Slashdot Mirror
Megatons To Megawatts Program Comes To a Close
necro81 writes "In the aftermath of the Cold War, the disintegrating Soviet Union had tens of thousands of nuclear weapons and tons of weapons-grade fissile material. In the economic and political turmoil, many feared that it would fall into unfriendly hands. However, thanks to the doggedness of an MIT professor, Dr. Thomas Neff, 500 metric tons of weapons grade material made its way into nuclear reactors in the United States through the Megatons to Megawatts program. During the program, about 10% of all electricity generated in the U.S. came from weapons once aimed at the country. Now, after nearly 20 years, the program is coming to an end. The final shipment of Soviet-era uranium, now nuclear fuel, has arrived in Baltimore."
So it is the nuclear industries fault that they follow safety regs and your mom and pop solar installer doesn't?
Nuclear is far far safer than most things. 250k coal mining deaths in the last 50 years worldwide. 64 nuclear deaths. Even accounting for relative energy production nuke is about 6% (fossiil fuels were lumped together where I found them http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W...) and scaling: you'd be looking at ~1k deaths if all were nuke versus about 500k if all coal (assuming ~50% of the fossil fuels is coal generation, the rest oil, natural gas).