Thread by @GeorgeMonbiot

1. As Germany reactivates its coal-burning power stations in response to the double whammy of Putin’s threat to gas supplies and the closure of its last nuclear reactors, please remember that the harms falsely attributed to nuclear can be correctly attributed to coal. Thread/

2. Let’s begin with total death rate, *including* the deaths caused by nuclear accidents, but *excluding* the deaths attributable to coal and caused by climate breakdown. As you can see, nuclear is massively safer.

3. Were we to include the climate deaths caused by coal burning, the contrast would be even starker. In fact, coal burning could help push us into systemic environmental collapse.

4. But how about the long-term health impacts? Surely radiation from nuclear plants causes transgenerational disease? No it doesn’t. Even in the case of the worst of all nuclear power plant disasters, at Chernobyl. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33888597/

5. However, the products of coal burning can cause major, lifelong conditions in foetuses exposed to them. Take mercury, for example. Prenatal exposure to methyl mercury causes a wide range of serious conditions. sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

6. So hang on, what about all those photos of children with terrible disabilities in the wake of Chernobyl? There is no evidence whatever that these conditions were caused by the disaster. science.org/doi/10.1126/sc…

7. In all populations, some children are born with disabilities. The photographers who sought out visibly disabled children in the regions surrounding Chernobyl, then displayed them like exhibits in a mediaeval circus, behaved in an utterly disgraceful and unethical manner.

8. So why do we do this to ourselves? Why do we give the most damaging energy technology a free pass, while transferring the blame? Well, we tend to be far more afraid of new, unfamiliar technologies than of old, established ones, even when the new ones are much less harmful.

9. For example, I know people who have junked their microwave ovens because they are afraid the non-ionising radiation the ovens use will affect their health (it doesn’t). But they retain their wood-burning stoves, whose health effects are major and well-documented.

10. Some of us tried to warn our friends in Germany that shutting down its nuclear power stations before the end of their lives was madness, again monbiot.com/2011/11/22/how…
and again: ft.com/content/e7e081…
We were ignored.

11. Now Putin has his hands on Germany's gas tap, and this otherwise enlightened nation is preparing once again to poison itself – and the planet – with yet more coal smoke. It’s the outcome of an irrational policy, guided not by science but by superstitious fairytales.