

Deaths per TWH by energy source - iand
http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html 

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Duff
Unless the point is to say "Wow, Coal is a very dangerous energy source on a
global basis." or "Wow, China is really bad at operating coal power plants",
this isn't very informative.

Obviously, the coal figures are reflecting the health issues created or
exacerbated by using the product. So miner deaths, cancers, respiratory
illnesses, etc are probably all factored in there.

Just as Chinese coal sticks out as outlier, nuclear sticks out as well.

How can you make an argument based on deaths without accounting for future
risks? Some waste products of many nuclear energy generation are dangerous for
10,000 years -- longer than recorded history. And as the article states, one
of the issues with nuclear accidents is the difficulty of attributing deaths:

"4000 people may eventually die earlier as a result of Chernobyl, but those
deaths would be more than 20 years after the fact and the cause and effect
becomes more tenuous."

It just seems bizarre to me that someone would discuss at length the hazards
of working on a roof, while the US has hundreds of nuclear power plants with
adjacent waste ponds that will require active cooling for an indefinite period
of time.

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nekojima
"4000 people may eventually die earlier as a result of Chernobyl, but those
deaths would be more than 20 years after the fact and the cause and effect
becomes more tenuous."

This figure is far less than the number who will die just this year from
mining coal (mostly in China and Africa), let alone from the direct health
effects of secondary causes of coal pollution which will number in the
hundreds of thousands to low millions.

There is very little nuclear waste (currently less than three Olympic sized
swimming pools for all of Canada's nuclear waste) compared to the primary and
secondary industrial waste from coal, oil and other forms of energy
production, including solar and wind manufacturing.

Solar and wind are only "environmentally friendly" after the units are
installed and working. If you add in the production, installation and land
requirements, as well as maintenance, solar and wind are not as helpful as
claimed.

I live between two of the largest nuclear generating stations in the world,
within 20km, and I have few concerns. Having visited the sites and educated
myself independently on the nuclear issue, I am far happier with this solution
than the alternatives, including industrial wind and solar, though solar roof
panels can have a place in helping reduce electrical heating of hot water.

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wildbunny
The title of this article should read: 'How not to monetise a blog post using
advertising'

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pjscott
True, but kind of trivial when the topic at hand involves the preventable
early deaths of millions of people.

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stfu
I have to admit these statistics are beautiful. Arguing that Nuclear is more
save than Solar because of more people dieing from falling down their roof
instead of dying by Nuclear catastrophes is just supreme quantitative logic.
It demonstrates so beautifully how numbers are excellent for focusing on a
narrow feature (i.e. "correlatable" action-death relations) while totally
blending out aspects such as long-term effects of nuclear waste and so on.

~~~
vidarh
The long-term effects of nuclear waste tend to get blown out of all
proportion. The _total_ amount of nuclear waste produced so far is so tiny
that even if you were to spread it in the atmosphere you're unlikely to cause
worse damage than what coal or oil does. Not least given the amount of
radioactive material that gets spread by coal power plants. When you take into
account the number of reactor designs that would allow using current nuclear
waste again as input to other types of reactors, and the problem diminishes
further.

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Androsynth
This post and your comment remind me of Al Gore's 'An Inconvenient Truth'. As
a politician, he went straight to fear-mongering rather than actually being a
leader and moving us forward.

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swaits
If we spent the same $/TWh on coal/oil safety as we do on nuclear, maybe this
would look different. Obviously, coal and oil are simply used, abundant, and
cheap.

~~~
RyanMcGreal
Most of the deaths from coal are related to air quality, so simply improving
plant safety isn't going to do a lot to reduce the death rate.

~~~
pjscott
There are plant upgrades, like various types of scrubbers, that can remove
some of the worst particulates from coal plant emissions. I don't know what
the marginal decrease in deaths per TWh per dollar would be, though, or how
low it can go.

There are also a considerable number of deaths from mining accidents, which of
course are drastically smaller for nuclear than for coal. Considering the
relative amounts of mining required, this should not be a surprise.

------
sandieman
"sorry page does not exist"

~~~
Anderkent
That's weird - works for me. Here's a cached copy:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:jvGUABA...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:jvGUABAHz4wJ:nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-
per-twh-by-energy-source.html+http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-
by-energy-source.html&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk)

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JoachimSchipper
Let's not have this discussion. I predict lots of heat and very little light.

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Duff
It should get amusing when the crowd of folks who claimed that Fukushima was
no big deal show up. Oh wait, they're here already.

~~~
ceejayoz
It was a big deal. The point is that statistically such incidents kill and
injure far fewer than coal, natural gas, or even hydroelectricity.

~~~
borism
it's not about deaths. it's about lives.

~~~
ceejayoz
I'm unclear as to what you're trying to say there. Are you contending that
nuclear power disrupts and ruins more lives than coal power does?

