of "nuclear heat" from his eyes. Nuclear power, many people think, is inseparable from a volatile, invariably lime-green, mutant-making radioactivity.

Coal, meanwhile, is believed responsible for a host of more quotidian problems, such as mining accidents, acid rain and greenhouse gas emissions. But it isn't supposed to spawn three-eyed fish like Blinky.

Over the past few decades, however, a series of studies has called these stereotypes into question. Among the surprising conclusions: the waste produced by coal plants is actually more radioactive than that generated by their nuclear counterparts. In fact, the fly ash emitted by a power plant—a by-product from burning coal for electricity—carries into the surrounding environment 100 times more radiation than a nuclear power plant producing the same amount of energy.

That's misleading. Yes, nuclear plants during normal operation leak much less radioactivity than coal plants. keywords here are "normal operation" and "leak", cause amount of radioactive waste (not leak) is obviously orders and orders magnitude higher for nukes.

 

[Elixir]

we have just as many people on the left who don't understand science as the right

I doubt it. That sounds like something you may have made up out of whole cloth. And it runs counter to my admittedly limited experience; virtually every science denier I know (more than a few) is also a right-wing religious lemming.

Climate change denial strongly linked to right-wing nationalism

A limited example, but a quick search doesn't turn up anything similar about left-wingers. There is some "soft" stuff out there like the following, but it doesn't include anything empirical (like a study) to back up the author's opinion:

The left is also guilty of unscientific dogma

I think the use of the word "also" in the title of that article is a dead giveaway - addressing the well-founded presumption that there is high correlation between right wing "conservatism" (a misnomer IMHO), lack of education, religiosity and science denial. Denial of climate science and evolutionary biology are almost the exclusive province of right wing extremism, so maybe the spread is more even in other scientific matters.

Here's an interesting tidbit:

Counterintuitively, the social justice stance on human evolution closely resembles that of the Catholic Church. The Catholic view of evolution generally accepts biological evolution for all organisms, yet holds that the human soul (however defined) had been specially created and thus has no evolutionary precursor. Similarly, the social justice view has no problem with evolutionary explanations for shaping the bodies and minds of all organisms both between and within a species regarding sex, yet insists that humans are special in that evolution has played no role in shaping observed sex-linked behavioral differences. Why the biological forces that shape all of life should be uniquely suspended for humans is unclear. What is clear is that both the Catholic Church and well-intentioned social justice activists are guilty of gerrymandering evolutionary biology to make humans special, and keep the universal acid at bay.

Maybe you're referring to stuff like that? For sure, human superstition knows no political boundary, even if certain biases do congregate on one side of the political divide.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Scientific American published an article that should be an eye opener for the anti-nuclear crowd.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste/

Coal Ash Is More Radioactive Than Nuclear Waste.

The popular conception of nuclear power is straight out of The Simpsons: Springfield abounds with signs of radioactivity, from the strange glow surrounding Mr. Burn's nuclear power plant workers to Homer's low sperm count. Then there's the local superhero, Radioactive Man, who fires beams of "nuclear heat" from his eyes. Nuclear power, many people think, is inseparable from a volatile, invariably lime-green, mutant-making radioactivity.

Coal, meanwhile, is believed responsible for a host of more quotidian problems, such as mining accidents, acid rain and greenhouse gas emissions. But it isn't supposed to spawn three-eyed fish like Blinky.

Over the past few decades, however, a series of studies has called these stereotypes into question. Among the surprising conclusions: the waste produced by coal plants is actually more radioactive than that generated by their nuclear counterparts. In fact, the fly ash emitted by a power plant—a by-product from burning coal for electricity—carries into the surrounding environment 100 times more radiation than a nuclear power plant producing the same amount of energy.

That's misleading. Yes, nuclear plants during normal operation leak much less radioactivity than coal plants. keywords here are "normal operation" and "leak", cause amount of radioactive waste (not leak) is obviously orders and orders magnitude higher for nukes.

Maybe the lesson is that two wrongs do not make a right.

Yea, the left wants to believe that it is more evolved on scientific issues than the right. But we have just as many people on the left who don't understand science as the right. In addition to nuclear power, some on the left also promote wacky vegetarian and anti-vax beliefs also.

I love you Harry.

 

[Harry Bosch]

we have just as many people on the left who don't understand science as the right

I doubt it. That sounds like something you may have made up out of whole cloth. And it runs counter to my admittedly limited experience; virtually every science denier I know (more than a few) is also a right-wing religious lemming.

