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Nuclear Power Prevents More Deaths Than It Causes
MTorrice writes "NASA researchers have compared nuclear power to fossil fuel energy sources in terms of greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution-related deaths. Using nuclear power in place of coal and gas power has prevented some 1.8 million deaths globally over the past four decades and could save millions of more lives in coming decades, concludes their study. The pair also found that nuclear energy prevents emissions of huge quantities of greenhouse gases. These estimates help make the case that policymakers should continue to rely on and expand nuclear power in place of fossil fuels to mitigate climate change, the authors say."
I am still wanting to see a viable long term storage solution for the waste, with at least one example of a spent rod finding a final and safe resting place. Otherwise the tail risk of nuclear power is just a myth.
It isn't the deaths we are most worried about.
Then what are you worried about?
It's also contaminated less land. And takes up less space overall.
Certianly compared to coal, which produces vast quantities of ash waste (which sometimes has massive spills), churns our mercury and requires insanely huge mining operations due to the sheer volume of coal required.
So, basacilly nuclear provides solid, reliable baseline power with fewer deaths per kWh than any other scheme in existence.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
It also take a lot of upfront cash. So as nice as it would be to have more nuclear energy; the window of opportunity is gone. Renewable energy sources will be far cheaper by the time a new nuclear plant opens
I would argue that it's not waste..It's valuable raw material we don't currently use
Definitely fewer than hydro I guess: check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dam_failure
My first program:
Hell Segmentation fault
Risky business, filing a logical fallacy complaint against another user while outright ignoring the reality of the situation, yourself. Most of your complaints stopped being an issue over twenty years ago as the technology matured. Modern reactors are perfectly safe, and can be constructed in such a way that they produce zero hazardous waste. The only major problem that we carry over from fossil fuels is the limited supply, which certain breeder reactor technologies promise to all but eliminate. Your entire premise is false, and has been for longer than most /. readers have been alive.
Nuclear power has the lowest deaths per TWh of any form of energy -- and that includes things like Chernobyl and Fukushima, the latter of which had a curious focus given that far, far, far more people were injured, displaced, or killed by the actual tsunami as opposed to any radiation events, now or in the future.
Direct deaths from fossil fuel sources -- including even naturally occurring radiation from conventional fossil fuel energy sources -- far outstrip any deaths that have ever occurred, or even will occur with even the most extreme statistical projections, from any nuclear power source, including accidents. That's right: there are more deaths from "radiation" from the byproducts of fossil fuel sources than there are from nuclear power, including accidents and waste.
This is what we should be worried about:
"Outdoor air pollution contributed to 1.2 million premature deaths in China in 2010, nearly 40 percent of the global total, according to a new summary of data from a scientific study on leading causes of death worldwide. Figured another way, the researchers said, China's toll from pollution was the loss of 25 million healthy years of life from the population."
There is a reason China has 30 nuclear plants under construction, while the US just approved its first new plant in 30 years.
If you're worried about accidents, then you're worried about deaths and and sickness. But fossil fuels are worse.
If you're worried about weaponisation, then you're worried about deaths. The cat's out of the bag, and not using nuclear power stations won't stop people from making bombs.
If you're worried about waste, then you need not worry.
So what are you more worried about than deaths?
Don't forget that every year the coal industry in the US pumps out more radioactive material than has ever been released from US nuclear power plants, even if you include the 3 mile island minor incident.
PV solar definitely creates more pollution per MWHr, wind would be site dependant but it's not like mining ore, smelting, etc all the pieces is pollution free plus it's not baseline and we're decades away from it being able to fill that role. Hydro is probably 80-90% tapped and we're actually tearing down hydro dams to try to help fish. Geothermal causes earthquakes and there aren't that many sites where it's economical.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Because it's the only other technology that supplies any appreciable percentage of global base load.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Simple as changing from Uranium to Thorium as a fuel supply. It consumes a small amount of Uranium to keep it's reaction going (which is why it can't go boom ) and burns with 99.9 % efficiency. Most of the remaining waste only remains radioactive for 10 years while a small amount the size of a coke can per MW remains radioactive for 300 years instead of Uranium's 10,000 years. It also is hugely less possible to proliferate than Uranium at the same time. In addition Thorium is so abundant and easy to refine that it appears easy compared to mining coal. It would cost us 1.6 Trillion in capital cost to convert all coal plants to LFTR Reactors (starting in about a 5 year time frame, once we have made the investment (23 Billion ) to overcome the inner containers materials problem. All other problems have been solved. In fact India will have their first full scale Thorium test reactor online THIS YEAR. A 500MW boohemoth! Within 3 years they will have 6 more that will follow for COMMERCIAL USE. So why not the US? I will leave it with this note there is other types of reactors that burn spent Uranium in larger quantities so consideration of them is also is an important feature to getting rid of long term waste.
