8 ms·

Deaths per TWh for all energy sources: Rooftop solar power relatively dangerous

54 points by lemming 16y ago

kevin_morrill 16y ago
Seems like at some point you also have to factor opportunity cost into this as well--so the numbers probably become even more compelling. So if a form of energy is especially expensive, that's dollars you could have spent on say healthcare, food, etc. To me this is the real indictment against things like solar, not the risk of people falling off roofs.
- patio11 16y ago
  Another problem is that solar is an alternative to nuclear in the same sense that sex is an alternative to food: no matter how much you enjoy it, attempting full substitution would be fatal. The alternative to nuclear is fossil fuels (+). Thus, you don't get the moderate increase in deaths from going nukes to solar, you get the massive increase in deaths from going nukes to fossil fuels. (And that's before you get to worrying about global warming, if that is your thing.) There are a variety of reasons for this: the necessity of meeting the base loads, the fact that solar is ridiculously geographically restricted, the cost issues, etc etc. + Or decreasing per capita energy needs to below that of the late 1800s, which has aesthetic appeal to some people but absolutely nothing else to recommend it. Among other reasons, it would condemn the worldwide poor to perpetual grinding poverty, which kills a heck of a lot more people prematurely than every other cause combined.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
- brlewis 16y ago
  It's dollars that would have been spent increasing the capacity of your local coal plant to handle peaks when evreybody's running an air conditioner. Solar electric isn't a substitute for large-scale power generation, but in many areas it's a great substitute. In China rooftop solar is used for water heating. I imagine this use is more economical: http://ourdoings.com/davidsky/2010-08-08 http://ourdoings.com/davidsky/2010-08-08
Udo 16y ago
Okay, that's DIY rooftop installations and though I'm usually against atomic fear-mongering I have to say that it's difficult to accurately gauge the effects of the Chernobyl incident. And to be fair, we also need to count birth defects and other permanent injuries. So I don't know if this is a valid comparison. By the way, without having the facts to support it, I'd wager that fossil fuels cost the most lives of all energy sources, but again, that's also impossible to ever measure accurately and in islolation.
- dublinclontarf 16y ago
  Actually the effects of Chernobyl have been very accurately gauged by a number of international organisations and take into account birth defects and other permanent injuries. See these two posts for for more details including links to reports. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2326672 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2326672 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2326129 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2326129
- lemming 16y ago
  Yeah, sorry, I had to edit the title to get it into 80 characters, and I cut out "Rooftop". I still thought the comparison was interesting. Edited: title to be a little less alarmist.
  - Udo 16y ago
    It is interesting, don't get me wrong! The larger message for me is that we have a lot of strange causes of death, simply because of the large population size. Of course every death is a tragedy to be avoided, but it follows - somewhat counterintuitively - that sometimes a few thousand highly linked and direct casualties drown out an even larger number of people who die routinely without anyone questioning why. The same issue became apparent when we started looking at the number of deaths resulting from terrorism compared to ...pretty much any other cause of death.
borism 16y ago
safety isn't just about deaths. we're all gonna die eventually, independently of our power source. what is the most important factor to me is the quality of life provided by different energy sources. personally wind is the big winner there for me. Full disclosure: I like sailing.
- lemming 16y ago
  I love sailing too, but I'm not huge on wind power. The problem with it is that it's not constant (whereas the demand on the power grid is). The only form of energy that we currently have that's sufficiently controllable to be able to top up wind is burning coal. I'm also not quite sure what you mean by "the quality of life provided by different sources" - surely wind lights your lights just like nuclear does?
  - borism 16y ago
    surely wind lights your lights just like nuclear does? at what cost? and by cost I don't mean market cost. surely cost of electricity in Japan didn't account for nuclear meltdown possibility, thus far. of course nuclear is still better than coal, which requires huge open pit mines and produces incredible amounts of dust, radioactivity of which is greater than all nucleotides released from nuclear power plants as far as I understand.
    - eru 16y ago
      > surely cost of electricity in Japan didn't account for nuclear meltdown possibility, thus far. They did, up to a point. All the safety measure that are build into the reactors have to be paid for.
    - anamax 16y ago
      > of course nuclear is still better than coal, which requires huge open pit mines Many/most US coal mines are not open pit so "requires" is a bit strong.
      - 16y ago
3pt14159 16y ago
Woah, so that basically means that for coal in the US of the 3 or 4 cents per khw (wholesale price, not yet transmitted to your house) there is a hidden cost that is between 35 and 50% more, assuming $1mm / life (a standard non-conservative assumption by engineers). So basically coal isn't worth it at all? It's not just nuclear, natural gas could be made cheaper (and greener) than coal after you take in the human life costs. I also question why the oil cost in human life is so high. Do they take into account oil related conflicts like the Gulf War?
- 2arrs2ells 16y ago
  If we had more Pigovian taxes in the US (i.e. a carbon tax), the cost of coal would more accurately include all of negative effects (or externalities) it has. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigovian_tax http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigovian_tax
