Is that COP OUT 20?

[ZiprHead]

How about instead of tearing apart the numerous scholarly studies linking uranium mining and cancer, maybe, just maybe, you people could link to some studies that disagree? I did find some. Too bad they were published by the nuclear industry.

 

[beero1000]

I'd like to see a single well-designed study. No one is arguing that radon doesn't cause cancer, but if you're trying to determine how much cancer uranium mining causes you need to have a realistic comparison for control...

In particular, the linked papers compare:

1. Uranium miners vs military veterans
2. Uranium miners vs general population
3. Uranium miners vs general population
4. No comparison
5. Uranium miners vs general population

I'm unimpressed.

The observed differences from the usual lung cancer mutational spectrum may reflect the genotoxic effects of radon.

Obviously #4 compared to "the usual lung cancer mutation spectrum" meaning they did compare to standard cancers seen in smokers and other lung cancer sufferers.

Considering that cancers among even smoking miners was eleven times greater than smokers in the general population, I find your apologia unconvincing.

If not comparing to the general population, whom would you compare to? Personally, I think that's the whole point.

I'd like to see them compared to groups that are as similar as possible in order to avoid confounding factors. Do you really not see how comparisons to the general population cannot show that it is the uranium mining that is causing the cancer, and not something else? That's the whole problem with epidemiological studies, in this case exacerbated by poor design that didn't even account for obvious factors.

 

[beero1000]

How about instead of tearing apart the numerous scholarly studies linking uranium mining and cancer, maybe, just maybe, you people could link to some studies that disagree? I did find some. Too bad they were published by the nuclear industry.

Do you really not understand the difference between your straw man and what I'm actually saying? I know it's a slightly subtle point, but FFS, it isn't that complicated.

 

[ZiprHead]

Who would be as similar as possible to uranium miners?

 

[bilby]

How about instead of tearing apart the numerous scholarly studies linking uranium mining and cancer, maybe, just maybe, you people could link to some studies that disagree? I did find some. Too bad they were published by the nuclear industry.

How about you simply accept that unless you can show that hundreds of thousands of uranium miners have died due to their work, this is an irrelevant derail - because if the number is any fewer than that, nuclear remains safer than coal, and the conclusion that coal should be replaced by nuclear on health and safety grounds alone, remains sound?

This irrelevant nonsense is just a propaganda tactic. For the sake of argument, let's say that there have been some massively inflated number of uranium miner deaths due to the power industry. Say 50,000 (which is likely two orders of magnitude above any figure you could actually source, even from the most crazy sources)...

... Now, given that huge and implausible figure, nuclear power is STILL orders of magnitude safer than coal power.

So who cares whether there are tens or whether there are hundreds of dead uranium miners; are their lives somehow more valuable than the lives of the hundreds of THOUSANDS of coal miners who would have had to die to make the same amount of electricity from coal?

 

[ZiprHead]

Yeah, sure. Nobody dies of cancer.

 

[bilby]

Yeah, sure. Nobody dies of cancer.

Lots of people die from cancer.

Lots of people died from cancer before nuclear power was even invented.

Several dozen people - perhaps even as many as a few hundred, if we believe the scaremongering - have died from cancer due to the nuclear power industry; and far more have died from cancer due to the coal power industry.

Cancer sucks.

That simple fact tells us nothing about the relative merits of coal vs nuclear power.

Looking at the fine details, if you care ONLY about cancer, nuclear is probably safer than coal.

If you care about all causes of death, illness and injury, nuclear is tens of thousands of times safer than coal.


It's as simple as that.

 

[ZiprHead]

Yeah, sure. Nobody dies of cancer.

Lots of people die from cancer.

Lots of people died from cancer before nuclear power was even invented.

Several dozen people - perhaps even as many as a hundred) have died from cancer due to the nuclear power industry; and far more have died from cancer due to the coal power industry.

Cancer sucks.

That simple fact tells us nothing about the relative merits of coal vs nuclear power.

Looking at the fine details, if you care ONLY about cancer, nuclear is safer than coal.

If you care about all causes of death, illness and injury, nuclear is tens of thousands of times safer than coal.


It's as simple as that.

And again, you are relying on your goal post move. Remember I first got into this because you stated that the IS terror attack in Paris killed more people than the nuclear power industry. I take it by the above that you are retracting that statement.

 

[bilby]

Lots of people die from cancer.

Lots of people died from cancer before nuclear power was even invented.

Several dozen people - perhaps even as many as a hundred) have died from cancer due to the nuclear power industry; and far more have died from cancer due to the coal power industry.