Climate change denial strongly linked to right-wing nationalism

A limited example, but a quick search doesn't turn up anything similar about left-wingers. There is some "soft" stuff out there like the following, but it doesn't include anything empirical (like a study) to back up the author's opinion:

The left is also guilty of unscientific dogma

I think the use of the word "also" in the title of that article is a dead giveaway - addressing the well-founded presumption that there is high correlation between right wing "conservatism" (a misnomer IMHO), lack of education, religiosity and science denial. Denial of climate science and evolutionary biology are almost the exclusive province of right wing extremism, so maybe the spread is more even in other scientific matters.

Here's an interesting tidbit:

Counterintuitively, the social justice stance on human evolution closely resembles that of the Catholic Church. The Catholic view of evolution generally accepts biological evolution for all organisms, yet holds that the human soul (however defined) had been specially created and thus has no evolutionary precursor. Similarly, the social justice view has no problem with evolutionary explanations for shaping the bodies and minds of all organisms both between and within a species regarding sex, yet insists that humans are special in that evolution has played no role in shaping observed sex-linked behavioral differences. Why the biological forces that shape all of life should be uniquely suspended for humans is unclear. What is clear is that both the Catholic Church and well-intentioned social justice activists are guilty of gerrymandering evolutionary biology to make humans special, and keep the universal acid at bay.

Maybe you're referring to stuff like that? For sure, human superstition knows no political boundary, even if certain biases do congregate on one side of the political divide.

Yea, I exaggerated a little. But my point is that we need to call out people on the left who are anti-science in the same way that we call out the right. When people claim without scientific facts, that vaccines cause autism, they are harming people. Same thing when people claim that nuclear power harms the environment.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-liberals-war-on-science/

We need to call it out when people use anti-science to promote their faulty ideas on whatever side of the political spectrum it comes from.

 

[Jokodo]

I doubt it. That sounds like something you may have made up out of whole cloth. And it runs counter to my admittedly limited experience; virtually every science denier I know (more than a few) is also a right-wing religious lemming.

Climate change denial strongly linked to right-wing nationalism

A limited example, but a quick search doesn't turn up anything similar about left-wingers. There is some "soft" stuff out there like the following, but it doesn't include anything empirical (like a study) to back up the author's opinion:

The left is also guilty of unscientific dogma

I think the use of the word "also" in the title of that article is a dead giveaway - addressing the well-founded presumption that there is high correlation between right wing "conservatism" (a misnomer IMHO), lack of education, religiosity and science denial. Denial of climate science and evolutionary biology are almost the exclusive province of right wing extremism, so maybe the spread is more even in other scientific matters.

Here's an interesting tidbit:


Maybe you're referring to stuff like that? For sure, human superstition knows no political boundary, even if certain biases do congregate on one side of the political divide.

Yea, I exaggerated a little. But my point is that we need to call out people on the left who are anti-science in the same way that we call out the right. When people claim without scientific facts, that vaccines cause autism, they are harming people. Same thing when people claim that nuclear power harms the environment.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-liberals-war-on-science/

We need to call it out when people use anti-science to promote their faulty ideas on whatever side of the political spectrum it comes from.

Do you have any evidence that antivax is primarily a left wing phenomenon?

This m sounds like an unscientific claim to me

 

[bilby]

Scientific American published an article that should be an eye opener for the anti-nuclear crowd.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste/

Coal Ash Is More Radioactive Than Nuclear Waste.

The popular conception of nuclear power is straight out of The Simpsons: Springfield abounds with signs of radioactivity, from the strange glow surrounding Mr. Burn's nuclear power plant workers to Homer's low sperm count. Then there's the local superhero, Radioactive Man, who fires beams of "nuclear heat" from his eyes. Nuclear power, many people think, is inseparable from a volatile, invariably lime-green, mutant-making radioactivity.

Coal, meanwhile, is believed responsible for a host of more quotidian problems, such as mining accidents, acid rain and greenhouse gas emissions. But it isn't supposed to spawn three-eyed fish like Blinky.

Over the past few decades, however, a series of studies has called these stereotypes into question. Among the surprising conclusions: the waste produced by coal plants is actually more radioactive than that generated by their nuclear counterparts. In fact, the fly ash emitted by a power plant—a by-product from burning coal for electricity—carries into the surrounding environment 100 times more radiation than a nuclear power plant producing the same amount of energy.

That's misleading. Yes, nuclear plants during normal operation leak much less radioactivity than coal plants. keywords here are "normal operation" and "leak", cause amount of radioactive waste (not leak) is obviously orders and orders magnitude higher for nukes.