- JoeAltmaier 16y ago
  I'm doubtful that the large round number quoted as deaths due to coal pollution have any foundation. China has half a million? How can we know that? Its such a large, round, made-up number. Fewer people die from car accidents. I know several dead from car accidents. Why don't I know one person dead from "coal pollution"?
  - derobert 16y ago
    Because coal pollution isn't listed as a cause of death (just like all pollution). It raises the incidence of many other diseases, and those diseases are listed as the cause of death. Coal also has additional direct deaths in e.g., mining accidents. The numbers are nice round numbers because, well, there are somewhat imprecise. Looking up actual studies that came up with them would give methodology & margins of error. Compare to, for example, smoking. The cause of death will be e.g., lung cancer. But had he not smoked for 30 years, he probably would have lived longer.
  - advnano2045 16y ago
    Global health risk studies (by the world Health Organization) compiled many other health impact studies. It was easiest for them to analyze and correlate particulate matter (10 micron and 2.5 micron) http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/global-health-risks.html http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/global-health-risks.html http://www.who.int/healthinfo/global_burden_disease/GlobalHealthRisks_report_full.pdf http://www.who.int/healthinfo/global_burden_disease/GlobalHe... In the year 2004, outdoor air pollution in urban areas was responsible for almost 1.2 million deaths (2% of all deaths) and 0.6% of the global burden of disease Exposure to particulate matter, including metals, has been linked to a range of adverse health outcomes, including modest transient changes in the respiratory tract and impaired pulmonary function, increased risk of symptoms requiring emergency room or hospital treatment, and increased risk of death from cardiovascular and respiratory diseases or lung cancer. Particulate matter is estimated to cause about 8% of deaths from lung cancer, 5% of deaths from cardiopulmonary disease and about 3% of deaths from respiratory infections. The impact of outdoor air pollution on the burden of disease in the world’s cities is large, but an assessment of sources of uncertainty, including the fact that only mortality impacts of exposure to PM were estimated, suggests that the impact is actually underestimated. The coal pollution deaths are increased heart attacks and lung disease and more hospitalization from asthma and other illnesses.
encoderer 16y ago
My first thought is that once a solar panel is installed on the roof, that death rate has to drop nearly to 0. That is, the risk is foremost in hoisting and installing these heavy fragile panels on your pitched roof. With nuclear, though, I'd think that very little comparative risk is associated with construction. The bulk of the risk is in ongoing operation. So the die is not yet cast on nuclear deaths. I'm reminded of a case a few years ago at a nuke plant in Ohio where an acid leak above the reactor head had slowly eaten away... The 6-inch thick reactor head was, in this spot, corroded down to just 1/8 (!!!!) inch thick. Now, politically, I do favor nuclear power. I think it's a national security issue to wean off fossil fuels. But i think this "study" is a little overheated and needed a healthy dousing of sea-water.
- Andys 16y ago
  Side note: you are supposed to regularly clean your solar panel glass to keep it at peak efficiency.
  - Tichy 16y ago
    How well would privately operated nuclear power sources work out?
    - eru 16y ago
      Does it matter? Nobody's proposing nuclear power plants in your backyard. If central installation and professional operation are better, than we should go for it.
      - Tichy 16y ago
        Just trying to say that this comparison might be comparing apples to oranges. It doesn't even say what goes into those numbers, or where they come from. For example, in Germany nuclear garbage is stored in old salt mines. Did they include the people who died creating the salt mines in the statistics?
ugh 16y ago
I would also like a more complete comparison of costs (including deaths, loss of arable land, ...) but I very much suspect that the picture would be similar. Renewable energies combined with nuclear energy seem to be a good idea.
shod 16y ago
"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." In other words, this article only counts the deaths of reactor staff and emergency crew, and goes on to outrightly dismiss cancer deaths. The article's stated purpose is to show a comparison of death tolls. The dramatic loss of quality of life due to radiation poisoning for thousands of people exposed to the highest levels of radiation surrounding the Chernobyl disaster, and the displacement of hundreds of thousands, is also worth considering when weighing the negative impact. That said, with Chernobyl, we're talking about the absolute worst-case scenario for a nuclear reactor improperly contained (actually, not contained at all) and neglected long after warning signs were shown. We shouldn't practice historical revisionism or insult its victims by downplaying its impact, but we should also remember that its particular history will not be repeated with the containment barriers and safety measures in place at today's plants.
- advnano2045 16y ago
  The 4000 people have not started dieing yet. Otherwise the two years of lifespan reduction from air pollution https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-DW9Uoz93Cvo/TXZo0dHQDNI/AAAAAAAAKow/goGPMXlkyqM/s1600/globalhealthrisks4.jpg https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-DW9Uoz93Cvo/TXZo0dHQDNI/A... http://www.who.int/healthinfo/global_burden_disease/GlobalHealthRisks_report_full.pdf http://www.who.int/healthinfo/global_burden_disease/GlobalHe... Would be applied to the shorten lifespans of billions of people. Air pollution increases the cost of public health by about 30%. The effect is so widespread that people do not know it because it is constant and pervasive