Cancer sucks.

That simple fact tells us nothing about the relative merits of coal vs nuclear power.

Looking at the fine details, if you care ONLY about cancer, nuclear is safer than coal.

If you care about all causes of death, illness and injury, nuclear is tens of thousands of times safer than coal.


It's as simple as that.

And again, you are relying on your goal post move. Remember I first got into this because you stated that the IS terror attack in Paris killed more people than the nuclear power industry. I take it by the above that you are retracting that statement.

Not at all.

I am simply declaring that I don't care whether or not you believe it.

It is not important enough to waste any further time on; it's true, but even if you want to believe that it is a thousandfold underestimate, the point I am trying to make by it still stands.

It is not important to me to care about whether you agree or not; unlike the real issue of climate change and the continuing support for the coal industry from the so-called 'environmental' lobby who block the best alternative to coal - which is an important issue - whether or not some guy in the Internet agrees with the minutiae of my illustrative claim is of fuck-all importance.

I'm not moving the goalposts; I'm quitting the game, because I have better things to do than play.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

So who cares whether there are tens or whether there are hundreds of dead uranium miners; are their lives somehow more valuable than the lives of the hundreds of THOUSANDS of coal miners who would have had to die to make the same amount of electricity from coal?

This would seem to be the relevant comparison to be making. It's less important to determine the rate at which uranium miners die in relation to the general population as it would be to determine how many of them die in relation to coal miners, since one of the arguments is to stop using coal power and replace it with nuclear power. If ten uranium miners die every year from radiation poisoning but fifty coal miners die every year from black lung (I'm not sure if either of those are actual risks to the workers, I'm just using them as examples) then the deaths caused by uranium mining are a positive factor in moving more power generation to the nuclear industry.

 

[dismal]

So who cares whether there are tens or whether there are hundreds of dead uranium miners; are their lives somehow more valuable than the lives of the hundreds of THOUSANDS of coal miners who would have had to die to make the same amount of electricity from coal?

This would seem to be the relevant comparison to be making. It's less important to determine the rate at which uranium miners die in relation to the general population as it would be to determine how many of them die in relation to coal miners, since one of the arguments is to stop using coal power and replace it with nuclear power. If ten uranium miners die every year from radiation poisoning but fifty coal miners die every year from black lung (I'm not sure if either of those are actual risks to the workers, I'm just using them as examples) then the deaths caused by uranium mining are a positive factor in moving more power generation to the nuclear industry.

Three points:

1) You should probably scale to the amount of energy produced.
2) You should probably take into account the entire system-wide effects (e.g., supposedly coal emissions cause thousands of deaths)
3) Generally people who are all jazzed up about CO2 reductions but against nuclear (and natural gas, I would add) are not thinking of coal as the alternative (despite evidence that coal exists and has been growing) but some magickal technology like solar or unicorn farts.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

This would seem to be the relevant comparison to be making. It's less important to determine the rate at which uranium miners die in relation to the general population as it would be to determine how many of them die in relation to coal miners, since one of the arguments is to stop using coal power and replace it with nuclear power. If ten uranium miners die every year from radiation poisoning but fifty coal miners die every year from black lung (I'm not sure if either of those are actual risks to the workers, I'm just using them as examples) then the deaths caused by uranium mining are a positive factor in moving more power generation to the nuclear industry.

Three points:

1) You should probably scale to the amount of energy produced.
2) You should probably take into account the entire system-wide effects (e.g., supposedly coal emissions cause thousands of deaths)
3) Generally people who are all jazzed up about CO2 reductions but against nuclear (and natural gas, I would add) are not thinking of coal as the alternative (despite evidence that coal exists and has been growing) but some magickal technology like solar or unicorn farts.

1) That's why rates should be used instead of overall deaths. If, on average, one person dies per mine per year then it doesn't matter if there's ten mines in one industry and five hundred in the other.
2) The argument against uranium mining seems to be a "it's too dangerous to get it out of the ground" type of argument. It would be best to relate it to how dangerous it is to get coal out of the ground in terms of lung cancer for the workers, getting run over by fracking trucks, etc, as opposed to deaths by the industry as a whole. Deaths by coal emissions would be better related to deaths from Chernobyl events and the like, in a "it's too dangerous to use this stuff" type of argument.
3) I've been trying to tell people for years how much unicorns like chili, so this is an industry we could get off the ground tomorrow, but the fucking hippies just won't stop feeding them carrots. You try telling a hippie how to take care of his unicorn - it's like arguing with a table.

