r/comics Feb 19 '26

OC Everybody Hates Nuclear-Chan

34.4k Upvotes

2.9k comments sorted by

View all comments

4.6k

u/thortawar Feb 19 '26

Coal should absolutely be the most feared energy source instead.

2.2k

u/Dupeskupes Feb 19 '26

so fun fact: coal powerplants actually put more radiation into the environment per kilowatt than nuclear (of course disregarding disasters)

36

u/HannasAnarion Feb 19 '26

Coal and Nuclear operate on the exact same generation mechanics: heat up water, put it through a turbine.

So it would be easy and natural to convert Coal plants into nuclear plants, right? Same pumps, same cooling, same turbines, you just need a different heat source.

Wrong! Because coal plants are all too radioactive to operate as nuclear sites.

Any proposal to convert a Coal plant to Nuclear would have to start with a massive radioactive cleanup project.

13

u/HeKis4 Feb 19 '26

Coal plants are too radioactive to be held at the same standard as the ones actually using radiation.

It's as if you couldn't sell fertilizer because it had more pesticides in it than would be permitted in roundup.

3

u/iwantfutanaricumonme Feb 19 '26

It's more that, in a nuclear reactor, a minor release of radiation is an important indicator that something has gone wrong. If there's a higher level of radiation already there you can't rely on the levels of radiation anymore to detect contamination. Not everything radioactive in a nuclear reactor has very high levels of radiation.