  - shod 16y ago
    To be clear: the NASB estimates that 93,000 deaths so far (as opposed to "eventual" deaths), the ICRIN estimates 500,000 deaths so far, and the RAS estimates 60,000 deaths so far and in Russia alone, were caused by Chernobyl. These are the deaths the article outrightly dismisses in favor of the IAEA/WHO's figure of 9. The latter figure may be the correct one, but the article is still wrong in using this death toll to decide that "rooftop solar is several times more dangerous than nuclear power" if Chernobyl is the example of nuclear power against which we are comparing rooftop solar: this is a callous and casual dismissal of the horrific disfigurements we see in children at Novinki, the hundreds of thousands of displaced families, the rescue workers who lost body parts to the cancer they subsequently suffered, and to the many other horrors and humiliations Chernobyl's victims have suffered.
msy 16y ago
Disingenuous opinionated twaddle masquerading as statistical reasoning.
- ugh 16y ago
  Would you like to explain that?
- jerf 16y ago
  Because you have some sort of substantiative criticism, or because it challenges your preconceptions and you have no rational response to make to it?
  - msy 16y ago
    They're comparing an arbitrary and selective pool of deaths to the modern death rate of roofers & DIY and pretending it has some significance in energy policy. If you take that seriously maybe you need to look closely at why you're so keen on such questionable material.
pieter 16y ago
> $4 billion is about the cost of one of the new 1.5 GW nuclear power plants, which would generate 12 TWh/year In China maybe, but not in the western world. The EPR for example, is 1.65GWe, and is projected to cost €6.4 billion, or almost $9 billion in Finland. The one being built in France is now projected at €5 billion ($7 bililon), but may cost more as it'll take another 3 years to complete.
- Havoc 16y ago
  Why isn't that gap being arbitraged away? Sure reactors aren't exactly portable, but a 5bn gap surely can't be right. 1. Build reactor pieces in China 4bn 2. Ship over to Finland at 1bn cost 3. Installation 2bn 4. = 2bn profit
  - ultrasaurus 16y ago
    I'd love to see the NIMBY crowd's take on importing a cut-rate Chinese reactor. But surely the electricity itself is fungible. I guess there's no grid connecting China to Finland to arbitrage the power directly (or conceivably no way to build Chinese reactors any faster than domestic demand and imperfect pricing mechanisms).
    - derobert 16y ago
      Electricity itself is hard to move over large distances due to resistive losses. However, energy-intensive industry will move, accomplishing a similar thing.
  - derobert 16y ago
    The cost differences may be due to required safety features or alternatively due to labor costs. Its a major construction project, after all.
  - pieter 16y ago
    My guess it's mostly due to regulations and labor / material costs in Finland. Moving a reactor really isn't easy, the things are made of tons of concrete, and need a pretty huge foundation. That said, there probably is a market for portable reactors. However, I'm not sure how happy countries would be with importing a reactor made and filled in China :).
Tichy 16y ago
I think if more people would operate nuclear power plants in their backyard (as they do with solar panels), we would see a different kind of statistic to emerge. Also, what goes into this statistic? Maybe a lot of people die in chinese coal mines (don't know), or somewhere where they don't use up to date technology? People die from pollution, but could better filters be installed? And so on... In the end, no power source will be free of side effects. Best to reduce power consumption.
- henrikschroder 16y ago
  You're missing the point which is that all forms of energy production are unsafe, and all forms of energy production can be made safer, but the public perception of the relative dangers between the different forms is completely wrong, and people are focusing their energy and fears on what feels the most dangerous instead of what actually kills most people. The events at Fukushima will lead to a global backlash against nuclear power, and some countries will most probably shut down some plants or postpone the building of new ones in response to public fears, and since the same public is unwilling to cut back on their power consumption, some other form has to increase, which means that more people will die. And to anyone with a rational mindset, this is just infuriating.
  - Tichy 16y ago
    Let's wait how Fukushima plays out. If all is fine in the end, maybe the public opinion will also turn. I don't think this "killing most people" comparison is very useful, there some to be a lot of aspects and details missing from the picture.
    - chc 16y ago
      What kinds of "aspects and details" are you thinking of?
      - Tichy 16y ago
        Production, consumption and disposal of fuels. Is it coal mined in some shoddy third world mine, could things be improved with better technology? (nuclear power received a lot of research money, can the same be said for other power sources?). Environmental impact (oil spills - blame on power plants, or on cars?). Quality of life (just surviving is not enough). Sustainability (nuclear power also seems to be a limited resource). small chance for big damage (nuclear power) vs higher chance for lower damage (fossile fuels). And so on - honestly, I am not an expert on this stuff.
waterlesscloud 16y ago
Do you know who is completely insane? People who think statistics like "deaths per TWh" have any meaning at all in public policy debates. You're in complete denial if you think the populace at large cares.
zb 16y ago
One difference: if you're killed falling off a roof it's probably because you failed to take appropriate safety precautions; if you're killed by one of those other things it's probably because it was out of your control. People are, understandably, happier to take risks where they feel in control of the outcome - which is why so many of them fall off roofs.

