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The World’s Safest Source of Energy
- davedx 8y agoSince this is Hacker News, I knew it would be nuclear before opening the article. And for an article making use of the word 'source' multiple times, it sure doesn't provide any, does it? What a surprise. Where do the 150 deaths per 1000 TWh from wind energy come from? Skeptical minds would like to know.
- vezycash 8y agoNuclear is safer than solar? (Couldn't read the article, because the read more button needs JavaScript.)
- kingkongjaffa 8y agoThe materials and quantities of said materials, needed to make solar panels, are dug up from the ground, mines are not very safe.
- bloak 8y agoIt's probably totally against the Hacker News comment guidelines for me to say this, but do you think people could perhaps stop globally replacing "the" with "said"? This meme, or whatever it is, is getting rather old and rather irritating. But if for some reason people feel it's necessary, by all means carry on and I'll try not to complain again.
- deaps 8y agoThe use totally fits the definition: adjective: said 1. used in legal language or humorously to refer to someone or something already mentioned or named.
- Spare_account 8y agoIt's not a meme, it's a valid use of that word.
- bloak 8y agoSure. It's used in patents, for example. But recently it has been massively overused in online discussions and it's no longer funny (if it ever was). It seems to roughly fit this definition of "meme": "an image, video, piece of text, etc., typically humorous in nature, that is copied and spread rapidly by Internet users". Clearly this is the wrong place for this discussion. Is there a right place to discuss it, from a linguistic/sociological/stylistic point of view? Not that I really should... I'm just trying to avoid an unpleasant task that I really ought to be doing.
- Spare_account 8y ago>Is there a right place to discuss it, from a linguistic/sociological/stylistic point of view? The first place that springs to mind is https://english.stackexchange.com/ https://english.stackexchange.com/ I've seen other forums with good quality contributions on topics like this, I think one of them was for people speaking English as a second language looking for advice from native speakers. The name eludes me at the moment but if I come across it again I'll respond here with it.
- bryanlarsen 8y agoThey specifically said rooftop solar. I imagine it's the rooftop part where the deaths come from.
- simonh 8y agoEDITED - Found it. Complete report on wind farm related accidents and deaths world wide. It's pretty extensive, so I've not had a chance to check it in any way. It seems to go up to 2018. It seems to include things like studies on increased suicides from the noise. It's a PDF so not very easy to analyse the figures. http://www.caithnesswindfarms.co.uk/fullaccidents.pdf http://www.caithnesswindfarms.co.uk/fullaccidents.pdf
- joosters 8y agoI wonder how they extrapolated from a list of accidents into deaths per 1,000TWh? Do you divide the estimated world output by the number of deaths? Do you 'weight' deaths by the year in which they happened and the output at that time? There's lots of ways to mangle those figures...
- simonh 8y agoNo idea, but the other issue is are the same criteria being applied for each source of power? I've got no problem accepting that industrial accidents happen with wind turbine manufacture, installation and maintenance. Also that it's reasonable to include all those in the figures, after all if a particular form of power generation involves a lot of industrial accidents, that's a problem. There's just not enough info to see if these figures are truly comparable. Maybe they are, I just can't tell and on a highly charged issue like this you really need to be able to trust the figures you're looking at.
- jusssi 8y agoThis list seems to include some incidents that are only tangentially related to wind power: "Second of three public fatalities at the same location put down to driver distraction. Accident spot is where turbines become visible to drivers" "34 year old was killed when his car collided with a truck carrying large wind turbine components" "47-yr old man killed when the snowmobile he was driving stuck a fence around a wind farm construction site"
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- mattlondon 8y agoLikewise - was keen to understand what deaths are attributable to solar panels as well, especially since they wre more than turbines. For wind turbines I can kind of imagine a few disaster scenarios (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-16115139/storm-caused-wind-turbine-fire http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-16115139/storm-caused-wind-t...) with all the large, heavy, moving parts swinging around at height. But solar? The same solar panels that sit there stationary like widow glass or floor tiles with zero moving parts? I guess there are deaths from the manufacturing and raw resource extraction? Otherwise I can only assume they include people falling off of the roof installing them?
