Over Time, Nuclear Power Would Kill Fewer People Than PetroleumUsing nuclear power for energy instead of coal has prevented almost 2 million pollution-related deaths around the world and could save millions more lives in the future according to a new paper. It's the latest publication from James Hansen NASA's fiery climate change scientist who is retiring on Wednesday after 46 years with the space agency.The paper argues that policymakers should increase nuclear power rather than continuing dependence on fossil fuels. The 2011 disaster at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant should not deter governments from expanding nuclear power according to Hansen and its lead author Pushker A. Kharecha of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia University Earth Institute. On the contrary nuclear power will prevent further deaths from air pollution they argue.Even taking the disaster at Fukushima into account they calculate that global nuclear power has prevented about 1.84 million air pollution-related deaths since 1971 and will prevent another 420000 to 7 million deaths by the middle of this century. (The death range depends on which fuel nuclear power will be replacing.) Nuclear power has already prevented 64 gigatons of greenhouse gas emissions and would prevent the equivalent of another 80 to 240 gigatons again depending on which fuel it replaces.The paper does acknowledge the serious health and environmental concerns related to storage of nuclear waste. But the main point is that nuclear power is cleaner and greener than sources that belch carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. The study has some limitations stemming from assumptions about future coal use but the authors think they were actually being conservative: Our results for both avoided GHG emissions and avoided mortality could be substantial underestimates they write. The paper has been accepted for publication in the journal Environmental Science & Technology and it comes in the same week that Hansen 72 said he will retire. He is a widely respected climate researcher but in the past several years has become much more than a scientist becoming involved in climate protests and even getting himself arrested a few times. He unapologetically beats the drum for human-caused climate change and its current effects. Even climate scientists have said he can be alarmist and he has rankled environmental groups with his support for nuclear power.With his departure from NASA the climate research community loses one of its most vocal members and the climate-denialists lose one of their favorite punching bags. But Hansen told the New York Times he plans to continue his activism after he retires including taking on the federal government in lawsuits. As a government employee you can't testify against the government he told the Times.The safety of nuclear energy is equal to flying an airplane. On a typical day life is good and the world is sweet but when an airplane falls from the sky and you are in it it only ends in as a gigantic disaster. The same is true of nuclear energy just ask Japan Russia etc..I am not drinking this cool-aid.@AnyIcon You may want to take the time to read up on Helium-3 Fusion and Thorium Fission then.@Anylcon: Your comment is a perfect exemplar of the psychology of risk misperception. Flying (at least flying in commercial airliners which the rest of your comment indicates you were talking about) is by far  the safest mode of transportation. Many times more people are killed per mile traveled in automobiles. Bicycling is about 10 times again more likely to get you killed. Motorcycling is about three times again as dangerous as pedal cycling.We (mis)perceive the risk of airline travel because every airliner crash becomes a major international news story. Meanwhile tens of thousands of auto (and cycle) deaths every year barely rate a mention in the local paper. The same holds for nuclear power vs. other energy sources. The *real* risk of a nuclear power disaster is far less than the *(mis)perceived* risk.If nuclear power was safe we would not need the Price�Anderson Nuclear Industries Indemnity Act.@Anyclon I have never seen a better comparison. Those occurrences get blown out of proportion because people do not realize the big picture and see that travel by almost any other mode of transportation is inherently more dangerous.