3 ms·

The thing with falling-of-roof deaths is that they are poisson distributed. If 25 people fell off roofs then maybe if we are unlucky 50 people will fall off roo

by im4w1l 10y ago

The thing with falling-of-roof deaths is that they are poisson distributed. If 25 people fell off roofs then maybe if we are unlucky 50 people will fall off roofs this year. But no amount of bad luck will ever make 10,000 fall off roofs the year after. Deaths from fusion and nuclear on the other hand are very unpredictable. It is easy to imagine that year after year, no people die. And then suddenly millions of people die. That means that equating actual danger with observed-deaths-so-far is just not possible.

DougWebb 10y ago
Millions of people? Where do you get that number? We've had two devastating accidents with nuclear reactors, and one that came close to being devastating. All three were older designs that were more dangerous than the designs we could build today. The combined death toll is in the hundreds to thousands, at best. You don't get up to millions of deaths unless we start firing nuclear weapons at each other.
- eggy 10y ago
  Exactly why I chose the geometric mean with the nuclear industry claiming less than a 100, and Greenpeace reaching for 850,000, that ballparks you to 9200. If you try and include hypothetical deaths decades later, you would also need to include coal-burning plants particulate causing respiratory diseases affecting longevity, and the fact that there is typically a higher radiation level on the perimeter of a coal-burning plant than right outside an operating nuclear power station. Nuclear looks better with each passing year in spite of the back pressure. Also, I am not sure of the choice of the Poisson distribution suggested above. Roofers are experienced at walking on rooftops, and die due to, well, accidents. That and roofing work is fairly consistent. This number would follow some sort of normal or Poisson distribution, but homeowners are typically only used to a ladder to clean rain gutters out, not roofing or rooftop walking. Death of roofers/installers during initial installation were the numbers I was quoting from Australia. I think homeowner fatalities will top the roofers in areas with increasing solar panel installations. I would think a Weibul distribution with a Beta of 0.5 would better suit this scenario to model all of the inexperienced homeowners cleaning their solar panels monthly, and then dropping off (no pun intended) after reports and education on working at heights diffuses into the populace.

by im4w1l 10y ago

DougWebb 10y ago

Millions of people? Where do you get that number? We've had two devastating accidents with nuclear reactors, and one that came close to being devastating. All three were older designs that were more dangerous than the designs we could build today. The combined death toll is in the hundreds to thousands, at best. You don't get up to millions of deaths unless we start firing nuclear weapons at each other.

eggy 10y ago
Exactly why I chose the geometric mean with the nuclear industry claiming less than a 100, and Greenpeace reaching for 850,000, that ballparks you to 9200. If you try and include hypothetical deaths decades later, you would also need to include coal-burning plants particulate causing respiratory diseases affecting longevity, and the fact that there is typically a higher radiation level on the perimeter of a coal-burning plant than right outside an operating nuclear power station. Nuclear looks better with each passing year in spite of the back pressure. Also, I am not sure of the choice of the Poisson distribution suggested above. Roofers are experienced at walking on rooftops, and die due to, well, accidents. That and roofing work is fairly consistent. This number would follow some sort of normal or Poisson distribution, but homeowners are typically only used to a ladder to clean rain gutters out, not roofing or rooftop walking. Death of roofers/installers during initial installation were the numbers I was quoting from Australia. I think homeowner fatalities will top the roofers in areas with increasing solar panel installations. I would think a Weibul distribution with a Beta of 0.5 would better suit this scenario to model all of the inexperienced homeowners cleaning their solar panels monthly, and then dropping off (no pun intended) after reports and education on working at heights diffuses into the populace.