Union of Concerned Scientists are an anti-nuclear lobbyist group. Anything they say should be dismissed out of hand. They have 0 credibility and have spent the last 50 years spreading lies and fear about nuclear energy.
The problem here is actually that the people at 'Union' are deeply convinced that nuclear is bad and no nuclear project no matter how much time was spent on safety has ever been endorsed by them. This is simply how they operate.
The reason there are 'exceptions' is because partly with the help of themselves the nuclear regulatory system was changed in a way to hardcore specific technological solution into the regulatory process that only work for traditional PWR, practically excluding every other form of nuclear energy.
NuScale uses PWR technology in a slightly different form but because that's what they believed to be able to regulated, but even that requires lots of extra cost to get regulated.
The regulatory changes after the nuclear accidents essentially killed all research and all progress. This can be seen both in the rates of new reactor designs and reactor building rates.
Union of Concerned Scientiests and Greenpeace have been at the forefront of this issue for a long time now, and their deliberate strategy since literally 50 years (and this is a fact that has been shown based on their internal documents) is to always focus on nuclear safety because that's how they can make it uneconomical. And to their credit, this strategy has worked perfectly. It might be the single most successful political campaign of the 'environmental movement'.
If they had been this effective against coal we would live in a better world now.
Coal – global average 100,000 (41% global electricity)
Coal – China 170,000 (75% China’s electricity)
Coal – U.S. 10,000 (32% U.S. electricity)
Oil 36,000 (33% of energy, 8% of electricity)
Natural Gas 4,000 (22% global electricity)
Biofuel/Biomass 24,000 (21% global energy)
Solar (rooftop) 440 (< 1% global electricity)
Wind 150 (2% global electricity)
Hydro – global average 1,400 (16% global electricity)
Hydro – U.S. 5 (6% U.S. electricity)
Nuclear – global average 90 (11% global electricity w/Chern&Fukush)
Nuclear – U.S. 0.1 (19% U.S. electricity)
I've never been quite enthusiastic about these kinds of numbers, because I'm not sure what deaths are included. I believe this article includes indirect, pollution-related deaths for fossil fuels, but what about deaths in uranium mining and processing?
Forbes separates out the US numbers because of the strong regulatory regime here---which strikes me as odd; doesn't Forbes usually consider environmental and health-and-safety regulations bad?
One confounding factor in this data is the low numbers of large-scale accidents for nuclear power. The reason the hydro power number is so high is a number of very large dam failures; would nuclear numbers be similar if Chernobyl happened in a much higher population area or if Fukushima happened faster?
> but what about deaths in uranium mining and processing
Modern Uranium mining is basically pin-point mining mostly done by machines. And even without that, Uranium is so energy dense that you don't actually have to mine much. Every other energy source also has lots of mining simply because you need lots more of normal metals.
Think about the absurd amount of mining required for wind miles.
The same for processing, those are very highly advanced modern processes that are pretty strictly on safety.
There are very few deaths from either.
> One confounding factor in this data is the low numbers of large-scale accidents for nuclear power.
The only ever large-scale accident (in terms of people) for nuclear power is Chernobyl and if you look at the long term death we are talking around 4000 who die earlier and maybe 50 who died faster and that is one event 40 years ago.
Other then that there have been basically 0 deaths from radiation from civilian power nuclear accidents. In reality Chernobyl was a military reactor and shouln't even be included in the first place.
> or if Fukushima happened faster
I'm not sure what you are talking about here. It seems that you assume that evacuation saved people? That is totally wrong. Actually a far larger number of people died during the evacuation that were actually endangered by the radiation.
The problem here is actually that the people at 'Union' are deeply convinced that nuclear is bad and no nuclear project no matter how much time was spent on safety has ever been endorsed by them. This is simply how they operate.
The reason there are 'exceptions' is because partly with the help of themselves the nuclear regulatory system was changed in a way to hardcore specific technological solution into the regulatory process that only work for traditional PWR, practically excluding every other form of nuclear energy.
NuScale uses PWR technology in a slightly different form but because that's what they believed to be able to regulated, but even that requires lots of extra cost to get regulated.
The regulatory changes after the nuclear accidents essentially killed all research and all progress. This can be seen both in the rates of new reactor designs and reactor building rates.
Union of Concerned Scientiests and Greenpeace have been at the forefront of this issue for a long time now, and their deliberate strategy since literally 50 years (and this is a fact that has been shown based on their internal documents) is to always focus on nuclear safety because that's how they can make it uneconomical. And to their credit, this strategy has worked perfectly. It might be the single most successful political campaign of the 'environmental movement'.
If they had been this effective against coal we would live in a better world now.
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