Hacker News Reader

The mercury and other pollution dusted by coal doesn’t degrade. It has the same two solutions as nuclear waste: ignore or concentrate.

View on HN

if you operate a coal plant for 3 years until the bubble bursts, you will emit 3 years of toxins and carbon dioxide. If you operate a nuclear plant for just one minute, your highly radioactive waste will be a burden for thousands of generations.

Nuclear waste is not a burden. It's very manageable. The problem would be in any uncontained accident. The probability of that is low but not zero, especially in old reactor designs such as the ones they are talking about reactivating.

Compare in tons please, not in minutes.

Coal has heavy metals and traces of radioactive materials in it. Multiply to the thousands tons and maybe they are more harmful than nuclear.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com