- pasta 8y agoYes, it's because people are falling of a roof while installing panels.
- Tarrosion 8y agoHere's a similar article with lots of sources (which also reports nuclear as extremely safe): https://ourworldindata.org/what-is-the-safest-form-of-energy https://ourworldindata.org/what-is-the-safest-form-of-energy
- davedx 8y agoI can't find wind or solar in that article?
- hoppi 8y agoIf you follow the links that are inlined in the article you eventually find referenced articles that they themselves have then referenced. Not optimal. These are the linked articles that contain the references for this data (haven't checked it out so I am assuming on a cursory glance) https://forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-price-always-paid/#7b6f0c06151a https://forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-death... and https://ourworldindata.org/what-is-the-safest-form-of-energy https://ourworldindata.org/what-is-the-safest-form-of-energy
- PJDK 8y agoI don't know how this article calculates things, but both Solar and Wind require lots of sites, and lots of working at heights. Every time someone goes up on a roof to instal a panel there is a non zero chance that they will fall off and die. The kind of people installing domestic solar don't tend to perform the same level of health and safety analysis as those installing nuclear reactors!
- sametmax 8y agoPlus the radiation from the 3 major nuclear accidents caused a lot of problems the article doesn't acknowledge. In France the number of cancers increased a lot for the generation living on the east border during Tchernobyl. One of my friends had to have his thyroid removed. Fukushima is still leaking radiation in the ocean (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/fukushima-nuclear-disaster-radiation-lethal-levels-leak-japan-tsunami-tokyo-electric-power-company-a8190981.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/fukushima-nucl...) and we can't (don't ?) measure the consequences. Then of course you have the burring sites. And the fact it's used to create bombs and we need only to fail one time to prevent a terrorist to getting one, but they can try again and again. So yes, nuclear energy is an interesting source of technology, but it's not the perfect source HN readers love to depict. It's also very expensive, and the calculations for the cost of nuclear energy usually completely ignore the cost of destroying the plant on retirement. I'm glad we have it, it has many benefits, but let's keep trying to find something better. Wind, solar, fusion...
- imglorp 8y agoMaybe when Big Solar has as many lobbyists, astroturfers and PR shills as the defense contractors that build the nuclear stuff, we'll start to see the other kind of article :)
- supreme_sublime 8y ago2 nuclear power plants in the US in the last 20 years. [0] These shills, lobbyists, and astroturfers need to get better at their job for the defense contractors. [0] - https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=228&t=21 https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=228&t=21
- dwighttk 8y agoHas wind produced 1000TWh of energy yet?
- lucidguppy 8y agoIts interesting how people have weird biases. Nuclear accidents do happen - and when they do - they poison the area pretty much forever. If you had the choice of building a power plant - or building a solar / wind factory - it's a no brainer. You're building a power plant factory rather than one single power plant. Everyone but he US sees the potential.
- fabatka 8y agoIn the case of Chernobyl, I would argue that the area is not poisoned "pretty much forever". The effects of radiation on local wildlife is up for debate[0], but note the fact that mammal population is increasing(cited in [0]). From this I would think that the local wildlife is not worse off than it would be if humans continued living in that area. [0]: https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/04/060418-chernobyl-wildlife-thirty-year-anniversary-science/ https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/04/060418-chernobyl... EDIT: forgot reference
- olavk 8y agoOf course wildlife is not worse off - anywhere humans leave an inhabited area (ghost towns) you will see it gradually reclaimed by nature. If you want to argue that radiation is healthy for mammals, you would have to compare with a similar unpolluted wildlife area, not with how wildlife fared when the area was a populous industrial city!
- legulere 8y agoHere in Bavaria, over 1500km away, we still today have problems that game and mushrooms are often too much contaminated with radioisotopes to be fit for human consumption.