Nuclear power != Nuclear bomb.
With your logic, I have decided to blame solar power on the death of anyone who got dehydrated while out in the sun. And I am going to blame wind power on the death of anyone caused by a hurricane or tornado. Under your flawed logic, more people have died from solar and wind power than have from nuclear power.
sudo make me a sandwich
Hydro is abismal, it destroys millions of acres of land with flooding and disrupts the river ecosystem. Migratory freshwater fish all around the world are rapidly facing extinction because of hydro power.
Geothermal is not infinitely renewable, heat sources can be and are being depleted, and there is evidence that it can cause earthquakes.
Solar thermal is great if you have the right environment for it, but outside the southwest, nuclear is still the better option.
We need more nuclear and more solar power.
The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few...or the one! - Spock
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
Not really a false dichotomy.
While there are numerous other sources of electrical power, the ONLY CURRENTLY AVAILABLE METHODS OF GETTING LARGE AMOUNTS OF BASELOAD POWER are fossil fuels and nuclear. Solar and wind MIGHT be able to scale up if we spend enough money improving the transmission infrastructure (which we are not). So, when talking about the big contributors, you have a limited number of options.
Now, I'm not so sanguine about TFA's answers. Having some researchers with an axe to grind (Climate Change) and having said researchers dig out some numbers of dubious quality, make a few entertaining assumptions and grind out some numbers doesn't exactly strike me as the most intellectual of ventures. In particular, the long term costs of nuclear waste storage have never been realistically modeled.
Big fission plants in the middle of nowhere might be answer - with the implicit assumption that if it starts glowing, you just put a big fence around it - but if you're going to go there, you need better transmission infrastructure and so you might as well do large scale wind / solar.....
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Your half right – because nuclear and coal are close substitute and coal is the low hanging fruit.
Both are very good a providing base load power and not much else. Natural gas can do other things – peak electricity, heating, stock feed for plastic manufacturing, etc. Solar, Wind, etc. – while getting better – can’t offer reliable baseline load.
And, if we are talking about changing the energy supply mix, then yes, it does make logical sense to ask relative questions – is A better then B? If yes, more of A and less of B.
We're worried about the *important* stuff!
The only way they can keep the price down is to nationalize it, and even then you have to have a very specific regulatory and business culture (like France) to make it work in abundance. Otherwise, the exclusive private club financing the construction of nuclear power plants will find ways to jack up the prices, essentially holding the ratepayers hostage once the community has made a commitment to having the new plant. IOW, nuclear literally puts too much power in too few hands to the extent that it gets abused immediately.
The war mongers (neoconservatives) love nuclear power the most because while they promote the scamming of consumers at home, they spread fear about its development in any country that has not put itself up for sale to Wall St. or become a client state to US military contractors.
Yes.
You got "Environmentalists" not the actually scientists per say but average guy who feels the need to stop all things that are bad, not really realizing that most things has some sort of trade-off, So they just say NO NO BAD BAD all the time. Oddly enough these people side with the left leaning parties, thus influence their policies.
You got other energy companies who won't cry to see nuclear go away. These guys tend to side with the right leaning parties, thus influence their policies.
As a counterpoint you have the supporters touting Clean, Safe, too cheap to meter. Who are just pushing the opposing side.
Nuclear Energy is dangerous, it produces a lot of hazardous wastes. However it is manageable when you have all the sides playing fairly and stop trying to discredit each other.
Nuclear Energy is part of a complete energy plan. Hydroelectric, Wind, Solar, Fossil Fuels, etc. are needed to. As of right now we are using too much Fossil Fuels, its side effects are outweighing its benefits. So we should start dialing it back a bit and replace it with other sources, yes they have their own side effects too, but they are different and if you get the right balance you are good.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I see this sort of propagandized research as a good reason for embracing James Hansen's coming departure from the Goddard Institute of Space Studies at NASA. While I agree with the main conclusion of the paper, that nuclear power has in general saved more lives than it has lost, I think he goes about it again in a haphazard fashion, heavily biased to nuclear power production.
