Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site dciem.UUCP Path: utzoo!dciem!mmt From: mmt@dciem.UUCP (Martin Taylor) Newsgroups: net.flame,net.politics Subject: Re: Sevener vs. Wheeler on nuclear power Message-ID: <838@dciem.UUCP> Date: Sun, 8-Apr-84 13:23:40 EST Article-I.D.: dciem.838 Posted: Sun Apr 8 13:23:40 1984 Date-Received: Sun, 8-Apr-84 21:16:20 EST References: <2681@azure.UUCP> Organization: D.C.I.E.M., Toronto, Canada Lines: 41 =================== b) According to Ralph Nader, nuclear plants are more polluting than their fossil fueled equivalents if you look at the total picture. That is, if you take into account the exposed tailings from uranium mines, the environmental impact of a nuclear plant is greater than a coal-fired plant. And when you begin to consider the possibility of an accident, well, I don't think that there's much of a contest. =================== I don't know where Nader gets his information, but this topic was thoroughly discussed at a AAAS symposium about 3 or 4 years ago, and in several articles in Science since then. The bottom line is that if you include all the environmental implications (black-lung vs uranium tailings, transportation accidents and incidents ... ) nuclear power is about an order or magnitude safer than coal, even with the most generous assumptions favouring coal. As for the worst conceivable accident (the one-in-a-billion chance), the worst that could happen to a nuclear plant is to be blown up by an H-bomb. This would make an area about the size of France uninhabitable for quite a few years. With coal, the worst possible accident is that the entire planet becomes uninhabitable because of the greenhouse effect, that could (the one-in-a-billion chance) turn Earth into another Venus. Even if you think only about radiation release to the environment, coal comes out worse than nuclear on a daily basis, and the radiation release from coal power plants is widely distributed. At least the problem of nuclear waste is localized. The worst one could do with nuclear waste is to dump it into a salt sea-marsh, from which it is distributed slowly around the neighbouring coastal waters. Bad news for those nearby, but it would be possible to quarantine the area of worst hazard. It isn't possible to quarantine the area of hazard from coal plants. Of course, conservation is best, but you can't do without central energy supplies with our current technological civilization, and it takes around 50 years to ramp up an energy technology (and to ramp one down). Fortunately, the one possible energy supply source that can fill the gap between oil and something else is the safest supply source we know -- nuclear fission. -- Martin Taylor {allegra,linus,ihnp4,uw-beaver,floyd,ubc-vision}!utzoo!dciem!mmt