
Coal plants emit more radioactive waste than nuclear plants (2007) - ChuckMcM
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste/
======
ChuckMcM
And as has been pointed out to me offline the article compares 'radioactivity
release' of an operating nuclear plant to an operating coal plant. Clearly a
properly designed nuclear plant emits no radioactivity at all.

On the plus side I offer the following report from the USGS in 2016 :
[https://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/1997/fs163-97/FS-163-97.html](https://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/1997/fs163-97/FS-163-97.html)
which talks about the levels of uranium and thorium in fly ash (0 - 4 ppm).

~~~
colechristensen
I think it's important to compare the actualities instead of idealizations.

Airplanes and cars aren't designed with a certain death rate in mind, but it's
good to compare the actual bad outcomes.

It's true that coal plants are "designed" to emit a characteristic amount of
radioactive material, but they also don't suffer from catastrophic or
significant accidental releases so it's appropriate to compare actual
historical outcomes. The failure rate of nuclear power is an important part of
the consideration. (and it still ends up on top)

~~~
zamalek
> also don't suffer from catastrophic or significant accidental releases

We've had a countable number of catastrophes and are getting better at
building safer reactors (G IV reactors are modulated by physics).

Regardless, Chernobyl is estimated to be currently claiming 4000 lives per
year worldwide[1], while coal power plants are claiming 7500 lives per year
_in America alone._ [2] Nuclear meltdowns are very scary events. Merely
running a coal power plant is a far scarier.

[1]:
[http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2005/pr38/en/](http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2005/pr38/en/)
[2]:
[http://www.catf.us/fossil/problems/power_plants/](http://www.catf.us/fossil/problems/power_plants/)

~~~
C4K3
Your source for [1] says that up to 4000 people may die, in total, not per
year.

------
tibarun
Can we focus on renewables and stop trying to sell people hazardous waste that
can last for millenia? You do realize that you can't actually guarantee what
will happen in 10, 20... 50 years time. Earthquakes, Tsunamis, tornados,
terrorist attacks, wars, neglect, malfunction, human error... How can you
guarantee that a certain place is safe to store millions of tons of
radioactive waste for thousands of years if we can't even guarantee what will
happen tomorrow? We need to stop this nuclear madness!

~~~
electricEmu
Well, damming rivers turned out to be a bad idea in cases so (Washington
State)[[https://relay.nationalgeographic.com/proxy/distribution/publ...](https://relay.nationalgeographic.com/proxy/distribution/public/amp/2016/06/largest-
dam-removal-elwha-river-restoration-environment)] is undoing them. Wind
turbines require surmounting large technical hurdles with storing energy.
Solar takes a lot of resources/space. Heck, in 50 years we might be in a dust
bowl and solar doesn't even work.

Why would you suggest we prevent using all appropriate options at our
disposal? Why not push for using a different type of fuel instead?

I didn't grow up during the nuclear scare times. Fukushima wasn't great, but
it wasn't so horrific either. If it gets us off coal and natural gas then I'm
down.

~~~
mikelyons
Fukushima isn't over, we don't know what it will have done in the next 50
years yet.

~~~
saulrh
Estimates of excess deaths due to nuclear, _counting chernobyl_ , are the
lowest of any energy technology. This isn't even counting the part where no
new nuclear reactor could possibly be as unsafe as Chernobyl or Fukushima in
the same way that no modern car could be as unsafe as as a car from the 1960s:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPF4fBGNK0U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPF4fBGNK0U)

~~~
coldtea
> _This isn 't even counting the part where no new nuclear reactor could
> possibly be as unsafe as Chernobyl or Fukushima_

That's what they say after every accident too. "This time, with the new
designs, it's different".

~~~
opo
A dangerous plant design like Chernobyl would have been illegal to build in
any western country, so not sure why you think it is relevant to any other
country. Accidents from hydroelectric plants have killed orders of magnitude
more people than even the largest estimates of deaths from Fukushima (or even
Chernobyl) - are you also opposed to hydroelectric power?

~~~
fnord123
Lying about diesel emissions is also illegal. Whoops!