@Him:  Yes people do not realize the big picture -- and that includes Anyclon who refuses to believe that nuclear power is less risky than most other sources of energy. His post was unintentionally ironic.This coming a day after I read that exposure to smog when pregnant doubles the likelihood of diseases such as spina bifida in newborns.Fossil fuels are very dirty even if you ignore CO2 from combustion. I read somewhere that coal fire power plants release more radiation (in the form of radioactive impurities being vaporized) into the atmosphere every year than all nuclear power plants ever (including meltdowns). I don't know how valid that is but the impurities in fossil fuels are destroying our environment. We used to believe that dilution was the solution to pollution but we're at such a point in our 'advancement' that our diluted pollutants are reaching toxic levels.1.  Nuclear power plants emit dangerous radiation into the air and water during their DAILY operations. Cancer-causing radiation such as Iodine-131 Cesium-137 Tritium Krypton Strontium...2.  A NEW Gallup Poll says over 70% of Americans want more WIND and SOLAR energy.3.  Hansen and Kharecha and everyone should watch the presentations at the Symposium on the Medical and Ecological Consequences of Fukushima in which the amount of cancers caused by radiation in our food and in our environment from nuclear meltdowns and nuclear power plants was discussed.The total amounts of deaths birth defects miscarriages heart attacks cancers etc. due to nuclear radiation is in the millions upon millions; far surpassing any deaths that could be caused by any other energy.That is why nuclear energy is rightly known as the most dangerous energy in the world.Here is the link to the Symposium:www.totalwebcasting.com/view/?id=hcf@ListenUp 1. Coal Ash Is More Radioactive than Nuclear Waste
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste2. I do agree we shall go for clean renewable energy however their efficiency is not high enough yet. I think nuclear fission energy will be suitable as a transitional substitution mean while.3. Let's hope we can have feasible nuclear fusion energy soon.Why can't they take nuclear fuel rods into space and drop them to burn up in reentry to atmosphere? Seems like a market for all the space pioneers.@ListenUp The amount of ignorance and misinformation in your comment blows my mind. You've become trapped in a self-feeding bubble of (mis)information a phenomenon the internet makes possible. So here's a tip - whatever you believe Google the exact opposite of it and consider what you find as seriously as you do your current beliefs.You don't seem to realize that there are only TWO events in all of history that actually spread any significant amount of radioactive particles into the atmosphere from nuclear reactors - Chernobyl and Fukushima. 3 mile island caused less extra radiation than you'd get from a cross-country flight.By contrast coal-fired power plants release higher quantities of radioactive isotopes directly into the atmosphere than even the oldest nuclear reactors ever did. Just Google radioactive coal ash (without quotes) and you'll learn the truth about coal. Not saying Solar and Wind aren't preferable to Nuclear but I *am* saying Nuclear is by far preferable to filthy coal and oil.@coachlowe Throw a bunch of nuclear waste into the atmosphere? Do you think burn up in the atmosphere means it just vanishes? These are basic atomic elements we're talking about not blocks of wood. They won't become any less radioactive just by getting a little hot.The nuclear dream is fading fast. Solar and amazing energy storage technologies are advancing exponentially. By the time one more nuclear plant is built the materials based energy revolution will change the face of energy production foreverChernobyl may have caused almost 1 million deaths according to a recent study.Fukushima is expected by Dr. Helen Caldicott M.D. to cause at least 1 million deaths by cancer due to radioactivity already released.If a Magnitude 8 earthquake strikes Japan before a fuel pool dangling 100 feet in the air is secured the resulting radioactivity is expected to be at least 40 times that of Chernobyl causing untold millions of cancers across the Northern Hemisphere.Two Japanese Agencies have issued M8 earthquake alerts.See the Aesop Institute website for details. If the USA pushes hard with some luck much might be done to avoid a nightmare.A surprisingly possible solar superstorm could cause hundreds of Fukushimas. See the same website to learn what we can do if we are wise enough to act fast.Fossil fuels can be replaced much faster than might be imagined. See the same site to understand how and why.MarkWhen environmentalists sue nuclear power plants and stop them from proceeding we should sue the environmentalists for killing us.Imagine if each home and business was energy independent how much stronger free-er society  would be in the USA and the environment would be cleaner too. ...... nice warm happy sigh.
