Nuclear plant shutdowns tied to coal pollution, decreased birth weights

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-environment-pediatrics-idUSKBN1762ZK

by bpodgursky • 9 years ago

170 188 9 years ago

Aloha• 9 years ago

While I don't doubt that coal pollution is harmful, I do have to wonder how much the study controlled for other conditions that could cause these changes (like economic factors).

I can't help but wonder if this is confusing correlation with causation even if just a little.

xroche2• 9 years ago

Closing nuclear power plants and replacing them with coal power plants is simply criminal. In Europe, coal pollution kills ~20,000 people each year (), nuclear never killed a single person, and no study could ever provide any mortality increase due to nuclear energy (outside the Tchernobyl accident, which killed between 200 and 4000 people depending on estimations, after 20 years of study)

To be clear: nuclear is not the perfect solution, is not a renewable energy, and will have to be replaced by something else in the future. But this is the least deadly energy, even safer than wind or solar power ()

() https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/jun/12/european... () http://www.nextbigfuture.com/2016/06/update-of-death-per-ter...

pdog• 9 years ago

Fukushima has demonstrated that humans aren't great at controlling or predicting the real risk of nuclear. The fact is, even if no one dies from acute radiation poisoning, nuclear disasters are costly and devastating.

loeg• 9 years ago

That can be mitigated in the US because the entire country doesn't run along a fault line. Not so Japan. Yes, don't build your nuclear reactor in western California.

bpodgursky• 9 years ago

Fukushima has demonstrated that relying on 60's technology and refusing to upgrade or invest because of political sensitivities exposes you to disasters 50 years down the line.

It's like if everyone got afraid of airplanes in the 1980's and kept flying the same ones from the 60s through today because people were afraid to build new ones. Would you say air travel was unsafe, or that we made poor technology investments?

mpweiher19• 9 years ago

Dunno. The Tsunami killed upwards of 15000 people. I don't have figures, but I am sure that a good number of these were not killed by the wave directly, but by technical contraptions that failed, crushed them or what have you.

One of these many technical contraptions that was damaged/destroyed by the Tsunami was the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. Yet, so far not a single person has been killed as a result of that failure, and so far the predictions are that future deaths will be so low as to disappear into the statistical noise. (And these predictions tend to be on the high side: the WHO created reports every decade after Chernobyl, and each report massively revised those estimates downwards).

Yet, all we ever hear about is Fukushima.

Odd. That.

ekianjo3• 9 years ago

We are still waiting for Fukushima nuclear event related deaths. The tsunami already killed 15000 people. Yeah, nuclear is super risky.

Turing_Machine4• 9 years ago

1) Massive earthquake

2) Devastating tsunami

3) Crippling fire causing loss of power to all control circuitry.

Even with all that, the number of direct radiation casualties was zero. There are about six workers who got more than a lifetime allowed dose of radiation. They may have an increased cancer risk.

1) How many do you suppose would have died had it been a hydroelectric dam of similar capacity? (hint: a lot more than six)

2) Just how safe does something have to be?

tonyedgecombe• 9 years ago

In other words nuclear never killed anybody apart from the ones it killed:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_and_radiation_...

blowski3• 9 years ago

I'm no expert on Chernobyl or power generation. But I think Chernobyl was the result of under-investment and poor management, whereas many of the deaths from coal are an unavoidable consequence of burning coal. Hence, you can say nuclear is safer as long as it's managed well.

thro1111111• 9 years ago

It only kills in case of a serious incident. Incidents are rare. Coal pollution and deaths are guaranteed

whiskers08xmt• 9 years ago

I think the important difference is killing people when running as intended, versus killing people when disasters occur. In a way, a Nulcear power plant is similar to dam; when the dam breaks, it's a serious disaster, but as long as it runs as intended, humans aren't really at risk.

folli3• 9 years ago

Based on this list, even the summed death toll of these incidences is still massively lower than the single worst incident involving hydroelectricity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam

rurban• 9 years ago

Nuclear killed a lot of people already and will for the next thousands of generations. There is still no proper prospect of how to get rid of that poison. That's not comparable to any other technology. That's why nuclear energy needs to demolished and banned.

vidarh10• 9 years ago

Those nuclear accidents are covered in those numbers. The deaths from nuclear have simply not been very high, and the amount of energy created is massive. The result is a very low mortality per unit of power.