54 points by lemming 16y ago

Seems like at some point you also have to factor opportunity cost into this as well--so the numbers probably become even more compelling. So if a form of energy is especially expensive, that's dollars you could have spent on say healthcare, food, etc. To me this is the real indictment against things like solar, not the risk of people falling off roofs.

patio11 16y ago
Another problem is that solar is an alternative to nuclear in the same sense that sex is an alternative to food: no matter how much you enjoy it, attempting full substitution would be fatal. The alternative to nuclear is fossil fuels (+). Thus, you don't get the moderate increase in deaths from going nukes to solar, you get the massive increase in deaths from going nukes to fossil fuels. (And that's before you get to worrying about global warming, if that is your thing.) There are a variety of reasons for this: the necessity of meeting the base loads, the fact that solar is ridiculously geographically restricted, the cost issues, etc etc. + Or decreasing per capita energy needs to below that of the late 1800s, which has aesthetic appeal to some people but absolutely nothing else to recommend it. Among other reasons, it would condemn the worldwide poor to perpetual grinding poverty, which kills a heck of a lot more people prematurely than every other cause combined.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
brlewis 16y ago
It's dollars that would have been spent increasing the capacity of your local coal plant to handle peaks when evreybody's running an air conditioner. Solar electric isn't a substitute for large-scale power generation, but in many areas it's a great substitute. In China rooftop solar is used for water heating. I imagine this use is more economical: http://ourdoings.com/davidsky/2010-08-08 http://ourdoings.com/davidsky/2010-08-08

Udo 16y ago

Okay, that's DIY rooftop installations and though I'm usually against atomic fear-mongering I have to say that it's difficult to accurately gauge the effects of the Chernobyl incident. And to be fair, we also need to count birth defects and other permanent injuries. So I don't know if this is a valid comparison. By the way, without having the facts to support it, I'd wager that fossil fuels cost the most lives of all energy sources, but again, that's also impossible to ever measure accurately and in islolation.