Dare to DREAM!One day to be solar is the way to go!To the (solar and wind are so much better!!!) people what you need to take a look at is energy density. Yes you could replace every watt of energy production with wind and solar....but you would destroy cover and disrupt 100's millions of acres of forest deserts plains lands mountains beachesetc. You can replace hundreds of wind turbines  and square miles of solar farms with one bnuclear power plant. The newest generations of nuclear power plants are some of the most well design and safest power plants in the world. I think we are up to gen 4 or 5. Fukushima...was gen 2 Chernobyl gen 1. These all had mechanical fail safes and piss poor back up plans and redundant systems. MAny of the problems with what happened at fukushima with the water running out and steaming off have been solved. This doesn't even take into account the FLTR or Thorium Reactors as near to meltdown proof as is possible. And its not new technology they are using some of the same tech developed for water reactors that has been going on for near a century. Thorium reactors have been proven built since the 50's or 60's...../rantI just thought I comment one more time so the same person can click Reported to site admins lol.Apparently I am not allowed a negative opinion again the dangers of nuclear energy and or the positive opinion towards solar power. Who knew?To the person who clicked Reported to site admins I'll just keep posting one way or another. Take care. ;)Hansen is a living example of the idea that a chimpanzee randomly typing will occasionally generate something coherent. Nuclear power is a very good thing. However given his penchant for wildly distorting numbers in his computer models the estimated number of lives saved 1.84 million should be treated with the same credence as virtually every other ridiculous claim he has ever made. He is after all an activist first who has time and again subverted science to trumpet his alarmist ideas including his paranoid delusion that the Bush administration was trying to silence him; a claim the gullible Rebecca Boyle perpetuates unchallenged. This is a man desperately in need of retirement. Too bad his pension will be on the taxpayers dime.@Onihikage -- Your comment is ill-informed and about as mature as your avatar.1.  A quick trip to wikipedia shows many many nuclear meltdowns and accidents such as Santa Susana in California and the Urals in Russia which spewed tons of radiation over unsuspecting populations.2. Comparing radiation received from an airplane flight to exposure to nuclear radiation which is inhaled/ingested is a hugely false comparison (so is comparing it to bananas or radiation from watching TV etc.)These comparisons are made by pro-nuclear propagandists to try to minimize the dangers of nuclear radiation.3.  Nuclear radiation is highly dangerous and there is NO SAFE DOSE of nuclear radiation.Dr. Romeo F. Quijano said this about nuclear radiation:The small amount of radiation claimed to be safe by authorities added to our increasingly fragile environment will cause serious harm to the health of human beings and other living organisms all over the world. Radioactive particles especially Plutonium Strontium and Cesium are bioaccumulative extremely persistent  and highly toxic. They travel long distances and will contaminate all regions on earth.www.abs-cbnnews.com/insights/04/01/11/nuclear-radiation-there-no-safe-dose4.  Dr. Yablokov found one MILLION deaths due to Chernobyl.5.  Dr. Wing found that lung cancers rose dramatically in people exposed to the Three Mile Island radiation plume.6.  Dr. Gould and Dr. Sternglass found a statistically significant increase of one MILLION deaths after Three Mile Island.  (See the video Three Mile Island Revisited on youtube)7.  Dr. Mangano and Dr. Sherman found an increase in infant mortality in the U.S. after Fukushima.8.  Dr. Mangano also found that in the first 50 weeks after fallout from Japan reached the U.S. hypothyroidism increased 28% increase on west coast.9.  Dr. Gofman did studies on the increases of breast cancer due to nuclear radiation.10.  Even the pro-nuclear World Health Organization says breast cancer and leukemia will increase after Fukushima and predicts a 70% increase thyroid cancer risk in females exposed to Fukushima radiation as infants.11.  It's not just cancers and death that nuclear radiation causes.Dr. Wertelecki found teratomos conjoined twins mocrophthalmia NTD microcephaly horrible birth defects and a decrease in cognitive skills due to Chernobyl.This is just a TINY example of the cancers deaths birth and health effects caused by nuclear radiation.Again I highly recommend everyone watch the speakers at the Fukushima Symposium to learn more.
www.totalwebcasting.com/view/?id=hcfThe doctors at the Symposium have spent decades studying the effects of nuclear radiation and their grim analysis is in their presentations.And nuclear radiation is not just affecting humans.Animals are showing signs of radiation exposure.  Fish have been caught with radiation.  An entire species of nails is extinct due to Fukushima. Radiation is being in found in seaweed zooplankton and sea life in the oceans.
