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Bulk is not all. The diffrence between the health hazard of nukes and wind is mostly down to the fact that while nuclear is one of the safest industies to work in, nuke plants are also quite heavily manned, so there are more workers to slip down stairs, do stupid things with hazardous chemicals, and have heart attacks - then there is the health impact of the radiation. This isnt a big factor at the plant, as it is mostly down to noble gas isotopes leaking to the atmosphere and causing some theoretical* number of cancers over the next few thousand years.

*The way this number is calculated is absurd. A population of 9 billion people is assumed, as are cancer survival rates identical to todays. That is not a possible future - If we maintain a technological civilization, cancer is not going to kill anyone in 400 years. If we do not, the population will be rather a heck of a lot lower than nine billion, and the number of cancer cases will be correspondingly lower.

by Thomas on Thu Jan 14th, 2010 at 10:34:19 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Got a link to the outline of those calculations?

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.
by ceebs (ceebs (at) eurotrib (dot) com) on Thu Jan 14th, 2010 at 10:48:14 AM EST
[ Parent ]
http://www.externe.info/ pulbications, nuclear. Huh. should have re-read. the most significant isotope is c-14. Calculation is still absurd, tough.
by Thomas on Thu Jan 14th, 2010 at 11:00:34 AM EST
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