Symmetry3• 9 years ago

If every single nuclear plant exploded like Fukushima a productive lifetime like Fukushima had did that would still be only an order of magnitude more deaths from nuclear than from coal.

legulere5• 9 years ago

(outside the Tchernobyl accident, which killed between 200 and 4000 people depending on estimations, after 20 years of study)

Wikipedia seems to give 4000 as an estimate on those exposed to the highest levels of radiation alone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster#Cancer_proj...

On the other hand coal, wind and solar never poisoned our food (wild boars in Germany thousands of km away still often are too radioactive to be eaten ). Coal, wind and solar never led to emergency evacuations. Coal, wind and solar cannot be used to make atomic bombs.

wbl• 9 years ago

Really? Have you already forgotten about this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingston_Fossil_Plant_coal_fly...

If coal plants had the same radiation rules as nuclear plants, they couldn't run.

foepys• 9 years ago

Also if a terrorist flys a plane into a coal plant they will not make hundreds of km² uninhabitable.

biehl• 9 years ago

Coal probably does poison our food with mercury and other heavy metals :(

folli3• 9 years ago

It's good that you don't mention hydroelectric energy, because based on your criteria this is the most dangerous way to produce electric power, killing 170,000 people in a single incident: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam

TheSpiceIsLife5• 9 years ago

This is incredibly myopic.

Burning coal for electricity generation has released in to the environment more radiation, heavy metals, and other pollutants than civil nuclear power could ever hope to.

bootload2• 9 years ago

"Coal,"

Don't mix coal... with wind and solar.

Coal releases proportional amounts of carbon dioxide when used to generate power. On the other hand, wind and solar release fixed amounts of carbon dioxide (during construction and transport) then generate energy C02 free.

Baeocystin• 9 years ago

Coal burning has poisoned more food than literally any other industrial activity of humankind. Where do you think the mercury in fish comes from?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_in_fish#Origins_of_mer...

Tomte• 9 years ago

We still don't know how to handle spent fuel.

So nuclear apologists are simply offering a calculation, where the biggest risk/liability has been left out, because "what number should we put in?".

Also, I'm always fascinated of the "Chernobyl was unsafe, today reactors are safe" argument. The exact same line was fed to us when Chernobyl was state of the art.

There are good reasons to think that it may indeed be so this time. But the nuclear industry has lost all trust and all right to demand anyone ever trusted them again.

WalterBright3• 9 years ago

Chernobyl argument

Consider airliners. Airliners have been around for 80 years, and get substantially safer every decade. This is a statistical fact. Every crash is used as a learning experience and designs, procedures, and training is adjusted as a result.

There's no reason to believe that such does not apply to nuclear power stations.

mpweiher19• 9 years ago

We still don't know how to handle spent fuel.

Actually we do, technically, and the amount is trivial (and can be reused, though that isn't currently being done). Spent fuel is a political problem. In fact, last time I checked even just the radiation from coal power plants is greater than from nuclear plants.

The exact same line was fed to us when Chernobyl was state of the art

Chernobyl was never state of the art and western reactors, which are much safer, are also of a design derived from military designs, not optimized for safety. Also, the negative health effects of coal and other energy sources are so much worse than even Chernobyl that it isn't funny.

de_Selby• 9 years ago

We still don't know how to handle spent fuel.

Yes we do, we can reprocess most of it and then just store what's left - which is such a small amount it could just be buried and essentially forgotten about.

adrianN3• 9 years ago

Throw the "spent" fuel in a breeder reactor, reduce it by >90%, store the rest (it's really not much, volume wise, and decays a lot faster after it's been through a breeder).

ageofwant5• 9 years ago

Of course we do. You need to update your ken on nuclear and stop being willfully ignorant. Spent fuel is fuel for breeder reactors, at the end you sit with material that is less radioactive than Guarapari beach.

You blame the nuclear industry, I blame my own party, the Greens, and their relentless demonising of the one thing that could have reversed doubling of atmospheric CO2, and I forgot how many times sea C02 levels. And you and your anti-nuclear agitpop is pulling us further into this mess. Please educate yourself and stop being part of the problem.

vidarh10• 9 years ago

Large proportions of coal plants spew uranium particles into the atmosphere. That's the radioactivity I worry about.

Also, I'm always fascinated of the "Chernobyl was unsafe, today reactors are safe" argument. The exact same line was fed to us when Chernobyl was state of the art.

And yet the death toll of Chernobyl turned out to be a tiny fraction of what was feared, and a blib compared to the death tolls from coal and other types.

Two of the reactors kept being operated for years. That's how small of a problem it turned out to be.

There are good reasons to think that it may indeed be so this time. But the nuclear industry has lost all trust and all right to demand anyone ever trusted them again.