dublinclontarf 16y ago
Actually the effects of Chernobyl have been very accurately gauged by a number of international organisations and take into account birth defects and other permanent injuries. See these two posts for for more details including links to reports. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2326672 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2326672 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2326129 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2326129
lemming 16y ago
Yeah, sorry, I had to edit the title to get it into 80 characters, and I cut out "Rooftop". I still thought the comparison was interesting. Edited: title to be a little less alarmist.
- Udo 16y ago
  It is interesting, don't get me wrong! The larger message for me is that we have a lot of strange causes of death, simply because of the large population size. Of course every death is a tragedy to be avoided, but it follows - somewhat counterintuitively - that sometimes a few thousand highly linked and direct casualties drown out an even larger number of people who die routinely without anyone questioning why. The same issue became apparent when we started looking at the number of deaths resulting from terrorism compared to ...pretty much any other cause of death.

borism 16y ago

safety isn't just about deaths. we're all gonna die eventually, independently of our power source. what is the most important factor to me is the quality of life provided by different energy sources. personally wind is the big winner there for me. Full disclosure: I like sailing.

lemming 16y ago
I love sailing too, but I'm not huge on wind power. The problem with it is that it's not constant (whereas the demand on the power grid is). The only form of energy that we currently have that's sufficiently controllable to be able to top up wind is burning coal. I'm also not quite sure what you mean by "the quality of life provided by different sources" - surely wind lights your lights just like nuclear does?
- borism 16y ago
  surely wind lights your lights just like nuclear does? at what cost? and by cost I don't mean market cost. surely cost of electricity in Japan didn't account for nuclear meltdown possibility, thus far. of course nuclear is still better than coal, which requires huge open pit mines and produces incredible amounts of dust, radioactivity of which is greater than all nucleotides released from nuclear power plants as far as I understand.
  - eru 16y ago
    > surely cost of electricity in Japan didn't account for nuclear meltdown possibility, thus far. They did, up to a point. All the safety measure that are build into the reactors have to be paid for.
  - anamax 16y ago
    > of course nuclear is still better than coal, which requires huge open pit mines Many/most US coal mines are not open pit so "requires" is a bit strong.
    - 16y ago

3pt14159 16y ago

Woah, so that basically means that for coal in the US of the 3 or 4 cents per khw (wholesale price, not yet transmitted to your house) there is a hidden cost that is between 35 and 50% more, assuming $1mm / life (a standard non-conservative assumption by engineers). So basically coal isn't worth it at all? It's not just nuclear, natural gas could be made cheaper (and greener) than coal after you take in the human life costs. I also question why the oil cost in human life is so high. Do they take into account oil related conflicts like the Gulf War?

2arrs2ells 16y ago
If we had more Pigovian taxes in the US (i.e. a carbon tax), the cost of coal would more accurately include all of negative effects (or externalities) it has. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigovian_tax http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigovian_tax
JoeAltmaier 16y ago
I'm doubtful that the large round number quoted as deaths due to coal pollution have any foundation. China has half a million? How can we know that? Its such a large, round, made-up number. Fewer people die from car accidents. I know several dead from car accidents. Why don't I know one person dead from "coal pollution"?
- derobert 16y ago
  Because coal pollution isn't listed as a cause of death (just like all pollution). It raises the incidence of many other diseases, and those diseases are listed as the cause of death. Coal also has additional direct deaths in e.g., mining accidents. The numbers are nice round numbers because, well, there are somewhat imprecise. Looking up actual studies that came up with them would give methodology & margins of error. Compare to, for example, smoking. The cause of death will be e.g., lung cancer. But had he not smoked for 30 years, he probably would have lived longer.
- advnano2045 16y ago
  Global health risk studies (by the world Health Organization) compiled many other health impact studies. It was easiest for them to analyze and correlate particulate matter (10 micron and 2.5 micron) http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/global-health-risks.html http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/global-health-risks.html http://www.who.int/healthinfo/global_burden_disease/GlobalHealthRisks_report_full.pdf http://www.who.int/healthinfo/global_burden_disease/GlobalHe... In the year 2004, outdoor air pollution in urban areas was responsible for almost 1.2 million deaths (2% of all deaths) and 0.6% of the global burden of disease Exposure to particulate matter, including metals, has been linked to a range of adverse health outcomes, including modest transient changes in the respiratory tract and impaired pulmonary function, increased risk of symptoms requiring emergency room or hospital treatment, and increased risk of death from cardiovascular and respiratory diseases or lung cancer. Particulate matter is estimated to cause about 8% of deaths from lung cancer, 5% of deaths from cardiopulmonary disease and about 3% of deaths from respiratory infections. The impact of outdoor air pollution on the burden of disease in the world’s cities is large, but an assessment of sources of uncertainty, including the fact that only mortality impacts of exposure to PM were estimated, suggests that the impact is actually underestimated. The coal pollution deaths are increased heart attacks and lung disease and more hospitalization from asthma and other illnesses.