- bhickey 8y ago> Nuclear accidents do happen - and when they do - they poison the area pretty much forever. The Chernobyl exclusion zone is about 1,000 mi^sq and the Fukushima exclusion zone is about 240 mi^sq. This is a lot of land, but it must be dwarfed in comparison to the land destroyed, essentially forever, through mineral exploitation.
- kapauldo 8y agoWe still don't have a safe way to dispose of nuclear waste, so I think this article is a little short sighted.
- tolpp 8y agoAnd, there is an asterisk. * Rooftop solar only Why?
- mdekkers 8y agoWhy? Gravity
- ebbv 8y agoThis is THE statistic that nuclear proponents love to cite. There have been articles blasting about nuclear’s low fatality number as long as I’ve been on HN. And just as long I’ve been pointing out it’s a bogus, stupid metric. Solar gets a higher fatality rating because of folks falling off their own roofs. It’s a tragedy sure but does that mean solar is dangerous? Of course not. Climbing up on the roof of your house is dangerous and everybody knows that. It’s also a number that tries to gloss over the worst parts of nuclear; the extremely long lived impact of nuclear accidents. The areas around Chernobyl and Fukushima are destroyed for generations to come. Finding responsible, safe ways to store spent nuclear fuel continues to be an issue. Renewables are cheaper and cheaper all the time. More countries are finding they can power a larger portion of their needs with renewables every year. Frankly we just don’t need nuclear and it’s serious risks and downsides.
- emiliobumachar 8y ago"It’s a tragedy sure but does that mean solar is dangerous? Of course not. Climbing up on the roof of your house is dangerous and everybody knows that." That danger is sure a relevant factor when evaluating energy policy. People can know the danger all they want, they'll still do it more often if governments subsidize or otherwise promote rooftop solar. I think it's fair game to compare those deaths to radiation poisoning deaths from nuclear spills.
- mdekkers 8y agoFrankly we just don’t need nuclear You lambast the actual statistics cited, but fail to provide anything yourself. How much TW is currently produced globally by Nuclear, and how much Solar or other renewables? What is the timeframe until there is parity?
- bhickey 8y agoThe biggest risk posed by nuclear power is that we don't build it and carbon levels rise to stratospheric heights.
- codingdave 8y agoSome quick google-fu shows that renewables have already surpassed nuclear worldwide...
- nl 8y agoYeah, it's funny how these type of articles never report that this isn't an accepted view at all. We summarize the results of a recent statistical analysis of 216 nuclear energy accidents and incidents (events). The dataset is twice as large as the previous best available. We employ cost in US dollars as a severity measure to facilitate the comparison of different types and sizes of events, a method more complete and consistent that the industry-standard approach. Despite significant reforms following past disasters, we estimate that, with 388 reactors in operation, there is a 50% chance that a Fukushima event (or more costly) occurs every 60–150 years. We also find that the average cost of events per year is around the cost of the construction of a new plant. This dire outlook necessitates post-Fukushima reforms that will truly minimize extreme nuclear power risks. Nuclear power accidents are decreasing in frequency, but increasing in severity. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214629615301067?via%3Dihub https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221462961...
- sureaboutthis 8y agoI've been curious enough to wonder why very small plants could not be created to serve much smaller areas. I don't know what I'm talking about but would it be possible to make a small nuclear box, say the size of a refrigerator, that could serve a small city alone? A large city would have several of these sprinkled around. In case of a meltdown, or other accident, there would be minimal damage? I don't know what I'm talking about.
- korantu 8y agoRegistered to post this - http://www.nuscalepower.com/ http://www.nuscalepower.com/ This is exactly the idea of smaller, factory-produced walkaway-safe nuclear reactors. It is weird how people compare safety of 50 year old technology (nuclear incidents) and cutting edge solar/wind
- spodek 8y agoIf a penny saved is a penny earned, then conservation is the safest of all. I'm not saying we don't need sources, but most Americans could reduce their energy use by probably 50% - 90%, probably improving their standards of living if they did it thoughtfully. In terms of deaths caused, conservation is probably be negative, by saving lives from power industries, which tend to be dangerous. To talk about energy and safety without talking about conservation seems irresponsible.