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.. is actually more radioactive than that generated by their nuclear counterparts. In fact, the fly ash emitted by a power plant—a by-product from burning coal for electricity—carries into the surrounding environment 100 times more radiation than a nuclear power plant producing the same amount of energy.
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For 60 years, the hunt has been on for handfuls of "excess" cancers in populations subjected to unnatural doses of radiation. The findings have been more politically vexing than scientifically satisfying...
Meeting in Vienna in 1986, experts expressed a hope that Chernobyl would finally resolve the debate. "In 20 to 30 years' time we're going to know whether the linear dose hypothesis [is correct]," predicted one, "at least for leukemia and maybe for lung cancer."
It was not to be. For the record, aside from a serious uptick in curable thyroid cancer among those exposed as children (which faster action at the time would have avoided), a U.N. monitoring project finds "no scientific evidence of increases in overall cancer incidence or mortality rates" among residents of the Chernobyl region. But that hasn't stopped other studies from predicting tens of thousands of "excess" cancer deaths across Europe over many decades based on the same linear, no-threshold modeling that governments everywhere have adopted as a regulatory standard.
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Start with deaths that aren't the product of statistical imagination: Thousands more die in coal mining accidents each year (especially in China) than have been killed in all nuclear-related accidents since the beginning of time. What's more, coal plants spew toxins like mercury and other metals—along with more radioactive thorium and uranium than a nuclear plant—
Ann Coulter was mocked last month for pointing out that there is a hypothesis in the scientific community called