~~~
saulrh
Um. This isn't something where you can just run your reactor in different
configurations at test time and run time. The technology has come a _long_ way
since the 1960s and the math and science have advanced transformatively.
Building an unsafely non-compliant nuclear plant would be like building a
diesel car and then trying to tell the regulators that it's electric. You can
do some fudging, sure, but things like the sign of the void coefficient are
effectively impossible to lie about.

~~~
coldtea
> _Um. This isn 't something where you can just run your reactor in different
> configurations at test time and run time._

No, but lying and having experts being, ahem _flexible_ , about the expected
safety is very easy, and par for the course when selling multi-billion dollar
projects...

It's also very easy to ignore "black swan" event cases, and the potential
impact to millions of lives, just because you think you've covered everything
there is to cover.

~~~
saulrh
Chernobyl was just about the worst possible outcome of a nuclear disaster: The
majority of the radiological material was swept up in a cloud of graphite dust
and lofted into the upper atmosphere by a fire that burned, uncontrolled, for
over a week. Fukushima happened in one of the most densely populated areas on
Earth. And yet, even counting those, Nuclear is _still the safest energy
source we have_. We can talk about black swans and fudging the estimates, and
I'll admit that your line of argument would be stronger if we were talking
about the very first reactors to be built, when they were still just
blueprints.

But that's not the case. We have real-world evidence that we can use to
calibrate our expectations against reality. The fact is that, even if you
count Chernobyl and Fukushima, our existing reactors are safer than fossil
fuels. And I think that you would have an exceedingly difficult time arguing
that newly-built reactors would be less safe than existing reactors.

------
raz32dust
It is slightly disingenuous. Although it might be true that a coal plant emits
more radioactive material overall, the concern with nuclear plants is the
radioactive emission in the event of an accident, not the emissions during
regular operation. Just wanted to bring up an important distinction. I
personally still support nuclear energy.

~~~
ajross
It's also almost certainly wrong in practice, given that the 2007 data in the
article wouldn't include the Fukushima meltdown.

~~~
hexane360
Even accounting for Fukushima and Chernobyl, coal has emitted more radiation
per MWh.

~~~
a_imho
No one can deny when fission goes wrong, it goes really wrong. Statistics are
often ineffective influencing emotions.

~~~
efaref
But coal and oil, working correctly, are destroying the planet.

~~~
a_imho
To clarify, I'm pro nuclear. I mean it is very hard to fight irrational fears
with logic. Like how flying is safer than driving per miles, yet many people
are more afraid of planes than cars.

------
ChuckMcM
An interesting discussion about how burning coal concentrates trace amounts of
uranium and thorium in coal and leaves it in fly ash (the remaining
particulates).

It makes me wonder how much of each element you could extract by "mining" fly
ash dump sites.

~~~
Laforet
People have already looked into extracting rare earth elements from fly ash.

>Average total REE content (defined as the sum of the lanthanides, yttrium,
and scandium) for ashes derived from Appalachian sources was 591 mg kg–1 and
significantly greater than in ashes from Illinois and Powder River basin coals
(403 and 337 mg kg–1, respectively). The fraction of critical REEs (Nd, Eu,
Tb, Dy, Y, and Er) in the fly ashes was 34–38% of the total and considerably
higher than in conventional ores (typically less than 15%).