Animal and plant mutations are being found everywhere.There is no doubt about it.Man-made nuclear radiation is wreaking havoc on human genetics human health and our environment.NEW Gallup Poll:Americans Want More Energy From Wind Solar GasNo fewer than two in three Americans want the U.S. to put more emphasis on producing domestic energy using solar power (76%) wind (71%) and natural gas (65%). Far fewer want to emphasize the production of oil (46%) and the use of nuclear power (37%). Least favored is coal with about one in three Americans wanting to prioritize its domestic production.www.gallup.com/poll/161519/americans-emphasis-solar-wind-natural-gas.aspxListenUp regardless of the tone of Onihikage's comments he's exactly right about there being only two nuclear power plant incidents in history that resulted in significant radiation release since the first nuclear power plant went online in 1954.There have been 68 fatalities in 59 years 57 of which were from Chernobyl.  (Interestingly no one died from radiation released in the Fukushima Daiichi accident.)  That averages out to a little over 1 fatality a year.  Can you identify any industry in the world with a better safety record?  Not even U.S. commercial aviation widely acknowledged as the safest form of travel can match that safety record.Here's a list of all nuclear power plant accidents:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_and_radiation_accidentsThe *4000 cancer number associated with Chernobyl is the number of cancers--not deaths--attributed to Chernobyl.  And the number is more like 6000; thyroid cancers in children and adolescents.  Thyroid cancer is highly treatable and the average 5-year survival rate is about 97%.  If it's caught early as is likely in the Chernobyl-affected area where intensive monitoring has been ongoing the survival rate is virtually 100%.This UN Scientific Committee Report on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) published in 2008 says there is no evidence of a major public health impact attributable to radiation exposure two decades after the accident.  That's from the WORST nuclear power plant accident in history.  See UNSCEAR report (2008) on Chernobyl here:http://www.unscear.org/unscear/en/chernobyl.htmlAs for all of your references absolute rubbish.  You should be able to figure that out yourself from Dr. Gould and Dr. Sternglass claiming a million deaths due to the radiation release from Three Mile Island.What you're missing in your extremely narrow and warped view  on nuclear radiation is balance and perspective.  Onihikage was right to call you out on your radiation junk science.  Do you know how much radiation was released from Three Mile Island?  I'll tell you.The radiation released resulted in an average dose of 1.4 mrem to the two million people near the plant. The report compared this with the additional 80 mrem per year received from living in a high altitude city such as Denver. As further comparison you receive 3.2 mrem from a chest X-Ray � more than twice the average dose of those received near the plant.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accidentDo you seriously think a million people die from receiving a chest X-ray?  If that were true chest X-rays would have been abolished long ago by the FDA.Your claim 3. Nuclear radiation is highly dangerous and there is NO SAFE DOSE of nuclear radiation is also rubbish.  Nuclear radiation is used daily to irradiate foods to prevent spoilage with no adverse health effect whatsoever.  In fact it saves lives by preventing deadly bacteria from forming.  Nuclear radiation is used safely countless times every day in numerous ways in medical and diagnostic procedures on humans; all of which results in the prolonging of life and improving the quality of life for millions of people each year.The effects of nuclear radiation have been studied carefully for over 60 years and extremely conservative dosage limits set in place to protect the safety of people who work in environments where radiation exposure is commonplace.The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission says Although radiation may cause cancer at high doses and high dose rates public health data do not absolutely establish the occurrence of cancer following exposure to low doses and dose rates � below about 10000 mrem (100 mSv). Studies of occupational workers who are chronically exposed to low levels of radiation above normal background have shown no adverse biological effects.http://www.nrc.gov/about-nrc/radiation/health-effects/rad-exposure-cancer.htmlHere's a graphic comparison of different levels of radiation dosages:http://xkcd.com/radiation/And here's an MIT study from 2012 which suggests that the established long-term radiation dosage limits may be 10 times too conservative due to the way the cancerous effects are measured; not from actual experiments of long-term radiation but from EXTRAPOLATING the effects from single high-dosage events like the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima or the exposion at Chernobyl:http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2012/prolonged-radiation-exposure-0515.htmlTo sum up do as Onihikage suggests and read up on the remarkable safety of nuclear power and get some perspective on the vast array of other things that pose much greater health risks than nuclear power.As for the Gallup poll ListenUp it says nothing about what forms of energy Americans want to prioritize.  It simply shows that Americans want the country to produce more energy from all of the sources named.If you add up the same emphasis as now or more emphasis results it looks like this:Solar power: 88%
