Bruce wrote:
The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Not really. It came from the ground. Lots of things that come from the
ground are toxic, like mercury, lead, sulphur.


So it's OK to dump them in the sea, too?


Dunno. Better ask God. He's been doing it for years. Try analysing
seawater some time. Loaded with radioactive natural thorium. Sea beds
full of it. Comes from decay of natural uranium.


Allegedly sulphur plumes were the original source of life.


Why not throw in a few dioxins, cyanides, phthalates and polychlorinated
biphenyls too? They can't do much harm - they are all made from things
that came out of the ground, after all.


Quite. All entirely natural materials. That will in time break down.

Although they have caused far more deaths than any nuclear power
technology has.

I guess you have a binary mind. Aspirin good. Cyanide bad. Try taking
1000 aspirin..


If you consider smoke alarms, medical uses of radioactive compounds and
the like, radioactivity has probably saved more lives than its ever
cost. Those radioactive compounds are made in reactors.

You live in a radioactive world. Life developed in spite of, and
possibly even because of, radioactivity. We know that too much
radioactivity does in fact kill. A-bombs proved that. We know that a
small amount doesn't. Life itself proves that.

What we don't know, is much about what happens in between.So the current
safety standards are set and met, at the nuclear industry contributing
less than 0.1% of the total radiation that people receive naturally.

You on average will receive 150 times more than that from medical
treatments of one sort or another, x-rays primarily.

You will recieve around 500 times more than that from natural radon, on
average, in the UK. A very nasty radioactive element that can collect
in the lungs. Reckoned to be the second largest cause of lung cancer
after smoking, in the UK.

It is in fact about 30 times more dangerous in terms of radioactivity,
to live on e.g Dartmoor, because of natural radon, than here in East
Anglia, a mere 50 miles from Sizewell 'B'. People are not dropping like
flies on Dartmoor.

There is no detectable increase in background radiation from any nuclear
power station in the UK., a mad greeny lefty friend of mine went round
them ALL with a geiger counter, and was honest enough to admit his
disappointment.

It's a bit different around the reprocessing plant though. There was
indeed a measurable increase of a few percent over normal background.
Nothing like Dartmoor, but measurable.

MOST of the so called 'high decommissioning costs' of old nuclear power
stations arise precisely BECAUSE any release of radiation that would be
trivial on Dartmoor, and is orders of magnitude less than that in the
waste tip of any coal fired power station, is immediately leapt upon and
reported as a 'grave nuclear incident' by real ale swilling ex CND
bearded overweight earth mothers and the like. So extreme and
unnecessary measures are taken to meet standards that no other industry
in the world is required to meet, standards imposed long AFTER the power
stations were built, so there was no chance to actually enable them to
meet them in terms of decomissioning -though they routinely do meet them
in normal operation.

There are very powerful interests that do not want us to either
relinquish dependence on fossil fuel, nor indeed to remain as a
reasonably successful post industrial society. It matters little as to
whether we drown in our own cO2, or die from starvation and cold.

Be careful what you wish for. A 'nuclear free' world would be a very
very unpleasant place to live at current UK population densities..