[http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.est.6b00085](http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.est.6b00085)

~~~
astrodust
It's amazing they just dump that stuff as if it's garbage.

------
philipkglass
I think that the Scientific American article somewhat distorts the original
article by paraphrasing it. Let's go back to the source. You can view the
original Science article via sci-hub.cc if you want to see all the numbers or
if you suspect that I've made mistakes with my own commentary.

[http://science.sciencemag.org/content/202/4372/1045](http://science.sciencemag.org/content/202/4372/1045)

DOI: 10.1126/science.202.4372.1045

First look at tables 2 and 3. The raw radionuclide release from the reactors,
measured in curies, are _far_ greater than those from the coal plant. Both
reactor types release thousands of curies of xenon isotopes and hundreds of
curies of krypton isotopes. The PWR also releases thousands of curies in the
form of tritium. The coal plant releases less than 2 curies of all
radionuclides combined.

Next look at table 4. The _maximum_ whole body dose commitment, e.g. the dose
that somebody might be exposed to if they lived 500 meters from the sources,
just beyond the plant boundary, is highest for the boiling water reactor (4.6
mrem/year), then coal (1.9), then the pressurized water reactor (1.8).

But if you look at table 5, average population dose within an 88.5 km radius,
you see that the _population_ dose commitment over the whole region is lower
for both pressurized and boiling water reactors (given the assumption that
100% of the food people eat is grown in the same region).

Table 6, "Population dose commitments from the airborne releases of model
1000-MWe power plants as a function of food intake", is the most interesting
table in the article. It shows what parameter is most key to which power
source produces greater population exposures: _percentage of food eaten that
is grown within the same region as the population_. At 50% or more local food
consumption, which is assumed in table 5, coal always exposes the regional
population to a higher radionuclide dose than nuclear reactors. If people were
eating 30% or less locally grown food -- which admittedly does not seem likely
-- then the region's population could be exposed to more radiation from a
nuclear plant than from an equivalent coal plant.

Why do nuclear reactors initially emit so much more than coal plants, measured
in curies of radionuclides, yet generally expose human populations in the
region to _less_ of a body burden? Why does the relative population exposure
ordering of nuclear power and coal change depending on how much locally grown
food those populations consume?

The answers lie in the _chemical and biological_ behaviors of the different
radionuclides that respectively dominate emissions from reactors and from coal
plants. "Radium-226 and radium-224 are the major contributors to the whole-
body and most organ doses from the coal-fired plant. Assuming that the
deposited radionuclides could enter the food chain, ingestion is the main
exposure pathway for the population dose commitments from this plant (93 to 96
percent for the whole body and most organ doses, 83 percent for the bone dose,
and 62 percent for the lung dose). ... Carbon-14 is the main contributor to
the whole-body and most of the organ doses from both nuclear plants. Ingestion
is the major exposure pathway."

Radium is chemically similar to calcium, so it is taken up by plants via the
same pathways that take up calcium. It gets stored in the bones of exposed
humans. Carbon of course is a major part of human and plant dry mass and also
gets stored in organisms. These key isotopes are chemically available to
plants and processed as nutrients in the bodies of both plants and humans.

Those thousands of curies of noble gases initially released by the nuclear
plant? They matter _orders of magnitude_ less when it comes to human exposure.
Those gases can't chemically react with anything and diffuse throughout the
whole volume of the atmosphere. Plants don't concentrate them and the human
body can't store them.

The much less significant exposure route, "immersion," basically means
exposure to radionuclides in the air all around you. Under most assumptions
the immersion route will deliver a lower exposure to a regional population
than ingestion via food. But if people in the exposed region are eating 30% or
less locally-grown food, then the immersion route can become dominant and can
lead to higher population exposure from nuclear power than from coal power.

The Scientific American article does not touch on any of these interesting
points. It paraphrases the original in a way that actually introduces
mistakes. It does not explain _why_ some reasonable assumptions lead to lower
population radionuclide exposure from nuclear power than from coal power. The
broad summaries remain similar but the mistakes and simplifications lend the
Scientific American article an unfortunate air of "here's a nice simple
conclusion to bash your friends with the next time they fret about radiation
from nuclear power."