 

[dismal]

Three points:

1) You should probably scale to the amount of energy produced.
2) You should probably take into account the entire system-wide effects (e.g., supposedly coal emissions cause thousands of deaths)
3) Generally people who are all jazzed up about CO2 reductions but against nuclear (and natural gas, I would add) are not thinking of coal as the alternative (despite evidence that coal exists and has been growing) but some magickal technology like solar or unicorn farts.

1) That's why rates should be used instead of overall deaths. If, on average, one person dies per mine per year then it doesn't matter if there's ten mines in one industry and five hundred in the other.
2) The argument against uranium mining seems to be a "it's too dangerous to get it out of the ground" type of argument. It would be best to relate it to how dangerous it is to get coal out of the ground in terms of lung cancer for the workers, getting run over by fracking trucks, etc, as opposed to deaths by the industry as a whole. Deaths by coal emissions would be better related to deaths from Chernobyl events and the like, in a "it's too dangerous to use this stuff" type of argument.
3) I've been trying to tell people for years how much unicorns like chili, so this is an industry we could get off the ground tomorrow, but the fucking hippies just won't stop feeding them carrots. You try telling a hippie how to take care of his unicorn - it's like arguing with a table.

1) I would scale by power output. Deaths per gigajoule of delivered energy or somesuch. One mine or miner may produce significantly more energy than the other.
2) I don't understand why you wouldn't include all sorts of deaths if you are trying to make a conclusion about which fuel is safer. I guess if you were making a narrow comment such as "uranium mining is more dangerous than coal mining" you'd juts look at the mine deaths but I think this is a "my energy is better than your energy" sort of dance off.
3) The best thing about unicorn farts is they are so high in energy that only a few unicorns eating either carrots or chili can fart enough energy to power our existing grid many times over. They also smell like roses.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

1) That's why rates should be used instead of overall deaths. If, on average, one person dies per mine per year then it doesn't matter if there's ten mines in one industry and five hundred in the other.
2) The argument against uranium mining seems to be a "it's too dangerous to get it out of the ground" type of argument. It would be best to relate it to how dangerous it is to get coal out of the ground in terms of lung cancer for the workers, getting run over by fracking trucks, etc, as opposed to deaths by the industry as a whole. Deaths by coal emissions would be better related to deaths from Chernobyl events and the like, in a "it's too dangerous to use this stuff" type of argument.
3) I've been trying to tell people for years how much unicorns like chili, so this is an industry we could get off the ground tomorrow, but the fucking hippies just won't stop feeding them carrots. You try telling a hippie how to take care of his unicorn - it's like arguing with a table.

1) I would scale by power output. Deaths per gigajoule of delivered energy or somesuch. One mine or miner may produce significantly more energy than the other.
2) I don't understand why you wouldn't include all sorts of deaths if you are trying to make a conclusion about which fuel is safer. I guess if you were making a narrow comment such as "uranium mining is more dangerous than coal mining" you'd juts look at the mine deaths but I think this is a "my energy is better than your energy" sort of dance off.
3) The best thing about unicorn farts is they are so high in energy that only a few unicorns eating either carrots or chili can fart enough energy to power our existing grid many times over. They also smell like roses.

OK, those are fair points.

 

[Axulus]

http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=378195

http://journals.lww.com/health-physics/Abstract/1969/05000/Mortality_of_Uranium_Miners_in_Relation_to.4.aspx

http://www.nejm.org/doi/pdf/10.1056/NEJM198406073102301

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0140673692908662

http://oem.bmj.com/content/53/10/697.full.pdf

These are just a few of the published research articles linking uranium mining to cancer and other health issues. And many of them did include tobacco use in their finding well over and above what they would find in tobacco users otherwise (the first cite I posted did take tobacco use into account too).

Would you like more?

What are the estimated number of deaths (or range of deaths) attributable to uranium mining for the nuclear power industry as per these studies? Could you summarize it for us?

 

[arkirk]

I think you are beginning to get the idea. There is a terrible lot of prime infrastructure that will lose its significance and wealth once we as a society begin to tackle the transition from Carbon and Nukes. Nukes create a large volume of highly radioactive waste.

replace/large/tiny/

In the 80's and indeed up until today, efforts were made to find ways to contain this waste and they all failed. Attempts were made to isolate it in glass but the radiation quickly reduced the glass balls it was contained in to fractured rubble. The problem was old in 80's and older today and still there. Our atmosphere is a little warmer today than when transition to alternative energy was first proposed. Every little increase in temperature means more and more south Pacific real estate is disappearing and whole countries are buying housing for their people when they have to leave. The scenario the oil companies are building would have cities like New York relocating. It is long past the time we should have started thinking and doing something about this.