Sure; But as spent nuclear fuel never leaks, it's effect on the wider environment is nil.

Worrying about spent fuel leaks is crazy - it would be like worrying about living near a steelworks, on the basis that molten steel is almost instantly deadly. Well, that's true; But living near a steelworks carries an approximately zero probability of coming into contact with molten steel. The hazard is extremely high, but the risk is zero.

Spent nuclear fuel is only dangerous if you get too close to it. Wrapping it in a steel and concrete dry cask, behind a fence, in a secure facility, eliminates the risk that this might occur. Problem solved.

 

[Elixir]

We need to call it out when people use anti-science to promote their faulty ideas on whatever side of the political spectrum it comes from.

Amen to THAT! It's just that ... well ...

Ohio bill orders doctors to ‘reimplant ectopic pregnancy’ or face 'abortion murder' charges

OMFG

 

[Bomb#20]

we have just as many people on the left who don't understand science as the right

I doubt it. That sounds like something you may have made up out of whole cloth. And it runs counter to my admittedly limited experience; virtually every science denier I know (more than a few) is also a right-wing religious lemming.

That's not a good reason to doubt it. Accepting the conclusions of science and understanding science are two entirely different things. The left is quite well stocked with people who accept global warming and evolution because they've been told to but would flunk a college science class. If you examine the statistics on political affiliation in academia, you'll find the chance of a professor being on the political right goes way up in the STEM fields.

a dead giveaway - addressing the well-founded presumption that there is high correlation between right wing "conservatism" (a misnomer IMHO), lack of education, religiosity and science denial.

But that presumption is being presumed primarily among leftists repeating it to one another, and it involves the sciences they have in mind, which predictably are selected based on their experience with their opponents. People are hardly going to notice the science denial among their own kind, since they're typically participating in it. But whether the presumption is correct depends on which science is at issue. People deny science that challenges their own ideological commitments. For instance, the denial that such things as Caucasoids, Negroids and Mongoloids exist is overwhelmingly found among leftists.

Denial of climate science and evolutionary biology are almost the exclusive province of right wing extremism, so maybe the spread is more even in other scientific matters.

I take it by "evolutionary biology" you mean "people evolved from animals". The folks who attacked E. O. Wilson for explaining the evolutionary biology of psychological differences between the sexes were hardly right wing extremists, and they certainly qualify as evolutionary biology deniers.

Here's an interesting tidbit: ... Similarly, the social justice view has no problem with evolutionary explanations for shaping the bodies and minds of all organisms both between and within a species regarding sex, yet insists that humans are special in that evolution has played no role in shaping observed sex-linked behavioral differences. ...

Maybe you're referring to stuff like that? For sure, human superstition knows no political boundary, even if certain biases do congregate on one side of the political divide.

Bingo. And sex differences are merely one example of a lot of the left's broader rejection of the science in nature/nurture disputes in general, as Pinker documents in The Blank Slate.

 

[barbos]

That's misleading. Yes, nuclear plants during normal operation leak much less radioactivity than coal plants. keywords here are "normal operation" and "leak", cause amount of radioactive waste (not leak) is obviously orders and orders magnitude higher for nukes.

Sure; But as spent nuclear fuel never leaks

Great, tell that to Germans and Japanese.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

... and yet proposed budgets, even with Trump admin decreases of 400 million in 2020 are over two billion for the year for Hanford decontamination efforts.

The proposed budget cuts come after the release of a Hanford “lifecycle” cost report in January that put the remaining cost of environmental cleanup at Hanford at an estimated $323 billion to $677 billion.

https://www.tri-cityherald.com/news/local/hanford/article228363169.html

BTW you're not the one who had people come out to our house twice between 1957 and 1960 to check, remove, and treat contaminated items and areas in our home just because my dad was one of those who volunteered to knock rods free after they had heated during operations.

I'm happy to report that glass embedding plant for contaminated material has become operational at Hanford. Now if we can just get rid of of 75 year old facilities and collapsing storage areas in a timely fashion .....

Hanford is the typical sort of fuck-up you see when you have a black site that the regulators can't check on. It says nothing about civilian nuclear power.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Scientific American published an article that should be an eye opener for the anti-nuclear crowd.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste/

Coal Ash Is More Radioactive Than Nuclear Waste.

The popular conception of nuclear power is straight out of The Simpsons: Springfield abounds with signs of radioactivity, from the strange glow surrounding Mr. Burn's nuclear power plant workers to Homer's low sperm count. Then there's the local superhero, Radioactive Man, who fires beams of "nuclear heat" from his eyes. Nuclear power, many people think, is inseparable from a volatile, invariably lime-green, mutant-making radioactivity.

