<story><title>Nuclear plant shutdowns tied to coal pollution, decreased birth weights</title><url>http://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-environment-pediatrics-idUSKBN1762ZK</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>pdog</author><text>Fukushima has demonstrated that humans aren&amp;#x27;t great at controlling or predicting the real risk of nuclear. The fact is, even if no one dies from acute radiation poisoning, nuclear disasters are costly and devastating.</text></item><item><author>xroche</author><text>Closing nuclear power plants and replacing them with coal power plants is simply criminal. In Europe, coal pollution kills ~20,000 people each year (&lt;i&gt;), nuclear never killed a single person, and no study could ever provide any mortality increase due to nuclear energy (outside the Tchernobyl accident, which killed between 200 and 4000 people depending on estimations, after 20 years of study)&lt;p&gt;To be clear: nuclear is not the perfect solution, is not a renewable energy, and will have to be replaced by something else in the future. But this is the least deadly energy, even safer than wind or solar power (&lt;/i&gt;)&lt;p&gt;(&lt;i&gt;) &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.theguardian.com&amp;#x2F;environment&amp;#x2F;2013&amp;#x2F;jun&amp;#x2F;12&amp;#x2F;european-coal-pollution-premature-deaths&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.theguardian.com&amp;#x2F;environment&amp;#x2F;2013&amp;#x2F;jun&amp;#x2F;12&amp;#x2F;european...&lt;/a&gt;
(&lt;/i&gt;) &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nextbigfuture.com&amp;#x2F;2016&amp;#x2F;06&amp;#x2F;update-of-death-per-terawatt-hour-by.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nextbigfuture.com&amp;#x2F;2016&amp;#x2F;06&amp;#x2F;update-of-death-per-ter...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mpweiher</author><text>Dunno.  The &lt;i&gt;Tsunami&lt;/i&gt; killed upwards of 15000 people.  I don&amp;#x27;t have figures, but I am sure that a good number of these were not killed by the wave directly, but by technical contraptions that failed, crushed them or what have you.&lt;p&gt;One of these many technical contraptions that was damaged&amp;#x2F;destroyed by the Tsunami was the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.  Yet, so far not a single person has been killed as a result of that failure, and so far the predictions are that future deaths will be so low as to disappear into the statistical noise.  (And these predictions tend to be on the high side:  the WHO created reports every decade after Chernobyl, and each report massively revised those estimates downwards).&lt;p&gt;Yet, all we ever hear about is Fukushima.&lt;p&gt;Odd.  That.</text></comment>
<story><title>Nuclear plant shutdowns tied to coal pollution, decreased birth weights</title><url>http://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-environment-pediatrics-idUSKBN1762ZK</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>pdog</author><text>Fukushima has demonstrated that humans aren&amp;#x27;t great at controlling or predicting the real risk of nuclear. The fact is, even if no one dies from acute radiation poisoning, nuclear disasters are costly and devastating.</text></item><item><author>xroche</author><text>Closing nuclear power plants and replacing them with coal power plants is simply criminal. In Europe, coal pollution kills ~20,000 people each year (&lt;i&gt;), nuclear never killed a single person, and no study could ever provide any mortality increase due to nuclear energy (outside the Tchernobyl accident, which killed between 200 and 4000 people depending on estimations, after 20 years of study)&lt;p&gt;To be clear: nuclear is not the perfect solution, is not a renewable energy, and will have to be replaced by something else in the future. But this is the least deadly energy, even safer than wind or solar power (&lt;/i&gt;)&lt;p&gt;(&lt;i&gt;) &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.theguardian.com&amp;#x2F;environment&amp;#x2F;2013&amp;#x2F;jun&amp;#x2F;12&amp;#x2F;european-coal-pollution-premature-deaths&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.theguardian.com&amp;#x2F;environment&amp;#x2F;2013&amp;#x2F;jun&amp;#x2F;12&amp;#x2F;european...&lt;/a&gt;
(&lt;/i&gt;) &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nextbigfuture.com&amp;#x2F;2016&amp;#x2F;06&amp;#x2F;update-of-death-per-terawatt-hour-by.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nextbigfuture.com&amp;#x2F;2016&amp;#x2F;06&amp;#x2F;update-of-death-per-ter...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>bpodgursky</author><text>Fukushima has demonstrated that relying on 60&amp;#x27;s technology and refusing to upgrade or invest because of political sensitivities exposes you to disasters 50 years down the line.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s like if everyone got afraid of airplanes in the 1980&amp;#x27;s and kept flying the same ones from the 60s through today because people were afraid to build new ones.  Would you say air travel was unsafe, or that we made poor technology investments?</text></comment>