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And that's before you compare death/injury per Mw produced. On that measure Solar power is more dangerous than nuclear given how many people die falling off ro

by brc 11y ago

And that's before you compare death/injury per Mw produced. On that measure Solar power is more dangerous than nuclear given how many people die falling off roofs while installing or maintaining solar panels.

xg15 11y ago
Really! And if you look at the illness/milliwatt scale, you can see that even the human metabolism itself is more dangerous than nuclear power. The fears are clearly overblown!
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  Well, even if that was so, it only goes to show how much effort went to make large-scale nuclear power generation very, very safe.
notahacker 11y ago
I'm assuming this stat stems from the famous blog article which rejected even the most conservative and widely-accepted Chernobyl death estimates and then calculated solar deaths based on the (unsupported) assumption that 1 in 6 roofing casualties were the result of installing solar panels...
- throwawayaway 11y ago
  > http://nextbigfuture.com/2008/03/deaths-per-twh-for-all-energy-sources.html http://nextbigfuture.com/2008/03/deaths-per-twh-for-all-ener... "The World Health Organization study in 2005 indicated that 50 people died to that point as a direct result of Chernobyl. 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." So he uses 50 deaths for his calculations. "1/6th of the 9 million roofing job accidents would be about 50 deaths from installing 1.5 million roofs if other countries had similar to US safety. The amount of roof installations is increasing as a percentage. 4 TWh from roofs PV. So 12.5 deaths per TWh from solar roof installations. Assuming 15 years as the average functional life or time until major maintenance or upgrade is required. The average yearly deaths from rooftop solar is 0.83/TWh." How did I miss that! Incredible.

by brc 11y ago

xg15 11y ago

Really! And if you look at the illness/milliwatt scale, you can see that even the human metabolism itself is more dangerous than nuclear power. The fears are clearly overblown!

TeMPOraL 11y ago
Well, even if that was so, it only goes to show how much effort went to make large-scale nuclear power generation very, very safe.

notahacker 11y ago

I'm assuming this stat stems from the famous blog article which rejected even the most conservative and widely-accepted Chernobyl death estimates and then calculated solar deaths based on the (unsupported) assumption that 1 in 6 roofing casualties were the result of installing solar panels...

throwawayaway 11y ago
> http://nextbigfuture.com/2008/03/deaths-per-twh-for-all-energy-sources.html http://nextbigfuture.com/2008/03/deaths-per-twh-for-all-ener... "The World Health Organization study in 2005 indicated that 50 people died to that point as a direct result of Chernobyl. 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." So he uses 50 deaths for his calculations. "1/6th of the 9 million roofing job accidents would be about 50 deaths from installing 1.5 million roofs if other countries had similar to US safety. The amount of roof installations is increasing as a percentage. 4 TWh from roofs PV. So 12.5 deaths per TWh from solar roof installations. Assuming 15 years as the average functional life or time until major maintenance or upgrade is required. The average yearly deaths from rooftop solar is 0.83/TWh." How did I miss that! Incredible.