Coal, meanwhile, is believed responsible for a host of more quotidian problems, such as mining accidents, acid rain and greenhouse gas emissions. But it isn't supposed to spawn three-eyed fish like Blinky.

Over the past few decades, however, a series of studies has called these stereotypes into question. Among the surprising conclusions: the waste produced by coal plants is actually more radioactive than that generated by their nuclear counterparts. In fact, the fly ash emitted by a power plant—a by-product from burning coal for electricity—carries into the surrounding environment 100 times more radiation than a nuclear power plant producing the same amount of energy.

Disagree. Coal plants release far more radioactivity than nuclear plants. That doesn't say coal ash is more radioactive than spent fuel. It's the coal ash gets loose, the spent fuel is almost always properly contained.

 

[fromderinside]

Well A utility passed bill passed the legislature setting up WPPSS to build three nuclear power plants at Hanford and two more plants at Satsop in the early seventies.

So much for military. How about we just say that all nuclear power companies are a bit stupid when it comes to maintenance and disposal issues. Take your fuck alls and shove them where the sun doesn't shine.

On top of all your misinformation Hanford was a prime site for storing nuclear waste from all over the country for both military and power producers.

No. You don't have to salute as your ship goes down. again.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Scientific American published an article that should be an eye opener for the anti-nuclear crowd.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste/

Coal Ash Is More Radioactive Than Nuclear Waste.

The popular conception of nuclear power is straight out of The Simpsons: Springfield abounds with signs of radioactivity, from the strange glow surrounding Mr. Burn's nuclear power plant workers to Homer's low sperm count. Then there's the local superhero, Radioactive Man, who fires beams of "nuclear heat" from his eyes. Nuclear power, many people think, is inseparable from a volatile, invariably lime-green, mutant-making radioactivity.

Coal, meanwhile, is believed responsible for a host of more quotidian problems, such as mining accidents, acid rain and greenhouse gas emissions. But it isn't supposed to spawn three-eyed fish like Blinky.

Over the past few decades, however, a series of studies has called these stereotypes into question. Among the surprising conclusions: the waste produced by coal plants is actually more radioactive than that generated by their nuclear counterparts. In fact, the fly ash emitted by a power plant—a by-product from burning coal for electricity—carries into the surrounding environment 100 times more radiation than a nuclear power plant producing the same amount of energy.

That's misleading. Yes, nuclear plants during normal operation leak much less radioactivity than coal plants. keywords here are "normal operation" and "leak", cause amount of radioactive waste (not leak) is obviously orders and orders magnitude higher for nukes.

Note, however, that coal plant emissions kill far more than nuke plant emissions even when you count accidents.

Also, an interesting bit regarding the waste.

You have x watts of nuke plant and x watts of coal plant. The waste from the nuke plant is reprocessed so only the useless stuff goes in the waste stream.

At the end of the year you prepare two storage vaults of the same size. One will hold the ash from the coal plants, one will hold the waste from the reactor. Next year, you have a new supply of waste--and you need to prepare another vault for the coal ash. The nuke waste fits in the original, though. Rinse and repeat. 10,000 years from now you have 10,000 vaults for the coal ash, but still only one vault for the nuke waste--and when you're depositing the waste for year 10,001 you pull out the waste from year 1 because it's now no longer any more radioactive than the environment. The coal ash is just as dangerous as it was the year it was put there, however. A million years from now you have a million vaults for the coal ash--but still only one for the nuke as you've removed 99% of it as the years went by.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

we have just as many people on the left who don't understand science as the right

I doubt it. That sounds like something you may have made up out of whole cloth. And it runs counter to my admittedly limited experience; virtually every science denier I know (more than a few) is also a right-wing religious lemming.

I do agree that total science deniers are almost always right wing.

However, there are plenty on the left that deny aspects of science. The anti-nuke crowd. The only-natural crowd. The anti-vax crowd. The anti-GMO crowd. The organic crowd.

They pretty much follow a standard pattern--they don't like things which are complex enough that understanding whether they are good or bad requires technical knowledge that is not easily acquired. (Not that it's hidden, just that it's complex enough that it takes a lot of study.)

It seems to me that herding is a good comparison. The right wing is easy to herd, they tend to go in the same direction and thus are obvious. The left is much more varied, rather than one big herd you have a bunch of smaller ones moving only roughly together. While any one person isn't likely to spout all the varieties of woo I think there are as many woo-spouters.