On the contrary they have demonstrated that the plants are safe enough that even in face of utter incompetency and criminal levels of negligence, nuclear disasters are manageable.

Unlike, say, collapsing damns, or coal plants that kill during normal operation.

themaninthedark2• 9 years ago

In his posthumously published memoirs, Valeri Legasov, the First Deputy Director of the Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy, revealed that the Institute's scientists had long known that the RBMK reactor had significant design flaws.[16][17] Legasov's death from suicide, apparently as a result of becoming bitterly disillusioned with the failure of the authorities to confront the flaws, caused shockwaves throughout the Soviet nuclear industry and the problems with the RBMK design were rapidly accepted.[18][19]

- Wikipedia

The design of the RBMK and the lack of criticism were due to political reasons. Similar to how today we can't update or replace reactors.

kostyash• 9 years ago

How sweet, the study that guardian refers returns 404: http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/silentkillers/

The_Double• 9 years ago

Working link: http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/publications/Camp...

bhgraham• 9 years ago

Energy Source Mortality Rate (deaths/trillionkWhr)

Coal – global average 100,000 (41% global electricity)

Coal – China 170,000 (75% China’s electricity)

Coal – U.S. 10,000 (32% U.S. electricity)

Oil 36,000 (33% of energy, 8% of electricity)

Natural Gas 4,000 (22% global electricity)

Biofuel/Biomass 24,000 (21% global energy)

Solar (rooftop) 440 (< 1% global electricity)

Wind 150 (2% global electricity)

Hydro – global average 1,400 (16% global electricity)

Hydro – U.S. 5 (6% U.S. electricity)

Nuclear – global average 90 (11% global electricity w/Chern&Fukush)

Nuclear – U.S. 0.1 (19% U.S. electricity)

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-d...

wapz• 9 years ago

How is the mortality rate of wind and hydro calculated? Is it from engineers being killed during maintenance/construction? It feels like those two would have a mortality rate or something similar to "a house."

opo6• 9 years ago

...To be clear: nuclear is not the perfect solution, is not a renewable energy, and will have to be replaced by something else in the future.

While we may want to replace nuclear with a different power source in the future, there is enough uranium and thorium to last hundreds of thousands (or more likely millions) of years.

basicplus2• 9 years ago

Electrostatic precipitators fix the particulate problem very effectivly

ageofwant5• 9 years ago

I worked at a massive coal plant years back as a student. Once spent a afternoon crawling through a ESP during maintenance. The dust made my hair feel like sand, weird gritty sticky eyeballs.

Now this was before health and safety became fashionable. I recall tales of the poor bastard that they forgot about when they tested the plate voltage. The test failed: 64kv was 40kv for some reason, and kept arching, they were still tracing the issue when his wife phoned to ask where John was, he was a few hours late picking up his kid at kindergarten...

legulere5• 9 years ago

A very weird way to study the outcome of coal air pollution. It seems like this is not really about air pollution but trying to push nuclear energy. Luckily shutting down nuclear plants does not necessarily mean turning on coal power (e.g. in Germany they were replaced by renewables).

Some questions arise though: Which coal power air pollutant is to blame for the birth weight decrease. Which coal pollution mitigation techniques[1] (which are probably now more common) were used by the coal plants?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_pollution_mitigation

lemming• 9 years ago

in Germany they were replaced by renewables

Do you have a reference for this? Germany has a very aggressive (and highly commendable) plan to move to renewables, but my understanding was that the closing of nuclear plants post-Fukushima was covered by coal. Wikipedia seems to agree (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Germany):

At the same time, Germany continues to rely heavily on coal power, with usage increasing to offset the phase-out of nuclear energy.

Maakuth3• 9 years ago

They really are adding renewable production at quite an aggressive pace: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-c...

Myself I'd prefer they would use that extra production to phase out coal first before shutting down their NPPs.

legulere5• 9 years ago

This graphic shows it pretty well in my opinion: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c9/Energiem...

Purple is nuclear energy. Dark green is biomass, light blue is wind power, yellow is solar power

hannob3• 9 years ago

but my understanding was that the closing of nuclear plants post-Fukushima was covered by coal.

There was a minor uptick in coal usage for a few years, however even that wasn't necessary, but due to bad policy (gas plants were standing still at the same time). By now coal usage is going down again.

There were a couple of new constructions of coal plants, but all of them were started before the nuclear phaseout. And by now most of their operators recognize that their investments were failures and will probably never pay out.