What are you smoking?? There are multiple good answers for dealing with high level waste. Yucca mountain would work, salt mines would work, deep sea mud would work. If it weren't for global warming dropping it in Antarctica would work. The issue is political. (And the question of whether we should be seeking to dispose of it in the first place without reprocessing.)

Actually, places like New York have very tall buildings that all have huge continuous energy requirements. Once we truly get serious about climate change we will not be building any more sky scrapers anyway.

Skyscrapers have less surface area for the volume than small buildings and thus less loss to the environment. While I haven't seen any numbers I would expect that in general a skyscraper is more energy efficient than the same space in smaller buildings.

Loren: No matter where you put this waste it becomes a SACRIFICE ZONE. As for sky scrapers....just moving the people to and from the working/living spaces in the building uses excessive energy. Their immense costs in construction are almost entirely due to energy demands. Just delivering water pressure to upper level floors requires far more energy than ground floor. Construction and operating costs compound the higher the building gets and so do the liabilities. There is far less efficiency in sky scrapers. They are actually just pawns in the corporate struggles for economic and social domination.

There are standards for construction of these behemoths. As unsustainable energy becomes less and less available, the cost of their construction will eventually become first unreasonable as it is today) and later very unmanageable in the finance department. The truth is a lot of these buildings are having problems today. One of the things with the Trade Center (remember they lost three of these buildings there to "fire" the first three in history) was shrinking tenant population and income. This was going on when the "terrorists" struck and gave the building owners insurance relief.

The high level nuclear waste is NOT GOING TO YUCCA MOUNTAIN...because it was not secure enough. You seem to have no real connection with the news on these matters. You seem to think that just because something came later, it is automatically okay. The denial of Yucca Mountain dump came later...where is your modern thinking now. If we had the answers you claim we have regarding some sort of rendering nuclear waste harmless, that would be the kind of news environmentalists would be happy to see, but it just isn't happening. What is happening is a couple of dying industries are mounting public relations campaigns full of lies to keep going a little longer. It is intellectually and socially corrupt on their part and I feel you know this too.
Are you sure you are not a Borg?

 

[ZiprHead]

What are the estimated number of deaths (or range of deaths) attributable to uranium mining for the nuclear power industry as per these studies? Could you summarize it for us?

Haven't found anywhere where it's been extrapolated to the entire industry. Uranium mining is a world-wide industry and cancers can come about years after the workers have left the mines. My point was simply that the nuclear industry is not nearly as safe as Bilby was trying to portray it.

 

[arkirk]

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion...fukushimas-appalling-death-toll/#.Vl4WrHarQgs

Just some more information on Fukushima. The cancer effects of radiation is due to low level exposure. High level exposure gives you cell fatality. Lower level exposures give you mutations that live and sometimes are cancerous. It is a kind of roulette wheel effect...but there is a statistical connection between radiation exposure and cancer. The fact is that these effects on populations are very hard to trace on a case by case basis, but the numbers still point to the fact that radiation exposure results in an increase in cancer. How many cancers...where do you measure. This lack of individualized data on cancer protected the asbestos industry and the tobacco industry for years while we all knew that asbestos and cigarettes were bad for you and could kill you.

The nuclear apologists along with the coal people and other fossil energy people are hiding behind the complexity of the situation though the handwriting is clearly on the wall in a statistical sense. I think it is a jackass thing to do to shake one's finger at people in the know and rejecting statistics and demanding individual case by case positive answers that nobody has bothered to nail down yet.

 

[bilby]

replace/large/tiny/

In the 80's and indeed up until today, efforts were made to find ways to contain this waste and they all failed. Attempts were made to isolate it in glass but the radiation quickly reduced the glass balls it was contained in to fractured rubble. The problem was old in 80's and older today and still there. Our atmosphere is a little warmer today than when transition to alternative energy was first proposed. Every little increase in temperature means more and more south Pacific real estate is disappearing and whole countries are buying housing for their people when they have to leave. The scenario the oil companies are building would have cities like New York relocating. It is long past the time we should have started thinking and doing something about this.

What are you smoking?? There are multiple good answers for dealing with high level waste. Yucca mountain would work, salt mines would work, deep sea mud would work. If it weren't for global warming dropping it in Antarctica would work. The issue is political. (And the question of whether we should be seeking to dispose of it in the first place without reprocessing.)

Actually, places like New York have very tall buildings that all have huge continuous energy requirements. Once we truly get serious about climate change we will not be building any more sky scrapers anyway.

