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?
I did not mention nuclear safety anywhere, why do you bring this up? If you insist on discussing it I can bring up that US nuclear power ends up all the way at the bottom of the list over the mortality rate (direct deaths and epidemiological estimates) with 0.1 lives lost per trillion kWh. Global nuclear, that is including Chernobyl, Fukushima and all other known accidents in the last 40 years ends up higher at 90 deaths/trillion kWh. The list, in order from low to high mortality goes like this:
0.1 - US nuclear
5 - US hydro
90 - nuclear
150 - wind
440 - solar
1400 - hydro
4000 - natural gas
10000 - US coal
24000 - biofuel and biomass
36000 - oil
100000 - coal
170000 - China coal
Doesn't change the picture. Hydro is surprisingly dangerous, in fact the single largest disaster involving an energy source was a dam that burst in China, killing 171,000 people.
Energy Source Mortality Rate (deaths/trillionkWhr)
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)
In deaths per KWh nuclear is king, with a thousandth of the deaths of gas and ten thousandth of coal. Until recently even solar was worse due to installers sometimes falling off roofs!
I really do not understand why almost no one bothers to spend a couple of minutes looking up the actual numbers and analysis that people have been doing for decades... its universal in all subjects, not just nuclear.
I think the 800k figure may be a global number. This 2012 Forbes article has a global average 100,000 deaths _per trillion kWhr_[1]. I have no clue if the the world uses 8 trillion kWhr of coal power in a year though.
The Banqiao and Shimantan dam failures in China killed ~170K people.
The Machchu-2 dam failure killed 5K people in India.
The South Fork dam failure killed 2K people in the US.
Coal mining directly killed over 100 people annually up until the mid 1980s, and continues to kill 10-30 people annually.
Oil drilling in general kills about 100-110 people annually.
There's not much good data for wind turbines, but generally wind power kills 10+ people annually, either due to fires in the turbine housing or falls.
There have been a number of deaths at various power plants, often due to electrocution or steam boiler explosions.
The only truly safe power utility-scale power source in widespread use is solar.
BTW: Fukushima killed 1 person directly due to the nuclear material. Even Chernobyl only killed between 30 to 80 people directly, depending on how you count it.
If you want to count indirect deaths due to Chernobyl and Fukushima, then you also have to compare that to indirect deaths due to traditional power. You don't want to know how many people diesel, oil, and coal kill annually!
Those are addressed in the episode as well and nuclear is at the bottom of the list. The order of deaths per unit of electricity were Coal > Oil > Gas > Hydro > Rooftop Solar > Wind > Nuclear[1]
And it is not surprising, because we are talking about very different things. Solar-related deaths are mostly people falling from rooftops, Hydro-related deaths mostly come from a single event: the Banqiao dam failure, and Nuclear-related deaths depend a lot on how you count Chernobyl and Fukushima. Coal goes through the roof, mostly because of pollution.
We simply don't know how many people die from the Chernobyl disaster, from 31 to hundreds of thousands, yes, it is that fuzzy. I think the most official number is around 4000, but who knows what number they used to make these numbers? It is probably in the fine print somewhere if really look for it.
Mining operations are also taken into account, but how deep shall we go into the supply chain? Do we count the fatalities related to the raw materials that make the plant? What about the guy who dies in a car accident going to work at the power plant?
Do these numbers even make sense or are they just politics? By carefully picking my metrics, I could probably make coal looks very safe and solar very dangerous if I wanted to.
however, the article is saying "coal is the biggest killer in U.S. energy at 15,000 deaths per trillion kWhrs produced, while nuclear is the least at zero. Wind energy kills a mere 100 people or so per trillion kWhrs, "
The WHO did a massive study[0] and actually found nuclear killed far fewer people per watt than all others, even solar:
Energy Source Death Rate (deaths per TWh)
Coal – world average 161
Coal – China 278
Coal – USA 15
Oil 36
Natural Gas 4
Biofuel/Biomass 12
Peat 12
Solar (rooftop) 0.44
Wind 0.15
Hydro 0.10
Hydro - world including Banqiao) 1.4
Nuclear 0.04
Note that rooftop construction is one of the most dangerous jobs in the US, with high mortality rates from falls.[1]
Coal mining is extremely hazardous, it would top this chart even just looking at production. Folding in air pollution deaths from burning coal and you add thousands of deaths per day.[2]
Each year coal and oil kill more people than the entire 60 year history of nuclear, including every nuclear disaster.
Even if we focus on worst case scenarios, nuclear is safer. The impact of Chernobyl is wildly overestimated by the public.[3]
For hydro, let's just note that a dam failure in Banqiao killed 171,000. The highest death estimates for Chernobyl (and this is including expected early deaths from radiation exposure that still haven't appeared a few decades after the incident) and you're looking at maybe 4,000.
You could add a Chernobyl every year, even take the most aggressive estimates for early deaths caused by that accident, then ignore all air pollution deaths, and coal and oil would still be more dangerous. They're just that insanely deadly an industry. Nuclear's worst case is safer than coal and oil's average.
On cost I think you're mistaken too, nuclear remaining an incredibly cheap source of power per watt, but power economics are complicated and that'd take another discussion. All I can say is that this was the standard wisdom of everyone I knew who worked in the energy industry, despite occasional scare stories in magazines about how the "true" cost of nuclear is disguised by subsidies - the math doesn't quite add up.[4]
[3] An overview of the actual mortality impact of Chernobyl found it responsible for a few dozen deaths in emergency workers (fewer than 50, and some of those dying 20 years after the accident). It might be possible to eventually tie a few thousand early deaths to the incident, but we're still waiting, decades after it happened. In general, radiation hazards were widely exaggerated. http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2005/pr38/en/
[4] Admittedly biased source, but it runs a few publically available numbers, even nuclear projects with cost overruns look better than some renewable projects: http://nuclearradiophobia.blogspot.com/p/cost-of-nuclear-pow...
I mean, ideally you get a mix of both sources, because they serve different purposes on the grid, but your bursty diurnal power isn't meant to serve as your cheap main source of power.
One of the first hits on google. Deaths are per 1000 TwH, and numbers are somewhat different, probably illustrating how hard it is to estimate casualties from pollution. Nuclear is still safest, followed by solar and wind.
global average values of the mortality rate per billion kWh, due to all causes as reported by the World HealthOrganization (WHO), are 100 for coal, 36 for oil, 24 for biofuel/biomass,4 for natural gas, 1.4 for hydro, 0.44 for solar, 0.15 for wind and 0.04 for nuclear (Table 6)
2500 times safer and people still think it's too dangerous?
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?
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