For example, there is no breakdown of the data or consideration of alternative strategies. What's the break down of the various sources of deaths from fossil fuel burning? In particular, I was curious how many deaths he would attribute to elevated levels of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. As far as I can tell, it's not there in his research though I probably could figure it out eventually from a detailed analysis of his references.
Here's another big question. How effective would implementing other strategies, like pollution controls on coal power plants, be? If most of those lives can be saved merely by scrubbing coal power plant exhaust, then that's not a strong argument for nuclear power (and would become another propaganda element of the paper).
And once again, he exaggerates the risks of carbon dioxide emissions (in his "Implications" section).
I have no problem with Hansen putting out biased research. Just don't do it with public funds.
Nuclear proponents talk about coal because coal is the competition. If a new nuclear plant is built it will be build instead of a fossil fuel plant, it won't be replacing a wind farm. 40% of our electricity comes from coal and another 25% comes from gas. Solar, wind, hydro, and geothermal are way down on the list and have no chance of becoming the dominant source of power in the near future, if ever.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
You can own a radio without a car; you cannot operate a hydro plant without a dam. Your analogy is flawed.
The inherent dangers and ecological drawbacks of dams are necessarily inherent to hydro-electric power stations.
Give me one that can:
1) Generate base load, as in it doesn't vary with the time of day or weather.
2) Provide for power in all parts of the world, from northern latitudes to the equator.
3) Is cost effective.
You can't. That isn't to say other power generation methods aren't useful in some areas. Solar rules in the desert for peak load (when it is the hottest, you need the most energy for cooling and it is also outputting the most usually). However you are going to need something for base load. Nuclear is the best option.
If you think we could just go solar and/or wind and that would be all we need, well you haven't researched the grid very well.
Because it doesn't make sense to compare it against technologies that can't scale up to meet demand.
No country has achieved more than 20% grid penetration of wind/solar without major compromises. In the case of Denmark, they did it by trading electricity with Norway. (Norway is fortunate to have LOTS of hydro resources, and hydro is great for energy storage and filling in holes left when you use a resource that typically has only 20-30% capacity factor.)
The problem is that our hydroelectric resources are pretty much tapped out - there aren't many more places we can build dams.
So once your wind/solar penetration goes above what our current hydro resources can fill in the gaps for - you've got a BIG scaling problem.
Nuclear, on the other hand, has a pretty consistent track record of delivering capacity factors of 90% or above. (The exception being France, who actually do have too much nuclear, so much that they actually have to do demand following with some of their plants.)
So what does that leave? Coal and gas. Coal can be proven to be FAR more dangerous and dirty than nuclear, and while gas burns cleanly, if you look at the environmental impacts of modern drilling techniques (such as hydrofracturing), you're approaching as much environmental damage in the past 5-10 years as the entire history of nuclear - it's just not as obvious because instead of bad things happening at a single obvious point source, the damage being done by gas drilling is distributed geographically.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
My feelings tell me that nuclear power is bad and scary!
Nuclear Energy is part of a complete energy plan.
Well it's a stepping stone to a sustainable energy plan anyway. But yes, it will be necessary for probably 50-100 years before we can fully finish converting to entirely renewable sources.
The *only* way nuclear is 'good' is that its less bad than coal in terms of greenhouse gases. No more.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
The only entities that can afford to build a nuclear power plant such as Entergy, Duke, PG&E always end up doing the double whammy of cutting back on maintenance just as the plants start to age out. Then, they quickly spin off the plant ownership to a separate division, then a separate DBA, then quietly sell it or convert it to a wholly separate no-liability company just as the expensive chickens of total rebuilt or shutdown come home to roost.
As an aside, the folks running SONGS for PG&E decided to redesign the tube bundles when they had to be replaced. They arrogantly redesigned them - without even telling the NRC, mind you - to get more [Jeremy Clarkson] Power! [/JC], but only managed to make them wear out in mere months due to so much vibration the tubes eroded each other.
So nuclear power does make sense, if it weren't the actual short-term greedy bastards that own and run them.
Because economics will pick what's more profitable, and that's not necessarily what's safer and cleaner.
You know what's a false dichotomy? Comparing nuclear to coal when talking about costs, and renewable when talking about environmental effect.
I believe you meant "fusion". Sunlight and wind don't have a ton of energy density per m^3. We will certainly still have a use for massive amounts of power in 50-100 years.
If we're playing this game, the only way solar and wind are "good" are that they have less of an environmental impact than coal, etc. They're not impact-free.
If you have material so highly radioactive why would you store it? You should use it as fuel. You might need a slightly different type of reactor to make use of the waste material you are referring to.