Skyscrapers have less surface area for the volume than small buildings and thus less loss to the environment. While I haven't seen any numbers I would expect that in general a skyscraper is more energy efficient than the same space in smaller buildings.

Loren: No matter where you put this waste it becomes a SACRIFICE ZONE.

You keep using that phrase; But you still haven't responded to my repeated requests to explain what it means.

If you mean that people cannot safely enter an area where nuclear waste is stored, then that's true, but hardly a problem - people can't safely enter all kinds of areas, and I doubt that they really want to hang out in abandoned mines or in the deep ocean in the first place. The actual volume of high-level waste is tiny; the chemical industry has already produced plenty of no-go zones; as has coal power (fly ash is nasty stuff), and 70%+ of the planets surface is naturally hazardous to human life without protective gear. It's a non-issue.

As for sky scrapers....just moving the people to and from the working/living spaces in the building uses excessive energy. Their immense costs in construction are almost entirely due to energy demands. Just delivering water pressure to upper level floors requires far more energy than ground floor. Construction and operating costs compound the higher the building gets and so do the liabilities. There is far less efficiency in sky scrapers. They are actually just pawns in the corporate struggles for economic and social domination.

There are standards for construction of these behemoths. As unsustainable energy becomes less and less available, the cost of their construction will eventually become first unreasonable as it is today) and later very unmanageable in the finance department. The truth is a lot of these buildings are having problems today. One of the things with the Trade Center (remember they lost three of these buildings there to "fire" the first three in history) was shrinking tenant population and income. This was going on when the "terrorists" struck and gave the building owners insurance relief.

The high level nuclear waste is NOT GOING TO YUCCA MOUNTAIN...because it was not secure enough idiots protested against it because nuclear power is bad, mmmkay?.

FTFY.

You seem to have no real connection with the news on these matters.

Radical environmentalist fearmongering websites are not the same thing as 'news'

You seem to think that just because something came later, it is automatically okay. The denial of Yucca Mountain dump came later...where is your modern thinking now. If we had the answers you claim we have regarding some sort of rendering nuclear waste harmless, that would be the kind of news environmentalists would be happy to see, but it just isn't happening.

It happened. But it wasn't 'good enough', because what they won't admit (but is clear from their actions) is that NOTHING will be good enough. That's the problem when your religion declares something 'sinful'; it is an absolute position, and you just cannot compromise, no matter how compelling the reasons to do so might become.

What is happening is a couple of dying industries are mounting public relations campaigns full of lies to keep going a little longer.

Yes, like the coal industry, who you are unwittingly supporting

It is intellectually and socially corrupt on their part and I feel you know this too.

It is; and you should stop doing it.

 

[ZiprHead]

Loren: No matter where you put this waste it becomes a SACRIFICE ZONE. As for sky scrapers....just moving the people to and from the working/living spaces in the building uses excessive energy. Their immense costs in construction are almost entirely due to energy demands. Just delivering water pressure to upper level floors requires far more energy than ground floor. Construction and operating costs compound the higher the building gets and so do the liabilities. There is far less efficiency in sky scrapers. They are actually just pawns in the corporate struggles for economic and social domination.

There are standards for construction of these behemoths. As unsustainable energy becomes less and less available, the cost of their construction will eventually become first unreasonable as it is today) and later very unmanageable in the finance department. The truth is a lot of these buildings are having problems today. One of the things with the Trade Center (remember they lost three of these buildings there to "fire" the first three in history) was shrinking tenant population and income. This was going on when the "terrorists" struck and gave the building owners insurance relief.

The high level nuclear waste is NOT GOING TO YUCCA MOUNTAIN...because it was not secure enough. You seem to have no real connection with the news on these matters. You seem to think that just because something came later, it is automatically okay. The denial of Yucca Mountain dump came later...where is your modern thinking now. If we had the answers you claim we have regarding some sort of rendering nuclear waste harmless, that would be the kind of news environmentalists would be happy to see, but it just isn't happening. What is happening is a couple of dying industries are mounting public relations campaigns full of lies to keep going a little longer. It is intellectually and socially corrupt on their part and I feel you know this too.View attachment 4902
Are you sure you are not a Borg?

I don't have a problem with nuclear power per se. I share your concern about waste disposal. This is material that can be highly dangerous for hundreds of years, and in some cases much longer. Who knows what society and the environment will be like just 100 years in the future, let alone even further. I feel it's highly irresponsible to leave what could be an immense and highly dangerous problem for future generations to deal with when it's quite possible there may be no solution.