~~~
iharhajster
Interesting points. Keep in mind though, this article is from 1978. Technology
and law regulation for reducing dangerous concentrations of gases from flue
gases at coal power plants improved since then. I don't know for nuclear. I
recently was leading electrical works for new DeNOx (SCR) plant at one coal
power plant. Since my country entered EU, the allowable safety margins
improved forcing the power plant owners to either invest in purification
plants or shutdown by 1st jan 2018.

~~~
philipkglass
Yes, it would be interesting to compare a modern nuclear reactor and a modern
coal plant using the same evaluation criteria. Regulators have changed how
both operate since the 1970s, even if the facilities were originally
constructed earlier.

Maybe I should have phrased my original objection more strongly: the headline
of this HN piece, the original headline in Scientific American, and many
commenters writing here are unambiguously _wrong_ about certain points. Coal
ash is not more radioactive than waste from nuclear reactors. Ordinary
commercial reactors, operating normally, emit _far more_ curies of radioactive
material than is present in the fly ash emitted from coal plants. The
_effective_ exposure of populations to radioactivity is however lower for
reactors than for coal plants due to the differing chemical/biological
characteristics of the different radionuclides emitted. That's pretty
interesting! But that key point which produces the counterintuitive lower-
effective-exposure result is completely lost in the SA article. Over the past
decade I have mostly seen this Scientific American article used as a club to
bash people who "just don't understand" nuclear power. It's a sad triumph of
tribal affinity over comprehension.

Coal is certainly far worse than nuclear power when you broaden the criteria
beyond radionuclide release. Most of the world's coal plants are still
operating without state-of-the-art pollution controls for mercury, acid gases,
and particulates. Even with modern emissions controls for acute pollution
hazards, coal emits a lot of CO2 for each MWh generated. But the overall
superior environmental and human health profile of nuclear power should not
tempt people to spread falsehoods in its defense.

------
stmfreak
Comparing the momentary release of coal combustion with the 10,000 year waste
management issues of nuclear in the way only "science" journalism can.

------
s0me0ne
If you believe in nuclear power so much, please keep the nuclear waste in your
state where it's created instead of sending it elsewhere

~~~
ajuc
I'm fine with that as long as people opposing nuclear power keep the
radioactive ashes from coal powerplants needed to replace the nuclear baseload
in their states. As well as all the other toxic wastes. Not mentioning the
side-effects, including global warming, starvation, migrations, and wars
caused by that.

Instead so far they seem to push the externalities to others by either using
coal and spewing it all into air, or not using coal, but buying balancing
power from elsewhere, where they do use nuclear power or coal power :).

I think we can agree both of these alternatives are morally dishonest.

------
_pmf_
Same for neodymium processing for wind turbine production.

------
KerrickStaley
The title is extremely misleading. The article says that the amount of
radiation released into the environment by a coal power plant is more than the
amount of radiation released by a comparable nuclear plant. This is because
coal ash is radioactive, and although it's (obviously) far less radioactive
than radioactive waste, there's no effort to contain its radioactivity, so it
results in more radiation exposure to people living around the plant.

~~~
astrodust
"Coal plants emit more radioactive waste than nuclear plants" is a better
translation here.

~~~
vilhelm_s
Or "than nuclear plants emit during normal operations". I would have liked to
see a comparison about how much radioactivity is released per kWh by a coal
plant versus a nuclear plant, if you divide Chernobyl and Fukushima by the
total amount of nuclear energy produced in the same timespan.

~~~
astrodust
To get a better average you'd need to compute the total radioactive emissions
of all nuclear plants divided by their operating time and compute per GWh
versus coal plants on the same scale.

Chernobyl and Fukushima are two exceptional events. There are hundreds of
reactors out there both civilian and military that have never had catastrophic
faults.

------
IanDrake
This isn't very useful information. I'm sure Chernobyl and Fukushima have
released more radioactivity than every coal fired plant that has ever been or
ever will be.

~~~
astrodust
There are a lot of coal plants that constantly emit a lot of waste into the
atmosphere. Nuclear events are, thankfully, quite rare and have been largely
contained.