The vast majority of hazardous waste from nuclear power generation is chemical in nature. And it is relatively a small amount compared to the paper industry, maybe you should think twice before putting up signs about how dangerous nuclear energy is.
Yes, and the AC was debunked by another commenter.
This is a very silly comparison. 1700 PBq of the Chernobyl release was in the form of I-131, which has a half-life of 8 days. Which means that 3 months after the disaster, it was effectively gone. Thousands more Pbq of Xenon-133 were released, but Xe133 has a half-life of 5 days. So after 2 months, that was effectively gone, 99.98% of it had decayed to stable cesium.
The only radioisotopes released from Chernobyl that are still exist in significant amounts, 26 years after the release, are Sr90 and Cs137, with half-lives of about 30 years. Total release of those isotopes was 100 Pbq. So about equal to the total radioactive release from burning coal for 100 years. But that stuff from burning coal? That's going to last for many thousands of years. (And that's just the radioactive release, the arsenic, mercury, etc? That stuff's forever.)
Meanwhile, 300,000 people a year die to air pollution. That beats Chernobyl's total by a factor of 75.
Don't forget that every year the coal industry in the US pumps out more radioactive material than has ever been released from US nuclear power plants, even if you include the 3 mile island minor incident.
Authoritative numbers for radiation release of a coal plant are hard to find, but here's what I found:
Coal plants release 330mCi per billion KWh Around 13MCi of radiation was released from TMI (mostly in the form of "harmless" noble gases.
So to figure out how many KwH of coal production that release was equivalent to:
13 x 10e6 Ci / 330 x 10e-3 Ci * 1 x 10e9 KWh = 3.9 x 10e16 Kwh
Coal plants generate 1 .5 million GWh or 1.5 x 10e6 * 10e9 = 1.5 x 10e15 Wh or 1.5 x 10e12 KWh
So the Three Mile Island release was equivalent to 3.9 x 10e16 Kwh / 1.5 x 10e12 KWh = 26,000 years worth of annual coat plant radiation release.
Most of TMI's radiation release was in the form of nobel gases that were said to be relatively harmless, only 13Ci of cancer causing Iodine-131 was released, so if you look only at the Iodine release, then the numbers are much smaller -- TMI's release was about .026 years (9.5 days) worth of coal fired power production.
Since you asked:
Deaths per terawatt hour (from nextbigfuture.com )
Coal – world average: 161
Coal – China: 278
Coal – USA: 15
Oil: 36
Natural Gas: 4
Biofuel/Biomass: 12
Peat: 12
Solar: 0.44
Wind: 0.15
Hydro: 0.10
Nuclear: 0.04
"Lives ruined" is kinda hard to track... kinda ambiguous.
Cost: Nuclear is normally in the middle for costs (long term). Solar and wind are "cheaper" but take up more property... As for property damage, check out the documentary "Windfall" on Netflix. It is about some unhappy people who agreed to have a windfarm move into their neighborhoods. Biggest complaint is noise and "flicker" caused by turning blades.
Plus I question the environmental damage wind-farms can cause. We are pulling energy out of the wind. That energy is used to create currents and is part of the ecosystem... by altering this by large wind farms, could we potentially prevent moisture from moving from offshore in land? Cause a dustbowl?
As for Nuclear: I really see that as the future. New LFT reactors, for example has waste with a half-life of, 30 years I believe... and have low pressure (no explosions) and the reaction will destabilize itself (no melt down).
if (it != oneThing) it = another;
Then what are you worried about?
Prosperity. Economic growth. Energy is the ultimate raw material necessary for these things.
Don't assume everyone shares the premise that we need cheap, abundant and clean energy. You could live out your life inside a three mile radius of your yurt nursing a solar panel. Putting you there is an ideal to which many aspire.
To be clear, I am not among them. I've just shed any illusions about whom I'm dealing with. They've either got theirs or they don't want it (the former being the vastly larger group) and job #1 is stopping you.
Lurking at the bottom of the gravity well, getting old
>
If we're playing this game, the only way solar and wind are "good" are that they have less of an environmental impact than coal, etc. They're not impact-free.
Mod Parent UP!!!!
You are indeed correct. Our energy needs are ever increasing as our population grows. Electrical demand is projected to keep going up, and I expect we will not stop that trend *anytime* soon. We will be building more and more generation capacity into the foreseeable future and, baring any major population adjustments (war, pestilence, mass starvation etc) for the next few hundred years as well. There isn't enough real estate out there for solar or enough wind blowing for wind... And "renewable" sources have their impacts too.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
There has never been a failure of a dam built specifically for hydroelectric power
Counterexamples abound if you look.