It isn't all ideal in Germany, but overall it's going into the right direction (and the success of solar in many countries these days wouldn't have been possible without the early investments in Germany that brought the prices down).

xroche2• 9 years ago

Germany they were replaced by renewables

This is unfortunately inaccurate (http://www.euractiv.com/section/health-consumers/news/report...), and Germany is one of the country where coal is the deadliest in Europe, thanks to anti-nuclear campaign from the green party.

legulere5• 9 years ago

The only point where the article brings coal into connection with the nuclear power shutdown is wrong:

Germany buys cheap coal-fired energy from Poland to pick up the slack left by the abandonment of nuclear power after the Fukushima disaster.

Germany is a net electricity exporter.

Germany is one of the country where coal is the deadliest in Europe

PM pollution is lower than average in the EU for one: http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/tgm/graph.do?tab=graph&plugin=1...

mtgx• 9 years ago

I think there was a post on HN about a year ago saying that Germany has a weird law or policy that says it can only produce renewable power for internal use, and for export it uses coal. I think this is only a political issue, because no one wants to tackle it when elections are this year.

Otherwise, the phasing-out of coal in Europe is looking pretty good, I'd say - they're looking to close the most polluting plants in Europe by 2031:

http://climateanalytics.org/files/coalphaseouteu-regulator.g...

Taniwha• 9 years ago

Yes they could equally say increased use of solar results in increased birth weights.

Really the take away here is simply "coal is bad" - there's correlation between coal plants and lowered birth weights.

Anything that supplants coal (nuclear, solar, wind, hydro, tidal, etc) will result in increased birth weights. Replacing them with coal will result in lowered birth weights.

It's a bit weird their pushing nuclear this way right now, didn't Westinghouse just go belly up?

ju-st• 9 years ago

This is a recurrent topic on HN. Somebody posts an article about "coal is bad". Then somebody mentions that nuclear is safer/better than coal. A third person then claims Germany is evil because they are replacing nuclear with coal. The next person shows evidence that this is not the case. Then a discussion about energy imports & exports of Germany starts.

Literally every fucking topic about renewables/nuclear/coal ends up with the same content.

ZeroGravitas4• 9 years ago

Similar to the "EVs use coal powered electricity, therefore EVs are bad" argument. A weird distraction from the fundamental "Coal is bad, pretty much everything is better than coal, let's use much less coal" argument that you'd think everyone (but Trump) could agree on together.

terminado• 9 years ago

  ...the difference in birth weights between the two time 
  periods is roughly the difference in birth weights between 
  a baby born to a mother with a disadvantaged background 
  who received supplemental nutrition during pregnancy and a 
  baby born to a similar mother who didn't get that help.

I think a map correlating power plant pollution plume estimates with the reporting hospitals or physicians that provided infant data, and their areas served would be helpful in representing the relationship between these two events.

Here seems to be an older version of the source, with power plant maps:

http://conference.iza.org/conference_files/environ_2015/seve...

Paywalled version:

http://www.nature.com/articles/nenergy201751

Infant vital statistics are drawn from county-level sources.

johan_larson• 9 years ago

I suspect the drop in infant birth weights is caused by the economic disruption of closing a major local employer, rather than by the increased pollution from the coal-fired power plants.

mirimir5• 9 years ago

TVA nuclear vs TVA coal wasn't a binary choice. TVA coal was likely the least-expensive offset, but TVA could have purchased hydro or gas-turbine power. Also, I suspect that the coal plants used were among the oldest and most-polluting.

lyschoening4• 9 years ago

This is research from the 1980s. It is undoubtedly correct, but it does not not apply to today.

Today, renewables are competing favorably against coal and nuclear power on price, and they are improving rapidly still. It takes easily 15 years to plan and build a nuclear power plant, while a solar plant can be planned and built in months.

The issue of what happens when the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine can be addressed through larger HVDC grids with a good energy mix and through storage technology, which is also improving rapidly. Meanwhile, nuclear has its own issues with the elements nowadays. Nuclear relies on huge amounts of freshwater. I've heard of nuclear plants that need to shut down in the summers now because of drought. It will become harder and harder to find locations where they can be built.

Finally, new fossil fuel plants built today are mostly gas, not coal. Gas also has its problems, but it has been a reasonable transition technology that is also losing ground now as energy storage technology is improving.

WalterBright3• 9 years ago

The sun not shining at night can also be addressed with variable pricing. Electricity usage is elastic, and a lot of consumption patterns can be time-shifted.

The idea that electricity should have a fixed rate 24/7 is obsolete.

awjr• 9 years ago

Is the sun not shining just a transmission problem? Have we been able to create ultra high voltage long range DC transmission systems?