Plus, as bad as radioactive incidents can be, they don't affect the climate.
Once the radiation dies down or is mitigated through clean-up efforts there
will be no lasting impact on the world. In other words, with the right
insurance policy you can recover from a disaster.

Hiroshima and Nagasakia were both deliberately targeted by nuclear weapons and
are still inhabited. Cleaning up the mess can be expensive, but it's not
impossible.

Cleaning up the mess made by a coal plant is basically impossible, the effects
are too far reaching.

~~~
tibarun
[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/09/fukushima-
nucl...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/09/fukushima-nuclear-
cleanup-falters-six-years-after-tsunami)

Seriously? "Expensive but not impossible"?

~~~
astrodust
There's a huge difference between cleaning up the surrounding landscape and
dealing with the broken reactors themselves. Eventually we'll figure out how
to fix those. Nothing an X-Prize contest or two can't help address if things
get truly desperate.

I'd take a contaminated room any day over a whole planet slowly cooking itself
to death.

~~~
coldtea
> _Nothing an X-Prize contest or two can 't help address if things get truly
> desperate._

Yeah, because technology advances magically if you will it enough...

~~~
astrodust
We have a number of commercial space-flight companies now and a dozen self-
driving car platforms that work quite well. Neither of these really existed
before their respective X-Prize type challenges.

------
basicplus2
I think if you add up all the coal power stations and add up all the nuclear
power stations, nuclear power stations emit millions of times more radiation
than coal fired power stations.. just look at fukashima

Not to mention the waste fuel containing stuff that never existed before being
produced in a nuclear power station

~~~
0xfeba
> I think if you add up all the coal power stations and add up all the nuclear
> power stations, nuclear power stations emit millions of times more radiation
> than coal fired power stations.. just look at fukashima

No. Coal spews out constant radioactivity. Nuclear emits nothing during normal
operation. Even counting Nuclear disasters, emitted radiation and deaths per
kW/h are lower for Nuclear. It is the safest per kW/h, period.

> Not to mention the waste fuel containing stuff that never existed before
> being produced in a nuclear power station

Which is much easier to contain then fly ash.

------
afterburner
That's nice.

Now let's talk about costs. Not idealized costs, but actual, non-hidden costs
of building, maintaining, and decommissioning nuclear power plants (oh and
storing the waste in effective perpetuity).

What's that you think decommissioning would be too expensive and want to keep
running the plant extra long with upgrades? Oooops, that's how you get
Fukushima.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/22/world/asia/22nuclear.html](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/22/world/asia/22nuclear.html)

~~~
obstinate
You get Fukushima by building backup generators right next to the ocean on an
island prone to being hit by tsunamis.

~~~
pdkl95
Building next to the ocean is fine. Japan has a _lot_ of experience in
protecting their shorelines. The seawall that covers over 40% of their
coastline is very impressive. However, as the 2011 tsunami demonstrated, all
defenses eventually fail. While some blame lies with TEPCO avoiding
recommendations to upgrade the seawall, it's hard to defend against the
insane[1] power of over 4m of moving water.

This is why the real lesson is to build _defenses in depth_ , with enough
variety to protect against _common mode failure_. Fukushima _Daini_ \- only
12km away from Fukushima Daiichi - suffered similarly from the earthquake and
tsunami, but a single surviving pump (and the skill and effort of the staff)
was enough to prevent Daini from suffering the same fate as it's sister
powerplant.

Good engineering asks questions like, "Are we safe _when_ (not "if"!) the
entire bank of backup generators fail?", or "Can a _single event_ cause
catastrophic failure?"

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IKIazZc-a8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IKIazZc-a8)

~~~
hvidgaard
It was my understanding that TEPCO was warned against the exact event that
happened, and didn't upgrade their backup generator infastructure accordingly.
Things only got bad when they ran out of power. Which seems ironic that they
couldn't use their own generated power to prevent a meltdown, but that was
because the reactors was shut down I assume.

