What are the True Costs of Nuclear and Coal?
Edwin Lyman, a physicist, is a senior scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Global Security Program in Washington, DC. Both coal and nuclear power pose serious risks to human health and the environment, but there is no consistent way to compare their very different risks on an apples-to-apples basis. The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) has developed an energy strategy, “Climate 2030: A National Blueprint for a Clean Energy Economy,” which shows that the United States can dramatically cut global-warming emissions and still enjoy robust economic growth over the next several decades without substantially increasing the use of either coal or nuclear power. That said, nuclear energy poses a unique and potentially catastrophic threat. A serious accident or a terrorist attack at a typical US nuclear plant could result in a release of enough radioactive material to cause thousands of deaths within weeks from acute radiation syndrome, tens of thousands of deaths over decades fro
