Cool Nuclear Facts

August 2002 -- The American public has been led to believe that nuclear power is extremely dangerous and that nuclear waste disposal is an unsolved problem. Those beliefs are based on preposterous distortions perpetrated by irrational environmentalists and an irresponsible mass media. In reality, a reactor meltdown would have to occur every two weeks to make nuclear power as deadly as the routine emissions from coal-fired power, from which we get about half of our electric power in the United States. (Note: some newer nuclear power plant designs cannot possibly meltdown.) And if the United States went completely nuclear for all its electric power for 10,000 years, the amount of land needed for waste disposal would be about what is needed for the coal ash that is currently generated every two weeks.
Anti-nuclear activists like to scare us with horror stories about the "thousands of tons of nuclear waste" that have been produced since nuclear power began some four decades ago. That sounds like a lot -- until you put it into perspective, which anti-nuclear activists and the mass media never do. Consider that one pound of plutonium can produce as much energy as the Yankee Stadium full of coal. And coal-fired power generates something like 100 million tons of waste annually in the United States, or about three tons of ash per second. Every few hours, more coal ash is generated than high-level nuclear waste has been generated in four decades!

Oh, but nuclear waste is far more dangerous than coal waste, isn't it? Actually, it isn't. For a given amount of energy produced, coal ash is actually more radioactive than nuclear waste. How can that be? Simple. The quantity of coal ash is literally millions of times greater than the corresponding quantity of nuclear waste, so even though the radioactive intensity of the coal ash is much less, the overall amount of radiation and radioactive matter is greater.

But nobody worries much about the radioactivity of coal ash because the chemicals in it are far more dangerous. They include several thousand tons per year of mercury and other heavy metals, along with huge amounts of lead, arsenic, and asbestos, for example. Yet even the huge quantities of chemical waste in coal ash are of little concern compared to the gaseous emissions from burning coal, which kill an estimated 10,000 to 50,000 Americans every year, depending on which study you believe. As a point of reference, even the lower estimate approaches the rate at which Americans died in the Viet Nam war, and the higher estimate greatly exceeds it, yet the media rarely report on those deaths.

So let's get this straight. For a given amount of energy produced, coal waste has more radioactive matter than nuclear waste, yet the radioactivity of coal waste is nowhere near as dangerous as the solid chemical waste, which in turn is nowhere near as dangerous as the gaseous emissions. Are you starting to get the picture yet?