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From: mmt@dciem.UUCP (Martin Taylor)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Nuclear power reduces radioactivity
Message-ID: <900@dciem.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 1-May-84 18:38:13 EDT
Article-I.D.: dciem.900
Posted: Tue May  1 18:38:13 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 1-May-84 20:45:28 EDT
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Organization: D.C.I.E.M., Toronto, Canada
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==================
This is not to say that coal is harmless, but I think that the sulphur content
is a much more serious problem than the minute amount of radiation in coal.
==================
Regardless of whether the emissions from coal power plants are more or
less radioactive than those from nuclear plants, the above statement
is probably true.  And it isn't just the sulphur.  There are lots of
compounds involved, both carcinogenic and teratogenic.  The main problem
with both radioactive and chemical pollution is that it kills us by
inducing cancer and it kills our children and their descendants by
genetic damage.  Both radioactivity and chemical pollution have rapidly
decaying and long-lived components.  Both sources can (with difficulty)
be sequestered from the environment for the most part. The volume is
greater for chemical pollutants, because it usually is mixed with large
volumes of effluent gas.  In nuclear plants, the volume problem is with
the ore from which the major radioactive elements have been extracted.

We should compare systems in terms of their effects, not in terms of the
methods by which those effects are achieved.  Chemical or radiation-induced
cancer or mutations are equally bad and their causes can be equally
long-lived.  The policy answers come down to numbers: how to control
the numbers of people adversely affected, and the degree to which
seriously affected people are damaged.
-- 

Martin Taylor
{allegra,linus,ihnp4,uw-beaver,floyd,ubc-vision}!utzoo!dciem!mmt