encoderer 16y ago

My first thought is that once a solar panel is installed on the roof, that death rate has to drop nearly to 0. That is, the risk is foremost in hoisting and installing these heavy fragile panels on your pitched roof. With nuclear, though, I'd think that very little comparative risk is associated with construction. The bulk of the risk is in ongoing operation. So the die is not yet cast on nuclear deaths. I'm reminded of a case a few years ago at a nuke plant in Ohio where an acid leak above the reactor head had slowly eaten away... The 6-inch thick reactor head was, in this spot, corroded down to just 1/8 (!!!!) inch thick. Now, politically, I do favor nuclear power. I think it's a national security issue to wean off fossil fuels. But i think this "study" is a little overheated and needed a healthy dousing of sea-water.

Andys 16y ago
Side note: you are supposed to regularly clean your solar panel glass to keep it at peak efficiency.
- Tichy 16y ago
  How well would privately operated nuclear power sources work out?
  - eru 16y ago
    Does it matter? Nobody's proposing nuclear power plants in your backyard. If central installation and professional operation are better, than we should go for it.
    - Tichy 16y ago
      Just trying to say that this comparison might be comparing apples to oranges. It doesn't even say what goes into those numbers, or where they come from. For example, in Germany nuclear garbage is stored in old salt mines. Did they include the people who died creating the salt mines in the statistics?

ugh 16y ago

I would also like a more complete comparison of costs (including deaths, loss of arable land, ...) but I very much suspect that the picture would be similar. Renewable energies combined with nuclear energy seem to be a good idea.

shod 16y ago

"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." In other words, this article only counts the deaths of reactor staff and emergency crew, and goes on to outrightly dismiss cancer deaths. The article's stated purpose is to show a comparison of death tolls. The dramatic loss of quality of life due to radiation poisoning for thousands of people exposed to the highest levels of radiation surrounding the Chernobyl disaster, and the displacement of hundreds of thousands, is also worth considering when weighing the negative impact. That said, with Chernobyl, we're talking about the absolute worst-case scenario for a nuclear reactor improperly contained (actually, not contained at all) and neglected long after warning signs were shown. We shouldn't practice historical revisionism or insult its victims by downplaying its impact, but we should also remember that its particular history will not be repeated with the containment barriers and safety measures in place at today's plants.

advnano2045 16y ago
The 4000 people have not started dieing yet. Otherwise the two years of lifespan reduction from air pollution https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-DW9Uoz93Cvo/TXZo0dHQDNI/AAAAAAAAKow/goGPMXlkyqM/s1600/globalhealthrisks4.jpg https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-DW9Uoz93Cvo/TXZo0dHQDNI/A... http://www.who.int/healthinfo/global_burden_disease/GlobalHealthRisks_report_full.pdf http://www.who.int/healthinfo/global_burden_disease/GlobalHe... Would be applied to the shorten lifespans of billions of people. Air pollution increases the cost of public health by about 30%. The effect is so widespread that people do not know it because it is constant and pervasive
- shod 16y ago
  To be clear: the NASB estimates that 93,000 deaths so far (as opposed to "eventual" deaths), the ICRIN estimates 500,000 deaths so far, and the RAS estimates 60,000 deaths so far and in Russia alone, were caused by Chernobyl. These are the deaths the article outrightly dismisses in favor of the IAEA/WHO's figure of 9. The latter figure may be the correct one, but the article is still wrong in using this death toll to decide that "rooftop solar is several times more dangerous than nuclear power" if Chernobyl is the example of nuclear power against which we are comparing rooftop solar: this is a callous and casual dismissal of the horrific disfigurements we see in children at Novinki, the hundreds of thousands of displaced families, the rescue workers who lost body parts to the cancer they subsequently suffered, and to the many other horrors and humiliations Chernobyl's victims have suffered.

