Funny out of the box article though, I didnt mean to sound so negative. Not very scientific if you ask me, but an interesting angle.

How else are you supposed to estimate the safety of various power supply system, what measure would you use other than deaths per (terra)W-h produced?

I read and found it curious that there was no mention of Church Rock, New Mexico,
http://www.ratical.com/radiation/KillingOurOwn/KOO9.html

Funny that the same page has a link entitled - Uranium Stocks Go Nuclear

I smell a dirty great big rat

I find the OP link to be highly suspect.

Yes, deaths are important, but so is property damage, long-term environmental damage (radiation, fraking), etc.

Also, I think it's important to separate risks. For instance, from that article, it appears that solar is only so dangerous because a bunch of incompetent people keep falling off their roofs. You can't rightfully compare that to Fukushima Daiichi and then say Nuclear power is safer. It's apples and oranges.

Coal is awful. It's dirty, radioactive, terrible for the environment and everyone working/living around them, not terribly efficient. Honestly, every type of power will have faults (hehe), but none of them are as bad as coal.

Fullhamish, i don't see the 'Uranium Stocks' link - also, how many died due to the Church Rock accident?

Cause i don't see any figures, well other than the 0 died when the flood hit.

The facts are radiation is invisible, the slow death from cancer 10-20 years later is not something which can be predicted.

Therefore it is much scarier.

Coal on the other-hand produces soot - which can be seen, this causes respiratory illness - which slowly gets worse and can be felt. You get used to it so it doesn't seem so bad. And finally it is linked to deaths from pneumonia or other respiratory illnesses which can be blamed on the illness, but the deaths usually wouldn't have occured if the lungs had not been exposed to coal dust in the first place. (NOTE: i'm ignoring deaths directly related to mining here)

So there are very good reasons for deaths related to nuclear power to be scarier than deaths related to coal power. However, emotions and numbers don't always add up to the same conclusion. It is possible that these figures are entirely correct. (though as I haven't done the original research it is hard to tell)

Firstly I agree with everything said about coal. I would say, however, that the dust/contaminants are only likely to pose a problem for a generation or two (excepting maybe for As). Nuclear contamination is a potential problem far into the future - the T1/2 of Th-232 is 14.05 billion years. Some might say this extended 1/2 life indicates low risk, it is however, highly toxic when inhaled/digested. Indeed a considerable quantity was released, for example, at Church Rock.
While I agree that it is more difficult to quantify deaths from radio-active exposure, this epidemiological link from a reputable source gives a good idea of the scale of the problem: http://www.emnrd.state.nm.us/mmd/marp/Documents/MK023ER_20081212_Marquez_NNELC-Acoma-Comments-AttachmentE-UExposureSummary.pdf

My point is that when considering the safety, or otherwise, of the nuclear industry decommissioning is often ignored while mining almost always is.

First of all. Why are you going on about thorium when the world uses uranium and, 2ndly, the fact that thorium has a very long half life indicates that it is NOT radioactive. Yes, eating heavy metals is bad for you but quoting its half life is just absurd.

Found the source study, if you'd like: http://manhaz.cyf.gov.pl/manhaz/strona_konferencja_EAE-2001/15%20-%20Polenp~1.pdf

@Yonni, perhaps we should be using Thorium, one of the major reasons all nuclear powers developed Uranium fuel cycles was because they needed to produce Uranium for weapons.

You can't weaponise Thorium, and it is 10-1000 times more common in the earth's surface... You could design thorium reactors and give them to Iran, North Korea, and anyone terrorist group who wants one. Designed to operate without high pressure steam, this actually reduces any chance of an explosion (nuclear reactors tend to have chemical explosions caused by too much heat in the reactor, NOT nuclear explosions - but an explosion spreading radioactive waste around an area is bad for everyone) ... Anyway, i'm not pro-nuclear or anything. I'm just familiar with some good ideas. I am mostly pro-Wind and Solar Power Towers.

I am ''going on'' about Th because when U is mined it is frequently placed in tailings piles as a byproduct. Can I refer you to this reference again:http://www.ratical.com/radiation/KillingOurOwn/KOO9.html. Yes it has a long T1/2, as I said, but here is a reputable report on its toxicology - http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxfaqs/tf.asp?id=659&tid=121. Effectively then anthropocentric derived surface concentrations will form a hazard far far into the future - that is why I mentioned the T1/2.

Of course if you would prefer me to talk about U, I will oblige.

I have always been the most pro-nuclear guy I know.

It one of the most environmentally friendly, its safest (according to this) and is just as cheap as coal.

Until another Chernobyl happens there is no downside events like Chernobyl are so rare, which is why Nuclear is so safe.

That said this study was done in 2008, prior to Japan

He's talking about thorium because a lot of experts are saying that thorium is the future of nuclear power.

Thorium has several advantages over uranium as a nuclear fuel, for example it is much more abundant on Earth than uranium, and is also much more difficult to weaponise.

Several countries including the USA, China, India, the UK and Norway, are actively pursuing programmes to develop and commercialise thorium-based nuclear reactors. China reckons it will have a working thorium reactor by 2015.

You can weaponise thorium. U233 is harder to use but it is certainly plenty fissile. Trust me, I do believe there are benefits to using thorium but I'm completely puzzled why its such a popular myth thg thorium is some sort of brilliant savior for the nuclear industry.

