Coal plants and radiation? Really?

China to reconsider nuclear power plans. Is that good or bad news? In the light of Japan disaster, it seems good. But some people think not. Like George Monbiot at The Guardian. And why?

'Even when nuclear power plants go horribly wrong, they do less damage to the planet and its people than coal-burning stations operating normally. Coal, the most carbon-dense of fossil fuels, is the primary driver of manmade climate change. If its combustion is not curtailed, it could kill millions of times more people than nuclear power plants have done so far. Yes, I really do mean millions.'

He goes on to say that deaths from Chernobyl and Fukushima cannot be ignored but remain 'a tiny fraction of the deaths for which climate change – through its damage to the food supply, its contribution to the spread of infectious diseases and its degradation of the quality of life for many of the world’s poorest people – is likely to be responsible.'

Coal also causes plenty of other environmental damage, far worse than the side-effects of nuclear power production: from mountaintop removal to acid rain and heavy metal pollution. An article in Scientific American points out that the fly ash produced by a coal-burning power plant “carries into the surrounding environment 100 times more radiation than a nuclear power plant producing the same amount of energy.” But we are not panicking about our coal plants, as we are right now with the winds blowing south or eastwards from japan!