I've got quite a few friends who are anti-nuclear power and they constantly site Chernobyl, 3-mile Island and Fukushima...
The problem is that they refuse to travel to enjoy the fresh air" in Beijing. I spent 3 weeks there in February, and let me tell you, after about 3 days there my nose was constantly congested. Within about 4 days of returning to the US, it cleared up. That air is not too fresh.
Also on the few days when it is clear there, the Japanese complain because all the smog has blown it's way into Japan.
Nuclear Energy is dangerous, it produces a lot of hazardous wastes.
Yup. Totally agree. The thing is... so does Coal. And oil. And natural gas. Small scale solar actually has more deaths from installers falling off roofs than you'd think All power is somewhat dangerous - nuclear just happens to be the least dangerous we have.
FFS, coal mining and burning puts more radioactivity into the system than nuclear waste would if the plants just ground up their detritus and spewed it into the sky - while removing the natural landscape - but we're used to it so it doesn't count.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
To clarify the above poster...
Things with a 'Short' half life...Decay away. They are not a long term issue (depending on decay products)
Things with half lives of a few years or decades are nasty - they last long enough and put out enough radiation to be a problem.
Things with a long half lives approach natural background radiation levels and don't really have a significant biological impact.
Treating something with a 250k year halflife as if it was a dangerous short-mid term radioactive is terribly expensive and has no benefit.
--- Mercutio was right.
Nuclear wins... Hands down.
At least until you factor in the cost of the bribes required to get enough politicians to tell the environmental lobby to take a hike long enough to get a plant approved and running... That has apparently killed the industry over the last decade or two here in the US. World wide though, it is pretty clear that nuclear power is the way to go for generating the base of an industrialized nation's electrical power.
They would not have built them, if they didn't make financial sense... With the possible exception of North Korea and Iran who are building them for other reasons...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
The age of planes used as missiles lasted exactly one day.
The authors are Kharecha and Hansen. James Hansen is world famous for supplying warmists with NASA stamped ammo since the early 1980's
You can say a lot of things about Hansen but shilling for nukes is just not plausible. But hey, if you want to discredit one of the most credible AGW celebrities in the world go right ahead.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
Nuclear power does not prevent deaths. Not a single one. In fact, it causes quite a few deaths.
Keep in mind that electricity in general saves all kinds of lives. Refrigeration reduces food poisoning deaths, air conditioning reduces heat stroke deaths, electric light reduces deaths from candle burning accidents as well as inhaled particles, electric power runs many life-saving machines in hospitals, dialysis, etc.
I suspect the number of lives saved by any electrical power producing system far outweighs deaths - even coal.
Just wait until we start driving electric cars, etc. That's going to double the demand for electricity.
No sig today...
Nuclear power could be a lot cleaner and less dangerous if we stopped using those old-fashioned bomb-making reactors, too.
No sig today...
No country has achieved more than 20% grid penetration of wind/solar without major compromises.
What's "major compromises" supposed to mean?
Germany did generate 23% from alternative sources in 2012. And we did export more energy than in previous years even though eight of 17 nuclear sites were shut down in 2011.
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Deutschland-steigert-Stromexport-1833469.html
They would not have built them, if they didn't make financial sense...
That's not true. All prior nuclear plants were built with the cost overruns being guaranteed by either the government or consumers in a regulated monopoly. The recent proposed boom that was supposed to happen fizzled when the companies were told that they had to bear their own costs and risks of capital, market volatility and insurance rather than relying on governmental guarantees. Liberalized electricity markets make the return rates more uncertain, causing capital investors to prefer more flexible if higher fuel cost options rather than the high sunk capital costs of a fission plant.
I have the feeling that the population isn't going to be growing for too much longer. Our current population levels are subsidized by cheap fertilizers/pesticides/medicines provided by ridiculously cheap hydrocarbon sources (mostly petroleum but also natural gas). That's not going to continue forever, and without that energy and carbon subsidy our population is unsustainable. No other large mammal (>10 kilos) on the planet has ever had our numbers, the worldwide population of the "enormous" herds of wildebeests and reindeer are smaller than the number of people in Shanghai. We either need to reduce our population soon, or Ma Nature will do it for us, and she's a bitch.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
They're not impact-free.
Nothing is, but they don't have fuel costs nor fuel waste...NOTHING else can say that.