LoSboccacc3• 9 years ago

electricity transmission powers aren't that trivial, even discounting the large saltwater ocean you'd have to cross to power the other side of the world (and the security implications for that infrastructure)

it's more of a storage problem. you can get quite efficient batteries using pressure/gravity chambers, but not all places are apt to host them.

adrianN3• 9 years ago

Actually we have been able to create high voltage transmission lines.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HVDC_projects

lyschoening4• 9 years ago

Usually the sun not shining means higher wind speeds, not necessarily at the same location. In general a larger grid means less overhead is required. HVDC is tested and proven, UHVDC links are also being constructed now https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current

mpweiher19• 9 years ago

This is research from the 1980s

Nope, it is research from now, about an event in the 80s. These are long-term effects, so obviously there is a delay.

lyschoening4• 9 years ago

That is just semantics. I am arguing that a nuclear shutdown event would have different long-term effects today. In the short term of course, fossil fuel plants would still be able to pick up the slack, but there would be a larger share of natural gas than in the 1980s and were the shutdown to last longer it would be less costly to set up renewable energy plants. People in this thread are also using the article to argue about new nuclear development rather than only unplanned shutdowns. I am countering that failing to develop new nuclear energy no longer automatically means more coal pollution.

ASlave2Gravity• 9 years ago

An aside from the article: What are the best ways to get access to journals? Is there some sort of subscription program like Spotify / Netflix but for journals?

istjohn• 9 years ago

Free: http://libgen.io

ZeroGravitas4• 9 years ago

An irony I've noticed recently is fans of nuclear saying: "Coal is killing people, if you say anything bad about Nuclear then you are killing people" and then turning round and attacking other, non-coal alternatives like wind, solar or even natural gas.

Initially I assumed these were actually coal supporters doing some devious concern trolling to delay the roll out of alternatives that are viable in the short term but I've come to accept that it's just another weird nerd-war like Emacs Vs Vi, except with deadlier real life consequences.

AstralStorm2• 9 years ago

While wind and solar are great and we need more, there is not enough of it unless major international cooperation for building huge plants in good locations is involved.

(0) https://www.withouthotair.com/

opo6• 9 years ago

The world will need base load power for a long time. Yes, there is a lot of research into grid storage, but except for pumped hydro we are a long way away from that being a major component of the power system. (For example, Gates is investing in startups that are working on innovative nuclear plant designs and startups that are working on storage - maybe they all succeed, maybe none of them will.)

NASA has estimated that using nuclear power has saved an estimated 1.8 million lives that would have been lost if the power has been replaced by fossil fuels: https://climate.nasa.gov/news/903/coal-and-gas-are-far-more-...

We are going to need a predictable, reliable form of base load power for a long time. When you compare nuclear, coal and natural gas, one of these three ways of generating electricity has much fewer health consequences than the others. Lives depend on having reliable, affordable electricity and as we transition the vehicle fleet to electric, we will need more electricity, not less.

ZeroGravitas4• 9 years ago

That paper basically says "coal is bad" but again, kind of throws natural gas under the bus in a sneaky way.

"almost certainly would have been supplied by fossil fuels instead (overwhelmingly coal)"

So they've established, coal is really bad. That would be a really powerful argument for nuclear if people didn't already know that. How about running the numbers for nuclear plus as much natural gas as necessary to follow load, vs renewables plus natural gas? That seems like the real question. (Numbers here being cost, time, C02, health impacts, deaths etc. because deaths are acceptable if we could have saved enough money to save many more lives elsewhere).

mcone• 9 years ago

You don't need to convince me of the dangers of coal pollution. I grew up in Farmington, New Mexico with two massive coal-fired power plants right outside of town.

But this article ignores the consequences, and apparently the very existence, of nuclear waste. This is a problem we'll be dealing with for tens of thousands of years.

It's unlikely that today's pollution from coal-fired power plants will endanger the lives of people thousands of years from now, but you can bet your bacon that the pollution from nuclear power plants will.

Neliquat2• 9 years ago

So where does coal pollution go in your mind that renders it inert and nonradioactive? Please re read your statement and look how dumb it is.

novalis78• 9 years ago

Can't wait for the results of Thorcon Power's first plant in Indonesia [1]. Too bad that they could not get past the regulatory innovation kill that's preventing the US from taking a lead on next generation nuclear power plants.

[1]http://www.nextbigfuture.com/2016/12/first-walk-away-safe-mo...

Nuclear plant shutdowns tied to coal pollution, decreased birth weights

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