Col wrote:
"Felicity S." Fliss@orpheusnet wrote in message
news:fIxm7.2485$lk6.888888@orpheusnews...
Francis Burton wrote:

Albert Ross wrote:
Bizarrely enough, or so I believe, coal fired power stations actually
emit more "radiation" than nuclear due to the radioactive content of
the coal
Coal fired power stations also kill (estimated of course) and
harm the health of more people than nuclear power stations ever
have.
Source: Bernard Cohen - http://russp.org/BLC-4.html
I'm amused by the chattering classes in London and the south-east who
say that if we must have nuclear power stations, these should at least
be situated up in the north. They don't think how close France is.

Good.
Let's have them up here and provide much needed employment.

Well we have the biggest one right down here.

Sizewell B.
Often go swimming within a mile of it.

Very nice little power station.

Best place for a Nuke Darn Sarth would be Battersea.

Bearing in mind the amount of cooling water, here are not that many
places to put em.

Coastal sites or major rivers needed.

That means Severn or Thames typically.

Radiation from a nuke *station* is almost zero. Its unmeasurable really.
Certainly none of the operational stations show any local radiation
increase. Friends with Geigers have in fact checked this out. Far more
radiation from fly ash or from Radon in e.g. Dartmoor.


Not so with reprocessing plant however.

Note that the Three Mile Island accident - worst in the western world,
apart from maybe Windscale - lead to no substantive radiation release
whatsoever due to the construction and safety methodology employed:
secondary containment did exactly what it was supposed to do.


"The Kemeny Commission Report concluded that "there will either be no
case of cancer or the number of cases will be so small that it will
never be possible to detect them. The same conclusion applies to the
other possible health effects."[2] Several epidemiological studies in
the years since the accident have supported the conclusion that
radiation releases from the accident had no perceptible effect on cancer
incidence in residents near the plant, though these findings have been
contested by one team of researchers."

(as they always are).


Even Windscale fire in 1957, the most clueless accident in a reactor
built with no containment whatsoever, and essentially 'open to the
skies' ONLY was estimated to result in 33+ excess cancer deaths

"The official National Radiological Protection Board estimated in a 1987
study that at least 33 people are likely to die prematurely from cancers
as a result of the accident."

Compare and contrast with BP's oil spill and explosion..and the many
deaths associated with windmills. Nuclear power holds the record for the
lowest number of deaths per unit generated of any power industry ever.
Even hydroelectric.

Compare windpowerhttp://www.wind-works.org/articles/BreathLife.html)

"In the mid-1990s, 14 men had been killed on wind turbines or working
with wind energy. Since then six more have died, including the first
member of the public, a parachutist who literally flew into a turbine in
Germany.

Total cumulative generation reached nearly 130 TWh from 1975 through the
year 2000. The number of deaths per TWh of cumulative generation
steadily dropped through the 1990s.

I reported in Wind Energy comes of Age a mortality rate of 0.27 deaths
per TWh. However, the mortality rate was higher than I reported then. I
had missed several accidents that I learned of later.

In the mid-1990s the mortally rate was actually 0.4 per TWh. The
worldwide mortality rate dropped more than half to 0.15 deaths per TWh
by the end of 2000.

One half of the deaths have occurred on or around turbines of the size
typically installed during the great California wind boom of the
mid-1980s. Still, 7 have been killed working with larger turbines.

Tragically, at least 3 people have been killed working with small
turbines. These deaths dramatically skew the mortality rate because
small turbines account for a minuscule amount of worldwide wind generation.

The preponderance of those killed worldwide were Americans; 12 U.S.
citizens, and one Canadian. Germany, despite the phenomenal growth of it
wind industry since 1990, has one of the lowest mortality rates of the
four nations where deaths have occurred, 0.07 deaths per TWh.

The German rate includes the parachutist who, in her first unassisted
jump, hit a wind turbine on the island of Fehmarn. In doing so she
became the first women killed by wind energy and the first member of the
public killed. However, it's important to note that though she was a
member of the public, she was not a passerby, such as a person who walks
or drives by a wind turbine. Her death is more akin to that of a suicide
from a jump off a bridge or tall building. (This is a critical
distinction. In the two decades I've tracked this data, no passerby has
been injured by wind energy.)

The mortality rate in the USA, where all 13 deaths in North America
occurred, is twice that of the international average. As is the
mortality rate in the Netherlands.

Data from the USA distorts the mortality rates relative to deaths in
construction and deaths in operation & maintenance. The great majority
of deaths in the USA can be attributed to construction activities, when
installing, moving, or removing wind turbines. Six were killed during
operation and maintenance.

At least two of those killed in the USA, all in California, were killed
during operations connected with moving wind turbines from one site to
another. One of the deaths in Denmark was also related to removing a 55
kW wind turbine in Jutland that was to be replaced with a 500 kW machine.

The high number of deaths in the USA may be connected to the typically
frantic nature of year-end, tax-subsidy driven installation booms.

Though no passerby or neighbor has been injured by a wind turbine, there
is some, albeit minor, risk. For example, there are anecdotal reports of
wind turbines throwing their blades. On Samsø a 55 kW Nordtank threw a
blade through a window into an indoor swimming pool, according to one
knowledgeable source. Fortunately nobody was home.

As turbines become larger, the consequences of such catastrophic
failures as throwing a blade raises the stakes for the public at large.
At the European Wind Energy Conference in Nice in 1999, the halls were a
buzz with the news that several megawatt turbines had "lost" a blade in
Germany. The manufacturers of the turbines were understandably
uncomfortable even acknowledging that the events actually happened.

Probably no country, because of its high population density, has more
interest in the potential of such accidents than the Netherlands.

ECN, the Dutch research center in North Holland, is developing a
Handbook for Determining Risk Zones for Wind Turbines (Handboek
Risicozonering Windturbines) according to ECN's Luc Rademakers. The
handbook, says Rademakers, will contain a method to assess the risks
associated with wind turbines and aid in planning for wind turbines in
densely populated locales.

How does wind's mortality rate compare with that from other energy
sources? Unfortunately, there is no simple answer. Part of the problem
is that statistics on mortality rates for the full fuel cycle of coal,
for example, are not readily available. And where available they use
different units. Yet, it appears that the current mortality rate of wind
energy of 0.15 deaths per TWh is roughly equivalent to that of mining,
processing, and burning of coal to generate electricity according to
some researchers. (This data doesn't include increases in mortality from
the air pollution that results from burning coal.) Data from other
researchers indicates that wind's mortality rate is about half that for
the occupational mortality rate for coal."