Renewables are multiple orders of magnitude less 'impacting' than fossil fuels or nuclear.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
Here. Refined nuclear fuel has roughly a million times as much energy per gram as any chemical source. Even counting the ore and refining, you just have to move much less stuff to get your energy - 1/100 to 1/1000 as much.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
As long as you subsidize it with government loan guarantees that no other power source needs, sure. But then you're not actually competing on an even level.
It would be cheaper than wars in the Middle East, wars on terror/drugs, bank bailouts, automotive bailouts, or any of that other stuff government does.
And... long-term, you'd have a chance of getting some of that money back, unlike wars in the Middle East, wars on terror/drugs, bank bailouts, automotive bailouts, or any of that other stuff government does.
No sig today...
Hydroelectricity can certainly exist without dams, there's no doubt about that. The post above mentioning Niagara Falls is another good example of that. But could a waterfall turbine or buoy farm even hope to match the output of a hydroelectric dam or compete with nuclear energy?
/* No Comment */
Oh, it is not like uranium does not have to be mined, mind you. It just magically appears there in the fuel pellet state in the close proximity of the reactor.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Meanwhile, 300,000 people a year die to air pollution. That beats Chernobyl's total by a factor of 75.
Yeah but those slowly accumulate over the year and so are easier to ignore.
I'll try this a few ways:
First:
http://www.ted.com/talks/debate_does_the_world_need_nuclear_energy.html
Second:
http://xkcd.com/1162/
Third:
I worked nuclear power for 10 years (ops/maint), coal for the last 5 years(maint), and and converting the plant to biomass from waste wood currently. As the TED talk suggests, the right answer is to build nuclear now to replace the aging plants that we currently have while we figure out how to fit the renewable sources in.
Arguably, the LFTR reactor addresses both issues. Now, the LFTR design does not completely eliminate the nuclear weapon effect, but it would make it quite a bit harder to weaponize than existing reactor designs. For practical fission reactors, I am pretty sure it is impossible to eliminate ALL possible nuke weapon uses. However, since you can clearly make a nuclear weapon if you have the resources and desire, it is impossible to eliminate the threat of nuclear weapons at all. So, this standard seems like an useless standard for nuclear power, since it can be bypassed anyway.
LFTR would clearly extend the useful cycle of high-density energy sources by a lot -- at least millions of years -- this is probably even long enough to get us transitioned to Mr. Fusion based flying cars.
Lots of smart people are looking seriously at LFTR and similar designs as the next big energy source.
With increased safety levels, Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors (a.k.a. LFTRs) would have even better results.
Then, take another step: Consider the Cost-Effectiveness of LFTRs, from construction to safe storage of waste, per Mega-KWH of electricity produced.
Now, what's the best choice, out of these 3 alternatives...?
All of this has been obvious to anyone with more than two brain cells not sold to some lobby group.
The reasons that nuclear is so disliked is not polution, it is danger. When a coal or gas plant blows up, tough luck for anyone inside. When a nuclear plant blows up, tough luck for everyone within many miles.
That, and the fact that we still don't know what to do with the radioactive waste.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Did you search the news where Germany's government is currently panicking because there reelection chance is almost zero if they can't stop power costs from increasing year over year? Oh yea you forgot that people have to afford the power too.
Your what-if scenero is really full of crap because for nuclear to kill people faster then our breeding rate we'd have to pretty much attempt to poison everybody on earth with it on purpose.
Not to mention that I've always figured that even if we had been successful with Yucca mountain, within 200 years our descendents would be cursing us as they work, fully knowing the dangers, to dig up the useful fuel we buried.
I don't read AC A human right
"Although the concentration of Uranium and Thorium in coal is extremely low, a typical 1000 MW coal fired plant burns about 4 million tons of coal every year. This results in an unregulated release to the environment of 5.2 tons of Uranium along with 12.8 tons of Thorium from a single coal plant each year. This does not include the large amounts of radium, radon, polonium and potassium-40 that is also released from coal plants."
There are 7000 coal power plants in the world with many more planned making alternative energy solutions completely insignificant. Consider that in the US almost twice as much uranium is released into the environment by coal plants than is used, stored in fused glass and buried by nuclear plants!
The percentage of uranium in ore bodies that are mined tends to be pretty low as such things go -- lots and lots of ore gets extracted and processed to get those kg's of U, then it has to be enriched wrt U235 to be useful. The de-enriched aka "spent" U238 waste product is used to poison anyone we shoot artillery shells at.