Proliferation proof? 1000x more abundant? Safer? No waste? GTFO

''......Thorium, and it is 10-1000 times more common in the earth's surface''

I doubt this, but I could be wrong. I do know, for instance, that the crustal ratio is only around 3-4 in favour of Th. Have you a reference please? I agree with what has been said by Yonni about its potential military use.

Ful, I completely agree that the front end of nuclear power is quite terrible and, as with all mining, requires a closer eye than what's currently afforded to it. I won't argue that.

That being said, when discussing power options, you often have to go with the lesser of the evils.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingston_Fossil_Plant_coal_fly_ash_slurry_spill

wikipedia disagrees with some things: (re:thorium vs Uranium) "Some benefits of thorium fuel when compared with uranium were summarized as follows:

Weapons-grade fissionable material (233U) is harder to retrieve safely and clandestinely from a thorium reactor;
Thorium produces 10 to 10,000 times less long-lived radioactive waste;
Thorium mining produces a single pure isotope, whereas the mixture of natural uranium isotopes must be enriched to function in most common reactor designs. The same cycle could also use the fissionable U-238 component of the natural uranium, and also contained in the depleted reactor fuel;
Thorium cannot sustain a nuclear chain reaction without priming, so fission stops by default in an accelerator driven reactor."

Yonni you are quite right to point out Kingston and the role of the TVA in hushing the matter up. I do, however, feel that Church Rock, for example, will impact far into the future (~tens of thousands of years at least) and has almost certainly already had severe toxic effects most likely including fatalities- all of the rather limited evidence points that way. Let alone anything else what sort of legacy is that for us to leave?

Just to repeat my point is this - when considering the safety, or otherwise, of the nuclear industry decommissioning is often ignored while mining almost always is.

As to the abundance question - i believe my figures may be based on the useful fuel - ie the precentage of the Ore which is usable in a fission reaction - Uranium 235 is only 0.72 of a percent of the Uranium Ore we mine.

4 times the abundance of Thorium in the crust could be up to 555 times the abundance of fisible material (i just don't know the isotope abundance of thorium or which ones are fissible... want to look it up?)

@orathiac thank you for the partial clarification of your original post. I still wonder where the 10,000x figure came from?Maybe that referred to a particular deposit, perhaps monazite-bearing? It would be interesting to see the source so we can clarify a little further.

wow, i found a tech talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHs2Ugxo7-8

Thorium 232, apparently 100% of the ore, can be used to facilitate a nuclear reaction. (of course this also points out the U-238 - 99.3% can be used in fast breeder reactors, though this produces plutonium, which is suspect is more toxic...) I knew my figures weren't coming from nowhere...

Thank you for the reference, at 55 mins length I think that I will view it a little later.

@fulhamish - sorry, my original figure was between 10 and 1000 times.

And, no, my source doesn't go into any particular details...

@orathiac, thanks and I apolgise for appearing pedantic. I was fascinated when you appeared to say that there was a geological process that concentrated Th on the surface from the body of the crust. Mineralogy is an interest of mine. Hence my pestering you for references.

Thorium isn't fissile, it's fertile. It needs a neutron source to transmutate into U233 which is fissile. Similarly, U238 is fertile. Like you said, it transmutates in a reactor to several different plutonium isotopes which are fissile.

Even in conventional 'slow' reactors, a considerable amount of the energy comes from plutonium fission. I know in Canadian heavy water reactors it's roughly 50% over the lifetime of the fuel. In light water reactors, I believe the figure is a little bit lower.

@Yonni - the process which is seeded with some U233 produces more U233 at the end of Thorium's decay chain, so it continues without the need to add more U233.

The U233 is also contaminated with U232 - which would need to be removed and safely handled if you wanted to turn it into a bomb (making it harder to do, but not a problem if you leave it all inside the core)

One of the major advantages (apart from the amount of fuel available) is the fact that a liquid thorium floride reactor operates at standard atmospheric pressure. Current generation Uranium reactors use water cooling at massively high pressure - so you can get up to several hundred degrees (which is the useful temperature for the reactor to be operating at - the high pressure keeps the water liquid) With Thorium salts, you get liquid salt as the working material (and the fuel) without needing high pressures (lots of heavy-duty steel, and a massive concrete containment box incase the high pressure steel fails)

You get to remove a whole system, along with massive amount of steel and concrete. This makes it safer and cheaper than conventional nuclear fission.

Sorry, theoretically cheaper - we haven't spent the time developing and testing the required technology. (though apparently the chemical industry routinely uses liquid salts, so this is a tried and tested bit of tech, just waiting for a new application)

Orthaic, you're confusing two different innovations - thorium fuel and molten salt reactors. While some ideas for molten salt reactors involve thorium fuel, it isn't a necessity and while some ideas for thorium fuels are for molten salt reactors, the current uses for thorium are as ceramic fuels.

That being said, I agree that MSR have the potential do some very cool things. Unfortunately, we're still quite a while away from seeing them in commercial use.

Regarding recycling thorium fuels - it isn't really that simple. You still lose a lot of reactivity to absorption in the transuranics and fission products so you can't just leave the fuel in without reprocessing. In fact, the breeding ratio is simply too low in light water reactors for thorium recycling to be very efficient.

Here's a brilliant and well written paper on thorium fuel cycles if you're interested:
http://digitalcommons.mcmaster.ca/opendissertations/6263/