kravietz 🦇 @kravietz@social.privacytools.io

@sheogorath @pro

Again, nothing comes for free. Wind and solar manufacturing requires rare earth metals, which are... mined.

And as they are mined, they release waste that is... radioactive due to natural radium and thorium content.

And this *too* has environmental impact https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_Pass_rare_earth_mine#Environmental_impact

But again, nobody wants to hear about it because "solar and wind are so clean".

Now, as it comes to coal - nobody wants it alone. But everyone wants stable power supply...

@sheogorath

And is it a full picture with coal? This is why it's important to compare objectively rather than single out one industry.

@pro

@sheogorath

And this is precisely why people prefer coal plants that kill them slowly over nuclear plants that don't kill anybody, but are "scary".

By the way, coal ash is also radioactive and contaminates ground. All coal plants in Germany alone produce around 8 million m3 of coal waste every month, so over 100 millions of tons per years. And the ash is just stored on heaps, contaminating land and water.

All nuclear plants in all EU produced 6 million m3 of waste ever. But who cares?

@pro

@sheogorath

So when the villages became visited by many people from outside - because of the plants construction - they started to get these infections. They were not serious, but in small percentage of children they triggered leukemia.

Obviously, it has nothing to do with radiation and it happened in other places with new tourist centers etc. But once again, if you want to blame something, you don't care about evidence.

@pro

@sheogorath

There was no evidence for that - and there were similar spikes of leukemia in other parts of UK, very far from any nuclear facilities. But when people are biased and they *want* to blame something/someone, they don't care about evidence.

Only in 2000's new research found cause to be regular bacterial infections. These places like Sellafield were always quite isolated and people living there had low immunity against more exotic pathogens.

@pro

@sheogorath @pro

This is all covered by medical research after nuclear accidents. In case of Fukushima there was 1 fatality, in case of Chernobyl - 200 (over 20 years). All that included cancer, early death, birth defects etc.

In many cases suspicious diseases are blamed on nuclear without conclusive evidence, as it was with a spike of leukemia near Sellafield nuclear processing plant in UK back in 80's. Media were quick to jump to conclusion that the plant is KILLING OUR CHILDREN!!! etc

@sheogorath @pro

This is precisely engineers do comparisons such as this one to objectively compare mortality of various energy sources against a normalised units.

@sheogorath

It's not true - a flood in the first place fills up sewers, water treatment plants, farms etc so the sediment after a flood is essentially a mix of human and animal crap, animal corpses, dead fish etc. You can't just "come back and start living", houses need to be cleaned, sterilized, repainted and in some cases demolished and rebuilt. Cars can be only scrapped as they smell shit and fish.

@pro

@sheogorath

The point is that nobody is building reactors such as in Fukushima and in such places.

The problem is that Japan had not much other choice back when they built it - they were cut from resources, and took the risk. The risk has materialized eventually, but that was their bet.

@pro

@sheogorath @pro

> than the number of even hundreds of solar or wind industry incidents

But not hydro incidents, right?

In a few recent years there were further dam failures in Brazil and in Russia.

They killed ~200 people.

Have you ever heard about them?

@sheogorath @pro

No, we cannot. Because accidents happened to old reactors built and operated in risky locations, and the industry has learned from it.

Nothing that happened in Chernobyl and Fukushima can ever happen in any reactor operated in France, UK or Germany, because they were built specifically to be safe.

Note that even Russia, with its long tradition of negligence, had no nuclear power safety accidents since Chernobyl.

@sheogorath @pro

I don't read German freely, but I can read graphs fortunately :) So these radiation levels from Chernobyl fallout - at 0.6 mSv per year - are absoutely negligible. Average exposure from natural sources (sun, space radiation, ground etc) is 3 mSv.

To give you a comparison against some real world values: a cigarette smoker gets 160 mSv per year from tobacco alone.

@sheogorath @pro

> are still recommended to not collect mushrooms in the forest, due to this nonsense

Yes, this recommendation is indeed a nonsense.

@sheogorath @pro Here are some case studies of fatal accidents in solar industry https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CCDPHP/DEODC/OHB/FACE/Pages/Solar.aspx

And obviously, we should not panic around that because *every* human activity can potentially result in harm and death. Keeping them safe is a task for healt & safety. The problem is that accidents in nuclear industry are singled out and presented as something immensely dangerous and deadly, when they are not.

@sheogorath @pro

Solar panels are catching fire as result of overheating or short circuits. Workers in solar and wind industry die as result of electrocution or fall from large heights.

But nobody talks about it because "solar and wind are nice and clean"! If a single worker breaks his ankle in a nuclear plant all world is suddenly concerned about their safety...