Wind: 87%
Natural gas: 89%
Oil: 67%
Nuclear power: 65%
Coal: 56%In other words generally speaking Americans want to become energy independent through ALL the resources at our disposal.http://www.gallup.com/file/poll/161525/Energy_sources_130327.pdfThis is absolutely true and it kills far less people anually then coal.If you leave your solar panel running in your garage no one will die. Some benefits to health and the environment are just a better trade off. We need to do a lot more development towards solar power. Besides another product produces on the side is JOBS. It takes more people to maintain solar panels associated power supply systems and power storage systems. These type of jobs are technical in nature and pay better thereby giving more people a higher level of money and yes medical benefits. And these benefits also apply to wind and hydroelectric power as well.Solar wind and hydroelectric systems do not pollute and are not cancer causing and create jobs with medical benefits! People with good paying skill jobs pay taxes too and the government needs it taxes since it does not know how to balance a budget.I would think that most people would agree that:renewable > nuclear > fossil fuel ORrenewable > fossil fuel > nucleardisregarding all money related issues here.But if money were to be put into this equation then most people would support a different one depending on how much of they are of each an environmentalist economist or politician. I would say that a person leaning toward the environmentalist side would go with renewable resources and economists would lean toward either fossil fuel or nuclear depending on their viewpoints and info. However a politician would rather go for fossil fuel or better yet renewable resources as they would want to avoid the somewhat untrue public opinion (Fukushima) on nuclear energy. My own opinion is that renewable resources trump all but that nuclear would be a little better than fossil fuels. First of all I would like to point out that without fossil fuels I would think none of us would ever need to question energy production. Second of all although most of the facts previously stated about radiation and nuclear energy are true you do realize that most of that info is talking about decades old nuclear technology? Nuclear energy is similar fossil fuels in the way of both safety and efficiency. Fossil fuel usage at its infancy was both dangerous and extremely wasteful. It is just like that with nuclear energy. Chernobyl and Fukushima were examples of plants built when scientist didn't even know about all of the elements we have now on the periodic table. When they were designed nuclear energy was at its infancy. They were practically the prototypes the testing stations for nuclear energy and even most of those wasteful dangerous first generation nuclear facilities are somewhat better than the most high tech fossil fuels. Putting plants into use is extensive. Nuclear plants were built with technology research and designed decades ago. Chernobyl and Fukushima built in the sixties and finished in the seventies used technology invented in the fifties! That's only a DECADE after the FIRST nuclear fission in human history! The nuclear plants finished recently (within the past decade) were built with technology developed in the seventies and eighties. Also I believe that fossil fuel technology has been research to almost full  potential. Nuclear fission and fusion and combination of the two have yet to reach the potentials and can be so much better than fossil fuels in both safety and efficiency (with a LOT of help). On a side note China has been doing the reverse compared to most of the world building and researching more into nuclear energy rather that quit because of two major accidents. Not saying that the Chinese are the smartest or the safest in anything just saying that if anything is to happen with nuclear stuff China might be in the news.People need to consider our world realities when thinking about alternate energies.  Solar will become less accessible over time as crud and greenhouse gases accumulate.  Solar's DAY; if it is to have one is now.  Eventually we will go above the cloud layer for it or we will do without.With nuclear some of you on here defending nuclear just want to act like Chernobyl and Fukushima are the whole of world nuclear contamination.  Whether it's the weapons and the nuke plants that create those isotopes or the ones that were built specifically for safer power generation or the massive shame to humanity that storage is--it's the nuclear issue.  No?  You tellin me that a couple hundred miles from my house I can't find powerplant waste with the Manhattan Project waste at Hanford?  Can you say Columbia Watershed?  Enjoy your fruit.  Doctors say it's good for you.  5 servings daily.I do agree with AnyIcon's statement about comparison to air travel yes it's by all means the safest mode of travel out there but when something goes wrong they go disastrously wrong I don't know how disposal of nuclear waste is brought about but in one other story that was discussing future concepts of skyscrapers one was harnessing noise pollution to create energy another was using volcanos I believe there are several more means that exist to create energy with relatively fewer adverse effects on the environment.