msy 16y ago

Disingenuous opinionated twaddle masquerading as statistical reasoning.

ugh 16y ago
Would you like to explain that?
jerf 16y ago
Because you have some sort of substantiative criticism, or because it challenges your preconceptions and you have no rational response to make to it?
- msy 16y ago
  They're comparing an arbitrary and selective pool of deaths to the modern death rate of roofers & DIY and pretending it has some significance in energy policy. If you take that seriously maybe you need to look closely at why you're so keen on such questionable material.

pieter 16y ago

> $4 billion is about the cost of one of the new 1.5 GW nuclear power plants, which would generate 12 TWh/year In China maybe, but not in the western world. The EPR for example, is 1.65GWe, and is projected to cost €6.4 billion, or almost $9 billion in Finland. The one being built in France is now projected at €5 billion ($7 bililon), but may cost more as it'll take another 3 years to complete.

Havoc 16y ago
Why isn't that gap being arbitraged away? Sure reactors aren't exactly portable, but a 5bn gap surely can't be right. 1. Build reactor pieces in China 4bn 2. Ship over to Finland at 1bn cost 3. Installation 2bn 4. = 2bn profit
- ultrasaurus 16y ago
  I'd love to see the NIMBY crowd's take on importing a cut-rate Chinese reactor. But surely the electricity itself is fungible. I guess there's no grid connecting China to Finland to arbitrage the power directly (or conceivably no way to build Chinese reactors any faster than domestic demand and imperfect pricing mechanisms).
  - derobert 16y ago
    Electricity itself is hard to move over large distances due to resistive losses. However, energy-intensive industry will move, accomplishing a similar thing.
- derobert 16y ago
  The cost differences may be due to required safety features or alternatively due to labor costs. Its a major construction project, after all.
- pieter 16y ago
  My guess it's mostly due to regulations and labor / material costs in Finland. Moving a reactor really isn't easy, the things are made of tons of concrete, and need a pretty huge foundation. That said, there probably is a market for portable reactors. However, I'm not sure how happy countries would be with importing a reactor made and filled in China :).

Tichy 16y ago

I think if more people would operate nuclear power plants in their backyard (as they do with solar panels), we would see a different kind of statistic to emerge. Also, what goes into this statistic? Maybe a lot of people die in chinese coal mines (don't know), or somewhere where they don't use up to date technology? People die from pollution, but could better filters be installed? And so on... In the end, no power source will be free of side effects. Best to reduce power consumption.

henrikschroder 16y ago
You're missing the point which is that all forms of energy production are unsafe, and all forms of energy production can be made safer, but the public perception of the relative dangers between the different forms is completely wrong, and people are focusing their energy and fears on what feels the most dangerous instead of what actually kills most people. The events at Fukushima will lead to a global backlash against nuclear power, and some countries will most probably shut down some plants or postpone the building of new ones in response to public fears, and since the same public is unwilling to cut back on their power consumption, some other form has to increase, which means that more people will die. And to anyone with a rational mindset, this is just infuriating.
- Tichy 16y ago
  Let's wait how Fukushima plays out. If all is fine in the end, maybe the public opinion will also turn. I don't think this "killing most people" comparison is very useful, there some to be a lot of aspects and details missing from the picture.
  - chc 16y ago
    What kinds of "aspects and details" are you thinking of?
    - Tichy 16y ago
      Production, consumption and disposal of fuels. Is it coal mined in some shoddy third world mine, could things be improved with better technology? (nuclear power received a lot of research money, can the same be said for other power sources?). Environmental impact (oil spills - blame on power plants, or on cars?). Quality of life (just surviving is not enough). Sustainability (nuclear power also seems to be a limited resource). small chance for big damage (nuclear power) vs higher chance for lower damage (fossile fuels). And so on - honestly, I am not an expert on this stuff.

waterlesscloud 16y ago

Do you know who is completely insane? People who think statistics like "deaths per TWh" have any meaning at all in public policy debates. You're in complete denial if you think the populace at large cares.

zb 16y ago

One difference: if you're killed falling off a roof it's probably because you failed to take appropriate safety precautions; if you're killed by one of those other things it's probably because it was out of your control. People are, understandably, happier to take risks where they feel in control of the outcome - which is why so many of them fall off roofs.