However, storing the fuel rods properly is borderline impossible due to politics, so your questions probably still stands.
However, storing the fuel rods properly is borderline impossible due to politics, so your questions probably still stands.
Where and how exactly is the radiation release of coal plants happening? I can imagine its maybe a difference if a smaller dose of radiation is put out slowly and spread more (in time and space terms)than if it’s concentrated on one point? Radiaton is anywhere thats clear... but we rarely get strong radiation caused illnesses from just catching cosmic radiation do we?
And how exactly are politics preventing proper storage?
I definitely don’t wanna promote coal, but where are these numbers proving coal killed and harmed more people than Fukushima and Tchernobyl and the many smaller incidents?
Also i often wonder - where could science of reusable energy and reduced consumption be if the billions invested in nuclear research were invested there instead?
Basically, NIMBY. Even if it's perfectly safe, some people will always worry about "but what if all physicists, seismologists etc. etc. are wrong (or lying)"?
The number of people who died from the radiation which escaped during the Fukishima nuclear disaster is currently zero.[0] Even factoring in the worst-case projections for every nuclear energy disaster, nuclear power is still the safest—or certainly one of the safest—forms of utility-scale electricity generation.
If you're looking for a form of energy which is normally safe but kills thousands in a disaster scenario, the answer is hydro. In one instance, a dam failure killed 171,000 people.
Solar panel installers and wind turbine workers occasionally die from falls. (Also, solar panel manufacturing can be a dirty/toxic process.)
Fossil fuels (coal, oil, gas, biomass) kill because miners, workers and citizens breathe in coal dust and smoke particulates belched into the atmosphere.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disa...
Source Rate
-----------------
Coal 100,000
Oil 36,000
Biofuel 24,000
Gas 4,000
Hydro 1,400
Solar 440
Wind 150
Nuclear 90
-----------------
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-d...Panels dropped on heads? Pollutants from production? A proportion of deaths from mining and refining silicon?
Put it another way, if California produced 0.0004 trillion kilowatt hours of solar power every year, that would put the death rate of solar installers at one every five to six years. Sounds plausible.
Coal plants don't burn pure elemental carbon, the black stuff that is dug up from the ground contains a lot of other stuff as well, such as sulphur (acid rain, etc.), and, yes, various radionuclides. So when the coal is burned, part of the radionuclides go up the smokestack, others are left in the ash.
Realistically, compared to all the other environmental destruction associated with coal power, the radioactivity release is a non-issue. At the same time, it's good to keep in mind that except for major disasters like Chernobyl, an operating coal plant releases orders of magnitude more radioactivity to the environment than an operating nuclear plant.
> I definitely don’t wanna promote coal, but where are these numbers proving coal killed and harmed more people than Fukushima and Tchernobyl and the many smaller incidents?
You cannot usually say that person X died due to coal power production (except for things like coal mining accidents (which are quite common), maintenance worker falling etc.), but at a population level coal pollution causes an increase in respiratory illnesses, strokes, etc. which, again, at population level kills people. If you want to learn more, you can start e.g. at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents
> Also i often wonder - where could science of reusable energy and reduced consumption be if the billions invested in nuclear research were invested there instead?
I'm not sure what "reusable energy" is supposed to mean, but yeah, sure, energy efficiency would probably be better than it is now. Would it be better enough to cover the loss of nuclear energy, and it's partial replacement by fossil power such as coal? I doubt it.